'It is no concern of mine,' he said, 'about Plato or Pythagoras or, in short, anyone at all who holds such opinions. For the truth is thus, and you would learn it from this. The soul is either life itself, or it possesses life. If, then, it is life, it would make something else live, not itself—just as motion would move something other than itself rather than itself. And that the soul lives, no one would deny. But if it lives, it does not live as being life itself, but by partaking of life; and that which partakes of something is other than that which it partakes of. Now the soul partakes of life, since God wills it to live.'
'So then it will also one day not partake of life, when He no longer wills it to live. For life is not its own possession, as it is God's; but just as a man does not exist forever, nor is the body always united with the soul, but, when this harmony must be dissolved, the soul leaves the body and the man ceases to be—so also, when the soul must be no more, the life-giving spirit departs from it and the soul is no longer, but it too goes back again to the place whence it was taken.'