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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Gorgias by Plato: and also more poetical. The beautiful and ingenious fancy occurs to Plato
that the upper atmosphere is an earth and heaven in one, a glorified earth,
fairer and purer than that in which we dwell. As the fishes live in the
ocean, mankind are living in a lower sphere, out of which they put their
heads for a moment or two and behold a world beyond. The earth which we
inhabit is a sediment of the coarser particles which drop from the world
above, and is to that heavenly earth what the desert and the shores of the
ocean are to us. A part of the myth consists of description of the
interior of the earth, which gives the opportunity of introducing several
mythological names and of providing places of torment for the wicked.
There is no clear distinction of soul and body; the spirits beneath the
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