"
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* This is the Hindu theory of nearly every one of the Aryan
philosophies.--Ed. Theos.
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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.
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