Enneads I.7: Of the First Good, and of the Other Goods
By Virtue, Life Changes from an Evil to a Good
How is death not an evil, if life be a good? Certainly life is a good for such as possess the Good, (it is a good) not because the soul is united to the body, but because she repels evil by virtue. (Without the latter) death would rather be a good (because it delivers us from the body[320]). To resume: by itself, life in a body is evil; but, by virtue, the soul locates herself in the good, not by perpetuating the existing corporeal union, but by separating herself from the body.