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The argument for immortality seems to rest on the absolute

dualism of soul and body. Admitting the existence of the soul, we

know of no force which is able to put an end to her. Vice is her

own proper evil; and if she cannot be destroyed by that, she

cannot be destroyed by any other. Yet Plato has acknowledged that

the soul may be so overgrown by the incrustations of earth as to

lose her original form; and in the Timaeus he recognizes more

strongly than in the Republic the influence which the body has

over the mind, denying even the voluntariness of human actions,

on the ground that they proceed from physical states (Tim.). In

the Republic, as elsewhere, he wavers between the original soul

which has to be restored, and the character which is developed by

training and education...