That would be a reasonable conclusion. 270 Well then is not the soul liable to a malady which renders it evil? Certainly it is: all those things which we were lately discussing—injustice, intemperance, cowardice, and ignorance—produce that result.” Then having proved that although these things injure the soul they do not actually destroy it he proceeds. “Well, it is irrational to suppose that a thing can be destroyed by the depravity of another thing, though it cannot be destroyed by its own. True it is irrational. Yes it is: for you must remember that we do not imagine that a body is to be destroyed by the proper depravity of its food whatever that may be, whether mouldiness or rottenness or anything else. But if the depravity of the food itself produces in the body a disorder proper to the body, we shall assert that the body has been destroyed by its food remotely, but by its own proper vice or disease, immediately: and we shall always disclaim the notion that the body can be corrupted by the depravity of its food which is a different thing from the body—that is to say, the notion that the body can be corrupted by an alien evil without the introduction of its own native evil. You are perfectly correct. Then according to the same reasoning I continued, unless depravity of body introduces into the soul depravity of soul let us never suppose that the soul can be destroyed by an alien evil without the presence of its own peculiar disease: for that would be to suppose that one thing can be destroyed by the evil of another thing. That is a reasonable statement. Well then let us either refute this doctrine and point out our mistake or else, so long as it remains unrefuted, let us never assert that a fever or any other disease, or fatal violence, or even the act of cutting up the entire body into the smallest possible pieces can have any tendency to destroy the soul, until it has been demonstrated that in consequence of this treatment of the body the soul itself becomes more unjust and more unholy. For so long as a thing is exempt from its own proper evil, while an evil foreign to it appears in another subject, let us not allow it to be said that this thing whether it be a soul or anything else is in danger of being destroyed. Well, certainly no one will prove that the souls of the dying become more unjust in consequence of death.” Here follows a passage to prove that even injustice does not destroy the soul, after which he proceeds, “Surely then when the soul cannot be killed and destroyed by its own depravity and its own evil, hardly will the evil which is charged with the destruction of another thing destroy a soul or anything else beyond its own appropriate object. Hardly: at least that is the natural inference. 370 Introduction.