A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries

soul, by being merged in matter, resides among the dead both here and hereafter. Although this follows as a necessary consequence from the preceding observations, it is indisputably confirmed by the testimony of the great and truly divine Plotinus in Ennead 1, book 8, page 80: “When the soul,” says he, “has descended into generation, she participates in evil and profoundly rushes into the region of dissimilitude, to be entirely merged in which is nothing more than to fall into dark mire.”

And again, soon after: “The soul therefore dies through vice, as much as it is possible for the soul to die: and the death of the soul is, while merged, or baptized, as it were, in the present body, to descend into matter, and be filled with its impurity, and after departing from this body, to lie absorbed in its filth till it returns to a superior condition,