Phaedo

By Plato

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Title: Phaedo
       The Last Hours Of Socrates

Author: Plato

Translator: Benjamin Jowett

Posting Date: October 29, 2008 [EBook #1658]
Release Date: March, 1999

Language: English


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Produced by Sue Asscher





PHAEDO

By Plato


Translated by Benjamin Jowett




INTRODUCTION.

After an interval of some months or years, and at Phlius, a town of
Peloponnesus, the tale of the last hours of Socrates is narrated to
Echecrates and other Phliasians by Phaedo the 'beloved disciple.' The
Dialogue necessarily takes the form of a narrative, because Socrates has
to be described acting as well as speaking. The minutest particulars of
the event are interesting to distant friends, and the narrator has an
equal interest in them.

During the voyage of the sacred ship to and from Delos, which has
occupied thirty days, the execution of Socrates has been deferred.
(Compare Xen. Mem.) The time has been passed by him in conversation with
a select company of disciples. But now the holy season is over, and the
disciples meet earlier than usual in order that they may converse with
Socrates for the last time. Those who were present, and those who might
have been expected to be present, are mentioned by name. There are
Simmias and Cebes (Crito), two disciples of Philolaus whom Socrates
'by his enchantments has attracted from Thebes' (Mem.), Crito the aged
friend, the attendant of the prison, who is as good as a friend--these
take part in the conversation. There are present also, Hermogenes,
from whom Xenophon derived his information about the trial of Socrates
(Mem.), the 'madman' Apollodorus (Symp.), Euclid and Terpsion from
Megara (compare Theaet.), Ctesippus, Antisthenes, Menexenus, and some
other less-known members of the Socratic circle, all of whom are silent
auditors. Aristippus, Cleombrotus, and Plato are noted as absent. Almost
as soon as the friends of Socrates enter the prison Xanthippe and her
children are sent home in the care of one of Crito's servants.
Socrates himself has just been released from chains, and is led by this
circumstance to make the natural remark that 'pleasure follows pain.'
(Observe that Plato is preparing the way for his doctrine of the
alternation of opposites.) 'Aesop would have represented them in a fable
as a two-headed creature of the gods.' The mention of Aesop reminds
Cebes of a question which had been asked by Evenus the poet (compare
Apol.): 'Why Socrates, who was not a poet, while in prison had been
putting Aesop into verse?'--'Because several times in his life he had
been warned in dreams that he should practise music; and as he was about
to die and was not certain of what was meant, he wished to fulfil the
admonition in the letter as well as in the spirit, by writing verses as
well as by cultivating philosophy. Tell this to Evenus; and say that I
would have him follow me in death.' 'He is not at all the sort of man
to comply with your request, Socrates.' 'Why, is he not a philosopher?'
'Yes.' 'Then he will be willing to die, although he will not take his
own life, for that is held to be unlawful.'

Cebes asks why suicide is thought not to be right, if death is to be
accounted a good? Well, (1) according to one explanation, because man is
a prisoner, who must not open the door of his prison and run away--this
is the truth in a 'mystery.' Or (2) rather, because he is not his own
property, but a possession of the gods, and has no right to make away
with that which does not belong to him. But why, asks Cebes, if he is a
possession of the gods, should he wish to die and leave them? For he is
under their protection; and surely he cannot take better care of himself
than they take of him. Simmias explains that Cebes is really referring
to Socrates, whom they think too unmoved at the prospect of leaving the
gods and his friends. Socrates answers that he is going to other gods
who are wise and good, and perhaps to better friends; and he professes
that he is ready to defend himself against the charge of Cebes.
The company shall be his judges, and he hopes that he will be more
successful in convincing them than he had been in convincing the court.

The philosopher desires death--which the wicked world will insinuate
that he also deserves: and perhaps he does, but not in any sense which
they are capable of understanding. Enough of them: the real question
is, What is the nature of that death which he desires? Death is
the separation of soul and body--and the philosopher desires such
a separation. He would like to be freed from the dominion of bodily
pleasures and of the senses, which are always perturbing his mental
vision. He wants to get rid of eyes and ears, and with the light of the
mind only to behold the light of truth. All the evils and impurities
and necessities of men come from the body. And death separates him from
these corruptions, which in life he cannot wholly lay aside. Why then
should he repine when the hour of separation arrives? Why, if he is dead
while he lives, should he fear that other death, through which alone he
can behold wisdom in her purity?

Besides, the philosopher has notions of good and evil unlike those of
other men. For they are courageous because they are afraid of greater
dangers, and temperate because they desire greater pleasures. But he
disdains this balancing of pleasures and pains, which is the exchange
of commerce and not of virtue. All the virtues, including wisdom, are
regarded by him only as purifications of the soul. And this was the
meaning of the founders of the mysteries when they said, 'Many are the
wand-bearers but few are the mystics.' (Compare Matt. xxii.: 'Many are
called but few are chosen.') And in the hope that he is one of these
mystics, Socrates is now departing. This is his answer to any one who
charges him with indifference at the prospect of leaving the gods and
his friends.

Still, a fear is expressed that the soul upon leaving the body may
vanish away like smoke or air. Socrates in answer appeals first of all
to the old Orphic tradition that the souls of the dead are in the world
below, and that the living come from them. This he attempts to found
on a philosophical assumption that all opposites--e.g. less, greater;
weaker, stronger; sleeping, waking; life, death--are generated out of
each other. Nor can the process of generation be only a passage from
living to dying, for then all would end in death. The perpetual sleeper
(Endymion) would be no longer distinguished from the rest of mankind.
The circle of nature is not complete unless the living come from the
dead as well as pass to them.

The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence is then adduced as a confirmation
of the pre-existence of the soul. Some proofs of this doctrine are
demanded. One proof given is the same as that of the Meno, and is
derived from the latent knowledge of mathematics, which may be elicited
from an unlearned person when a diagram is presented to him. Again,
there is a power of association, which from seeing Simmias may remember
Cebes, or from seeing a picture of Simmias may remember Simmias. The
lyre may recall the player of the lyre, and equal pieces of wood or
stone may be associated with the higher notion of absolute equality. But
here observe that material equalities fall short of the conception of
absolute equality with which they are compared, and which is the measure
of them. And the measure or standard must be prior to that which is
measured, the idea of equality prior to the visible equals. And if prior
to them, then prior also to the perceptions of the senses which recall
them, and therefore either given before birth or at birth. But all men
have not this knowledge, nor have any without a process of reminiscence;
which is a proof that it is not innate or given at birth, unless indeed
it was given and taken away at the same instant. But if not given to
men in birth, it must have been given before birth--this is the only
alternative which remains. And if we had ideas in a former state, then
our souls must have existed and must have had intelligence in a former
state. The pre-existence of the soul stands or falls with the doctrine
of ideas.

It is objected by Simmias and Cebes that these arguments only prove a
former and not a future existence. Socrates answers this objection by
recalling the previous argument, in which he had shown that the living
come from the dead. But the fear that the soul at departing may vanish
into air (especially if there is a wind blowing at the time) has not yet
been charmed away. He proceeds: When we fear that the soul will vanish
away, let us ask ourselves what is that which we suppose to be liable
to dissolution? Is it the simple or the compound, the unchanging or the
changing, the invisible idea or the visible object of sense? Clearly the
latter and not the former; and therefore not the soul, which in her own
pure thought is unchangeable, and only when using the senses descends
into the region of change. Again, the soul commands, the body serves:
in this respect too the soul is akin to the divine, and the body to the
mortal. And in every point of view the soul is the image of divinity and
immortality, and the body of the human and mortal. And whereas the
body is liable to speedy dissolution, the soul is almost if not quite
indissoluble. (Compare Tim.) Yet even the body may be preserved for ages
by the embalmer's art: how unlikely, then, that the soul will perish and
be dissipated into air while on her way to the good and wise God!
She has been gathered into herself, holding aloof from the body, and
practising death all her life long, and she is now finally released from
the errors and follies and passions of men, and for ever dwells in the
company of the gods.

But the soul which is polluted and engrossed by the corporeal, and has
no eye except that of the senses, and is weighed down by the bodily
appetites, cannot attain to this abstraction. In her fear of the world
below she lingers about the sepulchre, loath to leave the body which
she loved, a ghostly apparition, saturated with sense, and therefore
visible. At length entering into some animal of a nature congenial to
her former life of sensuality or violence, she takes the form of an ass,
a wolf or a kite. And of these earthly souls the happiest are those who
have practised virtue without philosophy; they are allowed to pass into
gentle and social natures, such as bees and ants. (Compare Republic,
Meno.) But only the philosopher who departs pure is permitted to enter
the company of the gods. (Compare Phaedrus.) This is the reason why he
abstains from fleshly lusts, and not because he fears loss or disgrace,
which is the motive of other men. He too has been a captive, and the
willing agent of his own captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him,
and he has heard her voice; she has gently entreated him, and brought
him out of the 'miry clay,' and purged away the mists of passion and
the illusions of sense which envelope him; his soul has escaped from the
influence of pleasures and pains, which are like nails fastening her to
the body. To that prison-house she will not return; and therefore she
abstains from bodily pleasures--not from a desire of having more or
greater ones, but because she knows that only when calm and free from
the dominion of the body can she behold the light of truth.

Simmias and Cebes remain in doubt; but they are unwilling to raise
objections at such a time. Socrates wonders at their reluctance. Let
them regard him rather as the swan, who, having sung the praises of
Apollo all his life long, sings at his death more lustily than ever.
Simmias acknowledges that there is cowardice in not probing truth to the
bottom. 'And if truth divine and inspired is not to be had, then let
a man take the best of human notions, and upon this frail bark let him
sail through life.' He proceeds to state his difficulty: It has been
argued that the soul is invisible and incorporeal, and therefore
immortal, and prior to the body. But is not the soul acknowledged to
be a harmony, and has she not the same relation to the body, as the
harmony--which like her is invisible--has to the lyre? And yet the
harmony does not survive the lyre. Cebes has also an objection, which
like Simmias he expresses in a figure. He is willing to admit that the
soul is more lasting than the body. But the more lasting nature of the
soul does not prove her immortality; for after having worn out many
bodies in a single life, and many more in successive births and
deaths, she may at last perish, or, as Socrates afterwards restates the
objection, the very act of birth may be the beginning of her death, and
her last body may survive her, just as the coat of an old weaver is left
behind him after he is dead, although a man is more lasting than his
coat. And he who would prove the immortality of the soul, must prove not
only that the soul outlives one or many bodies, but that she outlives
them all.

The audience, like the chorus in a play, for a moment interpret the
feelings of the actors; there is a temporary depression, and then the
enquiry is resumed. It is a melancholy reflection that arguments, like
men, are apt to be deceivers; and those who have been often deceived
become distrustful both of arguments and of friends. But this
unfortunate experience should not make us either haters of men or haters
of arguments. The want of health and truth is not in the argument, but
in ourselves. Socrates, who is about to die, is sensible of his own
weakness; he desires to be impartial, but he cannot help feeling that he
has too great an interest in the truth of the argument. And therefore he
would have his friends examine and refute him, if they think that he is
in error.

At his request Simmias and Cebes repeat their objections. They do not
go to the length of denying the pre-existence of ideas. Simmias is of
opinion that the soul is a harmony of the body. But the admission of the
pre-existence of ideas, and therefore of the soul, is at variance with
this. (Compare a parallel difficulty in Theaet.) For a harmony is
an effect, whereas the soul is not an effect, but a cause; a harmony
follows, but the soul leads; a harmony admits of degrees, and the soul
has no degrees. Again, upon the supposition that the soul is a harmony,
why is one soul better than another? Are they more or less harmonized,
or is there one harmony within another? But the soul does not admit of
degrees, and cannot therefore be more or less harmonized. Further, the
soul is often engaged in resisting the affections of the body, as Homer
describes Odysseus 'rebuking his heart.' Could he have written this
under the idea that the soul is a harmony of the body? Nay rather, are
we not contradicting Homer and ourselves in affirming anything of the
sort?

The goddess Harmonia, as Socrates playfully terms the argument of
Simmias, has been happily disposed of; and now an answer has to be given
to the Theban Cadmus. Socrates recapitulates the argument of Cebes,
which, as he remarks, involves the whole question of natural growth or
causation; about this he proposes to narrate his own mental experience.
When he was young he had puzzled himself with physics: he had enquired
into the growth and decay of animals, and the origin of thought, until
at last he began to doubt the self-evident fact that growth is the
result of eating and drinking; and so he arrived at the conclusion that
he was not meant for such enquiries. Nor was he less perplexed with
notions of comparison and number. At first he had imagined himself to
understand differences of greater and less, and to know that ten is two
more than eight, and the like. But now those very notions appeared to
him to contain a contradiction. For how can one be divided into two? Or
two be compounded into one? These are difficulties which Socrates cannot
answer. Of generation and destruction he knows nothing. But he has a
confused notion of another method in which matters of this sort are to
be investigated. (Compare Republic; Charm.)

Then he heard some one reading out of a book of Anaxagoras, that mind is
the cause of all things. And he said to himself: If mind is the cause
of all things, surely mind must dispose them all for the best. The new
teacher will show me this 'order of the best' in man and nature. How
great had been his hopes and how great his disappointment! For he found
that his new friend was anything but consistent in his use of mind as
a cause, and that he soon introduced winds, waters, and other eccentric
notions. (Compare Arist. Metaph.) It was as if a person had said that
Socrates is sitting here because he is made up of bones and muscles,
instead of telling the true reason--that he is here because the
Athenians have thought good to sentence him to death, and he has thought
good to await his sentence. Had his bones and muscles been left by him
to their own ideas of right, they would long ago have taken themselves
off. But surely there is a great confusion of the cause and condition
in all this. And this confusion also leads people into all sorts of
erroneous theories about the position and motions of the earth. None of
them know how much stronger than any Atlas is the power of the best. But
this 'best' is still undiscovered; and in enquiring after the cause, we
can only hope to attain the second best.

Now there is a danger in the contemplation of the nature of things, as
there is a danger in looking at the sun during an eclipse, unless the
precaution is taken of looking only at the image reflected in the water,
or in a glass. (Compare Laws; Republic.) 'I was afraid,' says Socrates,
'that I might injure the eye of the soul. I thought that I had better
return to the old and safe method of ideas. Though I do not mean to say
that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas sees
only through a glass darkly, any more than he who contemplates actual
effects.'

If the existence of ideas is granted to him, Socrates is of opinion that
he will then have no difficulty in proving the immortality of the soul.
He will only ask for a further admission:--that beauty is the cause of
the beautiful, greatness the cause of the great, smallness of the small,
and so on of other things. This is a safe and simple answer, which
escapes the contradictions of greater and less (greater by reason of
that which is smaller!), of addition and subtraction, and the other
difficulties of relation. These subtleties he is for leaving to wiser
heads than his own; he prefers to test ideas by the consistency of their
consequences, and, if asked to give an account of them, goes back to
some higher idea or hypothesis which appears to him to be the best,
until at last he arrives at a resting-place. (Republic; Phil.)

The doctrine of ideas, which has long ago received the assent of the
Socratic circle, is now affirmed by the Phliasian auditor to command
the assent of any man of sense. The narrative is continued; Socrates is
desirous of explaining how opposite ideas may appear to co-exist but do
not really co-exist in the same thing or person. For example, Simmias
may be said to have greatness and also smallness, because he is greater
than Socrates and less than Phaedo. And yet Simmias is not really great
and also small, but only when compared to Phaedo and Socrates. I use the
illustration, says Socrates, because I want to show you not only that
ideal opposites exclude one another, but also the opposites in us. I,
for example, having the attribute of smallness remain small, and cannot
become great: the smallness which is in me drives out greatness.

One of the company here remarked that this was inconsistent with the
old assertion that opposites generated opposites. But that, replies
Socrates, was affirmed, not of opposite ideas either in us or in
nature, but of opposition in the concrete--not of life and death, but
of individuals living and dying. When this objection has been removed,
Socrates proceeds: This doctrine of the mutual exclusion of opposites
is not only true of the opposites themselves, but of things which are
inseparable from them. For example, cold and heat are opposed; and fire,
which is inseparable from heat, cannot co-exist with cold, or snow,
which is inseparable from cold, with heat. Again, the number three
excludes the number four, because three is an odd number and four is
an even number, and the odd is opposed to the even. Thus we are able to
proceed a step beyond 'the safe and simple answer.' We may say, not
only that the odd excludes the even, but that the number three, which
participates in oddness, excludes the even. And in like manner, not only
does life exclude death, but the soul, of which life is the inseparable
attribute, also excludes death. And that of which life is the
inseparable attribute is by the force of the terms imperishable. If the
odd principle were imperishable, then the number three would not perish
but remove, on the approach of the even principle. But the immortal is
imperishable; and therefore the soul on the approach of death does not
perish but removes.

Thus all objections appear to be finally silenced. And now the
application has to be made: If the soul is immortal, 'what manner of
persons ought we to be?' having regard not only to time but to eternity.
For death is not the end of all, and the wicked is not released from his
evil by death; but every one carries with him into the world below that
which he is or has become, and that only.

For after death the soul is carried away to judgment, and when she has
received her punishment returns to earth in the course of ages. The wise
soul is conscious of her situation, and follows the attendant angel who
guides her through the windings of the world below; but the impure soul
wanders hither and thither without companion or guide, and is carried
at last to her own place, as the pure soul is also carried away to hers.
'In order that you may understand this, I must first describe to you the
nature and conformation of the earth.'

Now the whole earth is a globe placed in the centre of the heavens, and
is maintained there by the perfection of balance. That which we call the
earth is only one of many small hollows, wherein collect the mists and
waters and the thick lower air; but the true earth is above, and is in
a finer and subtler element. And if, like birds, we could fly to the
surface of the air, in the same manner that fishes come to the top of
the sea, then we should behold the true earth and the true heaven and
the true stars. Our earth is everywhere corrupted and corroded; and even
the land which is fairer than the sea, for that is a mere chaos or waste
of water and mud and sand, has nothing to show in comparison of the
other world. But the heavenly earth is of divers colours, sparkling with
jewels brighter than gold and whiter than any snow, having flowers and
fruits innumerable. And the inhabitants dwell some on the shore of the
sea of air, others in 'islets of the blest,' and they hold converse
with the gods, and behold the sun, moon and stars as they truly are, and
their other blessedness is of a piece with this.

The hollows on the surface of the globe vary in size and shape from that
which we inhabit: but all are connected by passages and perforations in
the interior of the earth. And there is one huge chasm or opening called
Tartarus, into which streams of fire and water and liquid mud are ever
flowing; of these small portions find their way to the surface and
form seas and rivers and volcanoes. There is a perpetual inhalation and
exhalation of the air rising and falling as the waters pass into the
depths of the earth and return again, in their course forming lakes
and rivers, but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on
either side the rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice.
These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal ones,
Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus is the river
which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite direction, and
after flowing under the earth through desert places, at last reaches the
Acherusian lake,--this is the river at which the souls of the dead await
their return to earth. Pyriphlegethon is a stream of fire, which coils
round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus. The fourth river,
Cocytus, is that which is called by the poets the Stygian river, and
passes into and forms the lake Styx, from the waters of which it gains
new and strange powers. This river, too, falls into Tartarus.

The dead are first of all judged according to their deeds, and those who
are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they never come out.
Those who have only committed venial sins are first purified of them,
and then rewarded for the good which they have done. Those who have
committed crimes, great indeed, but not unpardonable, are thrust
into Tartarus, but are cast forth at the end of a year by way of
Pyriphlegethon or Cocytus, and these carry them as far as the Acherusian
lake, where they call upon their victims to let them come out of the
rivers into the lake. And if they prevail, then they are let out and
their sufferings cease: if not, they are borne unceasingly into Tartarus
and back again, until they at last obtain mercy. The pure souls also
receive their reward, and have their abode in the upper earth, and a
select few in still fairer 'mansions.'

Socrates is not prepared to insist on the literal accuracy of this
description, but he is confident that something of the kind is true.
He who has sought after the pleasures of knowledge and rejected the
pleasures of the body, has reason to be of good hope at the approach of
death; whose voice is already speaking to him, and who will one day be
heard calling all men.

The hour has come at which he must drink the poison, and not much
remains to be done. How shall they bury him? That is a question which he
refuses to entertain, for they are burying, not him, but his dead body.
His friends had once been sureties that he would remain, and they shall
now be sureties that he has run away. Yet he would not die without the
customary ceremonies of washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of
the poison? In the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he
utters in the very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages.
With a sort of irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is
still unfulfilled, just as above he desires before he departs to compose
a few verses in order to satisfy a scruple about a dream--unless,
indeed, we suppose him to mean, that he was now restored to health, and
made the customary offering to Asclepius in token of his recovery.

*****

1. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has sunk deep into
the heart of the human race; and men are apt to rebel against any
examination of the nature or grounds of their belief. They do not like
to acknowledge that this, as well as the other 'eternal ideas; of
man, has a history in time, which may be traced in Greek poetry or
philosophy, and also in the Hebrew Scriptures. They convert feeling into
reasoning, and throw a network of dialectics over that which is really
a deeply-rooted instinct. In the same temper which Socrates reproves in
himself they are disposed to think that even fallacies will do no harm,
for they will die with them, and while they live they will gain by the
delusion. And when they consider the numberless bad arguments which have
been pressed into the service of theology, they say, like the companions
of Socrates, 'What argument can we ever trust again?' But there is a
better and higher spirit to be gathered from the Phaedo, as well as from
the other writings of Plato, which says that first principles should
be most constantly reviewed (Phaedo and Crat.), and that the highest
subjects demand of us the greatest accuracy (Republic); also that we
must not become misologists because arguments are apt to be deceivers.

2. In former ages there was a customary rather than a reasoned belief
in the immortality of the soul. It was based on the authority of the
Church, on the necessity of such a belief to morality and the order of
society, on the evidence of an historical fact, and also on analogies
and figures of speech which filled up the void or gave an expression
in words to a cherished instinct. The mass of mankind went on their
way busy with the affairs of this life, hardly stopping to think about
another. But in our own day the question has been reopened, and it is
doubtful whether the belief which in the first ages of Christianity
was the strongest motive of action can survive the conflict with a
scientific age in which the rules of evidence are stricter and the mind
has become more sensitive to criticism. It has faded into the distance
by a natural process as it was removed further and further from the
historical fact on which it has been supposed to rest. Arguments derived
from material things such as the seed and the ear of corn or transitions
in the life of animals from one state of being to another (the chrysalis
and the butterfly) are not 'in pari materia' with arguments from
the visible to the invisible, and are therefore felt to be no longer
applicable. The evidence to the historical fact seems to be weaker than
was once supposed: it is not consistent with itself, and is based upon
documents which are of unknown origin. The immortality of man must be
proved by other arguments than these if it is again to become a living
belief. We must ask ourselves afresh why we still maintain it, and seek
to discover a foundation for it in the nature of God and in the first
principles of morality.

3. At the outset of the discussion we may clear away a confusion. We
certainly do not mean by the immortality of the soul the immortality of
fame, which whether worth having or not can only be ascribed to a very
select class of the whole race of mankind, and even the interest in
these few is comparatively short-lived. To have been a benefactor to the
world, whether in a higher or a lower sphere of life and thought, is a
great thing: to have the reputation of being one, when men have passed
out of the sphere of earthly praise or blame, is hardly worthy of
consideration. The memory of a great man, so far from being immortal,
is really limited to his own generation:--so long as his friends or his
disciples are alive, so long as his books continue to be read, so long
as his political or military successes fill a page in the history of
his country. The praises which are bestowed upon him at his death hardly
last longer than the flowers which are strewed upon his coffin or the
'immortelles' which are laid upon his tomb. Literature makes the most
of its heroes, but the true man is well aware that far from enjoying an
immortality of fame, in a generation or two, or even in a much shorter
time, he will be forgotten and the world will get on without him.

4. Modern philosophy is perplexed at this whole question, which is
sometimes fairly given up and handed over to the realm of faith. The
perplexity should not be forgotten by us when we attempt to submit the
Phaedo of Plato to the requirements of logic. For what idea can we form
of the soul when separated from the body? Or how can the soul be united
with the body and still be independent? Is the soul related to the
body as the ideal to the real, or as the whole to the parts, or as the
subject to the object, or as the cause to the effect, or as the end to
the means? Shall we say with Aristotle, that the soul is the entelechy
or form of an organized living body? or with Plato, that she has a life
of her own? Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or that of the
monad, the truer expression? Is the soul related to the body as sight to
the eye, or as the boatman to his boat? (Arist. de Anim.) And in
another state of being is the soul to be conceived of as vanishing into
infinity, hardly possessing an existence which she can call her own,
as in the pantheistic system of Spinoza: or as an individual informing
another body and entering into new relations, but retaining her own
character? (Compare Gorgias.) Or is the opposition of soul and body a
mere illusion, and the true self neither soul nor body, but the union
of the two in the 'I' which is above them? And is death the assertion
of this individuality in the higher nature, and the falling away into
nothingness of the lower? Or are we vainly attempting to pass
the boundaries of human thought? The body and the soul seem to be
inseparable, not only in fact, but in our conceptions of them; and any
philosophy which too closely unites them, or too widely separates them,
either in this life or in another, disturbs the balance of human nature.
No thinker has perfectly adjusted them, or been entirely consistent with
himself in describing their relation to one another. Nor can we
wonder that Plato in the infancy of human thought should have confused
mythology and philosophy, or have mistaken verbal arguments for real
ones.

5. Again, believing in the immortality of the soul, we must still
ask the question of Socrates, 'What is that which we suppose to be
immortal?' Is it the personal and individual element in us, or the
spiritual and universal? Is it the principle of knowledge or of
goodness, or the union of the two? Is it the mere force of life which is
determined to be, or the consciousness of self which cannot be got rid
of, or the fire of genius which refuses to be extinguished? Or is there
a hidden being which is allied to the Author of all existence, who is
because he is perfect, and to whom our ideas of perfection give us a
title to belong? Whatever answer is given by us to these questions,
there still remains the necessity of allowing the permanence of evil, if
not for ever, at any rate for a time, in order that the wicked 'may not
have too good a bargain.' For the annihilation of evil at death, or the
eternal duration of it, seem to involve equal difficulties in the moral
government of the universe. Sometimes we are led by our feelings, rather
than by our reason, to think of the good and wise only as existing in
another life. Why should the mean, the weak, the idiot, the infant,
the herd of men who have never in any proper sense the use of reason,
reappear with blinking eyes in the light of another world? But our
second thought is that the hope of humanity is a common one, and that
all or none will be partakers of immortality. Reason does not allow us
to suppose that we have any greater claims than others, and experience
may often reveal to us unexpected flashes of the higher nature in
those whom we had despised. Why should the wicked suffer any more than
ourselves? had we been placed in their circumstances should we have been
any better than they? The worst of men are objects of pity rather than
of anger to the philanthropist; must they not be equally such to divine
benevolence? Even more than the good they have need of another life; not
that they may be punished, but that they may be educated. These are
a few of the reflections which arise in our minds when we attempt to
assign any form to our conceptions of a future state.

There are some other questions which are disturbing to us because we
have no answer to them. What is to become of the animals in a future
state? Have we not seen dogs more faithful and intelligent than men,
and men who are more stupid and brutal than any animals? Does their life
cease at death, or is there some 'better thing reserved' also for
them? They may be said to have a shadow or imitation of morality, and
imperfect moral claims upon the benevolence of man and upon the justice
of God. We cannot think of the least or lowest of them, the insect, the
bird, the inhabitants of the sea or the desert, as having any place in
a future world, and if not all, why should those who are specially
attached to man be deemed worthy of any exceptional privilege? When we
reason about such a subject, almost at once we degenerate into nonsense.
It is a passing thought which has no real hold on the mind. We may argue
for the existence of animals in a future state from the attributes of
God, or from texts of Scripture ('Are not two sparrows sold for one
farthing?' etc.), but the truth is that we are only filling up the void
of another world with our own fancies. Again, we often talk about
the origin of evil, that great bugbear of theologians, by which they
frighten us into believing any superstition. What answer can be made
to the old commonplace, 'Is not God the author of evil, if he knowingly
permitted, but could have prevented it?' Even if we assume that the
inequalities of this life are rectified by some transposition of human
beings in another, still the existence of the very least evil if it
could have been avoided, seems to be at variance with the love and
justice of God. And so we arrive at the conclusion that we are carrying
logic too far, and that the attempt to frame the world according to a
rule of divine perfection is opposed to experience and had better be
given up. The case of the animals is our own. We must admit that the
Divine Being, although perfect himself, has placed us in a state of life
in which we may work together with him for good, but we are very far
from having attained to it.

6. Again, ideas must be given through something; and we are always prone
to argue about the soul from analogies of outward things which may serve
to embody our thoughts, but are also partly delusive. For we cannot
reason from the natural to the spiritual, or from the outward to the
inward. The progress of physiological science, without bringing us
nearer to the great secret, has tended to remove some erroneous notions
respecting the relations of body and mind, and in this we have the
advantage of the ancients. But no one imagines that any seed of
immortality is to be discerned in our mortal frames. Most people have
been content to rest their belief in another life on the agreement of
the more enlightened part of mankind, and on the inseparable connection
of such a doctrine with the existence of a God--also in a less degree
on the impossibility of doubting about the continued existence of those
whom we love and reverence in this world. And after all has been
said, the figure, the analogy, the argument, are felt to be only
approximations in different forms to an expression of the common
sentiment of the human heart. That we shall live again is far more
certain than that we shall take any particular form of life.

7. When we speak of the immortality of the soul, we must ask further
what we mean by the word immortality. For of the duration of a living
being in countless ages we can form no conception; far less than a three
years' old child of the whole of life. The naked eye might as well try
to see the furthest star in the infinity of heaven. Whether time and
space really exist when we take away the limits of them may be doubted;
at any rate the thought of them when unlimited us so overwhelming to us
as to lose all distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms
of the human mind, but what is the mind without them? As then infinite
time, or an existence out of time, which are the only possible
explanations of eternal duration, are equally inconceivable to us, let
us substitute for them a hundred or a thousand years after death, and
ask not what will be our employment in eternity, but what will happen to
us in that definite portion of time; or what is now happening to those
who passed out of life a hundred or a thousand years ago. Do we imagine
that the wicked are suffering torments, or that the good are singing the
praises of God, during a period longer than that of a whole life, or
of ten lives of men? Is the suffering physical or mental? And does the
worship of God consist only of praise, or of many forms of service? Who
are the wicked, and who are the good, whom we venture to divide by a
hard and fast line; and in which of the two classes should we place
ourselves and our friends? May we not suspect that we are making
differences of kind, because we are unable to imagine differences
of degree?--putting the whole human race into heaven or hell for the
greater convenience of logical division? Are we not at the same time
describing them both in superlatives, only that we may satisfy the
demands of rhetoric? What is that pain which does not become deadened
after a thousand years? or what is the nature of that pleasure or
happiness which never wearies by monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains
are short in proportion as they are keen; of any others which are both
intense and lasting we have no experience, and can form no idea.
The words or figures of speech which we use are not consistent with
themselves. For are we not imagining Heaven under the similitude of
a church, and Hell as a prison, or perhaps a madhouse or chamber of
horrors? And yet to beings constituted as we are, the monotony of
singing psalms would be as great an infliction as the pains of hell,
and might be even pleasantly interrupted by them. Where are the actions
worthy of rewards greater than those which are conferred on the greatest
benefactors of mankind? And where are the crimes which according to
Plato's merciful reckoning,--more merciful, at any rate, than the
eternal damnation of so-called Christian teachers,--for every ten years
in this life deserve a hundred of punishment in the life to come?
We should be ready to die of pity if we could see the least of the
sufferings which the writers of Infernos and Purgatorios have attributed
to the damned. Yet these joys and terrors seem hardly to exercise an
appreciable influence over the lives of men. The wicked man when old,
is not, as Plato supposes (Republic), more agitated by the terrors of
another world when he is nearer to them, nor the good in an ecstasy at
the joys of which he is soon to be the partaker. Age numbs the sense of
both worlds; and the habit of life is strongest in death. Even the dying
mother is dreaming of her lost children as they were forty or fifty
years before, 'pattering over the boards,' not of reunion with them
in another state of being. Most persons when the last hour comes are
resigned to the order of nature and the will of God. They are not
thinking of Dante's Inferno or Paradiso, or of the Pilgrim's Progress.
Heaven and hell are not realities to them, but words or ideas; the
outward symbols of some great mystery, they hardly know what. Many
noble poems and pictures have been suggested by the traditional
representations of them, which have been fixed in forms of art and can
no longer be altered. Many sermons have been filled with descriptions
of celestial or infernal mansions. But hardly even in childhood did the
thought of heaven and hell supply the motives of our actions, or at any
time seriously affect the substance of our belief.

8. Another life must be described, if at all, in forms of thought
and not of sense. To draw pictures of heaven and hell, whether in the
language of Scripture or any other, adds nothing to our real knowledge,
but may perhaps disguise our ignorance. The truest conception which
we can form of a future life is a state of progress or education--a
progress from evil to good, from ignorance to knowledge. To this we are
led by the analogy of the present life, in which we see different races
and nations of men, and different men and women of the same nation,
in various states or stages of cultivation; some more and some less
developed, and all of them capable of improvement under favourable
circumstances. There are punishments too of children when they are
growing up inflicted by their parents, of elder offenders which are
imposed by the law of the land, of all men at all times of life,
which are attached by the laws of nature to the performance of certain
actions. All these punishments are really educational; that is to say,
they are not intended to retaliate on the offender, but to teach him
a lesson. Also there is an element of chance in them, which is another
name for our ignorance of the laws of nature. There is evil too
inseparable from good (compare Lysis); not always punished here, as good
is not always rewarded. It is capable of being indefinitely diminished;
and as knowledge increases, the element of chance may more and more
disappear.

For we do not argue merely from the analogy of the present state of this
world to another, but from the analogy of a probable future to which we
are tending. The greatest changes of which we have had experience as yet
are due to our increasing knowledge of history and of nature. They
have been produced by a few minds appearing in three or four favoured
nations, in a comparatively short period of time. May we be allowed to
imagine the minds of men everywhere working together during many ages
for the completion of our knowledge? May not the science of physiology
transform the world? Again, the majority of mankind have really
experienced some moral improvement; almost every one feels that he has
tendencies to good, and is capable of becoming better. And these germs
of good are often found to be developed by new circumstances, like
stunted trees when transplanted to a better soil. The differences
between the savage and the civilized man, or between the civilized
man in old and new countries, may be indefinitely increased. The first
difference is the effect of a few thousand, the second of a few hundred
years. We congratulate ourselves that slavery has become industry;
that law and constitutional government have superseded despotism and
violence; that an ethical religion has taken the place of Fetichism.
There may yet come a time when the many may be as well off as the few;
when no one will be weighed down by excessive toil; when the necessity
of providing for the body will not interfere with mental improvement;
when the physical frame may be strengthened and developed; and the
religion of all men may become a reasonable service.

Nothing therefore, either in the present state of man or in the
tendencies of the future, as far as we can entertain conjecture of them,
would lead us to suppose that God governs us vindictively in this
world, and therefore we have no reason to infer that he will govern us
vindictively in another. The true argument from analogy is not, 'This
life is a mixed state of justice and injustice, of great waste, of
sudden casualties, of disproportionate punishments, and therefore the
like inconsistencies, irregularities, injustices are to be expected
in another;' but 'This life is subject to law, and is in a state of
progress, and therefore law and progress may be believed to be the
governing principles of another.' All the analogies of this world would
be against unmeaning punishments inflicted a hundred or a thousand years
after an offence had been committed. Suffering there might be as a
part of education, but not hopeless or protracted; as there might be
a retrogression of individuals or of bodies of men, yet not such as to
interfere with a plan for the improvement of the whole (compare Laws.)

9. But some one will say: That we cannot reason from the seen to the
unseen, and that we are creating another world after the image of this,
just as men in former ages have created gods in their own likeness. And
we, like the companions of Socrates, may feel discouraged at hearing
our favourite 'argument from analogy' thus summarily disposed of. Like
himself, too, we may adduce other arguments in which he seems to have
anticipated us, though he expresses them in different language. For we
feel that the soul partakes of the ideal and invisible; and can never
fall into the error of confusing the external circumstances of man with
his higher self; or his origin with his nature. It is as repugnant to
us as it was to him to imagine that our moral ideas are to be attributed
only to cerebral forces. The value of a human soul, like the value of a
man's life to himself, is inestimable, and cannot be reckoned in earthly
or material things. The human being alone has the consciousness of truth
and justice and love, which is the consciousness of God. And the soul
becoming more conscious of these, becomes more conscious of her own
immortality.

10. The last ground of our belief in immortality, and the strongest, is
the perfection of the divine nature. The mere fact of the existence of
God does not tend to show the continued existence of man. An evil God
or an indifferent God might have had the power, but not the will, to
preserve us. He might have regarded us as fitted to minister to his
service by a succession of existences,--like the animals, without
attributing to each soul an incomparable value. But if he is perfect,
he must will that all rational beings should partake of that perfection
which he himself is. In the words of the Timaeus, he is good, and
therefore he desires that all other things should be as like himself as
possible. And the manner in which he accomplishes this is by permitting
evil, or rather degrees of good, which are otherwise called evil.
For all progress is good relatively to the past, and yet may be
comparatively evil when regarded in the light of the future. Good and
evil are relative terms, and degrees of evil are merely the negative
aspect of degrees of good. Of the absolute goodness of any finite nature
we can form no conception; we are all of us in process of transition
from one degree of good or evil to another. The difficulties which
are urged about the origin or existence of evil are mere dialectical
puzzles, standing in the same relation to Christian philosophy as the
puzzles of the Cynics and Megarians to the philosophy of Plato. They
arise out of the tendency of the human mind to regard good and evil both
as relative and absolute; just as the riddles about motion are to be
explained by the double conception of space or matter, which the human
mind has the power of regarding either as continuous or discrete.

In speaking of divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and
true and loving, the author of order and not of disorder, of good and
not of evil. Or rather, that he is justice, that he is truth, that he
is love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were
speaking; and that wherever these qualities are present, whether in the
human soul or in the order of nature, there is God. We might still see
him everywhere, if we had not been mistakenly seeking for him apart from
us, instead of in us; away from the laws of nature, instead of in
them. And we become united to him not by mystical absorption, but by
partaking, whether consciously or unconsciously, of that truth and
justice and love which he himself is.

Thus the belief in the immortality of the soul rests at last on the
belief in God. If there is a good and wise God, then there is a progress
of mankind towards perfection; and if there is no progress of men
towards perfection, then there is no good and wise God. We cannot
suppose that the moral government of God of which we see the beginnings
in the world and in ourselves will cease when we pass out of life.

11. Considering the 'feebleness of the human faculties and the
uncertainty of the subject,' we are inclined to believe that the fewer
our words the better. At the approach of death there is not much said;
good men are too honest to go out of the world professing more than they
know. There is perhaps no important subject about which, at any time,
even religious people speak so little to one another. In the fulness
of life the thought of death is mostly awakened by the sight or
recollection of the death of others rather than by the prospect of our
own. We must also acknowledge that there are degrees of the belief in
immortality, and many forms in which it presents itself to the mind.
Some persons will say no more than that they trust in God, and that they
leave all to Him. It is a great part of true religion not to pretend
to know more than we do. Others when they quit this world are comforted
with the hope 'That they will see and know their friends in heaven.' But
it is better to leave them in the hands of God and to be assured that
'no evil shall touch them.' There are others again to whom the belief in
a divine personality has ceased to have any longer a meaning; yet they
are satisfied that the end of all is not here, but that something still
remains to us, 'and some better thing for the good than for the evil.'
They are persuaded, in spite of their theological nihilism, that the
ideas of justice and truth and holiness and love are realities. They
cherish an enthusiastic devotion to the first principles of morality.
Through these they see, or seem to see, darkly, and in a figure, that
the soul is immortal.

But besides differences of theological opinion which must ever prevail
about things unseen, the hope of immortality is weaker or stronger in
men at one time of life than at another; it even varies from day to day.
It comes and goes; the mind, like the sky, is apt to be overclouded.
Other generations of men may have sometimes lived under an 'eclipse of
faith,' to us the total disappearance of it might be compared to the
'sun falling from heaven.' And we may sometimes have to begin again and
acquire the belief for ourselves; or to win it back again when it is
lost. It is really weakest in the hour of death. For Nature, like a kind
mother or nurse, lays us to sleep without frightening us; physicians,
who are the witnesses of such scenes, say that under ordinary
circumstances there is no fear of the future. Often, as Plato tells
us, death is accompanied 'with pleasure.' (Tim.) When the end is still
uncertain, the cry of many a one has been, 'Pray, that I may be taken.'
The last thoughts even of the best men depend chiefly on the accidents
of their bodily state. Pain soon overpowers the desire of life; old age,
like the child, is laid to sleep almost in a moment. The long experience
of life will often destroy the interest which mankind have in it. So
various are the feelings with which different persons draw near to
death; and still more various the forms in which imagination clothes it.
For this alternation of feeling compare the Old Testament,--Psalm vi.;
Isaiah; Eccles.

12. When we think of God and of man in his relation to God; of the
imperfection of our present state and yet of the progress which is
observable in the history of the world and of the human mind; of the
depth and power of our moral ideas which seem to partake of the very
nature of God Himself; when we consider the contrast between the
physical laws to which we are subject and the higher law which raises us
above them and is yet a part of them; when we reflect on our capacity of
becoming the 'spectators of all time and all existence,' and of framing
in our own minds the ideal of a perfect Being; when we see how the
human mind in all the higher religions of the world, including Buddhism,
notwithstanding some aberrations, has tended towards such a belief--we
have reason to think that our destiny is different from that of animals;
and though we cannot altogether shut out the childish fear that the soul
upon leaving the body may 'vanish into thin air,' we have still, so far
as the nature of the subject admits, a hope of immortality with which we
comfort ourselves on sufficient grounds. The denial of the belief takes
the heart out of human life; it lowers men to the level of the material.
As Goethe also says, 'He is dead even in this world who has no belief in
another.'

13. It is well also that we should sometimes think of the forms of
thought under which the idea of immortality is most naturally presented
to us. It is clear that to our minds the risen soul can no longer be
described, as in a picture, by the symbol of a creature half-bird,
half-human, nor in any other form of sense. The multitude of angels, as
in Milton, singing the Almighty's praises, are a noble image, and may
furnish a theme for the poet or the painter, but they are no longer an
adequate expression of the kingdom of God which is within us. Neither is
there any mansion, in this world or another, in which the departed can
be imagined to dwell and carry on their occupations. When this earthly
tabernacle is dissolved, no other habitation or building can take them
in: it is in the language of ideas only that we speak of them.

First of all there is the thought of rest and freedom from pain; they
have gone home, as the common saying is, and the cares of this world
touch them no more. Secondly, we may imagine them as they were at
their best and brightest, humbly fulfilling their daily round of
duties--selfless, childlike, unaffected by the world; when the eye was
single and the whole body seemed to be full of light; when the mind was
clear and saw into the purposes of God. Thirdly, we may think of them
as possessed by a great love of God and man, working out His will at a
further stage in the heavenly pilgrimage. And yet we acknowledge that
these are the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard and therefore
it hath not entered into the heart of man in any sensible manner to
conceive them. Fourthly, there may have been some moments in our own
lives when we have risen above ourselves, or been conscious of our truer
selves, in which the will of God has superseded our wills, and we have
entered into communion with Him, and been partakers for a brief season
of the Divine truth and love, in which like Christ we have been inspired
to utter the prayer, 'I in them, and thou in me, that we may be all made
perfect in one.' These precious moments, if we have ever known them, are
the nearest approach which we can make to the idea of immortality.

14. Returning now to the earlier stage of human thought which is
represented by the writings of Plato, we find that many of the
same questions have already arisen: there is the same tendency to
materialism; the same inconsistency in the application of the idea of
mind; the same doubt whether the soul is to be regarded as a cause or as
an effect; the same falling back on moral convictions. In the Phaedo the
soul is conscious of her divine nature, and the separation from the body
which has been commenced in this life is perfected in another. Beginning
in mystery, Socrates, in the intermediate part of the Dialogue, attempts
to bring the doctrine of a future life into connection with his theory
of knowledge. In proportion as he succeeds in this, the individual seems
to disappear in a more general notion of the soul; the contemplation of
ideas 'under the form of eternity' takes the place of past and future
states of existence. His language may be compared to that of some modern
philosophers, who speak of eternity, not in the sense of perpetual
duration of time, but as an ever-present quality of the soul. Yet at
the conclusion of the Dialogue, having 'arrived at the end of the
intellectual world' (Republic), he replaces the veil of mythology,
and describes the soul and her attendant genius in the language of the
mysteries or of a disciple of Zoroaster. Nor can we fairly demand of
Plato a consistency which is wanting among ourselves, who acknowledge
that another world is beyond the range of human thought, and yet are
always seeking to represent the mansions of heaven or hell in
the colours of the painter, or in the descriptions of the poet or
rhetorician.

15. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not new to the
Greeks in the age of Socrates, but, like the unity of God, had a
foundation in the popular belief. The old Homeric notion of a gibbering
ghost flitting away to Hades; or of a few illustrious heroes enjoying
the isles of the blest; or of an existence divided between the two; or
the Hesiodic, of righteous spirits, who become guardian angels,--had
given place in the mysteries and the Orphic poets to representations,
partly fanciful, of a future state of rewards and punishments. (Laws.)
The reticence of the Greeks on public occasions and in some part of
their literature respecting this 'underground' religion, is not to be
taken as a measure of the diffusion of such beliefs. If Pericles in the
funeral oration is silent on the consolations of immortality, the
poet Pindar and the tragedians on the other hand constantly assume the
continued existence of the dead in an upper or under world. Darius
and Laius are still alive; Antigone will be dear to her brethren after
death; the way to the palace of Cronos is found by those who 'have
thrice departed from evil.' The tragedy of the Greeks is not 'rounded'
by this life, but is deeply set in decrees of fate and mysterious
workings of powers beneath the earth. In the caricature of Aristophanes
there is also a witness to the common sentiment. The Ionian and
Pythagorean philosophies arose, and some new elements were added to the
popular belief. The individual must find an expression as well as the
world. Either the soul was supposed to exist in the form of a magnet, or
of a particle of fire, or of light, or air, or water; or of a number or
of a harmony of number; or to be or have, like the stars, a principle
of motion (Arist. de Anim.). At length Anaxagoras, hardly distinguishing
between life and mind, or between mind human and divine, attained
the pure abstraction; and this, like the other abstractions of Greek
philosophy, sank deep into the human intelligence. The opposition of
the intelligible and the sensible, and of God to the world, supplied an
analogy which assisted in the separation of soul and body. If ideas were
separable from phenomena, mind was also separable from matter; if the
ideas were eternal, the mind that conceived them was eternal too. As
the unity of God was more distinctly acknowledged, the conception of the
human soul became more developed. The succession, or alternation of
life and death, had occurred to Heracleitus. The Eleatic Parmenides had
stumbled upon the modern thesis, that 'thought and being are the same.'
The Eastern belief in transmigration defined the sense of individuality;
and some, like Empedocles, fancied that the blood which they had shed
in another state of being was crying against them, and that for thirty
thousand years they were to be 'fugitives and vagabonds upon the earth.'
The desire of recognizing a lost mother or love or friend in the world
below (Phaedo) was a natural feeling which, in that age as well as in
every other, has given distinctness to the hope of immortality. Nor were
ethical considerations wanting, partly derived from the necessity of
punishing the greater sort of criminals, whom no avenging power of this
world could reach. The voice of conscience, too, was heard reminding
the good man that he was not altogether innocent. (Republic.) To these
indistinct longings and fears an expression was given in the mysteries
and Orphic poets: a 'heap of books' (Republic), passing under the names
of Musaeus and Orpheus in Plato's time, were filled with notions of an
under-world.

16. Yet after all the belief in the individuality of the soul after
death had but a feeble hold on the Greek mind. Like the personality of
God, the personality of man in a future state was not inseparably bound
up with the reality of his existence. For the distinction between the
personal and impersonal, and also between the divine and human, was far
less marked to the Greek than to ourselves. And as Plato readily passes
from the notion of the good to that of God, he also passes almost
imperceptibly to himself and his reader from the future life of the
individual soul to the eternal being of the absolute soul. There has
been a clearer statement and a clearer denial of the belief in modern
times than is found in early Greek philosophy, and hence the comparative
silence on the whole subject which is often remarked in ancient writers,
and particularly in Aristotle. For Plato and Aristotle are not further
removed in their teaching about the immortality of the soul than they
are in their theory of knowledge.

17. Living in an age when logic was beginning to mould human thought,
Plato naturally cast his belief in immortality into a logical form. And
when we consider how much the doctrine of ideas was also one of words,
it is not surprising that he should have fallen into verbal fallacies:
early logic is always mistaking the truth of the form for the truth of
the matter. It is easy to see that the alternation of opposites is
not the same as the generation of them out of each other; and that the
generation of them out of each other, which is the first argument in
the Phaedo, is at variance with their mutual exclusion of each other,
whether in themselves or in us, which is the last. For even if we admit
the distinction which he draws between the opposites and the things
which have the opposites, still individuals fall under the latter class;
and we have to pass out of the region of human hopes and fears to a
conception of an abstract soul which is the impersonation of the ideas.
Such a conception, which in Plato himself is but half expressed, is
unmeaning to us, and relative only to a particular stage in the history
of thought. The doctrine of reminiscence is also a fragment of a former
world, which has no place in the philosophy of modern times. But Plato
had the wonders of psychology just opening to him, and he had not the
explanation of them which is supplied by the analysis of language and
the history of the human mind. The question, 'Whence come our abstract
ideas?' he could only answer by an imaginary hypothesis. Nor is it
difficult to see that his crowning argument is purely verbal, and is
but the expression of an instinctive confidence put into a logical
form:--'The soul is immortal because it contains a principle of
imperishableness.' Nor does he himself seem at all to be aware that
nothing is added to human knowledge by his 'safe and simple answer,'
that beauty is the cause of the beautiful; and that he is merely
reasserting the Eleatic being 'divided by the Pythagorean numbers,'
against the Heracleitean doctrine of perpetual generation. The answer to
the 'very serious question' of generation and destruction is really
the denial of them. For this he would substitute, as in the Republic, a
system of ideas, tested, not by experience, but by their consequences,
and not explained by actual causes, but by a higher, that is, a more
general notion. Consistency with themselves is the only test which is to
be applied to them. (Republic, and Phaedo.)

18. To deal fairly with such arguments, they should be translated as
far as possible into their modern equivalents. 'If the ideas of men are
eternal, their souls are eternal, and if not the ideas, then not the
souls.' Such an argument stands nearly in the same relation to Plato and
his age, as the argument from the existence of God to immortality among
ourselves. 'If God exists, then the soul exists after death; and if
there is no God, there is no existence of the soul after death.' For
the ideas are to his mind the reality, the truth, the principle of
permanence, as well as of intelligence and order in the world. When
Simmias and Cebes say that they are more strongly persuaded of the
existence of ideas than they are of the immortality of the soul, they
represent fairly enough the order of thought in Greek philosophy. And we
might say in the same way that we are more certain of the existence
of God than we are of the immortality of the soul, and are led by the
belief in the one to a belief in the other. The parallel, as Socrates
would say, is not perfect, but agrees in as far as the mind in either
case is regarded as dependent on something above and beyond herself. The
analogy may even be pressed a step further: 'We are more certain of our
ideas of truth and right than we are of the existence of God, and
are led on in the order of thought from one to the other.' Or more
correctly: 'The existence of right and truth is the existence of God,
and can never for a moment be separated from Him.'

19. The main argument of the Phaedo is derived from the existence of
eternal ideas of which the soul is a partaker; the other argument of the
alternation of opposites is replaced by this. And there have not been
wanting philosophers of the idealist school who have imagined that the
doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a theory of knowledge, and
that in what has preceded Plato is accommodating himself to the popular
belief. Such a view can only be elicited from the Phaedo by what may
be termed the transcendental method of interpretation, and is obviously
inconsistent with the Gorgias and the Republic. Those who maintain
it are immediately compelled to renounce the shadow which they have
grasped, as a play of words only. But the truth is, that Plato in his
argument for the immortality of the soul has collected many elements of
proof or persuasion, ethical and mythological as well as dialectical,
which are not easily to be reconciled with one another; and he is as
much in earnest about his doctrine of retribution, which is repeated
in all his more ethical writings, as about his theory of knowledge.
And while we may fairly translate the dialectical into the language of
Hegel, and the religious and mythological into the language of Dante or
Bunyan, the ethical speaks to us still in the same voice, and appeals to
a common feeling.

20. Two arguments of this ethical character occur in the Phaedo. The
first may be described as the aspiration of the soul after another state
of being. Like the Oriental or Christian mystic, the philosopher is
seeking to withdraw from impurities of sense, to leave the world and the
things of the world, and to find his higher self. Plato recognizes in
these aspirations the foretaste of immortality; as Butler and Addison in
modern times have argued, the one from the moral tendencies of mankind,
the other from the progress of the soul towards perfection. In using
this argument Plato has certainly confused the soul which has left the
body, with the soul of the good and wise. (Compare Republic.) Such a
confusion was natural, and arose partly out of the antithesis of soul
and body. The soul in her own essence, and the soul 'clothed upon' with
virtues and graces, were easily interchanged with one another, because
on a subject which passes expression the distinctions of language can
hardly be maintained.

21. The ethical proof of the immortality of the soul is derived from the
necessity of retribution. The wicked would be too well off if their
evil deeds came to an end. It is not to be supposed that an Ardiaeus,
an Archelaus, an Ismenias could ever have suffered the penalty of
their crimes in this world. The manner in which this retribution is
accomplished Plato represents under the figures of mythology. Doubtless
he felt that it was easier to improve than to invent, and that in
religion especially the traditional form was required in order to give
verisimilitude to the myth. The myth too is far more probable to that
age than to ours, and may fairly be regarded as 'one guess among
many' about the nature of the earth, which he cleverly supports by the
indications of geology. Not that he insists on the absolute truth of
his own particular notions: 'no man of sense will be confident in such
matters; but he will be confident that something of the kind is true.'
As in other passages (Gorg., Tim., compare Crito), he wins belief for
his fictions by the moderation of his statements; he does not, like
Dante or Swedenborg, allow himself to be deceived by his own creations.

The Dialogue must be read in the light of the situation. And first of
all we are struck by the calmness of the scene. Like the spectators
at the time, we cannot pity Socrates; his mien and his language are
so noble and fearless. He is the same that he ever was, but milder and
gentler, and he has in no degree lost his interest in dialectics;
he will not forego the delight of an argument in compliance with the
jailer's intimation that he should not heat himself with talking. At
such a time he naturally expresses the hope of his life, that he has
been a true mystic and not a mere retainer or wand-bearer: and he refers
to passages of his personal history. To his old enemies the Comic
poets, and to the proceedings on the trial, he alludes playfully; but he
vividly remembers the disappointment which he felt in reading the books
of Anaxagoras. The return of Xanthippe and his children indicates that
the philosopher is not 'made of oak or rock.' Some other traits of his
character may be noted; for example, the courteous manner in which
he inclines his head to the last objector, or the ironical touch, 'Me
already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls;' or
the depreciation of the arguments with which 'he comforted himself and
them;' or his fear of 'misology;' or his references to Homer; or the
playful smile with which he 'talks like a book' about greater and less;
or the allusion to the possibility of finding another teacher among
barbarous races (compare Polit.); or the mysterious reference to another
science (mathematics?) of generation and destruction for which he is
vainly feeling. There is no change in him; only now he is invested with
a sort of sacred character, as the prophet or priest of Apollo the God
of the festival, in whose honour he first of all composes a hymn,
and then like the swan pours forth his dying lay. Perhaps the extreme
elevation of Socrates above his own situation, and the ordinary
interests of life (compare his jeu d'esprit about his burial, in which
for a moment he puts on the 'Silenus mask'), create in the mind of the
reader an impression stronger than could be derived from arguments that
such a one has in him 'a principle which does not admit of death.'

The other persons of the Dialogue may be considered under two heads: (1)
private friends; (2) the respondents in the argument.

First there is Crito, who has been already introduced to us in the
Euthydemus and the Crito; he is the equal in years of Socrates, and
stands in quite a different relation to him from his younger disciples.
He is a man of the world who is rich and prosperous (compare the jest
in the Euthydemus), the best friend of Socrates, who wants to know his
commands, in whose presence he talks to his family, and who performs
the last duty of closing his eyes. It is observable too that, as in the
Euthydemus, Crito shows no aptitude for philosophical discussions. Nor
among the friends of Socrates must the jailer be forgotten, who seems
to have been introduced by Plato in order to show the impression made
by the extraordinary man on the common. The gentle nature of the man
is indicated by his weeping at the announcement of his errand and then
turning away, and also by the words of Socrates to his disciples: 'How
charming the man is! since I have been in prison he has been always
coming to me, and is as good as could be to me.' We are reminded
too that he has retained this gentle nature amid scenes of death and
violence by the contrasts which he draws between the behaviour of
Socrates and of others when about to die.

Another person who takes no part in the philosophical discussion is the
excitable Apollodorus, the same who, in the Symposium, of which he is
the narrator, is called 'the madman,' and who testifies his grief by the
most violent emotions. Phaedo is also present, the 'beloved disciple'
as he may be termed, who is described, if not 'leaning on his bosom,'
as seated next to Socrates, who is playing with his hair. He too, like
Apollodorus, takes no part in the discussion, but he loves above all
things to hear and speak of Socrates after his death. The calmness
of his behaviour, veiling his face when he can no longer restrain
his tears, contrasts with the passionate outcries of the other. At a
particular point the argument is described as falling before the attack
of Simmias. A sort of despair is introduced in the minds of the company.
The effect of this is heightened by the description of Phaedo, who has
been the eye-witness of the scene, and by the sympathy of his Phliasian
auditors who are beginning to think 'that they too can never trust an
argument again.' And the intense interest of the company is communicated
not only to the first auditors, but to us who in a distant country read
the narrative of their emotions after more than two thousand years have
passed away.

The two principal interlocutors are Simmias and Cebes, the disciples of
Philolaus the Pythagorean philosopher of Thebes. Simmias is described
in the Phaedrus as fonder of an argument than any man living; and
Cebes, although finally persuaded by Socrates, is said to be the most
incredulous of human beings. It is Cebes who at the commencement of
the Dialogue asks why 'suicide is held to be unlawful,' and who
first supplies the doctrine of recollection in confirmation of the
pre-existence of the soul. It is Cebes who urges that the pre-existence
does not necessarily involve the future existence of the soul, as is
shown by the illustration of the weaver and his coat. Simmias, on the
other hand, raises the question about harmony and the lyre, which is
naturally put into the mouth of a Pythagorean disciple. It is Simmias,
too, who first remarks on the uncertainty of human knowledge, and
only at last concedes to the argument such a qualified approval as is
consistent with the feebleness of the human faculties. Cebes is the
deeper and more consecutive thinker, Simmias more superficial and
rhetorical; they are distinguished in much the same manner as Adeimantus
and Glaucon in the Republic.

Other persons, Menexenus, Ctesippus, Lysis, are old friends; Evenus
has been already satirized in the Apology; Aeschines and Epigenes
were present at the trial; Euclid and Terpsion will reappear in the
Introduction to the Theaetetus, Hermogenes has already appeared in
the Cratylus. No inference can fairly be drawn from the absence of
Aristippus, nor from the omission of Xenophon, who at the time of
Socrates' death was in Asia. The mention of Plato's own absence seems
like an expression of sorrow, and may, perhaps, be an indication that
the report of the conversation is not to be taken literally.

The place of the Dialogue in the series is doubtful. The doctrine of
ideas is certainly carried beyond the Socratic point of view; in no
other of the writings of Plato is the theory of them so completely
developed. Whether the belief in immortality can be attributed to
Socrates or not is uncertain; the silence of the Memorabilia, and of the
earlier Dialogues of Plato, is an argument to the contrary. Yet in the
Cyropaedia Xenophon has put language into the mouth of the dying Cyrus
which recalls the Phaedo, and may have been derived from the teaching of
Socrates. It may be fairly urged that the greatest religious interest of
mankind could not have been wholly ignored by one who passed his life in
fulfilling the commands of an oracle, and who recognized a Divine plan
in man and nature. (Xen. Mem.) And the language of the Apology and of
the Crito confirms this view.

The Phaedo is not one of the Socratic Dialogues of Plato; nor, on the
other hand, can it be assigned to that later stage of the Platonic
writings at which the doctrine of ideas appears to be forgotten. It
belongs rather to the intermediate period of the Platonic philosophy,
which roughly corresponds to the Phaedrus, Gorgias, Republic,
Theaetetus. Without pretending to determine the real time of their
composition, the Symposium, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedo may be
conveniently read by us in this order as illustrative of the life of
Socrates. Another chain may be formed of the Meno, Phaedrus, Phaedo,
in which the immortality of the soul is connected with the doctrine of
ideas. In the Meno the theory of ideas is based on the ancient belief in
transmigration, which reappears again in the Phaedrus as well as in the
Republic and Timaeus, and in all of them is connected with a doctrine of
retribution. In the Phaedrus the immortality of the soul is supposed to
rest on the conception of the soul as a principle of motion, whereas in
the Republic the argument turns on the natural continuance of the soul,
which, if not destroyed by her own proper evil, can hardly be destroyed
by any other. The soul of man in the Timaeus is derived from the Supreme
Creator, and either returns after death to her kindred star, or descends
into the lower life of an animal. The Apology expresses the same view
as the Phaedo, but with less confidence; there the probability of death
being a long sleep is not excluded. The Theaetetus also describes, in a
digression, the desire of the soul to fly away and be with God--'and to
fly to him is to be like him.' The Symposium may be observed to
resemble as well as to differ from the Phaedo. While the first notion of
immortality is only in the way of natural procreation or of posthumous
fame and glory, the higher revelation of beauty, like the good in the
Republic, is the vision of the eternal idea. So deeply rooted in
Plato's mind is the belief in immortality; so various are the forms of
expression which he employs.

As in several other Dialogues, there is more of system in the Phaedo
than appears at first sight. The succession of arguments is based on
previous philosophies; beginning with the mysteries and the Heracleitean
alternation of opposites, and proceeding to the Pythagorean harmony and
transmigration; making a step by the aid of Platonic reminiscence, and
a further step by the help of the nous of Anaxagoras; until at last we
rest in the conviction that the soul is inseparable from the ideas,
and belongs to the world of the invisible and unknown. Then, as in
the Gorgias or Republic, the curtain falls, and the veil of mythology
descends upon the argument. After the confession of Socrates that he is
an interested party, and the acknowledgment that no man of sense will
think the details of his narrative true, but that something of the kind
is true, we return from speculation to practice. He is himself more
confident of immortality than he is of his own arguments; and the
confidence which he expresses is less strong than that which his
cheerfulness and composure in death inspire in us.

Difficulties of two kinds occur in the Phaedo--one kind to be explained
out of contemporary philosophy, the other not admitting of an entire
solution. (1) The difficulty which Socrates says that he experienced in
explaining generation and corruption; the assumption of hypotheses which
proceed from the less general to the more general, and are tested by
their consequences; the puzzle about greater and less; the resort to the
method of ideas, which to us appear only abstract terms,--these are to
be explained out of the position of Socrates and Plato in the history of
philosophy. They were living in a twilight between the sensible and
the intellectual world, and saw no way of connecting them. They
could neither explain the relation of ideas to phenomena, nor their
correlation to one another. The very idea of relation or comparison was
embarrassing to them. Yet in this intellectual uncertainty they had a
conception of a proof from results, and of a moral truth, which remained
unshaken amid the questionings of philosophy. (2) The other is a
difficulty which is touched upon in the Republic as well as in the
Phaedo, and is common to modern and ancient philosophy. Plato is not
altogether satisfied with his safe and simple method of ideas. He wants
to have proved to him by facts that all things are for the best, and
that there is one mind or design which pervades them all. But this
'power of the best' he is unable to explain; and therefore takes refuge
in universal ideas. And are not we at this day seeking to discover that
which Socrates in a glass darkly foresaw?

Some resemblances to the Greek drama may be noted in all the Dialogues
of Plato. The Phaedo is the tragedy of which Socrates is the protagonist
and Simmias and Cebes the secondary performers, standing to them in the
same relation as to Glaucon and Adeimantus in the Republic. No Dialogue
has a greater unity of subject and feeling. Plato has certainly
fulfilled the condition of Greek, or rather of all art, which requires
that scenes of death and suffering should be clothed in beauty. The
gathering of the friends at the commencement of the Dialogue, the
dismissal of Xanthippe, whose presence would have been out of place at
a philosophical discussion, but who returns again with her children to
take a final farewell, the dejection of the audience at the temporary
overthrow of the argument, the picture of Socrates playing with the
hair of Phaedo, the final scene in which Socrates alone retains his
composure--are masterpieces of art. And the chorus at the end might have
interpreted the feeling of the play: 'There can no evil happen to a good
man in life or death.'

'The art of concealing art' is nowhere more perfect than in those
writings of Plato which describe the trial and death of Socrates. Their
charm is their simplicity, which gives them verisimilitude; and yet
they touch, as if incidentally, and because they were suitable to the
occasion, on some of the deepest truths of philosophy. There is nothing
in any tragedy, ancient or modern, nothing in poetry or history (with
one exception), like the last hours of Socrates in Plato. The master
could not be more fitly occupied at such a time than in discoursing of
immortality; nor the disciples more divinely consoled. The arguments,
taken in the spirit and not in the letter, are our arguments; and
Socrates by anticipation may be even thought to refute some 'eccentric
notions; current in our own age. For there are philosophers among
ourselves who do not seem to understand how much stronger is the power
of intelligence, or of the best, than of Atlas, or mechanical force.
How far the words attributed to Socrates were actually uttered by him we
forbear to ask; for no answer can be given to this question. And it
is better to resign ourselves to the feeling of a great work, than to
linger among critical uncertainties.




PHAEDO


PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:

Phaedo, who is the narrator of the dialogue to Echecrates of Phlius.
Socrates, Apollodorus, Simmias, Cebes, Crito and an Attendant of the
Prison.

SCENE: The Prison of Socrates.

PLACE OF THE NARRATION: Phlius.



ECHECRATES: Were you yourself, Phaedo, in the prison with Socrates on
the day when he drank the poison?

PHAEDO: Yes, Echecrates, I was.

ECHECRATES: I should so like to hear about his death. What did he say in
his last hours? We were informed that he died by taking poison, but no
one knew anything more; for no Phliasian ever goes to Athens now, and it
is a long time since any stranger from Athens has found his way hither;
so that we had no clear account.

PHAEDO: Did you not hear of the proceedings at the trial?

ECHECRATES: Yes; some one told us about the trial, and we could not
understand why, having been condemned, he should have been put to death,
not at the time, but long afterwards. What was the reason of this?

PHAEDO: An accident, Echecrates: the stern of the ship which the
Athenians send to Delos happened to have been crowned on the day before
he was tried.

ECHECRATES: What is this ship?

PHAEDO: It is the ship in which, according to Athenian tradition,
Theseus went to Crete when he took with him the fourteen youths, and was
the saviour of them and of himself. And they were said to have vowed
to Apollo at the time, that if they were saved they would send a yearly
mission to Delos. Now this custom still continues, and the whole period
of the voyage to and from Delos, beginning when the priest of Apollo
crowns the stern of the ship, is a holy season, during which the city is
not allowed to be polluted by public executions; and when the vessel
is detained by contrary winds, the time spent in going and returning
is very considerable. As I was saying, the ship was crowned on the day
before the trial, and this was the reason why Socrates lay in prison and
was not put to death until long after he was condemned.

ECHECRATES: What was the manner of his death, Phaedo? What was said or
done? And which of his friends were with him? Or did the authorities
forbid them to be present--so that he had no friends near him when he
died?

PHAEDO: No; there were several of them with him.

ECHECRATES: If you have nothing to do, I wish that you would tell me
what passed, as exactly as you can.

PHAEDO: I have nothing at all to do, and will try to gratify your wish.
To be reminded of Socrates is always the greatest delight to me, whether
I speak myself or hear another speak of him.

ECHECRATES: You will have listeners who are of the same mind with you,
and I hope that you will be as exact as you can.

PHAEDO: I had a singular feeling at being in his company. For I
could hardly believe that I was present at the death of a friend, and
therefore I did not pity him, Echecrates; he died so fearlessly, and
his words and bearing were so noble and gracious, that to me he appeared
blessed. I thought that in going to the other world he could not be
without a divine call, and that he would be happy, if any man ever was,
when he arrived there, and therefore I did not pity him as might have
seemed natural at such an hour. But I had not the pleasure which I
usually feel in philosophical discourse (for philosophy was the theme
of which we spoke). I was pleased, but in the pleasure there was also a
strange admixture of pain; for I reflected that he was soon to die, and
this double feeling was shared by us all; we were laughing and weeping
by turns, especially the excitable Apollodorus--you know the sort of
man?

ECHECRATES: Yes.

PHAEDO: He was quite beside himself; and I and all of us were greatly
moved.

ECHECRATES: Who were present?

PHAEDO: Of native Athenians there were, besides Apollodorus, Critobulus
and his father Crito, Hermogenes, Epigenes, Aeschines, Antisthenes;
likewise Ctesippus of the deme of Paeania, Menexenus, and some others;
Plato, if I am not mistaken, was ill.

ECHECRATES: Were there any strangers?

PHAEDO: Yes, there were; Simmias the Theban, and Cebes, and Phaedondes;
Euclid and Terpison, who came from Megara.

ECHECRATES: And was Aristippus there, and Cleombrotus?

PHAEDO: No, they were said to be in Aegina.

ECHECRATES: Any one else?

PHAEDO: I think that these were nearly all.

ECHECRATES: Well, and what did you talk about?

PHAEDO: I will begin at the beginning, and endeavour to repeat the
entire conversation. On the previous days we had been in the habit of
assembling early in the morning at the court in which the trial took
place, and which is not far from the prison. There we used to wait
talking with one another until the opening of the doors (for they were
not opened very early); then we went in and generally passed the day
with Socrates. On the last morning we assembled sooner than usual,
having heard on the day before when we quitted the prison in the evening
that the sacred ship had come from Delos, and so we arranged to meet
very early at the accustomed place. On our arrival the jailer who
answered the door, instead of admitting us, came out and told us to stay
until he called us. 'For the Eleven,' he said, 'are now with Socrates;
they are taking off his chains, and giving orders that he is to die
to-day.' He soon returned and said that we might come in. On entering we
found Socrates just released from chains, and Xanthippe, whom you know,
sitting by him, and holding his child in her arms. When she saw us she
uttered a cry and said, as women will: 'O Socrates, this is the last
time that either you will converse with your friends, or they with you.'
Socrates turned to Crito and said: 'Crito, let some one take her home.'
Some of Crito's people accordingly led her away, crying out and beating
herself. And when she was gone, Socrates, sitting up on the couch, bent
and rubbed his leg, saying, as he was rubbing: How singular is the
thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be
thought to be the opposite of it; for they are never present to a man at
the same instant, and yet he who pursues either is generally compelled
to take the other; their bodies are two, but they are joined by a single
head. And I cannot help thinking that if Aesop had remembered them, he
would have made a fable about God trying to reconcile their strife, and
how, when he could not, he fastened their heads together; and this is
the reason why when one comes the other follows, as I know by my own
experience now, when after the pain in my leg which was caused by the
chain pleasure appears to succeed.

Upon this Cebes said: I am glad, Socrates, that you have mentioned the
name of Aesop. For it reminds me of a question which has been asked by
many, and was asked of me only the day before yesterday by Evenus the
poet--he will be sure to ask it again, and therefore if you would like
me to have an answer ready for him, you may as well tell me what I
should say to him:--he wanted to know why you, who never before wrote
a line of poetry, now that you are in prison are turning Aesop's fables
into verse, and also composing that hymn in honour of Apollo.

Tell him, Cebes, he replied, what is the truth--that I had no idea of
rivalling him or his poems; to do so, as I knew, would be no easy task.
But I wanted to see whether I could purge away a scruple which I felt
about the meaning of certain dreams. In the course of my life I have
often had intimations in dreams 'that I should compose music.' The same
dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes in another, but
always saying the same or nearly the same words: 'Cultivate and make
music,' said the dream. And hitherto I had imagined that this was only
intended to exhort and encourage me in the study of philosophy, which
has been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best of music.
The dream was bidding me do what I was already doing, in the same way
that the competitor in a race is bidden by the spectators to run when he
is already running. But I was not certain of this, for the dream might
have meant music in the popular sense of the word, and being under
sentence of death, and the festival giving me a respite, I thought that
it would be safer for me to satisfy the scruple, and, in obedience to
the dream, to compose a few verses before I departed. And first I made
a hymn in honour of the god of the festival, and then considering that a
poet, if he is really to be a poet, should not only put together words,
but should invent stories, and that I have no invention, I took some
fables of Aesop, which I had ready at hand and which I knew--they were
the first I came upon--and turned them into verse. Tell this to Evenus,
Cebes, and bid him be of good cheer; say that I would have him come
after me if he be a wise man, and not tarry; and that to-day I am likely
to be going, for the Athenians say that I must.

Simmias said: What a message for such a man! having been a frequent
companion of his I should say that, as far as I know him, he will never
take your advice unless he is obliged.

Why, said Socrates,--is not Evenus a philosopher?

I think that he is, said Simmias.

Then he, or any man who has the spirit of philosophy, will be willing to
die, but he will not take his own life, for that is held to be unlawful.

Here he changed his position, and put his legs off the couch on to the
ground, and during the rest of the conversation he remained sitting.

Why do you say, enquired Cebes, that a man ought not to take his own
life, but that the philosopher will be ready to follow the dying?

Socrates replied: And have you, Cebes and Simmias, who are the disciples
of Philolaus, never heard him speak of this?

Yes, but his language was obscure, Socrates.

My words, too, are only an echo; but there is no reason why I should not
repeat what I have heard: and indeed, as I am going to another place,
it is very meet for me to be thinking and talking of the nature of
the pilgrimage which I am about to make. What can I do better in the
interval between this and the setting of the sun?

Then tell me, Socrates, why is suicide held to be unlawful? as I have
certainly heard Philolaus, about whom you were just now asking, affirm
when he was staying with us at Thebes: and there are others who say the
same, although I have never understood what was meant by any of them.

Do not lose heart, replied Socrates, and the day may come when you will
understand. I suppose that you wonder why, when other things which are
evil may be good at certain times and to certain persons, death is to
be the only exception, and why, when a man is better dead, he is not
permitted to be his own benefactor, but must wait for the hand of
another.

Very true, said Cebes, laughing gently and speaking in his native
Boeotian.

I admit the appearance of inconsistency in what I am saying; but
there may not be any real inconsistency after all. There is a doctrine
whispered in secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open
the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite
understand. Yet I too believe that the gods are our guardians, and that
we are a possession of theirs. Do you not agree?

Yes, I quite agree, said Cebes.

And if one of your own possessions, an ox or an ass, for example, took
the liberty of putting himself out of the way when you had given no
intimation of your wish that he should die, would you not be angry with
him, and would you not punish him if you could?

Certainly, replied Cebes.

Then, if we look at the matter thus, there may be reason in saying that
a man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him, as
he is now summoning me.

Yes, Socrates, said Cebes, there seems to be truth in what you say. And
yet how can you reconcile this seemingly true belief that God is our
guardian and we his possessions, with the willingness to die which we
were just now attributing to the philosopher? That the wisest of men
should be willing to leave a service in which they are ruled by the gods
who are the best of rulers, is not reasonable; for surely no wise man
thinks that when set at liberty he can take better care of himself than
the gods take of him. A fool may perhaps think so--he may argue that he
had better run away from his master, not considering that his duty is
to remain to the end, and not to run away from the good, and that there
would be no sense in his running away. The wise man will want to be ever
with him who is better than himself. Now this, Socrates, is the reverse
of what was just now said; for upon this view the wise man should sorrow
and the fool rejoice at passing out of life.

The earnestness of Cebes seemed to please Socrates. Here, said he,
turning to us, is a man who is always inquiring, and is not so easily
convinced by the first thing which he hears.

And certainly, added Simmias, the objection which he is now making does
appear to me to have some force. For what can be the meaning of a truly
wise man wanting to fly away and lightly leave a master who is better
than himself? And I rather imagine that Cebes is referring to you; he
thinks that you are too ready to leave us, and too ready to leave the
gods whom you acknowledge to be our good masters.

Yes, replied Socrates; there is reason in what you say. And so you think
that I ought to answer your indictment as if I were in a court?

We should like you to do so, said Simmias.

Then I must try to make a more successful defence before you than I
did when before the judges. For I am quite ready to admit, Simmias and
Cebes, that I ought to be grieved at death, if I were not persuaded in
the first place that I am going to other gods who are wise and good (of
which I am as certain as I can be of any such matters), and secondly
(though I am not so sure of this last) to men departed, better than
those whom I leave behind; and therefore I do not grieve as I might have
done, for I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the
dead, and as has been said of old, some far better thing for the good
than for the evil.

But do you mean to take away your thoughts with you, Socrates? said
Simmias. Will you not impart them to us?--for they are a benefit
in which we too are entitled to share. Moreover, if you succeed in
convincing us, that will be an answer to the charge against yourself.

I will do my best, replied Socrates. But you must first let me hear what
Crito wants; he has long been wishing to say something to me.

Only this, Socrates, replied Crito:--the attendant who is to give you
the poison has been telling me, and he wants me to tell you, that you
are not to talk much, talking, he says, increases heat, and this is
apt to interfere with the action of the poison; persons who excite
themselves are sometimes obliged to take a second or even a third dose.

Then, said Socrates, let him mind his business and be prepared to give
the poison twice or even thrice if necessary; that is all.

I knew quite well what you would say, replied Crito; but I was obliged
to satisfy him.

Never mind him, he said.

And now, O my judges, I desire to prove to you that the real philosopher
has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after
death he may hope to obtain the greatest good in the other world. And
how this may be, Simmias and Cebes, I will endeavour to explain. For I
deem that the true votary of philosophy is likely to be misunderstood
by other men; they do not perceive that he is always pursuing death and
dying; and if this be so, and he has had the desire of death all his
life long, why when his time comes should he repine at that which he has
been always pursuing and desiring?

Simmias said laughingly: Though not in a laughing humour, you have made
me laugh, Socrates; for I cannot help thinking that the many when they
hear your words will say how truly you have described philosophers, and
our people at home will likewise say that the life which philosophers
desire is in reality death, and that they have found them out to be
deserving of the death which they desire.

And they are right, Simmias, in thinking so, with the exception of the
words 'they have found them out'; for they have not found out either
what is the nature of that death which the true philosopher deserves,
or how he deserves or desires death. But enough of them:--let us discuss
the matter among ourselves: Do we believe that there is such a thing as
death?

To be sure, replied Simmias.

Is it not the separation of soul and body? And to be dead is the
completion of this; when the soul exists in herself, and is released
from the body and the body is released from the soul, what is this but
death?

Just so, he replied.

There is another question, which will probably throw light on our
present inquiry if you and I can agree about it:--Ought the philosopher
to care about the pleasures--if they are to be called pleasures--of
eating and drinking?

Certainly not, answered Simmias.

And what about the pleasures of love--should he care for them?

By no means.

And will he think much of the other ways of indulging the body, for
example, the acquisition of costly raiment, or sandals, or other
adornments of the body? Instead of caring about them, does he not rather
despise anything more than nature needs? What do you say?

I should say that the true philosopher would despise them.

Would you not say that he is entirely concerned with the soul and not
with the body? He would like, as far as he can, to get away from the
body and to turn to the soul.

Quite true.

In matters of this sort philosophers, above all other men, may be
observed in every sort of way to dissever the soul from the communion of
the body.

Very true.

Whereas, Simmias, the rest of the world are of opinion that to him who
has no sense of pleasure and no part in bodily pleasure, life is not
worth having; and that he who is indifferent about them is as good as
dead.

That is also true.

What again shall we say of the actual acquirement of knowledge?--is the
body, if invited to share in the enquiry, a hinderer or a helper? I mean
to say, have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as the
poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses? and yet, if even
they are inaccurate and indistinct, what is to be said of the other
senses?--for you will allow that they are the best of them?

Certainly, he replied.

Then when does the soul attain truth?--for in attempting to consider
anything in company with the body she is obviously deceived.

True.

Then must not true existence be revealed to her in thought, if at all?

Yes.

And thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of
these things trouble her--neither sounds nor sights nor pain nor any
pleasure,--when she takes leave of the body, and has as little as
possible to do with it, when she has no bodily sense or desire, but is
aspiring after true being?

Certainly.

And in this the philosopher dishonours the body; his soul runs away from
his body and desires to be alone and by herself?

That is true.

Well, but there is another thing, Simmias: Is there or is there not an
absolute justice?

Assuredly there is.

And an absolute beauty and absolute good?

Of course.

But did you ever behold any of them with your eyes?

Certainly not.

Or did you ever reach them with any other bodily sense?--and I speak not
of these alone, but of absolute greatness, and health, and strength,
and of the essence or true nature of everything. Has the reality of them
ever been perceived by you through the bodily organs? or rather, is not
the nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made
by him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact
conception of the essence of each thing which he considers?

Certainly.

And he attains to the purest knowledge of them who goes to each with the
mind alone, not introducing or intruding in the act of thought sight
or any other sense together with reason, but with the very light of the
mind in her own clearness searches into the very truth of each; he who
has got rid, as far as he can, of eyes and ears and, so to speak, of the
whole body, these being in his opinion distracting elements which when
they infect the soul hinder her from acquiring truth and knowledge--who,
if not he, is likely to attain the knowledge of true being?

What you say has a wonderful truth in it, Socrates, replied Simmias.

And when real philosophers consider all these things, will they not be
led to make a reflection which they will express in words something like
the following? 'Have we not found,' they will say, 'a path of thought
which seems to bring us and our argument to the conclusion, that while
we are in the body, and while the soul is infected with the evils of the
body, our desire will not be satisfied? and our desire is of the truth.
For the body is a source of endless trouble to us by reason of the mere
requirement of food; and is liable also to diseases which overtake and
impede us in the search after true being: it fills us full of loves, and
lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and
in fact, as men say, takes away from us the power of thinking at all.
Whence come wars, and fightings, and factions? whence but from the body
and the lusts of the body? wars are occasioned by the love of money, and
money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body;
and by reason of all these impediments we have no time to give to
philosophy; and, last and worst of all, even if we are at leisure and
betake ourselves to some speculation, the body is always breaking in
upon us, causing turmoil and confusion in our enquiries, and so amazing
us that we are prevented from seeing the truth. It has been proved to us
by experience that if we would have pure knowledge of anything we
must be quit of the body--the soul in herself must behold things in
themselves: and then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire, and of
which we say that we are lovers, not while we live, but after death; for
if while in company with the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge,
one of two things follows--either knowledge is not to be attained at
all, or, if at all, after death. For then, and not till then, the soul
will be parted from the body and exist in herself alone. In this present
life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we
have the least possible intercourse or communion with the body, and are
not surfeited with the bodily nature, but keep ourselves pure until the
hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And thus having got rid
of the foolishness of the body we shall be pure and hold converse with
the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is
no other than the light of truth.' For the impure are not permitted to
approach the pure. These are the sort of words, Simmias, which the true
lovers of knowledge cannot help saying to one another, and thinking. You
would agree; would you not?

Undoubtedly, Socrates.

But, O my friend, if this is true, there is great reason to hope that,
going whither I go, when I have come to the end of my journey, I shall
attain that which has been the pursuit of my life. And therefore I go on
my way rejoicing, and not I only, but every other man who believes that
his mind has been made ready and that he is in a manner purified.

Certainly, replied Simmias.

And what is purification but the separation of the soul from the body,
as I was saying before; the habit of the soul gathering and collecting
herself into herself from all sides out of the body; the dwelling in
her own place alone, as in another life, so also in this, as far as she
can;--the release of the soul from the chains of the body?

Very true, he said.

And this separation and release of the soul from the body is termed
death?

To be sure, he said.

And the true philosophers, and they only, are ever seeking to release
the soul. Is not the separation and release of the soul from the body
their especial study?

That is true.

And, as I was saying at first, there would be a ridiculous contradiction
in men studying to live as nearly as they can in a state of death, and
yet repining when it comes upon them.

Clearly.

And the true philosophers, Simmias, are always occupied in the practice
of dying, wherefore also to them least of all men is death terrible.
Look at the matter thus:--if they have been in every way the enemies of
the body, and are wanting to be alone with the soul, when this desire of
theirs is granted, how inconsistent would they be if they trembled and
repined, instead of rejoicing at their departure to that place where,
when they arrive, they hope to gain that which in life they desired--and
this was wisdom--and at the same time to be rid of the company of their
enemy. Many a man has been willing to go to the world below animated
by the hope of seeing there an earthly love, or wife, or son, and
conversing with them. And will he who is a true lover of wisdom, and is
strongly persuaded in like manner that only in the world below he can
worthily enjoy her, still repine at death? Will he not depart with joy?
Surely he will, O my friend, if he be a true philosopher. For he will
have a firm conviction that there and there only, he can find wisdom
in her purity. And if this be true, he would be very absurd, as I was
saying, if he were afraid of death.

He would, indeed, replied Simmias.

And when you see a man who is repining at the approach of death, is not
his reluctance a sufficient proof that he is not a lover of wisdom, but
a lover of the body, and probably at the same time a lover of either
money or power, or both?

Quite so, he replied.

And is not courage, Simmias, a quality which is specially characteristic
of the philosopher?

Certainly.

There is temperance again, which even by the vulgar is supposed to
consist in the control and regulation of the passions, and in the sense
of superiority to them--is not temperance a virtue belonging to those
only who despise the body, and who pass their lives in philosophy?

Most assuredly.

For the courage and temperance of other men, if you will consider them,
are really a contradiction.

How so?

Well, he said, you are aware that death is regarded by men in general as
a great evil.

Very true, he said.

And do not courageous men face death because they are afraid of yet
greater evils?

That is quite true.

Then all but the philosophers are courageous only from fear, and because
they are afraid; and yet that a man should be courageous from fear, and
because he is a coward, is surely a strange thing.

Very true.

And are not the temperate exactly in the same case? They are temperate
because they are intemperate--which might seem to be a contradiction,
but is nevertheless the sort of thing which happens with this foolish
temperance. For there are pleasures which they are afraid of losing; and
in their desire to keep them, they abstain from some pleasures, because
they are overcome by others; and although to be conquered by pleasure is
called by men intemperance, to them the conquest of pleasure consists in
being conquered by pleasure. And that is what I mean by saying that, in
a sense, they are made temperate through intemperance.

Such appears to be the case.

Yet the exchange of one fear or pleasure or pain for another fear or
pleasure or pain, and of the greater for the less, as if they were
coins, is not the exchange of virtue. O my blessed Simmias, is there not
one true coin for which all things ought to be exchanged?--and that
is wisdom; and only in exchange for this, and in company with this, is
anything truly bought or sold, whether courage or temperance or justice.
And is not all true virtue the companion of wisdom, no matter what fears
or pleasures or other similar goods or evils may or may not attend her?
But the virtue which is made up of these goods, when they are severed
from wisdom and exchanged with one another, is a shadow of virtue only,
nor is there any freedom or health or truth in her; but in the true
exchange there is a purging away of all these things, and temperance,
and justice, and courage, and wisdom herself are the purgation of them.
The founders of the mysteries would appear to have had a real meaning,
and were not talking nonsense when they intimated in a figure long ago
that he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below
will lie in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and
purification will dwell with the gods. For 'many,' as they say in the
mysteries, 'are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the mystics,'--meaning,
as I interpret the words, 'the true philosophers.' In the number
of whom, during my whole life, I have been seeking, according to my
ability, to find a place;--whether I have sought in a right way or not,
and whether I have succeeded or not, I shall truly know in a little
while, if God will, when I myself arrive in the other world--such is my
belief. And therefore I maintain that I am right, Simmias and Cebes,
in not grieving or repining at parting from you and my masters in this
world, for I believe that I shall equally find good masters and friends
in another world. But most men do not believe this saying; if then I
succeed in convincing you by my defence better than I did the Athenian
judges, it will be well.

Cebes answered: I agree, Socrates, in the greater part of what you say.
But in what concerns the soul, men are apt to be incredulous; they fear
that when she has left the body her place may be nowhere, and that on
the very day of death she may perish and come to an end--immediately on
her release from the body, issuing forth dispersed like smoke or air
and in her flight vanishing away into nothingness. If she could only be
collected into herself after she has obtained release from the evils of
which you are speaking, there would be good reason to hope, Socrates,
that what you say is true. But surely it requires a great deal of
argument and many proofs to show that when the man is dead his soul yet
exists, and has any force or intelligence.

True, Cebes, said Socrates; and shall I suggest that we converse a
little of the probabilities of these things?

I am sure, said Cebes, that I should greatly like to know your opinion
about them.

I reckon, said Socrates, that no one who heard me now, not even if he
were one of my old enemies, the Comic poets, could accuse me of idle
talking about matters in which I have no concern:--If you please, then,
we will proceed with the inquiry.

Suppose we consider the question whether the souls of men after death
are or are not in the world below. There comes into my mind an ancient
doctrine which affirms that they go from hence into the other world, and
returning hither, are born again from the dead. Now if it be true that
the living come from the dead, then our souls must exist in the other
world, for if not, how could they have been born again? And this would
be conclusive, if there were any real evidence that the living are only
born from the dead; but if this is not so, then other arguments will
have to be adduced.

Very true, replied Cebes.

Then let us consider the whole question, not in relation to man only,
but in relation to animals generally, and to plants, and to everything
of which there is generation, and the proof will be easier. Are not all
things which have opposites generated out of their opposites? I mean
such things as good and evil, just and unjust--and there are innumerable
other opposites which are generated out of opposites. And I want to show
that in all opposites there is of necessity a similar alternation;
I mean to say, for example, that anything which becomes greater must
become greater after being less.

True.

And that which becomes less must have been once greater and then have
become less.

Yes.

And the weaker is generated from the stronger, and the swifter from the
slower.

Very true.

And the worse is from the better, and the more just is from the more
unjust.

Of course.

And is this true of all opposites? and are we convinced that all of them
are generated out of opposites?

Yes.

And in this universal opposition of all things, are there not also two
intermediate processes which are ever going on, from one to the other
opposite, and back again; where there is a greater and a less there is
also an intermediate process of increase and diminution, and that which
grows is said to wax, and that which decays to wane?

Yes, he said.

And there are many other processes, such as division and composition,
cooling and heating, which equally involve a passage into and out of one
another. And this necessarily holds of all opposites, even though not
always expressed in words--they are really generated out of one another,
and there is a passing or process from one to the other of them?

Very true, he replied.

Well, and is there not an opposite of life, as sleep is the opposite of
waking?

True, he said.

And what is it?

Death, he answered.

And these, if they are opposites, are generated the one from the other,
and have there their two intermediate processes also?

Of course.

Now, said Socrates, I will analyze one of the two pairs of opposites
which I have mentioned to you, and also its intermediate processes, and
you shall analyze the other to me. One of them I term sleep, the other
waking. The state of sleep is opposed to the state of waking, and out
of sleeping waking is generated, and out of waking, sleeping; and the
process of generation is in the one case falling asleep, and in the
other waking up. Do you agree?

I entirely agree.

Then, suppose that you analyze life and death to me in the same manner.
Is not death opposed to life?

Yes.

And they are generated one from the other?

Yes.

What is generated from the living?

The dead.

And what from the dead?

I can only say in answer--the living.

Then the living, whether things or persons, Cebes, are generated from
the dead?

That is clear, he replied.

Then the inference is that our souls exist in the world below?

That is true.

And one of the two processes or generations is visible--for surely the
act of dying is visible?

Surely, he said.

What then is to be the result? Shall we exclude the opposite process?
And shall we suppose nature to walk on one leg only? Must we not rather
assign to death some corresponding process of generation?

Certainly, he replied.

And what is that process?

Return to life.

And return to life, if there be such a thing, is the birth of the dead
into the world of the living?

Quite true.

Then here is a new way by which we arrive at the conclusion that the
living come from the dead, just as the dead come from the living; and
this, if true, affords a most certain proof that the souls of the dead
exist in some place out of which they come again.

Yes, Socrates, he said; the conclusion seems to flow necessarily out of
our previous admissions.

And that these admissions were not unfair, Cebes, he said, may be shown,
I think, as follows: If generation were in a straight line only, and
there were no compensation or circle in nature, no turn or return of
elements into their opposites, then you know that all things would at
last have the same form and pass into the same state, and there would be
no more generation of them.

What do you mean? he said.

A simple thing enough, which I will illustrate by the case of sleep,
he replied. You know that if there were no alternation of sleeping
and waking, the tale of the sleeping Endymion would in the end have no
meaning, because all other things would be asleep, too, and he would not
be distinguishable from the rest. Or if there were composition only,
and no division of substances, then the chaos of Anaxagoras would come
again. And in like manner, my dear Cebes, if all things which partook
of life were to die, and after they were dead remained in the form
of death, and did not come to life again, all would at last die, and
nothing would be alive--what other result could there be? For if the
living spring from any other things, and they too die, must not all
things at last be swallowed up in death? (But compare Republic.)

There is no escape, Socrates, said Cebes; and to me your argument seems
to be absolutely true.

Yes, he said, Cebes, it is and must be so, in my opinion; and we have
not been deluded in making these admissions; but I am confident that
there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living spring
from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence, and that
the good souls have a better portion than the evil.

Cebes added: Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is simply
recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in
which we have learned that which we now recollect. But this would be
impossible unless our soul had been in some place before existing in the
form of man; here then is another proof of the soul's immortality.

But tell me, Cebes, said Simmias, interposing, what arguments are urged
in favour of this doctrine of recollection. I am not very sure at the
moment that I remember them.

One excellent proof, said Cebes, is afforded by questions. If you put
a question to a person in a right way, he will give a true answer of
himself, but how could he do this unless there were knowledge and right
reason already in him? And this is most clearly shown when he is taken
to a diagram or to anything of that sort. (Compare Meno.)

But if, said Socrates, you are still incredulous, Simmias, I would ask
you whether you may not agree with me when you look at the matter
in another way;--I mean, if you are still incredulous as to whether
knowledge is recollection.

Incredulous, I am not, said Simmias; but I want to have this doctrine
of recollection brought to my own recollection, and, from what Cebes has
said, I am beginning to recollect and be convinced; but I should still
like to hear what you were going to say.

This is what I would say, he replied:--We should agree, if I am not
mistaken, that what a man recollects he must have known at some previous
time.

Very true.

And what is the nature of this knowledge or recollection? I mean to
ask, Whether a person who, having seen or heard or in any way perceived
anything, knows not only that, but has a conception of something
else which is the subject, not of the same but of some other kind of
knowledge, may not be fairly said to recollect that of which he has the
conception?

What do you mean?

I mean what I may illustrate by the following instance:--The knowledge
of a lyre is not the same as the knowledge of a man?

True.

And yet what is the feeling of lovers when they recognize a lyre, or
a garment, or anything else which the beloved has been in the habit of
using? Do not they, from knowing the lyre, form in the mind's eye an
image of the youth to whom the lyre belongs? And this is recollection.
In like manner any one who sees Simmias may remember Cebes; and there
are endless examples of the same thing.

Endless, indeed, replied Simmias.

And recollection is most commonly a process of recovering that which has
been already forgotten through time and inattention.

Very true, he said.

Well; and may you not also from seeing the picture of a horse or a
lyre remember a man? and from the picture of Simmias, you may be led to
remember Cebes?

True.

Or you may also be led to the recollection of Simmias himself?

Quite so.

And in all these cases, the recollection may be derived from things
either like or unlike?

It may be.

And when the recollection is derived from like things, then another
consideration is sure to arise, which is--whether the likeness in any
degree falls short or not of that which is recollected?

Very true, he said.

And shall we proceed a step further, and affirm that there is such a
thing as equality, not of one piece of wood or stone with another, but
that, over and above this, there is absolute equality? Shall we say so?

Say so, yes, replied Simmias, and swear to it, with all the confidence
in life.

And do we know the nature of this absolute essence?

To be sure, he said.

And whence did we obtain our knowledge? Did we not see equalities of
material things, such as pieces of wood and stones, and gather from
them the idea of an equality which is different from them? For you will
acknowledge that there is a difference. Or look at the matter in another
way:--Do not the same pieces of wood or stone appear at one time equal,
and at another time unequal?

That is certain.

But are real equals ever unequal? or is the idea of equality the same as
of inequality?

Impossible, Socrates.

Then these (so-called) equals are not the same with the idea of
equality?

I should say, clearly not, Socrates.

And yet from these equals, although differing from the idea of equality,
you conceived and attained that idea?

Very true, he said.

Which might be like, or might be unlike them?

Yes.

But that makes no difference; whenever from seeing one thing you
conceived another, whether like or unlike, there must surely have been
an act of recollection?

Very true.

But what would you say of equal portions of wood and stone, or other
material equals? and what is the impression produced by them? Are they
equals in the same sense in which absolute equality is equal? or do they
fall short of this perfect equality in a measure?

Yes, he said, in a very great measure too.

And must we not allow, that when I or any one, looking at any object,
observes that the thing which he sees aims at being some other thing,
but falls short of, and cannot be, that other thing, but is inferior, he
who makes this observation must have had a previous knowledge of that to
which the other, although similar, was inferior?

Certainly.

And has not this been our own case in the matter of equals and of
absolute equality?

Precisely.

Then we must have known equality previously to the time when we first
saw the material equals, and reflected that all these apparent equals
strive to attain absolute equality, but fall short of it?

Very true.

And we recognize also that this absolute equality has only been known,
and can only be known, through the medium of sight or touch, or of some
other of the senses, which are all alike in this respect?

Yes, Socrates, as far as the argument is concerned, one of them is the
same as the other.

From the senses then is derived the knowledge that all sensible things
aim at an absolute equality of which they fall short?

Yes.

Then before we began to see or hear or perceive in any way, we must have
had a knowledge of absolute equality, or we could not have referred to
that standard the equals which are derived from the senses?--for to that
they all aspire, and of that they fall short.

No other inference can be drawn from the previous statements.

And did we not see and hear and have the use of our other senses as soon
as we were born?

Certainly.

Then we must have acquired the knowledge of equality at some previous
time?

Yes.

That is to say, before we were born, I suppose?

True.

And if we acquired this knowledge before we were born, and were born
having the use of it, then we also knew before we were born and at the
instant of birth not only the equal or the greater or the less, but all
other ideas; for we are not speaking only of equality, but of beauty,
goodness, justice, holiness, and of all which we stamp with the name of
essence in the dialectical process, both when we ask and when we answer
questions. Of all this we may certainly affirm that we acquired the
knowledge before birth?

We may.

But if, after having acquired, we have not forgotten what in each case
we acquired, then we must always have come into life having knowledge,
and shall always continue to know as long as life lasts--for knowing
is the acquiring and retaining knowledge and not forgetting. Is not
forgetting, Simmias, just the losing of knowledge?

Quite true, Socrates.

But if the knowledge which we acquired before birth was lost by us at
birth, and if afterwards by the use of the senses we recovered what
we previously knew, will not the process which we call learning be a
recovering of the knowledge which is natural to us, and may not this be
rightly termed recollection?

Very true.

So much is clear--that when we perceive something, either by the help of
sight, or hearing, or some other sense, from that perception we are
able to obtain a notion of some other thing like or unlike which is
associated with it but has been forgotten. Whence, as I was saying, one
of two alternatives follows:--either we had this knowledge at birth, and
continued to know through life; or, after birth, those who are said to
learn only remember, and learning is simply recollection.

Yes, that is quite true, Socrates.

And which alternative, Simmias, do you prefer? Had we the knowledge at
our birth, or did we recollect the things which we knew previously to
our birth?

I cannot decide at the moment.

At any rate you can decide whether he who has knowledge will or will not
be able to render an account of his knowledge? What do you say?

Certainly, he will.

But do you think that every man is able to give an account of these very
matters about which we are speaking?

Would that they could, Socrates, but I rather fear that to-morrow, at
this time, there will no longer be any one alive who is able to give an
account of them such as ought to be given.

Then you are not of opinion, Simmias, that all men know these things?

Certainly not.

They are in process of recollecting that which they learned before?

Certainly.

But when did our souls acquire this knowledge?--not since we were born
as men?

Certainly not.

And therefore, previously?

Yes.

Then, Simmias, our souls must also have existed without bodies before
they were in the form of man, and must have had intelligence.

Unless indeed you suppose, Socrates, that these notions are given us at
the very moment of birth; for this is the only time which remains.

Yes, my friend, but if so, when do we lose them? for they are not in
us when we are born--that is admitted. Do we lose them at the moment of
receiving them, or if not at what other time?

No, Socrates, I perceive that I was unconsciously talking nonsense.

Then may we not say, Simmias, that if, as we are always repeating, there
is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and an absolute essence of all
things; and if to this, which is now discovered to have existed in our
former state, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them,
finding these ideas to be pre-existent and our inborn possession--then
our souls must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be
no force in the argument? There is the same proof that these ideas must
have existed before we were born, as that our souls existed before we
were born; and if not the ideas, then not the souls.

Yes, Socrates; I am convinced that there is precisely the same necessity
for the one as for the other; and the argument retreats successfully
to the position that the existence of the soul before birth cannot be
separated from the existence of the essence of which you speak. For
there is nothing which to my mind is so patent as that beauty, goodness,
and the other notions of which you were just now speaking, have a most
real and absolute existence; and I am satisfied with the proof.

Well, but is Cebes equally satisfied? for I must convince him too.

I think, said Simmias, that Cebes is satisfied: although he is the most
incredulous of mortals, yet I believe that he is sufficiently convinced
of the existence of the soul before birth. But that after death the soul
will continue to exist is not yet proven even to my own satisfaction.
I cannot get rid of the feeling of the many to which Cebes was
referring--the feeling that when the man dies the soul will be
dispersed, and that this may be the extinction of her. For admitting
that she may have been born elsewhere, and framed out of other elements,
and was in existence before entering the human body, why after having
entered in and gone out again may she not herself be destroyed and come
to an end?

Very true, Simmias, said Cebes; about half of what was required has been
proven; to wit, that our souls existed before we were born:--that the
soul will exist after death as well as before birth is the other half of
which the proof is still wanting, and has to be supplied; when that is
given the demonstration will be complete.

But that proof, Simmias and Cebes, has been already given, said
Socrates, if you put the two arguments together--I mean this and the
former one, in which we admitted that everything living is born of the
dead. For if the soul exists before birth, and in coming to life and
being born can be born only from death and dying, must she not after
death continue to exist, since she has to be born again?--Surely the
proof which you desire has been already furnished. Still I suspect
that you and Simmias would be glad to probe the argument further. Like
children, you are haunted with a fear that when the soul leaves the
body, the wind may really blow her away and scatter her; especially if a
man should happen to die in a great storm and not when the sky is calm.

Cebes answered with a smile: Then, Socrates, you must argue us out of
our fears--and yet, strictly speaking, they are not our fears, but there
is a child within us to whom death is a sort of hobgoblin; him too we
must persuade not to be afraid when he is alone in the dark.

Socrates said: Let the voice of the charmer be applied daily until you
have charmed away the fear.

And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears, Socrates, when you
are gone?

Hellas, he replied, is a large place, Cebes, and has many good men, and
there are barbarous races not a few: seek for him among them all, far
and wide, sparing neither pains nor money; for there is no better way
of spending your money. And you must seek among yourselves too; for you
will not find others better able to make the search.

The search, replied Cebes, shall certainly be made. And now, if
you please, let us return to the point of the argument at which we
digressed.

By all means, replied Socrates; what else should I please?

Very good.

Must we not, said Socrates, ask ourselves what that is which, as we
imagine, is liable to be scattered, and about which we fear? and what
again is that about which we have no fear? And then we may proceed
further to enquire whether that which suffers dispersion is or is not
of the nature of soul--our hopes and fears as to our own souls will turn
upon the answers to these questions.

Very true, he said.

Now the compound or composite may be supposed to be naturally capable,
as of being compounded, so also of being dissolved; but that which is
uncompounded, and that only, must be, if anything is, indissoluble.

Yes; I should imagine so, said Cebes.

And the uncompounded may be assumed to be the same and unchanging,
whereas the compound is always changing and never the same.

I agree, he said.

Then now let us return to the previous discussion. Is that idea or
essence, which in the dialectical process we define as essence or true
existence--whether essence of equality, beauty, or anything else--are
these essences, I say, liable at times to some degree of change? or
are they each of them always what they are, having the same simple
self-existent and unchanging forms, not admitting of variation at all,
or in any way, or at any time?

They must be always the same, Socrates, replied Cebes.

And what would you say of the many beautiful--whether men or horses or
garments or any other things which are named by the same names and may
be called equal or beautiful,--are they all unchanging and the same
always, or quite the reverse? May they not rather be described as almost
always changing and hardly ever the same, either with themselves or with
one another?

The latter, replied Cebes; they are always in a state of change.

And these you can touch and see and perceive with the senses, but
the unchanging things you can only perceive with the mind--they are
invisible and are not seen?

That is very true, he said.

Well, then, added Socrates, let us suppose that there are two sorts of
existences--one seen, the other unseen.

Let us suppose them.

The seen is the changing, and the unseen is the unchanging?

That may be also supposed.

And, further, is not one part of us body, another part soul?

To be sure.

And to which class is the body more alike and akin?

Clearly to the seen--no one can doubt that.

And is the soul seen or not seen?

Not by man, Socrates.

And what we mean by 'seen' and 'not seen' is that which is or is not
visible to the eye of man?

Yes, to the eye of man.

And is the soul seen or not seen?

Not seen.

Unseen then?

Yes.

Then the soul is more like to the unseen, and the body to the seen?

That follows necessarily, Socrates.

And were we not saying long ago that the soul when using the body as an
instrument of perception, that is to say, when using the sense of sight
or hearing or some other sense (for the meaning of perceiving through
the body is perceiving through the senses)--were we not saying that the
soul too is then dragged by the body into the region of the changeable,
and wanders and is confused; the world spins round her, and she is like
a drunkard, when she touches change?

Very true.

But when returning into herself she reflects, then she passes into the
other world, the region of purity, and eternity, and immortality, and
unchangeableness, which are her kindred, and with them she ever lives,
when she is by herself and is not let or hindered; then she ceases
from her erring ways, and being in communion with the unchanging is
unchanging. And this state of the soul is called wisdom?

That is well and truly said, Socrates, he replied.

And to which class is the soul more nearly alike and akin, as far as may
be inferred from this argument, as well as from the preceding one?

I think, Socrates, that, in the opinion of every one who follows the
argument, the soul will be infinitely more like the unchangeable--even
the most stupid person will not deny that.

And the body is more like the changing?

Yes.

Yet once more consider the matter in another light: When the soul and
the body are united, then nature orders the soul to rule and govern, and
the body to obey and serve. Now which of these two functions is akin to
the divine? and which to the mortal? Does not the divine appear to you
to be that which naturally orders and rules, and the mortal to be that
which is subject and servant?

True.

And which does the soul resemble?

The soul resembles the divine, and the body the mortal--there can be no
doubt of that, Socrates.

Then reflect, Cebes: of all which has been said is not this the
conclusion?--that the soul is in the very likeness of the divine,
and immortal, and intellectual, and uniform, and indissoluble, and
unchangeable; and that the body is in the very likeness of the human,
and mortal, and unintellectual, and multiform, and dissoluble, and
changeable. Can this, my dear Cebes, be denied?

It cannot.

But if it be true, then is not the body liable to speedy dissolution?
and is not the soul almost or altogether indissoluble?

Certainly.

And do you further observe, that after a man is dead, the body, or
visible part of him, which is lying in the visible world, and is
called a corpse, and would naturally be dissolved and decomposed and
dissipated, is not dissolved or decomposed at once, but may remain for a
for some time, nay even for a long time, if the constitution be sound at
the time of death, and the season of the year favourable? For the body
when shrunk and embalmed, as the manner is in Egypt, may remain almost
entire through infinite ages; and even in decay, there are still
some portions, such as the bones and ligaments, which are practically
indestructible:--Do you agree?

Yes.

And is it likely that the soul, which is invisible, in passing to the
place of the true Hades, which like her is invisible, and pure, and
noble, and on her way to the good and wise God, whither, if God will, my
soul is also soon to go,--that the soul, I repeat, if this be her nature
and origin, will be blown away and destroyed immediately on quitting the
body, as the many say? That can never be, my dear Simmias and Cebes.
The truth rather is, that the soul which is pure at departing and draws
after her no bodily taint, having never voluntarily during life had
connection with the body, which she is ever avoiding, herself gathered
into herself;--and making such abstraction her perpetual study--which
means that she has been a true disciple of philosophy; and therefore
has in fact been always engaged in the practice of dying? For is not
philosophy the practice of death?--

Certainly--

That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world--to
the divine and immortal and rational: thither arriving, she is secure of
bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and
wild passions and all other human ills, and for ever dwells, as they say
of the initiated, in company with the gods (compare Apol.). Is not this
true, Cebes?

Yes, said Cebes, beyond a doubt.

But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her
departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is
in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures
of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in
a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste, and use for the
purposes of his lusts,--the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear
and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark
and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy;--do you suppose
that such a soul will depart pure and unalloyed?

Impossible, he replied.

She is held fast by the corporeal, which the continual association and
constant care of the body have wrought into her nature.

Very true.

And this corporeal element, my friend, is heavy and weighty and earthy,
and is that element of sight by which a soul is depressed and dragged
down again into the visible world, because she is afraid of the
invisible and of the world below--prowling about tombs and sepulchres,
near which, as they tell us, are seen certain ghostly apparitions
of souls which have not departed pure, but are cloyed with sight and
therefore visible.

(Compare Milton, Comus:--

     'But when lust,
     By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
     But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
     Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
     The soul grows clotted by contagion,
     Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose,
     The divine property of her first being.
     Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
     Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres,
     Lingering, and sitting by a new made grave,
     As loath to leave the body that it lov'd,
     And linked itself by carnal sensuality
     To a degenerate and degraded state.')

That is very likely, Socrates.

Yes, that is very likely, Cebes; and these must be the souls, not of the
good, but of the evil, which are compelled to wander about such places
in payment of the penalty of their former evil way of life; and they
continue to wander until through the craving after the corporeal which
never leaves them, they are imprisoned finally in another body. And they
may be supposed to find their prisons in the same natures which they
have had in their former lives.

What natures do you mean, Socrates?

What I mean is that men who have followed after gluttony, and
wantonness, and drunkenness, and have had no thought of avoiding them,
would pass into asses and animals of that sort. What do you think?

I think such an opinion to be exceedingly probable.

And those who have chosen the portion of injustice, and tyranny, and
violence, will pass into wolves, or into hawks and kites;--whither else
can we suppose them to go?

Yes, said Cebes; with such natures, beyond question.

And there is no difficulty, he said, in assigning to all of them places
answering to their several natures and propensities?

There is not, he said.

Some are happier than others; and the happiest both in themselves and
in the place to which they go are those who have practised the civil and
social virtues which are called temperance and justice, and are acquired
by habit and attention without philosophy and mind. (Compare Republic.)

Why are they the happiest?

Because they may be expected to pass into some gentle and social kind
which is like their own, such as bees or wasps or ants, or back again
into the form of man, and just and moderate men may be supposed to
spring from them.

Very likely.

No one who has not studied philosophy and who is not entirely pure at
the time of his departure is allowed to enter the company of the Gods,
but the lover of knowledge only. And this is the reason, Simmias and
Cebes, why the true votaries of philosophy abstain from all fleshly
lusts, and hold out against them and refuse to give themselves up to
them,--not because they fear poverty or the ruin of their families, like
the lovers of money, and the world in general; nor like the lovers of
power and honour, because they dread the dishonour or disgrace of evil
deeds.

No, Socrates, that would not become them, said Cebes.

No indeed, he replied; and therefore they who have any care of their
own souls, and do not merely live moulding and fashioning the body, say
farewell to all this; they will not walk in the ways of the blind: and
when philosophy offers them purification and release from evil, they
feel that they ought not to resist her influence, and whither she leads
they turn and follow.

What do you mean, Socrates?

I will tell you, he said. The lovers of knowledge are conscious that
the soul was simply fastened and glued to the body--until philosophy
received her, she could only view real existence through the bars of
a prison, not in and through herself; she was wallowing in the mire of
every sort of ignorance; and by reason of lust had become the principal
accomplice in her own captivity. This was her original state; and
then, as I was saying, and as the lovers of knowledge are well aware,
philosophy, seeing how terrible was her confinement, of which she was
to herself the cause, received and gently comforted her and sought to
release her, pointing out that the eye and the ear and the other senses
are full of deception, and persuading her to retire from them, and
abstain from all but the necessary use of them, and be gathered up and
collected into herself, bidding her trust in herself and her own pure
apprehension of pure existence, and to mistrust whatever comes to her
through other channels and is subject to variation; for such things
are visible and tangible, but what she sees in her own nature is
intelligible and invisible. And the soul of the true philosopher thinks
that she ought not to resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains
from pleasures and desires and pains and fears, as far as she is
able; reflecting that when a man has great joys or sorrows or fears or
desires, he suffers from them, not merely the sort of evil which might
be anticipated--as for example, the loss of his health or property which
he has sacrificed to his lusts--but an evil greater far, which is the
greatest and worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks.

What is it, Socrates? said Cebes.

The evil is that when the feeling of pleasure or pain is most intense,
every soul of man imagines the objects of this intense feeling to be
then plainest and truest: but this is not so, they are really the things
of sight.

Very true.

And is not this the state in which the soul is most enthralled by the
body?

How so?

Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails
and rivets the soul to the body, until she becomes like the body, and
believes that to be true which the body affirms to be true; and from
agreeing with the body and having the same delights she is obliged to
have the same habits and haunts, and is not likely ever to be pure at
her departure to the world below, but is always infected by the body;
and so she sinks into another body and there germinates and grows,
and has therefore no part in the communion of the divine and pure and
simple.

Most true, Socrates, answered Cebes.

And this, Cebes, is the reason why the true lovers of knowledge are
temperate and brave; and not for the reason which the world gives.

Certainly not.

Certainly not! The soul of a philosopher will reason in quite another
way; she will not ask philosophy to release her in order that when
released she may deliver herself up again to the thraldom of pleasures
and pains, doing a work only to be undone again, weaving instead of
unweaving her Penelope's web. But she will calm passion, and follow
reason, and dwell in the contemplation of her, beholding the true
and divine (which is not matter of opinion), and thence deriving
nourishment. Thus she seeks to live while she lives, and after death she
hopes to go to her own kindred and to that which is like her, and to be
freed from human ills. Never fear, Simmias and Cebes, that a soul which
has been thus nurtured and has had these pursuits, will at her departure
from the body be scattered and blown away by the winds and be nowhere
and nothing.

When Socrates had done speaking, for a considerable time there was
silence; he himself appeared to be meditating, as most of us were, on
what had been said; only Cebes and Simmias spoke a few words to one
another. And Socrates observing them asked what they thought of the
argument, and whether there was anything wanting? For, said he, there
are many points still open to suspicion and attack, if any one were
disposed to sift the matter thoroughly. Should you be considering
some other matter I say no more, but if you are still in doubt do not
hesitate to say exactly what you think, and let us have anything better
which you can suggest; and if you think that I can be of any use, allow
me to help you.

Simmias said: I must confess, Socrates, that doubts did arise in our
minds, and each of us was urging and inciting the other to put the
question which we wanted to have answered and which neither of us liked
to ask, fearing that our importunity might be troublesome under present
at such a time.

Socrates replied with a smile: O Simmias, what are you saying? I am
not very likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present
situation as a misfortune, if I cannot even persuade you that I am no
worse off now than at any other time in my life. Will you not allow that
I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they,
when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long,
do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the thought that
they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are. But men,
because they are themselves afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the
swans that they sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird
sings when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, nor
the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe; which are said indeed to tune a lay of
sorrow, although I do not believe this to be true of them any more than
of the swans. But because they are sacred to Apollo, they have the gift
of prophecy, and anticipate the good things of another world, wherefore
they sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before. And I
too, believing myself to be the consecrated servant of the same God, and
the fellow-servant of the swans, and thinking that I have received from
my master gifts of prophecy which are not inferior to theirs, would not
go out of life less merrily than the swans. Never mind then, if this be
your only objection, but speak and ask anything which you like, while
the eleven magistrates of Athens allow.

Very good, Socrates, said Simmias; then I will tell you my difficulty,
and Cebes will tell you his. I feel myself, (and I daresay that you have
the same feeling), how hard or rather impossible is the attainment of
any certainty about questions such as these in the present life. And yet
I should deem him a coward who did not prove what is said about them to
the uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined them
on every side. For he should persevere until he has achieved one of two
things: either he should discover, or be taught the truth about them;
or, if this be impossible, I would have him take the best and most
irrefragable of human theories, and let this be the raft upon which he
sails through life--not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some
word of God which will more surely and safely carry him. And now, as
you bid me, I will venture to question you, and then I shall not have to
reproach myself hereafter with not having said at the time what I think.
For when I consider the matter, either alone or with Cebes, the argument
does certainly appear to me, Socrates, to be not sufficient.

Socrates answered: I dare say, my friend, that you may be right, but I
should like to know in what respect the argument is insufficient.

In this respect, replied Simmias:--Suppose a person to use the same
argument about harmony and the lyre--might he not say that harmony is
a thing invisible, incorporeal, perfect, divine, existing in the lyre
which is harmonized, but that the lyre and the strings are matter and
material, composite, earthy, and akin to mortality? And when some one
breaks the lyre, or cuts and rends the strings, then he who takes this
view would argue as you do, and on the same analogy, that the harmony
survives and has not perished--you cannot imagine, he would say, that
the lyre without the strings, and the broken strings themselves which
are mortal remain, and yet that the harmony, which is of heavenly and
immortal nature and kindred, has perished--perished before the mortal.
The harmony must still be somewhere, and the wood and strings will decay
before anything can happen to that. The thought, Socrates, must have
occurred to your own mind that such is our conception of the soul;
and that when the body is in a manner strung and held together by the
elements of hot and cold, wet and dry, then the soul is the harmony or
due proportionate admixture of them. But if so, whenever the strings of
the body are unduly loosened or overstrained through disease or other
injury, then the soul, though most divine, like other harmonies of music
or of works of art, of course perishes at once, although the material
remains of the body may last for a considerable time, until they are
either decayed or burnt. And if any one maintains that the soul, being
the harmony of the elements of the body, is first to perish in that
which is called death, how shall we answer him?

Socrates looked fixedly at us as his manner was, and said with a smile:
Simmias has reason on his side; and why does not some one of you who
is better able than myself answer him? for there is force in his attack
upon me. But perhaps, before we answer him, we had better also hear what
Cebes has to say that we may gain time for reflection, and when they
have both spoken, we may either assent to them, if there is truth in
what they say, or if not, we will maintain our position. Please to tell
me then, Cebes, he said, what was the difficulty which troubled you?

Cebes said: I will tell you. My feeling is that the argument is where it
was, and open to the same objections which were urged before; for I am
ready to admit that the existence of the soul before entering into
the bodily form has been very ingeniously, and, if I may say so, quite
sufficiently proven; but the existence of the soul after death is still,
in my judgment, unproven. Now my objection is not the same as that of
Simmias; for I am not disposed to deny that the soul is stronger and
more lasting than the body, being of opinion that in all such respects
the soul very far excels the body. Well, then, says the argument to me,
why do you remain unconvinced?--When you see that the weaker continues
in existence after the man is dead, will you not admit that the more
lasting must also survive during the same period of time? Now I will
ask you to consider whether the objection, which, like Simmias, I will
express in a figure, is of any weight. The analogy which I will adduce
is that of an old weaver, who dies, and after his death somebody
says:--He is not dead, he must be alive;--see, there is the coat which
he himself wove and wore, and which remains whole and undecayed. And
then he proceeds to ask of some one who is incredulous, whether a man
lasts longer, or the coat which is in use and wear; and when he is
answered that a man lasts far longer, thinks that he has thus certainly
demonstrated the survival of the man, who is the more lasting, because
the less lasting remains. But that, Simmias, as I would beg you to
remark, is a mistake; any one can see that he who talks thus is talking
nonsense. For the truth is, that the weaver aforesaid, having woven and
worn many such coats, outlived several of them, and was outlived by the
last; but a man is not therefore proved to be slighter and weaker than
a coat. Now the relation of the body to the soul may be expressed in a
similar figure; and any one may very fairly say in like manner that the
soul is lasting, and the body weak and shortlived in comparison. He may
argue in like manner that every soul wears out many bodies, especially
if a man live many years. While he is alive the body deliquesces and
decays, and the soul always weaves another garment and repairs the
waste. But of course, whenever the soul perishes, she must have on her
last garment, and this will survive her; and then at length, when
the soul is dead, the body will show its native weakness, and quickly
decompose and pass away. I would therefore rather not rely on the
argument from superior strength to prove the continued existence of the
soul after death. For granting even more than you affirm to be possible,
and acknowledging not only that the soul existed before birth, but also
that the souls of some exist, and will continue to exist after death,
and will be born and die again and again, and that there is a
natural strength in the soul which will hold out and be born many
times--nevertheless, we may be still inclined to think that she will
weary in the labours of successive births, and may at last succumb in
one of her deaths and utterly perish; and this death and dissolution of
the body which brings destruction to the soul may be unknown to any of
us, for no one of us can have had any experience of it: and if so,
then I maintain that he who is confident about death has but a foolish
confidence, unless he is able to prove that the soul is altogether
immortal and imperishable. But if he cannot prove the soul's
immortality, he who is about to die will always have reason to fear that
when the body is disunited, the soul also may utterly perish.

All of us, as we afterwards remarked to one another, had an unpleasant
feeling at hearing what they said. When we had been so firmly convinced
before, now to have our faith shaken seemed to introduce a confusion and
uncertainty, not only into the previous argument, but into any future
one; either we were incapable of forming a judgment, or there were no
grounds of belief.

ECHECRATES: There I feel with you--by heaven I do, Phaedo, and when you
were speaking, I was beginning to ask myself the same question: What
argument can I ever trust again? For what could be more convincing than
the argument of Socrates, which has now fallen into discredit? That
the soul is a harmony is a doctrine which has always had a wonderful
attraction for me, and, when mentioned, came back to me at once, as my
own original conviction. And now I must begin again and find another
argument which will assure me that when the man is dead the soul
survives. Tell me, I implore you, how did Socrates proceed? Did he
appear to share the unpleasant feeling which you mention? or did he
calmly meet the attack? And did he answer forcibly or feebly? Narrate
what passed as exactly as you can.

PHAEDO: Often, Echecrates, I have wondered at Socrates, but never more
than on that occasion. That he should be able to answer was nothing,
but what astonished me was, first, the gentle and pleasant and approving
manner in which he received the words of the young men, and then his
quick sense of the wound which had been inflicted by the argument, and
the readiness with which he healed it. He might be compared to a general
rallying his defeated and broken army, urging them to accompany him and
return to the field of argument.

ECHECRATES: What followed?

PHAEDO: You shall hear, for I was close to him on his right hand, seated
on a sort of stool, and he on a couch which was a good deal higher.
He stroked my head, and pressed the hair upon my neck--he had a way of
playing with my hair; and then he said: To-morrow, Phaedo, I suppose
that these fair locks of yours will be severed.

Yes, Socrates, I suppose that they will, I replied.

Not so, if you will take my advice.

What shall I do with them? I said.

To-day, he replied, and not to-morrow, if this argument dies and we
cannot bring it to life again, you and I will both shave our locks; and
if I were you, and the argument got away from me, and I could not hold
my ground against Simmias and Cebes, I would myself take an oath, like
the Argives, not to wear hair any more until I had renewed the conflict
and defeated them.

Yes, I said, but Heracles himself is said not to be a match for two.

Summon me then, he said, and I will be your Iolaus until the sun goes
down.

I summon you rather, I rejoined, not as Heracles summoning Iolaus, but
as Iolaus might summon Heracles.

That will do as well, he said. But first let us take care that we avoid
a danger.

Of what nature? I said.

Lest we become misologists, he replied, no worse thing can happen to a
man than this. For as there are misanthropists or haters of men, there
are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same
cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises out of the
too great confidence of inexperience;--you trust a man and think him
altogether true and sound and faithful, and then in a little while he
turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and
when this has happened several times to a man, especially when it
happens among those whom he deems to be his own most trusted and
familiar friends, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates
all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all. You must
have observed this trait of character?

I have.

And is not the feeling discreditable? Is it not obvious that such an
one having to deal with other men, was clearly without any experience of
human nature; for experience would have taught him the true state of
the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great
majority are in the interval between them.

What do you mean? I said.

I mean, he replied, as you might say of the very large and very small,
that nothing is more uncommon than a very large or very small man; and
this applies generally to all extremes, whether of great and small, or
swift and slow, or fair and foul, or black and white: and whether
the instances you select be men or dogs or anything else, few are the
extremes, but many are in the mean between them. Did you never observe
this?

Yes, I said, I have.

And do you not imagine, he said, that if there were a competition in
evil, the worst would be found to be very few?

Yes, that is very likely, I said.

Yes, that is very likely, he replied; although in this respect arguments
are unlike men--there I was led on by you to say more than I had
intended; but the point of comparison was, that when a simple man who
has no skill in dialectics believes an argument to be true which he
afterwards imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and
then another and another, he has no longer any faith left, and great
disputers, as you know, come to think at last that they have grown to be
the wisest of mankind; for they alone perceive the utter unsoundness and
instability of all arguments, or indeed, of all things, which, like the
currents in the Euripus, are going up and down in never-ceasing ebb and
flow.

That is quite true, I said.

Yes, Phaedo, he replied, and how melancholy, if there be such a thing as
truth or certainty or possibility of knowledge--that a man should have
lighted upon some argument or other which at first seemed true and then
turned out to be false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want
of wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to transfer
the blame from himself to arguments in general: and for ever afterwards
should hate and revile them, and lose truth and the knowledge of
realities.

Yes, indeed, I said; that is very melancholy.

Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of allowing or of
admitting into our souls the notion that there is no health or soundness
in any arguments at all. Rather say that we have not yet attained to
soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our
best to gain health of mind--you and all other men having regard to the
whole of your future life, and I myself in the prospect of death. For at
this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a philosopher;
like the vulgar, I am only a partisan. Now the partisan, when he is
engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question,
but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.
And the difference between him and me at the present moment is merely
this--that whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is
true, I am rather seeking to convince myself; to convince my hearers
is a secondary matter with me. And do but see how much I gain by the
argument. For if what I say is true, then I do well to be persuaded of
the truth, but if there be nothing after death, still, during the short
time that remains, I shall not distress my friends with lamentations,
and my ignorance will not last, but will die with me, and therefore
no harm will be done. This is the state of mind, Simmias and Cebes, in
which I approach the argument. And I would ask you to be thinking of
the truth and not of Socrates: agree with me, if I seem to you to be
speaking the truth; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may
not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and like the bee,
leave my sting in you before I die.

And now let us proceed, he said. And first of all let me be sure that
I have in my mind what you were saying. Simmias, if I remember rightly,
has fears and misgivings whether the soul, although a fairer and diviner
thing than the body, being as she is in the form of harmony, may not
perish first. On the other hand, Cebes appeared to grant that the soul
was more lasting than the body, but he said that no one could know
whether the soul, after having worn out many bodies, might not perish
herself and leave her last body behind her; and that this is death,
which is the destruction not of the body but of the soul, for in the
body the work of destruction is ever going on. Are not these, Simmias
and Cebes, the points which we have to consider?

They both agreed to this statement of them.

He proceeded: And did you deny the force of the whole preceding
argument, or of a part only?

Of a part only, they replied.

And what did you think, he said, of that part of the argument in which
we said that knowledge was recollection, and hence inferred that the
soul must have previously existed somewhere else before she was enclosed
in the body?

Cebes said that he had been wonderfully impressed by that part of the
argument, and that his conviction remained absolutely unshaken. Simmias
agreed, and added that he himself could hardly imagine the possibility
of his ever thinking differently.

But, rejoined Socrates, you will have to think differently, my Theban
friend, if you still maintain that harmony is a compound, and that the
soul is a harmony which is made out of strings set in the frame of the
body; for you will surely never allow yourself to say that a harmony is
prior to the elements which compose it.

Never, Socrates.

But do you not see that this is what you imply when you say that the
soul existed before she took the form and body of man, and was made up
of elements which as yet had no existence? For harmony is not like
the soul, as you suppose; but first the lyre, and the strings, and the
sounds exist in a state of discord, and then harmony is made last of
all, and perishes first. And how can such a notion of the soul as this
agree with the other?

Not at all, replied Simmias.

And yet, he said, there surely ought to be harmony in a discourse of
which harmony is the theme.

There ought, replied Simmias.

But there is no harmony, he said, in the two propositions that knowledge
is recollection, and that the soul is a harmony. Which of them will you
retain?

I think, he replied, that I have a much stronger faith, Socrates, in the
first of the two, which has been fully demonstrated to me, than in
the latter, which has not been demonstrated at all, but rests only on
probable and plausible grounds; and is therefore believed by the many. I
know too well that these arguments from probabilities are impostors, and
unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they are apt to
be deceptive--in geometry, and in other things too. But the doctrine of
knowledge and recollection has been proven to me on trustworthy grounds;
and the proof was that the soul must have existed before she came into
the body, because to her belongs the essence of which the very name
implies existence. Having, as I am convinced, rightly accepted this
conclusion, and on sufficient grounds, I must, as I suppose, cease to
argue or allow others to argue that the soul is a harmony.

Let me put the matter, Simmias, he said, in another point of view: Do
you imagine that a harmony or any other composition can be in a state
other than that of the elements, out of which it is compounded?

Certainly not.

Or do or suffer anything other than they do or suffer?

He agreed.

Then a harmony does not, properly speaking, lead the parts or elements
which make up the harmony, but only follows them.

He assented.

For harmony cannot possibly have any motion, or sound, or other quality
which is opposed to its parts.

That would be impossible, he replied.

And does not the nature of every harmony depend upon the manner in which
the elements are harmonized?

I do not understand you, he said.

I mean to say that a harmony admits of degrees, and is more of a
harmony, and more completely a harmony, when more truly and fully
harmonized, to any extent which is possible; and less of a harmony, and
less completely a harmony, when less truly and fully harmonized.

True.

But does the soul admit of degrees? or is one soul in the very least
degree more or less, or more or less completely, a soul than another?

Not in the least.

Yet surely of two souls, one is said to have intelligence and virtue,
and to be good, and the other to have folly and vice, and to be an evil
soul: and this is said truly?

Yes, truly.

But what will those who maintain the soul to be a harmony say of this
presence of virtue and vice in the soul?--will they say that here is
another harmony, and another discord, and that the virtuous soul is
harmonized, and herself being a harmony has another harmony within her,
and that the vicious soul is inharmonical and has no harmony within her?

I cannot tell, replied Simmias; but I suppose that something of the sort
would be asserted by those who say that the soul is a harmony.

And we have already admitted that no soul is more a soul than another;
which is equivalent to admitting that harmony is not more or less
harmony, or more or less completely a harmony?

Quite true.

And that which is not more or less a harmony is not more or less
harmonized?

True.

And that which is not more or less harmonized cannot have more or less
of harmony, but only an equal harmony?

Yes, an equal harmony.

Then one soul not being more or less absolutely a soul than another, is
not more or less harmonized?

Exactly.

And therefore has neither more nor less of discord, nor yet of harmony?

She has not.

And having neither more nor less of harmony or of discord, one soul
has no more vice or virtue than another, if vice be discord and virtue
harmony?

Not at all more.

Or speaking more correctly, Simmias, the soul, if she is a harmony, will
never have any vice; because a harmony, being absolutely a harmony, has
no part in the inharmonical.

No.

And therefore a soul which is absolutely a soul has no vice?

How can she have, if the previous argument holds?

Then, if all souls are equally by their nature souls, all souls of all
living creatures will be equally good?

I agree with you, Socrates, he said.

And can all this be true, think you? he said; for these are the
consequences which seem to follow from the assumption that the soul is a
harmony?

It cannot be true.

Once more, he said, what ruler is there of the elements of human nature
other than the soul, and especially the wise soul? Do you know of any?

Indeed, I do not.

And is the soul in agreement with the affections of the body? or is she
at variance with them? For example, when the body is hot and thirsty,
does not the soul incline us against drinking? and when the body
is hungry, against eating? And this is only one instance out of ten
thousand of the opposition of the soul to the things of the body.

Very true.

But we have already acknowledged that the soul, being a harmony, can
never utter a note at variance with the tensions and relaxations and
vibrations and other affections of the strings out of which she is
composed; she can only follow, she cannot lead them?

It must be so, he replied.

And yet do we not now discover the soul to be doing the exact
opposite--leading the elements of which she is believed to be composed;
almost always opposing and coercing them in all sorts of ways throughout
life, sometimes more violently with the pains of medicine and gymnastic;
then again more gently; now threatening, now admonishing the desires,
passions, fears, as if talking to a thing which is not herself, as Homer
in the Odyssee represents Odysseus doing in the words--

'He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart: Endure, my heart;
far worse hast thou endured!'

Do you think that Homer wrote this under the idea that the soul is a
harmony capable of being led by the affections of the body, and not
rather of a nature which should lead and master them--herself a far
diviner thing than any harmony?

Yes, Socrates, I quite think so.

Then, my friend, we can never be right in saying that the soul is a
harmony, for we should contradict the divine Homer, and contradict
ourselves.

True, he said.

Thus much, said Socrates, of Harmonia, your Theban goddess, who has
graciously yielded to us; but what shall I say, Cebes, to her husband
Cadmus, and how shall I make peace with him?

I think that you will discover a way of propitiating him, said Cebes; I
am sure that you have put the argument with Harmonia in a manner that
I could never have expected. For when Simmias was mentioning his
difficulty, I quite imagined that no answer could be given to him, and
therefore I was surprised at finding that his argument could not sustain
the first onset of yours, and not impossibly the other, whom you call
Cadmus, may share a similar fate.

Nay, my good friend, said Socrates, let us not boast, lest some evil eye
should put to flight the word which I am about to speak. That, however,
may be left in the hands of those above, while I draw near in Homeric
fashion, and try the mettle of your words. Here lies the point:--You
want to have it proven to you that the soul is imperishable and
immortal, and the philosopher who is confident in death appears to you
to have but a vain and foolish confidence, if he believes that he will
fare better in the world below than one who has led another sort of
life, unless he can prove this; and you say that the demonstration of
the strength and divinity of the soul, and of her existence prior to our
becoming men, does not necessarily imply her immortality. Admitting the
soul to be longlived, and to have known and done much in a former state,
still she is not on that account immortal; and her entrance into
the human form may be a sort of disease which is the beginning of
dissolution, and may at last, after the toils of life are over, end in
that which is called death. And whether the soul enters into the body
once only or many times, does not, as you say, make any difference in
the fears of individuals. For any man, who is not devoid of sense,
must fear, if he has no knowledge and can give no account of the soul's
immortality. This, or something like this, I suspect to be your notion,
Cebes; and I designedly recur to it in order that nothing may escape us,
and that you may, if you wish, add or subtract anything.

But, said Cebes, as far as I see at present, I have nothing to add or
subtract: I mean what you say that I mean.

Socrates paused awhile, and seemed to be absorbed in reflection. At
length he said: You are raising a tremendous question, Cebes, involving
the whole nature of generation and corruption, about which, if you like,
I will give you my own experience; and if anything which I say is likely
to avail towards the solution of your difficulty you may make use of it.

I should very much like, said Cebes, to hear what you have to say.

Then I will tell you, said Socrates. When I was young, Cebes, I had a
prodigious desire to know that department of philosophy which is called
the investigation of nature; to know the causes of things, and why
a thing is and is created or destroyed appeared to me to be a lofty
profession; and I was always agitating myself with the consideration of
questions such as these:--Is the growth of animals the result of some
decay which the hot and cold principle contracts, as some have said? Is
the blood the element with which we think, or the air, or the fire? or
perhaps nothing of the kind--but the brain may be the originating
power of the perceptions of hearing and sight and smell, and memory
and opinion may come from them, and science may be based on memory and
opinion when they have attained fixity. And then I went on to examine
the corruption of them, and then to the things of heaven and earth, and
at last I concluded myself to be utterly and absolutely incapable
of these enquiries, as I will satisfactorily prove to you. For I was
fascinated by them to such a degree that my eyes grew blind to things
which I had seemed to myself, and also to others, to know quite well; I
forgot what I had before thought self-evident truths; e.g. such a fact
as that the growth of man is the result of eating and drinking; for when
by the digestion of food flesh is added to flesh and bone to bone, and
whenever there is an aggregation of congenial elements, the lesser
bulk becomes larger and the small man great. Was not that a reasonable
notion?

Yes, said Cebes, I think so.

Well; but let me tell you something more. There was a time when I
thought that I understood the meaning of greater and less pretty well;
and when I saw a great man standing by a little one, I fancied that one
was taller than the other by a head; or one horse would appear to
be greater than another horse: and still more clearly did I seem to
perceive that ten is two more than eight, and that two cubits are more
than one, because two is the double of one.

And what is now your notion of such matters? said Cebes.

I should be far enough from imagining, he replied, that I knew the cause
of any of them, by heaven I should; for I cannot satisfy myself that,
when one is added to one, the one to which the addition is made becomes
two, or that the two units added together make two by reason of the
addition. I cannot understand how, when separated from the other, each
of them was one and not two, and now, when they are brought together,
the mere juxtaposition or meeting of them should be the cause of their
becoming two: neither can I understand how the division of one is the
way to make two; for then a different cause would produce the same
effect,--as in the former instance the addition and juxtaposition of one
to one was the cause of two, in this the separation and subtraction of
one from the other would be the cause. Nor am I any longer satisfied
that I understand the reason why one or anything else is either
generated or destroyed or is at all, but I have in my mind some confused
notion of a new method, and can never admit the other.

Then I heard some one reading, as he said, from a book of Anaxagoras,
that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was delighted at this
notion, which appeared quite admirable, and I said to myself: If mind
is the disposer, mind will dispose all for the best, and put each
particular in the best place; and I argued that if any one desired to
find out the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of
anything, he must find out what state of being or doing or suffering was
best for that thing, and therefore a man had only to consider the best
for himself and others, and then he would also know the worse, since the
same science comprehended both. And I rejoiced to think that I had found
in Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I desired,
and I imagined that he would tell me first whether the earth is flat or
round; and whichever was true, he would proceed to explain the cause and
the necessity of this being so, and then he would teach me the nature of
the best and show that this was best; and if he said that the earth was
in the centre, he would further explain that this position was the best,
and I should be satisfied with the explanation given, and not want any
other sort of cause. And I thought that I would then go on and ask him
about the sun and moon and stars, and that he would explain to me their
comparative swiftness, and their returnings and various states, active
and passive, and how all of them were for the best. For I could not
imagine that when he spoke of mind as the disposer of them, he would
give any other account of their being as they are, except that this was
best; and I thought that when he had explained to me in detail the cause
of each and the cause of all, he would go on to explain to me what was
best for each and what was good for all. These hopes I would not have
sold for a large sum of money, and I seized the books and read them as
fast as I could in my eagerness to know the better and the worse.

What expectations I had formed, and how grievously was I disappointed!
As I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any
other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and
water, and other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who
began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions
of Socrates, but who, when he endeavoured to explain the causes of my
several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my
body is made up of bones and muscles; and the bones, as he would say,
are hard and have joints which divide them, and the muscles are elastic,
and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of
flesh and skin which contains them; and as the bones are lifted at their
joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able
to bend my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved
posture--that is what he would say, and he would have a similar
explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and
air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the
same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is, that the
Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought
it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence; for
I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have
gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia--by the dog they would, if they
had been moved only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not
chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running
away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts. There is
surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may
be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts
of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do
because of them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and
not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of
speaking. I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the
condition, which the many, feeling about in the dark, are always
mistaking and misnaming. And thus one man makes a vortex all round and
steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives the air as a support to
the earth, which is a sort of broad trough. Any power which in arranging
them as they are arranges them for the best never enters into their
minds; and instead of finding any superior strength in it, they rather
expect to discover another Atlas of the world who is stronger and more
everlasting and more containing than the good;--of the obligatory and
containing power of the good they think nothing; and yet this is the
principle which I would fain learn if any one would teach me. But as I
have failed either to discover myself, or to learn of any one else,
the nature of the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have
found to be the second best mode of enquiring into the cause.

I should very much like to hear, he replied.

Socrates proceeded:--I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation
of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of
my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing
on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of only
looking at the image reflected in the water, or in some similar medium.
So in my own case, I was afraid that my soul might be blinded altogether
if I looked at things with my eyes or tried to apprehend them by the
help of the senses. And I thought that I had better have recourse to the
world of mind and seek there the truth of existence. I dare say that
the simile is not perfect--for I am very far from admitting that he who
contemplates existences through the medium of thought, sees them only
'through a glass darkly,' any more than he who considers them in action
and operation. However, this was the method which I adopted: I first
assumed some principle which I judged to be the strongest, and then I
affirmed as true whatever seemed to agree with this, whether relating
to the cause or to anything else; and that which disagreed I regarded
as untrue. But I should like to explain my meaning more clearly, as I do
not think that you as yet understand me.

No indeed, replied Cebes, not very well.

There is nothing new, he said, in what I am about to tell you; but
only what I have been always and everywhere repeating in the previous
discussion and on other occasions: I want to show you the nature of that
cause which has occupied my thoughts. I shall have to go back to those
familiar words which are in the mouth of every one, and first of all
assume that there is an absolute beauty and goodness and greatness, and
the like; grant me this, and I hope to be able to show you the nature of
the cause, and to prove the immortality of the soul.

Cebes said: You may proceed at once with the proof, for I grant you
this.

Well, he said, then I should like to know whether you agree with me
in the next step; for I cannot help thinking, if there be anything
beautiful other than absolute beauty should there be such, that it can
be beautiful only in as far as it partakes of absolute beauty--and I
should say the same of everything. Do you agree in this notion of the
cause?

Yes, he said, I agree.

He proceeded: I know nothing and can understand nothing of any other of
those wise causes which are alleged; and if a person says to me that
the bloom of colour, or form, or any such thing is a source of beauty,
I leave all that, which is only confusing to me, and simply and singly,
and perhaps foolishly, hold and am assured in my own mind that nothing
makes a thing beautiful but the presence and participation of beauty in
whatever way or manner obtained; for as to the manner I am uncertain,
but I stoutly contend that by beauty all beautiful things become
beautiful. This appears to me to be the safest answer which I can give,
either to myself or to another, and to this I cling, in the persuasion
that this principle will never be overthrown, and that to myself or
to any one who asks the question, I may safely reply, That by beauty
beautiful things become beautiful. Do you not agree with me?

I do.

And that by greatness only great things become great and greater
greater, and by smallness the less become less?

True.

Then if a person were to remark that A is taller by a head than B, and
B less by a head than A, you would refuse to admit his statement, and
would stoutly contend that what you mean is only that the greater is
greater by, and by reason of, greatness, and the less is less only by,
and by reason of, smallness; and thus you would avoid the danger of
saying that the greater is greater and the less less by the measure of
the head, which is the same in both, and would also avoid the monstrous
absurdity of supposing that the greater man is greater by reason of the
head, which is small. You would be afraid to draw such an inference,
would you not?

Indeed, I should, said Cebes, laughing.

In like manner you would be afraid to say that ten exceeded eight by,
and by reason of, two; but would say by, and by reason of, number; or
you would say that two cubits exceed one cubit not by a half, but by
magnitude?-for there is the same liability to error in all these cases.

Very true, he said.

Again, would you not be cautious of affirming that the addition of
one to one, or the division of one, is the cause of two? And you would
loudly asseverate that you know of no way in which anything comes
into existence except by participation in its own proper essence,
and consequently, as far as you know, the only cause of two is
the participation in duality--this is the way to make two, and the
participation in one is the way to make one. You would say: I will let
alone puzzles of division and addition--wiser heads than mine may answer
them; inexperienced as I am, and ready to start, as the proverb says,
at my own shadow, I cannot afford to give up the sure ground of a
principle. And if any one assails you there, you would not mind him,
or answer him, until you had seen whether the consequences which follow
agree with one another or not, and when you are further required to give
an explanation of this principle, you would go on to assume a higher
principle, and a higher, until you found a resting-place in the best of
the higher; but you would not confuse the principle and the consequences
in your reasoning, like the Eristics--at least if you wanted to discover
real existence. Not that this confusion signifies to them, who never
care or think about the matter at all, for they have the wit to be well
pleased with themselves however great may be the turmoil of their ideas.
But you, if you are a philosopher, will certainly do as I say.

What you say is most true, said Simmias and Cebes, both speaking at
once.

ECHECRATES: Yes, Phaedo; and I do not wonder at their assenting. Any
one who has the least sense will acknowledge the wonderful clearness of
Socrates' reasoning.

PHAEDO: Certainly, Echecrates; and such was the feeling of the whole
company at the time.

ECHECRATES: Yes, and equally of ourselves, who were not of the company,
and are now listening to your recital. But what followed?

PHAEDO: After all this had been admitted, and they had that ideas exist,
and that other things participate in them and derive their names from
them, Socrates, if I remember rightly, said:--

This is your way of speaking; and yet when you say that Simmias is
greater than Socrates and less than Phaedo, do you not predicate of
Simmias both greatness and smallness?

Yes, I do.

But still you allow that Simmias does not really exceed Socrates, as
the words may seem to imply, because he is Simmias, but by reason of the
size which he has; just as Simmias does not exceed Socrates because he
is Simmias, any more than because Socrates is Socrates, but because he
has smallness when compared with the greatness of Simmias?

True.

And if Phaedo exceeds him in size, this is not because Phaedo is
Phaedo, but because Phaedo has greatness relatively to Simmias, who is
comparatively smaller?

That is true.

And therefore Simmias is said to be great, and is also said to be small,
because he is in a mean between them, exceeding the smallness of the one
by his greatness, and allowing the greatness of the other to exceed his
smallness. He added, laughing, I am speaking like a book, but I believe
that what I am saying is true.

Simmias assented.

I speak as I do because I want you to agree with me in thinking, not
only that absolute greatness will never be great and also small, but
that greatness in us or in the concrete will never admit the small or
admit of being exceeded: instead of this, one of two things will happen,
either the greater will fly or retire before the opposite, which is the
less, or at the approach of the less has already ceased to exist; but
will not, if allowing or admitting of smallness, be changed by that;
even as I, having received and admitted smallness when compared with
Simmias, remain just as I was, and am the same small person. And as the
idea of greatness cannot condescend ever to be or become small, in like
manner the smallness in us cannot be or become great; nor can any other
opposite which remains the same ever be or become its own opposite, but
either passes away or perishes in the change.

That, replied Cebes, is quite my notion.

Hereupon one of the company, though I do not exactly remember which of
them, said: In heaven's name, is not this the direct contrary of what
was admitted before--that out of the greater came the less and out of
the less the greater, and that opposites were simply generated from
opposites; but now this principle seems to be utterly denied.

Socrates inclined his head to the speaker and listened. I like your
courage, he said, in reminding us of this. But you do not observe that
there is a difference in the two cases. For then we were speaking of
opposites in the concrete, and now of the essential opposite which, as
is affirmed, neither in us nor in nature can ever be at variance with
itself: then, my friend, we were speaking of things in which opposites
are inherent and which are called after them, but now about the
opposites which are inherent in them and which give their name to them;
and these essential opposites will never, as we maintain, admit of
generation into or out of one another. At the same time, turning to
Cebes, he said: Are you at all disconcerted, Cebes, at our friend's
objection?

No, I do not feel so, said Cebes; and yet I cannot deny that I am often
disturbed by objections.

Then we are agreed after all, said Socrates, that the opposite will
never in any case be opposed to itself?

To that we are quite agreed, he replied.

Yet once more let me ask you to consider the question from another point
of view, and see whether you agree with me:--There is a thing which you
term heat, and another thing which you term cold?

Certainly.

But are they the same as fire and snow?

Most assuredly not.

Heat is a thing different from fire, and cold is not the same with snow?

Yes.

And yet you will surely admit, that when snow, as was before said, is
under the influence of heat, they will not remain snow and heat; but at
the advance of the heat, the snow will either retire or perish?

Very true, he replied.

And the fire too at the advance of the cold will either retire or
perish; and when the fire is under the influence of the cold, they will
not remain as before, fire and cold.

That is true, he said.

And in some cases the name of the idea is not only attached to the idea
in an eternal connection, but anything else which, not being the idea,
exists only in the form of the idea, may also lay claim to it. I will
try to make this clearer by an example:--The odd number is always called
by the name of odd?

Very true.

But is this the only thing which is called odd? Are there not other
things which have their own name, and yet are called odd, because,
although not the same as oddness, they are never without oddness?--that
is what I mean to ask--whether numbers such as the number three are not
of the class of odd. And there are many other examples: would you not
say, for example, that three may be called by its proper name, and also
be called odd, which is not the same with three? and this may be said
not only of three but also of five, and of every alternate number--each
of them without being oddness is odd, and in the same way two and
four, and the other series of alternate numbers, has every number even,
without being evenness. Do you agree?

Of course.

Then now mark the point at which I am aiming:--not only do essential
opposites exclude one another, but also concrete things, which, although
not in themselves opposed, contain opposites; these, I say, likewise
reject the idea which is opposed to that which is contained in them,
and when it approaches them they either perish or withdraw. For example;
Will not the number three endure annihilation or anything sooner than be
converted into an even number, while remaining three?

Very true, said Cebes.

And yet, he said, the number two is certainly not opposed to the number
three?

It is not.

Then not only do opposite ideas repel the advance of one another, but
also there are other natures which repel the approach of opposites.

Very true, he said.

Suppose, he said, that we endeavour, if possible, to determine what
these are.

By all means.

Are they not, Cebes, such as compel the things of which they have
possession, not only to take their own form, but also the form of some
opposite?

What do you mean?

I mean, as I was just now saying, and as I am sure that you know, that
those things which are possessed by the number three must not only be
three in number, but must also be odd.

Quite true.

And on this oddness, of which the number three has the impress, the
opposite idea will never intrude?

No.

And this impress was given by the odd principle?

Yes.

And to the odd is opposed the even?

True.

Then the idea of the even number will never arrive at three?

No.

Then three has no part in the even?

None.

Then the triad or number three is uneven?

Very true.

To return then to my distinction of natures which are not opposed, and
yet do not admit opposites--as, in the instance given, three, although
not opposed to the even, does not any the more admit of the even, but
always brings the opposite into play on the other side; or as two does
not receive the odd, or fire the cold--from these examples (and there
are many more of them) perhaps you may be able to arrive at the general
conclusion, that not only opposites will not receive opposites, but also
that nothing which brings the opposite will admit the opposite of
that which it brings, in that to which it is brought. And here let me
recapitulate--for there is no harm in repetition. The number five will
not admit the nature of the even, any more than ten, which is the
double of five, will admit the nature of the odd. The double has another
opposite, and is not strictly opposed to the odd, but nevertheless
rejects the odd altogether. Nor again will parts in the ratio 3:2, nor
any fraction in which there is a half, nor again in which there is a
third, admit the notion of the whole, although they are not opposed to
the whole: You will agree?

Yes, he said, I entirely agree and go along with you in that.

And now, he said, let us begin again; and do not you answer my question
in the words in which I ask it: let me have not the old safe answer of
which I spoke at first, but another equally safe, of which the truth
will be inferred by you from what has been just said. I mean that if any
one asks you 'what that is, of which the inherence makes the body
hot,' you will reply not heat (this is what I call the safe and
stupid answer), but fire, a far superior answer, which we are now in a
condition to give. Or if any one asks you 'why a body is diseased,' you
will not say from disease, but from fever; and instead of saying that
oddness is the cause of odd numbers, you will say that the monad is the
cause of them: and so of things in general, as I dare say that you will
understand sufficiently without my adducing any further examples.

Yes, he said, I quite understand you.

Tell me, then, what is that of which the inherence will render the body
alive?

The soul, he replied.

And is this always the case?

Yes, he said, of course.

Then whatever the soul possesses, to that she comes bearing life?

Yes, certainly.

And is there any opposite to life?

There is, he said.

And what is that?

Death.

Then the soul, as has been acknowledged, will never receive the opposite
of what she brings.

Impossible, replied Cebes.

And now, he said, what did we just now call that principle which repels
the even?

The odd.

And that principle which repels the musical, or the just?

The unmusical, he said, and the unjust.

And what do we call the principle which does not admit of death?

The immortal, he said.

And does the soul admit of death?

No.

Then the soul is immortal?

Yes, he said.

And may we say that this has been proven?

Yes, abundantly proven, Socrates, he replied.

Supposing that the odd were imperishable, must not three be
imperishable?

Of course.

And if that which is cold were imperishable, when the warm principle
came attacking the snow, must not the snow have retired whole and
unmelted--for it could never have perished, nor could it have remained
and admitted the heat?

True, he said.

Again, if the uncooling or warm principle were imperishable, the fire
when assailed by cold would not have perished or have been extinguished,
but would have gone away unaffected?

Certainly, he said.

And the same may be said of the immortal: if the immortal is also
imperishable, the soul when attacked by death cannot perish; for the
preceding argument shows that the soul will not admit of death, or ever
be dead, any more than three or the odd number will admit of the even,
or fire or the heat in the fire, of the cold. Yet a person may say: 'But
although the odd will not become even at the approach of the even, why
may not the odd perish and the even take the place of the odd?' Now to
him who makes this objection, we cannot answer that the odd principle is
imperishable; for this has not been acknowledged, but if this had been
acknowledged, there would have been no difficulty in contending that
at the approach of the even the odd principle and the number three took
their departure; and the same argument would have held good of fire and
heat and any other thing.

Very true.

And the same may be said of the immortal: if the immortal is also
imperishable, then the soul will be imperishable as well as immortal;
but if not, some other proof of her imperishableness will have to be
given.

No other proof is needed, he said; for if the immortal, being eternal,
is liable to perish, then nothing is imperishable.

Yes, replied Socrates, and yet all men will agree that God, and the
essential form of life, and the immortal in general, will never perish.

Yes, all men, he said--that is true; and what is more, gods, if I am not
mistaken, as well as men.

Seeing then that the immortal is indestructible, must not the soul, if
she is immortal, be also imperishable?

Most certainly.

Then when death attacks a man, the mortal portion of him may be supposed
to die, but the immortal retires at the approach of death and is
preserved safe and sound?

True.

Then, Cebes, beyond question, the soul is immortal and imperishable, and
our souls will truly exist in another world!

I am convinced, Socrates, said Cebes, and have nothing more to object;
but if my friend Simmias, or any one else, has any further objection to
make, he had better speak out, and not keep silence, since I do not know
to what other season he can defer the discussion, if there is anything
which he wants to say or to have said.

But I have nothing more to say, replied Simmias; nor can I see any
reason for doubt after what has been said. But I still feel and cannot
help feeling uncertain in my own mind, when I think of the greatness of
the subject and the feebleness of man.

Yes, Simmias, replied Socrates, that is well said: and I may add that
first principles, even if they appear certain, should be carefully
considered; and when they are satisfactorily ascertained, then, with a
sort of hesitating confidence in human reason, you may, I think, follow
the course of the argument; and if that be plain and clear, there will
be no need for any further enquiry.

Very true.

But then, O my friends, he said, if the soul is really immortal, what
care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time
which is called life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting her
from this point of view does indeed appear to be awful. If death had
only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in
dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but
of their own evil together with their souls. But now, inasmuch as the
soul is manifestly immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil
except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom. For the soul
when on her progress to the world below takes nothing with her but
nurture and education; and these are said greatly to benefit or greatly
to injure the departed, at the very beginning of his journey thither.

For after death, as they say, the genius of each individual, to whom
he belonged in life, leads him to a certain place in which the dead are
gathered together, whence after judgment has been given they pass into
the world below, following the guide, who is appointed to conduct them
from this world to the other: and when they have there received their
due and remained their time, another guide brings them back again after
many revolutions of ages. Now this way to the other world is not, as
Aeschylus says in the Telephus, a single and straight path--if that were
so no guide would be needed, for no one could miss it; but there are
many partings of the road, and windings, as I infer from the rites and
sacrifices which are offered to the gods below in places where three
ways meet on earth. The wise and orderly soul follows in the straight
path and is conscious of her surroundings; but the soul which desires
the body, and which, as I was relating before, has long been fluttering
about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after many struggles
and many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by her
attendant genius, and when she arrives at the place where the other
souls are gathered, if she be impure and have done impure deeds, whether
foul murders or other crimes which are the brothers of these, and the
works of brothers in crime--from that soul every one flees and turns
away; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but alone she
wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are fulfilled, and
when they are fulfilled, she is borne irresistibly to her own fitting
habitation; as every pure and just soul which has passed through life in
the company and under the guidance of the gods has also her own proper
home.

Now the earth has divers wonderful regions, and is indeed in nature
and extent very unlike the notions of geographers, as I believe on the
authority of one who shall be nameless.

What do you mean, Socrates? said Simmias. I have myself heard many
descriptions of the earth, but I do not know, and I should very much
like to know, in which of these you put faith.

And I, Simmias, replied Socrates, if I had the art of Glaucus would tell
you; although I know not that the art of Glaucus could prove the truth
of my tale, which I myself should never be able to prove, and even if
I could, I fear, Simmias, that my life would come to an end before the
argument was completed. I may describe to you, however, the form and
regions of the earth according to my conception of them.

That, said Simmias, will be enough.

Well, then, he said, my conviction is, that the earth is a round body
in the centre of the heavens, and therefore has no need of air or any
similar force to be a support, but is kept there and hindered from
falling or inclining any way by the equability of the surrounding heaven
and by her own equipoise. For that which, being in equipoise, is in the
centre of that which is equably diffused, will not incline any way in
any degree, but will always remain in the same state and not deviate.
And this is my first notion.

Which is surely a correct one, said Simmias.

Also I believe that the earth is very vast, and that we who dwell in
the region extending from the river Phasis to the Pillars of Heracles
inhabit a small portion only about the sea, like ants or frogs about a
marsh, and that there are other inhabitants of many other like places;
for everywhere on the face of the earth there are hollows of various
forms and sizes, into which the water and the mist and the lower
air collect. But the true earth is pure and situated in the pure
heaven--there are the stars also; and it is the heaven which is commonly
spoken of by us as the ether, and of which our own earth is the sediment
gathering in the hollows beneath. But we who live in these hollows are
deceived into the notion that we are dwelling above on the surface of
the earth; which is just as if a creature who was at the bottom of the
sea were to fancy that he was on the surface of the water, and that the
sea was the heaven through which he saw the sun and the other stars,
he having never come to the surface by reason of his feebleness and
sluggishness, and having never lifted up his head and seen, nor ever
heard from one who had seen, how much purer and fairer the world above
is than his own. And such is exactly our case: for we are dwelling in a
hollow of the earth, and fancy that we are on the surface; and the air
we call the heaven, in which we imagine that the stars move. But the
fact is, that owing to our feebleness and sluggishness we are prevented
from reaching the surface of the air: for if any man could arrive at the
exterior limit, or take the wings of a bird and come to the top, then
like a fish who puts his head out of the water and sees this world, he
would see a world beyond; and, if the nature of man could sustain the
sight, he would acknowledge that this other world was the place of the
true heaven and the true light and the true earth. For our earth, and
the stones, and the entire region which surrounds us, are spoilt and
corroded, as in the sea all things are corroded by the brine, neither
is there any noble or perfect growth, but caverns only, and sand, and an
endless slough of mud: and even the shore is not to be compared to the
fairer sights of this world. And still less is this our world to be
compared with the other. Of that upper earth which is under the heaven,
I can tell you a charming tale, Simmias, which is well worth hearing.

And we, Socrates, replied Simmias, shall be charmed to listen to you.

The tale, my friend, he said, is as follows:--In the first place, the
earth, when looked at from above, is in appearance streaked like one of
those balls which have leather coverings in twelve pieces, and is decked
with various colours, of which the colours used by painters on earth are
in a manner samples. But there the whole earth is made up of them,
and they are brighter far and clearer than ours; there is a purple of
wonderful lustre, also the radiance of gold, and the white which is in
the earth is whiter than any chalk or snow. Of these and other colours
the earth is made up, and they are more in number and fairer than the
eye of man has ever seen; the very hollows (of which I was speaking)
filled with air and water have a colour of their own, and are seen like
light gleaming amid the diversity of the other colours, so that the
whole presents a single and continuous appearance of variety in unity.
And in this fair region everything that grows--trees, and flowers, and
fruits--are in a like degree fairer than any here; and there are hills,
having stones in them in a like degree smoother, and more transparent,
and fairer in colour than our highly-valued emeralds and sardonyxes and
jaspers, and other gems, which are but minute fragments of them: for
there all the stones are like our precious stones, and fairer still
(compare Republic). The reason is, that they are pure, and not, like
our precious stones, infected or corroded by the corrupt briny elements
which coagulate among us, and which breed foulness and disease both in
earth and stones, as well as in animals and plants. They are the jewels
of the upper earth, which also shines with gold and silver and the like,
and they are set in the light of day and are large and abundant and in
all places, making the earth a sight to gladden the beholder's eye.
And there are animals and men, some in a middle region, others dwelling
about the air as we dwell about the sea; others in islands which the air
flows round, near the continent: and in a word, the air is used by them
as the water and the sea are by us, and the ether is to them what the
air is to us. Moreover, the temperament of their seasons is such that
they have no disease, and live much longer than we do, and have
sight and hearing and smell, and all the other senses, in far greater
perfection, in the same proportion that air is purer than water or the
ether than air. Also they have temples and sacred places in which the
gods really dwell, and they hear their voices and receive their answers,
and are conscious of them and hold converse with them, and they see the
sun, moon, and stars as they truly are, and their other blessedness is
of a piece with this.

Such is the nature of the whole earth, and of the things which are
around the earth; and there are divers regions in the hollows on the
face of the globe everywhere, some of them deeper and more extended than
that which we inhabit, others deeper but with a narrower opening
than ours, and some are shallower and also wider. All have numerous
perforations, and there are passages broad and narrow in the interior of
the earth, connecting them with one another; and there flows out of and
into them, as into basins, a vast tide of water, and huge subterranean
streams of perennial rivers, and springs hot and cold, and a great fire,
and great rivers of fire, and streams of liquid mud, thin or thick (like
the rivers of mud in Sicily, and the lava streams which follow them),
and the regions about which they happen to flow are filled up with them.
And there is a swinging or see-saw in the interior of the earth which
moves all this up and down, and is due to the following cause:--There is
a chasm which is the vastest of them all, and pierces right through the
whole earth; this is that chasm which Homer describes in the words,--

     'Far off, where is the inmost depth beneath the earth;'

and which he in other places, and many other poets, have called
Tartarus. And the see-saw is caused by the streams flowing into and out
of this chasm, and they each have the nature of the soil through which
they flow. And the reason why the streams are always flowing in and out,
is that the watery element has no bed or bottom, but is swinging and
surging up and down, and the surrounding wind and air do the same; they
follow the water up and down, hither and thither, over the earth--just
as in the act of respiration the air is always in process of inhalation
and exhalation;--and the wind swinging with the water in and out
produces fearful and irresistible blasts: when the waters retire with
a rush into the lower parts of the earth, as they are called, they flow
through the earth in those regions, and fill them up like water raised
by a pump, and then when they leave those regions and rush back hither,
they again fill the hollows here, and when these are filled, flow
through subterranean channels and find their way to their several
places, forming seas, and lakes, and rivers, and springs. Thence they
again enter the earth, some of them making a long circuit into many
lands, others going to a few places and not so distant; and again fall
into Tartarus, some at a point a good deal lower than that at which they
rose, and others not much lower, but all in some degree lower than the
point from which they came. And some burst forth again on the opposite
side, and some on the same side, and some wind round the earth with one
or many folds like the coils of a serpent, and descend as far as they
can, but always return and fall into the chasm. The rivers flowing in
either direction can descend only to the centre and no further, for
opposite to the rivers is a precipice.

Now these rivers are many, and mighty, and diverse, and there are four
principal ones, of which the greatest and outermost is that called
Oceanus, which flows round the earth in a circle; and in the opposite
direction flows Acheron, which passes under the earth through desert
places into the Acherusian lake: this is the lake to the shores of
which the souls of the many go when they are dead, and after waiting an
appointed time, which is to some a longer and to some a shorter time,
they are sent back to be born again as animals. The third river passes
out between the two, and near the place of outlet pours into a vast
region of fire, and forms a lake larger than the Mediterranean Sea,
boiling with water and mud; and proceeding muddy and turbid, and winding
about the earth, comes, among other places, to the extremities of the
Acherusian Lake, but mingles not with the waters of the lake, and after
making many coils about the earth plunges into Tartarus at a deeper
level. This is that Pyriphlegethon, as the stream is called, which
throws up jets of fire in different parts of the earth. The fourth river
goes out on the opposite side, and falls first of all into a wild and
savage region, which is all of a dark-blue colour, like lapis lazuli;
and this is that river which is called the Stygian river, and falls into
and forms the Lake Styx, and after falling into the lake and receiving
strange powers in the waters, passes under the earth, winding round
in the opposite direction, and comes near the Acherusian lake from the
opposite side to Pyriphlegethon. And the water of this river too mingles
with no other, but flows round in a circle and falls into Tartarus over
against Pyriphlegethon; and the name of the river, as the poets say, is
Cocytus.

Such is the nature of the other world; and when the dead arrive at the
place to which the genius of each severally guides them, first of all,
they have sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and piously
or not. And those who appear to have lived neither well nor ill, go to
the river Acheron, and embarking in any vessels which they may find, are
carried in them to the lake, and there they dwell and are purified of
their evil deeds, and having suffered the penalty of the wrongs which
they have done to others, they are absolved, and receive the rewards of
their good deeds, each of them according to his deserts. But those who
appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of their crimes--who
have committed many and terrible deeds of sacrilege, murders foul and
violent, or the like--such are hurled into Tartarus which is their
suitable destiny, and they never come out. Those again who have
committed crimes, which, although great, are not irremediable--who in
a moment of anger, for example, have done violence to a father or a
mother, and have repented for the remainder of their lives, or, who
have taken the life of another under the like extenuating
circumstances--these are plunged into Tartarus, the pains of which they
are compelled to undergo for a year, but at the end of the year the
wave casts them forth--mere homicides by way of Cocytus, parricides and
matricides by Pyriphlegethon--and they are borne to the Acherusian lake,
and there they lift up their voices and call upon the victims whom they
have slain or wronged, to have pity on them, and to be kind to them,
and let them come out into the lake. And if they prevail, then they come
forth and cease from their troubles; but if not, they are carried back
again into Tartarus and from thence into the rivers unceasingly, until
they obtain mercy from those whom they have wronged: for that is the
sentence inflicted upon them by their judges. Those too who have been
pre-eminent for holiness of life are released from this earthly prison,
and go to their pure home which is above, and dwell in the purer earth;
and of these, such as have duly purified themselves with philosophy live
henceforth altogether without the body, in mansions fairer still which
may not be described, and of which the time would fail me to tell.

Wherefore, Simmias, seeing all these things, what ought not we to do
that we may obtain virtue and wisdom in this life? Fair is the prize,
and the hope great!

A man of sense ought not to say, nor will I be very confident, that the
description which I have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly
true. But I do say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal,
he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, that something of
the kind is true. The venture is a glorious one, and he ought to comfort
himself with words like these, which is the reason why I lengthen out
the tale. Wherefore, I say, let a man be of good cheer about his soul,
who having cast away the pleasures and ornaments of the body as alien to
him and working harm rather than good, has sought after the pleasures of
knowledge; and has arrayed the soul, not in some foreign attire, but
in her own proper jewels, temperance, and justice, and courage, and
nobility, and truth--in these adorned she is ready to go on her journey
to the world below, when her hour comes. You, Simmias and Cebes, and all
other men, will depart at some time or other. Me already, as the tragic
poet would say, the voice of fate calls. Soon I must drink the poison;
and I think that I had better repair to the bath first, in order that
the women may not have the trouble of washing my body after I am dead.

When he had done speaking, Crito said: And have you any commands for us,
Socrates--anything to say about your children, or any other matter in
which we can serve you?

Nothing particular, Crito, he replied: only, as I have always told
you, take care of yourselves; that is a service which you may be ever
rendering to me and mine and to all of us, whether you promise to do so
or not. But if you have no thought for yourselves, and care not to walk
according to the rule which I have prescribed for you, not now for the
first time, however much you may profess or promise at the moment, it
will be of no avail.

We will do our best, said Crito: And in what way shall we bury you?

In any way that you like; but you must get hold of me, and take care
that I do not run away from you. Then he turned to us, and added with a
smile:--I cannot make Crito believe that I am the same Socrates who have
been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies that I am the other
Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead body--and he asks, How shall he
bury me? And though I have spoken many words in the endeavour to show
that when I have drunk the poison I shall leave you and go to the joys
of the blessed,--these words of mine, with which I was comforting you
and myself, have had, as I perceive, no effect upon Crito. And therefore
I want you to be surety for me to him now, as at the trial he was surety
to the judges for me: but let the promise be of another sort; for he
was surety for me to the judges that I would remain, and you must be my
surety to him that I shall not remain, but go away and depart; and then
he will suffer less at my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body
being burned or buried. I would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or
say at the burial, Thus we lay out Socrates, or, Thus we follow him to
the grave or bury him; for false words are not only evil in themselves,
but they infect the soul with evil. Be of good cheer, then, my dear
Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that
whatever is usual, and what you think best.

When he had spoken these words, he arose and went into a chamber to
bathe; Crito followed him and told us to wait. So we remained behind,
talking and thinking of the subject of discourse, and also of the
greatness of our sorrow; he was like a father of whom we were being
bereaved, and we were about to pass the rest of our lives as orphans.
When he had taken the bath his children were brought to him--(he had two
young sons and an elder one); and the women of his family also came,
and he talked to them and gave them a few directions in the presence of
Crito; then he dismissed them and returned to us.

Now the hour of sunset was near, for a good deal of time had passed
while he was within. When he came out, he sat down with us again after
his bath, but not much was said. Soon the jailer, who was the servant of
the Eleven, entered and stood by him, saying:--To you, Socrates, whom
I know to be the noblest and gentlest and best of all who ever came to
this place, I will not impute the angry feelings of other men, who rage
and swear at me, when, in obedience to the authorities, I bid them drink
the poison--indeed, I am sure that you will not be angry with me; for
others, as you are aware, and not I, are to blame. And so fare you well,
and try to bear lightly what must needs be--you know my errand. Then
bursting into tears he turned away and went out.

Socrates looked at him and said: I return your good wishes, and will do
as you bid. Then turning to us, he said, How charming the man is: since
I have been in prison he has always been coming to see me, and at times
he would talk to me, and was as good to me as could be, and now see how
generously he sorrows on my account. We must do as he says, Crito; and
therefore let the cup be brought, if the poison is prepared: if not, let
the attendant prepare some.

Yet, said Crito, the sun is still upon the hill-tops, and I know that
many a one has taken the draught late, and after the announcement has
been made to him, he has eaten and drunk, and enjoyed the society of his
beloved; do not hurry--there is time enough.

Socrates said: Yes, Crito, and they of whom you speak are right in so
acting, for they think that they will be gainers by the delay; but I am
right in not following their example, for I do not think that I should
gain anything by drinking the poison a little later; I should only be
ridiculous in my own eyes for sparing and saving a life which is already
forfeit. Please then to do as I say, and not to refuse me.

Crito made a sign to the servant, who was standing by; and he went out,
and having been absent for some time, returned with the jailer
carrying the cup of poison. Socrates said: You, my good friend, who
are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to
proceed. The man answered: You have only to walk about until your legs
are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act. At the same
time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest
manner, without the least fear or change of colour or feature, looking
at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the
cup and said: What do you say about making a libation out of this cup
to any god? May I, or not? The man answered: We only prepare, Socrates,
just so much as we deem enough. I understand, he said: but I may
and must ask the gods to prosper my journey from this to the other
world--even so--and so be it according to my prayer. Then raising the
cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison.
And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now
when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught,
we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were
flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept, not for him, but at
the thought of my own calamity in having to part from such a friend. Nor
was I the first; for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his
tears, had got up, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who
had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud and passionate cry
which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness: What
is this strange outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order
that they might not misbehave in this way, for I have been told that
a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we
heard his words we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked
about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his
back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison
now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed
his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said, No; and then
his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and
stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the poison reaches the
heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the
groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up,
and said--they were his last words--he said: Crito, I owe a cock to
Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be
paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to
this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the
attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes
and mouth.

Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend; concerning whom I may
truly say, that of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the
wisest and justest and best.





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