Plotinos · Plotinus
THE HISTORIC EVIDENCE FOR IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.
15. (20). This, then, is our answer to those who seek a philosophical demonstration. Those who are satisfied with the testimony of faith and sense, may be referred to those extracts from history which furnish numerous proofs thereof.[94] We may also refer to the oracles given by the divinities who order an appeasement of the souls who were victims of some injustice, and to honor the dead,[95] and to the rites observed by all towards those who live no more;[96] which presupposes that their souls are still conscious beyond. Even after leaving their bodies, many souls who lived on the earth have continued to grant benefits to men.[97] By revelation of the future;[98] and rendering other services, they themselves prove that the other souls cannot have perished. As the first book was evidently Platonic, the second seems Numenian, reminding us of the latter's book on the Immortality of the Soul, one of the arguments from which we find in 3 E. Concerning Fate. 1. The first possibility is that there is a cause both for the things that become, and those that are; the cause of the former being their becoming, and that of the latter, their existence. Again, neither of them may have a cause. Or, in both cases, some may have a cause, and some not. Further, those that become might have a cause, while, of these that exist, some might partly have a cause. Contrariwise, all things that exist may have a cause, while of those that become, parts may have a cause, and part not. Last, none of the things that become might have any cause.
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