Why the Oracles Cease to Give Answers (39-40)

And the rest of the company making the like exhortations, having paused a while, I began after this manner: It so happened, Ammonius, that you did, without your knowledge, give occasion to the discourse which was then held; for if the Daemons be souls and spirits separated from bodies and having no communication with them, as you affirm, but according to the divine poet Hesiod,

Are our kind guardians, walking here their rounds,[*]

why do we deprive the spirits and souls which are in bodies of the same power by which Daemons may foresee and foretell things to come? For it is not likely souls do acquire any property and power, when they abandon their bodies, wherewith they were not endowed before; but rather, we should think that they had always the same parts, but in a worse degree, when they were mixed with bodies, some of them being inapparent and hid, and others weak and obscure, like those who see through a thick mist or move in water, heavily and uneasily performing their operations, much desiring to be cured and so to recover what is their own, and to be discharged and purified of that which covers them. For as the sun does not then properly become bright when he has escaped out of the cloud,—for he is always so, though to our eyes, being clouded, he seems obscure and dark,—so the soul acquires not then the faculty of divining when gotten clear of the body, as from a cloud, but having the same before, is blinded by the commixture and confusion which she has with the mortal body. And this cannot seem strange or incredible, if we consider nothing else in the soul but the faculty of remembrance, which is, as it were, the reverse of divination, and if we reflect upon the miraculous power it hath of preserving things past, or, we should rather say, things present, for of what is past nothing remains, and all things do come into being and perish in the same moment, whether they be actions, or words, or passions; they all pass by and vanish as soon as they appear; for time, like the course of a river, passeth on, and carries every thing along with it. But this retentive faculty of the soul seizes upon these in some mysterious way, and gives a form and a being to those things which are no longer present. For the oracle which was given to those of Thessaly, touching Arne, enjoined them to declare

The deaf man’s hearing, and the blind man’s sight.

But memory is to us the hearing of things without voice, and the sight of things invisible; so that, as I now said, no marvel, if retaining the things which are no longer in being, the soul anticipates several of those which are still to come; for these do more concern her, and she does naturally sympathize with them, inclining and tending to things which are future; whereas, as to those which are past and have an end, she leaves them behind her, only retaining the bare remembrance of them.

Our souls then, having this inbred power,—though weak, obscure, and hardly able to express their apprehensions,—yet sometimes spread forth and recover themselves, either in dreams or in the time of sacrifice or religious worship, when the body is well purified and endued with a certain temperature proper to this effect or when the rational and speculative part, being released and freed from the solicitude after present things, joineth with the irrational and imaginative part to think of and represent what is to come. For it is not, as Euripides saith, that he is the best prophet who guesses well; but he is the wisest man, not whose guess succeeds well in the event, but who, whatever the event be, takes reason and probability for his guide. Now the faculty of divining, like blank paper, is void of any reason or determination of itself, but is susceptible of fantasies and presentiments; and without any ratiocination or discourse of reason, it touches on that which is to come, when it has withdrawn itself farthest from the present. And from this it withdraws by means of a certain disposition of body, by which that state is produced which we call inspiration or enthusiasm. Now the body is sometimes endued naturally with this disposition; but

most times the earth casts forth to men the sources and causes of several other powers and faculties, some of which carry men beside themselves into ecstasy and phrensy, and produce maladies and mortalities; others again are good, gentle, and profitable, as appears by those who have had the experience of them. But this spring, or wind, or spirit of divination is most holy and divine, whether it comes by itself through the air, or through the water of some spring. For, being infused and mixed with the body, it produceth an odd temperature and strange disposition in the soul, which a man cannot exactly express, though he may resemble or compare it to several things. For by heat and dilatation it seems to open certain pores that make a discovery of future things; like wine, which, causing fumes to ascend up into the head, puts the spirits into many unusual motions, and reveals things that were laid up in secret. For drunkenness and phrensy, if we will believe Euripides, have a near approach to the nature of divination, when the soul, being hot and fiery, banishes those fears to which prudence and sobriety are subject, and which extinguish and quench the spirit of divination.