dissipated into air while on her way to the good and wise God! She has
been gathered into herself, holding aloof from the body, and practising
death all her life long, and she is now finally released from the errors
and follies and passions of men, and for ever dwells in the company of the
gods.

But the soul which is polluted and engrossed by the corporeal, and has no
eye except that of the senses, and is weighed down by the bodily appetites,
cannot attain to this abstraction. In her fear of the world below she
lingers about the sepulchre, loath to leave the body which she loved, a
ghostly apparition, saturated with sense, and therefore visible. At length
entering into some animal of a nature congenial to her former life of
sensuality or violence, she takes the form of an ass, a wolf or a kite.
And of these earthly souls the happiest are those who have practised virtue
without philosophy; they are allowed to pass into gentle and social
natures, such as bees and ants. (Compare Republic, Meno.) But only the
philosopher who departs pure is permitted to enter the company of the gods.
(Compare Phaedrus.) This is the reason why he abstains from fleshly lusts,
and not because he fears loss or disgrace, which is the motive of other
men. He too has been a captive, and the willing agent of his own
captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him, and he has heard her voice;
she has gently entreated him, and brought him out of the 'miry clay,' and
purged away the mists of passion and the illusions of sense which envelope
him; his soul has escaped from the influence of pleasures and pains, which
are like nails fastening her to the body. To that prison-house she will
not return; and therefore she abstains from bodily pleasures--not from a
desire of having more or greater ones, but because she knows that only when
calm and free from the dominion of the body can she behold the light of
truth.