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Preparation for the Gospel

Eusebius of Caesarea, tr. Gifford, 1903

Book 12, That It is Not the Body But the Soul that is the Cause of Our Evil Deeds

[PLATO]¹ ‘We remember, however, that in the former part of our discussion we agreed that, if the soul should be found to be older than the body, the properties also of the soul would be older than those of the body.

‘Yes, certainly.

‘Then tempers, and dispositions, and wishes, and reasonings, and true opinions, and meditations, and remembrances must hare been prior to length and breadth and thickness and strength of bodies, if soul is prior to body.

‘Necessarily.

‘Must we not then necessarily grant what follows immediately from this, that the soul is the cause of all that is good and evil, and noble and base, and just and unjust, and of all opposites, if we suppose her to be the cause of all things?’

Let these quotations suffice from the tenth Book of the Laws. Now with these Moses frequently agrees in his laws, saying: ‘And if a soul sin and commit a transgression,’² and all other passages expressed by him in like manner to this.

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