Taylor - Eleusianian and Bacchic Mysteries.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

66 Eleusinian andparently separated from the body, have onlyexchanged one place for another of similarnature ;since conduct of this kind, accordingtothe arcana of divine philosophy, insteadof separating the soul from its body, onlyrestores it to a condition perfectly correspondent to its former inclinations and habits,lamentations and woes:* But if we examinethis affair more profoundly, we shall findthat these three characters are justly placedin the same situation, because the reason ofpunishment is in each equally obscure.Foris it not a just matter of doubt why thesouls of infants should be punished ? Andis it not equally dubious and wonderful whythose who have been unjustly condemned todeath in one period of existenceshould bepunished in another? And as to suicides,Plato in his Plicedo says that the prohibitionof this crime in the aTCOppv^a (aporrheta)*isa profound doctrine, and not easy to be* Aporrheta, the arcane or confidential disclosures made to thecandidate undergoing initiation. In the Eleusinia, these weremade by the Hierophant, and enforced by him from theBookof Interpretation, said to have consisted of two tablets of stone.This was the pctroma, a name usually derived from petra, a rock,