it causes her to attract a certain vehicle to herself; either of an aerial nature, or composed from the spirit and vapours of her terrestrial body, or which is recently collected from surrounding air; for according to the arcana of the Platonic philosophy, between an ethereal body, which is simple and immaterial and is the eternal connate vehicle of the soul, and a terrene body, which is material and composite, and of short duration, there is an aerial body, which is material indeed, but simple and of a more extended duration; and in this body the unpurified soul dwells for a long time after its exit from hence, till this pneumatic vehicle being dissolved, it is again invested with a composite body; while on the contrary the purified soul immediately ascends into the celestial regions with its ethereal vehicle alone.”

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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.  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