Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
A demonstration that souls do not pass from one body into another. Let us overturn the notion of a migration from body to body on the ground that these souls remember nothing at all of what they did before. For if they were sent forth for this purpose, that they might come to be in every kind of activity, they ought to have remembered what had been done before, so that they might fulfill what was lacking, and not go on laboring wretchedly, forever revolving around the same things. For the admixture of a body could not utterly extinguish the whole of the memory of what had previously been possessed by these souls; for even when the body is asleep and at rest, the soul itself, remembering, communicates with the body — and sometimes, even after a great length of time, a man reports on waking whatever he saw in a dream. In just this way the soul would surely remember also the things it did before it came into this body. For if a thing seen in the briefest span of time, or conceived merely in a fantasy, is recalled by the soul alone through a dream even after it has been mixed with the body and dispersed through every member, much more would it remember those things in which it dwelt for such long ages and for the whole span of a past life. A demonstration that, according to Plato, souls do not drink a cup of forgetfulness. To meet this difficulty Plato, that ancient Athenian who was the first to introduce this opinion, thought he could escape an aporia of this kind — offering no demonstration, but answering dogmatically — by saying that souls entering into this life are given a drink of forgetfulness by the daemon set over the entrance, before they enter their bodies. And in doing so he unwittingly fell into a still greater difficulty. For if a cup of forgetfulness, once drunk, can blot out the memory of everything done, then how, O Plato, do you yourself know this — since your soul is now in a body — that before it entered the body it was given the drug of forgetfulness by a daemon? For if you remember the daemon, and the cup, and the entrance, you ought to know the rest as well; but if you are ignorant of these things, then neither is the daemon real nor is the cup of forgetfulness a genuine invention. A demonstration that the body is not forgetfulness. Against those who say that the body itself is the medicine of forgetfulness, this objection arises: how then does the soul, through itself alone, see whatever it sees both in dreams and in thought (the mind's own attention) while the body is at rest, and itself remember it, and report it to those nearby? But indeed the soul, existing in the body, would not even remember things once known through the eyes or through hearing, if the body were forgetfulness; rather, as soon as the eye was absent from the things observed, the memory of them would likewise be taken away. For a soul existing in utter forgetfulness could know nothing else but what it was looking at in the present moment alone. But how then would it learn divine things, and remember them, existing in a body, if — as they claim — the body itself is forgetfulness? Indeed the prophets themselves, while they were on earth, remembered, once turned back into human form, whatever they had spiritually seen or heard in visions of heavenly things, and reported it to others; and the body did not produce forgetfulness in their souls of what had been spiritually seen, but rather the soul taught the body, and made it a partaker of the spiritual vision granted to it. That the soul rules the body, not the reverse. The body is inferior to the soul, since it is the soul that breathes life into it, and gives it growth, and gives it its articulation; rather the soul holds sway over the body and governs it. The soul's swiftness is slowed only to the extent that the body takes part in its movement, yet it does not on that account forfeit what it knows. For the body is like an instrument, while the soul holds the reasoning power of the craftsman. Just as the craftsman devises the work swiftly within himself, but performs it more slowly on the instrument, owing to the sluggishness of the material worked upon — and the swiftness of his mind, mingled with the slowness of the instrument, produces a tempered result — so too the soul, sharing in its body, is hindered only in a measure, but not entirely, in the exercise of its powers; yet, though it lends the body its life, it does not for that reason stop living on its own. So too, communicating the rest of itself to the body, it loses neither its own knowledge nor the memory of the things it has observed. A demonstration that each of us has his own soul, just as he has his own body. If, then, no one remembers anything of past events, but only gains knowledge of things now existing, it follows that no soul was ever previously in other bodies, nor did it do things which it does not even recognize, nor does it know things which indeed it does not even see. Rather, just as each of us receives his own body through the craft of God, so too he has his own soul. For God is neither so poor nor so lacking that he would fail to give each body its own proper soul, just as he gives it its own proper character. And therefore, when the number of those written for life is completed, they will rise again, each keeping the body proper to it, the soul proper to it, and the spirit proper to it, in which condition they found favor with God. But those judged worthy of punishment will depart into it, likewise keeping each his own soul and his own body, the state in which they turned aside from God's goodness. And both parties will thereupon cease to generate more, and the appointed fullness of the human race, predetermined by God, will preserve the perfected fitting-together of the Father's plan.