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You would admit that everything has an element of good and of

evil. In all things there is an inherent corruption; and if this

cannot destroy them, nothing else will. The soul too has her own

corrupting principles, which are injustice, intemperance,

cowardice, and the like. But none of these destroy the soul in

the same sense that disease destroys the body. The soul may be

full of all iniquities, but is not, by reason of them, brought

any nearer to death. Nothing which was not destroyed from within

ever perished by external affection of evil. The body, which is

one thing, cannot be destroyed by food, which is another, unless

the badness of the food is communicated to the body. Neither can

the soul, which is one thing, be corrupted by the body, which is

another, unless she herself is infected. And as no bodily evil

can infect the soul, neither can any bodily evil, whether disease

or violence, or any other destroy the soul, unless it can be

shown to render her unholy and unjust.