---------- * This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan philosophies.--Ed. Theos. ---------- Always it is the disposition of the soul that determines the quality of its body. "However the soul be in itself affected," says Porphyry (translated by Cudworth), "so does it always find a body suitable and agreeable to its present disposition, and therefore to the purged soul does naturally accrue a body that comes next to immateriality, that is, an ethereal one." And the same author, "The soul is never quite naked of all body, but hath always some body or other joined with it, suitable and agreeable to its present disposition (either a purer or impurer one). But that at its first quitting this gross earthly body, the spirituous body which accompanieth it (as its vehicle) must needs go away fouled and incrassated with the vapours and steams thereof, till the soul afterwards by degrees purging itself, this becometh at length a dry splendour, which hath no misty obscurity nor casteth any shadow." Here it will be seen, we lose sight of the specific difference of the two future vehicles--the ethereal is regarded as a sublimation of the aerial. This, however, is opposed to the general consensus of Plato's commentators. Sometimes the ethereal body, or augoeides, is appropriated to the rational soul, or spirit, which must then be considered as a distinct entity, separable from the lower soul. Philoponus, a Christian writer, says, "that the Rational Soul, as to its energie, is separable from all body, but the irrational part or life thereof is separable only from this gross body, and not from all body whatsoever, but hath after death a spirituous or airy body, in which it acteth--this I say is a true opinion which shall afterwards be proved by us.... The irrational life of the soul hath not all its being in this gross earthly body, but remaineth after the soul's departure out of it, having for its vehicle and subject the spirituous body, which itself is also compounded out of the four elements, but receiveth its denomination from the predominant part, to wit, Air, as this gross body of ours is called earthy from what is most predominant therein."--Cudworth, "Intell. Syst." From the same source we extract the following: "Wherefore these ancients say that impure souls after their departure out of this body wander here up and down for a certain space in their spirituous vaporous and airy body, appearing about sepulchres and haunting their former habitation. For which cause there is great reason that we should take care of living well, as also of abstaining from a fouler and grosser diet; these Ancients telling us likewise that this spirituous body of ours being fouled and incrassated by evil diet, is apt to render the soul in this life also more obnoxious to the disturbances of passions. They further add that there is something of the Plantal or Plastic life, also exercised by the soul, in those spirituous or airy bodies after death;