Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.26
26.1. But when I hear the soul called I-know-not-what outstanding thing, near and next to God, knowing all things as it arrives here from superior ages, I refuse that it learn and instead want it to teach, and not become from learned an elementary pupil, as they say, but, keeping its own things, bind itself round with earthly bodies. For unless the matter stands so, how can it be discerned whether what it hears it remembers or learns, when it is much easier to believe that it learns what it does not know than that it has forgotten what it knew a little before?
2. “By the opposition of the body it loses the recollection of prior things.” — And where is that which is said, that souls have an incorporeal substance? For what is of no body is not hindered by another’s opposition, nor can that lose anything from its own stock which cannot sustain the touch of an opposed thing. For as number, constituted without bodies, though buried by a thousand bodies, stands intact and inviolable, so souls, if they are incorporeal as alleged, must suffer no oblivion of prior things, though the solidest bindings of bodies have wrapped them.
3. What of this—that the same reasoning not only shows they are not incorporeal, but also strips them all of immortality and applies them to limits by which accustomed life is wont to be ended? For whatever, when some cause comes on, is so changed and turned that it cannot keep its integrity must be judged passive in nature. And what is ready and exposed to passion declares by that very passibility intervening that it is corruptible.
Latin
26.1. Sed ego cum audio nescio quid praestans animam dici, deo vicinum et proximum, scientem huc omnia superioribus adventare de saeculis, nolo illam discere set docere nec ex docta ut dicitur elementariam fieri sed retinentem res suas corporibus semet circumligare terrenis. Nisi enim sese habuerit res ita, discerni qui poterit, utrumne illud quod audit reminiscatur an discat, cum multo facilius <sit> credere, discere illam quod nesciat quam oblitam quod paulo ante sciebat.
2. ''Ex oppositu corporis amittit repetentiam priorum'' [Plat., Phaedr. 248 a-c]. - Et ubi est illud quod dicitur, incorporalis animas substantiam non habere? Quod enim nullius est corporis, oppositione alterius non inpeditur nec potest aliquid sua de re perdere id quod non potest tactum rei oppositae sustinere. Ut enim numerus sine corporibus constitutus, quamvis mille corporibus obruatur, intactus et inviolabilis constat, ita necesse est animas, si sunt ut perhibetur incorporeae, oblivionem priorum nullam pati, quamvis eas solidissimae corporum circumligaverint vinctiones.
3. Quid quod eadem ratio non tantum incorporeas indicat eas non esse, verum etiam privat immortalitate has omnis et ad fines adplicat quibus vita consueta est terminari? Quicquid enim causa ingruente nonnulla ita mutatur et vertitur ut integritatem suam retinere non possit, id necesse est iudicari natura esse passivum. Quod autem est promptum atque expositum passioni, corruptibile esse ipsa passibilitate interveniente denuntiat.