Oration to the Greeks 20

Even if you are healed by drugs (I allow it you as a concession), you must give the credit to God. For the world still drags us down, and in my weakness I seek the help of matter. The perfect spirit is the soul's plumage; having cast it off through sin, the soul fluttered like a fledgling and fell to the ground; and having left its heavenly companionship, it longed to share in lesser things. The demons were made to change their dwelling; the first-formed were banished. The demons were cast down from heaven; the first-formed from an earth, but not from this one: from a better ordering than the one here. And so we must now long for our original state and reject everything that stands in the way. For heaven is not infinite, O man, but bounded and within limits; and beyond it are the better ages, which have no change of seasons, the cause of various diseases, but enjoy a perfectly tempered climate, and have a day that does not end, and a light that people from here cannot approach. Those who labored over geographies described the regions as far as a human being could; but being unable to speak of what lies beyond, because it could not be observed, they spoke of tides, of one sea full of seaweed and another full of mud, and of some regions as fiery and others as cold and frozen. But we have learned what was unknown to us through the prophets, who, being convinced that the soul will gain the heavenly spirit as a garment over its mortality, foretold things that the other souls did not know. Everyone who is naked can obtain this adornment and run back to the ancient kinship.