Phaedo by Plato. - HTML preview

And linked itself by carnal sensuality To a degenerate and degraded state.’) And this corporeal element, my friend, is heavy and weighty 67

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That is very likely, Socrates.

There is not, he said.

Yes, that is very likely, Cebes; and these must be the souls, Some are happier than others; and the happiest both in not of the good, but of the evil, which are compelled to themselves and in the place to which they go are those who wander about such places in payment of the penalty of their have practised the civil and social virtues which are called former evil way of life; and they continue to wander until temperance and justice, and are acquired by habit and at-through the craving after the corporeal which never leaves tention without philosophy and mind. (Compare Repub-them, they are imprisoned finally in another body. And they lic.)

may be supposed to find their prisons in the same natures Why are they the happiest?

which they have had in their former lives.

Because they may be expected to pass into some gentle What natures do you mean, Socrates?

and social kind which is like their own, such as bees or wasps What I mean is that men who have followed after glut-or ants, or back again into the form of man, and just and tony, and wantonness, and drunkenness, and have had no moderate men may be supposed to spring from them.

thought of avoiding them, would pass into asses and ani-Very likely.

mals of that sort. What do you think?

No one who has not studied philosophy and who is not I think such an opinion to be exceedingly probable.

entirely pure at the time of his departure is allowed to enter And those who have chosen the portion of injustice, and the company of the Gods, but the lover of knowledge only.

tyranny, and violence, will pass into wolves, or into hawks And this is the reason, Simmias and Cebes, why the true and kites;—whither else can we suppose them to go?

votaries of philosophy abstain from all fleshly lusts, and hold Yes, said Cebes; with such natures, beyond question.

out against them and refuse to give themselves up to them,—

And there is no difficulty, he said, in assigning to all of them not because they fear poverty or the ruin of their families, places answering to their several natures and propensities?

like the lovers of money, and the world in general; nor like 68

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the lovers of power and honour, because they dread the gently comforted her and sought to release her, pointing out dishonour or disgrace of evil deeds.

that the eye and the ear and the other senses are full of de-No, Socrates, that would not become them, said Cebes.

ception, and persuading her to retire from them, and ab-No indeed, he replied; and therefore they who have any stain from all but the necessary use of them, and be gathered care of their own souls, and do not merely live moulding up and collected into herself, bidding her trust in herself and fashioning the body, say farewell to all this; they will and her own pure apprehension of pure existence, and to not walk in the ways of the blind: and when philosophy mistrust whatever comes to her through other channels and offers them purification and release from evil, they feel that is subject to variation; for such things are visible and tan-they ought not to resist her influence, and whither she leads gible, but what she sees in her own nature is intelligible and they turn and follow.

invisible. And the soul of the true philosopher thinks that What do you mean, Socrates?

she ought not to resist this deliverance, and therefore ab-I will tell you, he said. The lovers of knowledge are con-stains from pleasures and desires and pains and fears, as far scious that the soul was simply fastened and glued to the as she is able; reflecting that when a man has great joys or body—until philosophy received her, she could only view sorrows or fears or desires, he suffers from them, not merely real existence through the bars of a prison, not in and through the sort of evil which might be anticipated—as for example, herself; she was wallowing in the mire of every sort of igno-the loss of his health or property which he has sacrificed to rance; and by reason of lust had become the principal achis lusts—but an evil greater far, which is the greatest and complice in her own captivity. This was her original state; worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks.

and then, as I was saying, and as the lovers of knowledge are What is it, Socrates? said Cebes.

well aware, philosophy, seeing how terrible was her confine-The evil is that when the feeling of pleasure or pain is ment, of which she was to herself the cause, received and most intense, every soul of man imagines the objects of this 69

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intense feeling to be then plainest and truest: but this is not Certainly not! The soul of a philosopher will reason in so, they are really the things of sight.

quite another way; she will not ask philosophy to release her Very true.

in order that when released she may deliver herself up again And is not this the state in which the soul is most en-to the thraldom of pleasures and pains, doing a work only to thralled by the body?

be undone again, weaving instead of unweaving her How so?

Penelope’s web. But she will calm passion, and follow rea-Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which son, and dwell in the contemplation of her, beholding the nails and rivets the soul to the body, until she becomes like true and divine (which is not matter of opinion), and thence the body, and believes that to be true which the body af-deriving nourishment. Thus she seeks to live while she lives, firms to be true; and from agreeing with the body and hav-and after death she hopes to go to her own kindred and to ing the same delights she is obliged to have the same habits that which is like her, and to be freed from human ills. Never and haunts, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure fear, Simmias and Cebes, that a soul which has been thus to the world below, but is always infected by the body; and nurtured and has had these pursuits, will at her departure so she sinks into another body and there germinates and from the body be scattered and blown away by the winds grows, and has therefore no part in the communion of the and be nowhere and nothing.

divine and pure and simple.

When Socrates had done speaking, for a considerable time Most true, Socrates, answered Cebes.

there was silence; he himself appeared to be meditating, as And this, Cebes, is the reason why the true lovers of knowl-most of us were, on what had been said; only Cebes and edge are temperate and brave; and not for the reason which Simmias spoke a few words to one another. And Socrates the world gives.

observing them asked what they thought of the argument, Certainly not.

and whether there was anything wanting? For, said he, there 70

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are many points still open to suspicion and attack, if any thought that they are about to go away to the god whose one were disposed to sift the matter thoroughly. Should you ministers they are. But men, because they are themselves be considering some other matter I say no more, but if you afraid of death, slanderously affirm of the swans that they are still in doubt do not hesitate to say exactly what you sing a lament at the last, not considering that no bird sings think, and let us have anything better which you can sug-when cold, or hungry, or in pain, not even the nightingale, gest; and if you think that I can be of any use, allow me to nor the swallow, nor yet the hoopoe; which are said indeed help you.

to tune a lay of sorrow, although I do not believe this to be Simmias said: I must confess, Socrates, that doubts did true of them any more than of the swans. But because they arise in our minds, and each of us was urging and inciting are sacred to Apollo, they have the gift of prophecy, and the other to put the question which we wanted to have an-anticipate the good things of another world, wherefore they swered and which neither of us liked to ask, fearing that our sing and rejoice in that day more than they ever did before.

importunity might be troublesome under present at such a And I too, believing myself to be the consecrated servant of time.

the same God, and the fellow-servant of the swans, and think-Socrates replied with a smile: O Simmias, what are you ing that I have received from my master gifts of prophecy saying? I am not very likely to persuade other men that I do which are not inferior to theirs, would not go out of life less not regard my present situation as a misfortune, if I cannot merrily than the swans. Never mind then, if this be your even persuade you that I am no worse off now than at any only objection, but speak and ask anything which you like, other time in my life. Will you not allow that I have as much while the eleven magistrates of Athens allow.

of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when Very good, Socrates, said Simmias; then I will tell you my they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life difficulty, and Cebes will tell you his. I feel myself, (and I long, do then sing more lustily than ever, rejoicing in the daresay that you have the same feeling), how hard or rather 71

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impossible is the attainment of any certainty about questions not say that harmony is a thing invisible, incorporeal, per-such as these in the present life. And yet I should deem him a fect, divine, existing in the lyre which is harmonized, but coward who did not prove what is said about them to the that the lyre and the strings are matter and material, com-uttermost, or whose heart failed him before he had examined posite, earthy, and akin to mortality? And when some one them on every side. For he should persevere until he has breaks the lyre, or cuts and rends the strings, then he who achieved one of two things: either he should discover, or be takes this view would argue as you do, and on the same anal-taught the truth about them; or, if this be impossible, I would ogy, that the harmony survives and has not perished—you have him take the best and most irrefragable of human theo-cannot imagine, he would say, that the lyre without the ries, and let this be the raft upon which he sails through life—

strings, and the broken strings themselves which are mortal not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of remain, and yet that the harmony, which is of heavenly and God which will more surely and safely carry him. And now, as immortal nature and kindred, has perished—perished be-you bid me, I will venture to question you, and then I shall fore the mortal. The harmony must still be somewhere, and not have to reproach myself hereafter with not having said at the wood and strings will decay before anything can happen the time what I think. For when I consider the matter, either to that. The thought, Socrates, must have occurred to your alone or with Cebes, the argument does ce rtainly appear to own mind that such is our conception of the soul; and that me, Socrates, to be not sufficient.

when the body is in a manner strung and held together by Socrates answered: I dare say, my friend, that you may be the elements of hot and cold, wet and dry, then the soul is right, but I should like to know in what respect the argu-the harmony or due proportionate admixture of them. But ment is insufficient.

if so, whenever the strings of the body are unduly loosened In this respect, replied Simmias:—Suppose a person to use or overstrained through disease or other injury, then the soul, the same argument about harmony and the lyre—might he though most divine, like other harmonies of music or of 72

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works of art, of course perishes at once, although the mate-but the existence of the soul after death is still, in my judg-rial remains of the body may last for a considerable time, ment, unproven. Now my objection is not the same as that until they are either decayed or burnt. And if any one main-of Simmias; for I am not disposed to deny that the soul is tains that the soul, being the harmony of the elements of stronger and more lasting than the body, being of opinion the body, is first to perish in that which is called death, how that in all such respects the soul very far excels the body.

shall we answer him?

Well, then, says the argument to me, why do you remain Socrates looked fixedly at us as his manner was, and said unconvinced?—When you see that the weaker continues in with a smile: Simmias has reason on his side; and why does existence after the man is dead, will you not admit that the not some one of you who is better able than myself answer more lasting must also survive during the same period of him? for there is force in his attack upon me. But perhaps, time? Now I will ask you to consider whether the objection, before we answer him, we had better also hear what Cebes which, like Simmias, I will express in a figure, is of any weight.

has to say that we may gain time for reflection, and when The analogy which I will adduce is that of an old weaver, they have both spoken, we may either assent to them, if who dies, and after his death somebody says:—He is not there is truth in what they say, or if not, we will maintain dead, he must be alive;—see, there is the coat which he him-our position. Please to tell me then, Cebes, he said, what self wove and wore, and which remains whole and undecayed.

was the difficulty which troubled you?

And then he proceeds to ask of some one who is incredu-Cebes said: I will tell you. My feeling is that the argument lous, whether a man lasts longer, or the coat which is in use is where it was, and open to the same objections which were and wear; and when he is answered that a man lasts far longer, urged before; for I am ready to admit that the existence of thinks that he has thus certainly demonstrated the survival the soul before entering into the bodily form has been very of the man, who is the more lasting, because the less lasting ingeniously, and, if I may say so, quite sufficiently proven; remains. But that, Simmias, as I would beg you to remark, is 73

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a mistake; any one can see that he who talks thus is talking and will be born and die again and again, and that there is a nonsense. For the truth is, that the weaver aforesaid, having natural strength in the soul which will hold out and be born woven and worn many such coats, outlived several of them, many times—nevertheless, we may be still inclined to think and was outlived by the last; but a man is not therefore proved that she will weary in the labours of successive births, and to be slighter and weaker than a coat. Now the relation of may at last succumb in one of her deaths and utterly perish; the body to the soul may be expressed in a similar figure; and this death and dissolution of the body which brings and any one may very fairly say in like manner that the soul destruction to the soul may be unknown to any of us, for no is lasting, and the body weak and shortlived in comparison.

one of us can have had any experience of it: and if so, then I He may argue in like manner that every soul wears out many maintain that he who is confident about death has but a bodies, especially if a man live many years. While he is alive foolish confidence, unless he is able to prove that the soul is the body deliquesces and decays, and the soul always weaves altogether immortal and imperishable. But if he cannot prove another garment and repairs the waste. But of course, when-the soul’s immortality, he who is about to die will always ever the soul perishes, she must have on her last garment, have reason to fear that when the body is disunited, the soul and this will survive her; and then at length, when the soul also may utterly perish.

is dead, the body will show its native weakness, and quickly All of us, as we afterwards remarked to one another, had decompose and pass away. I would therefore rather not rely an unpleasant feeling at hearing what they said. When we on the argument from superior strength to prove the con-had been so firmly convinced before, now to have our faith tinued existence of the soul after death. For granting even shaken seemed to introduce a confusion and uncertainty, more than you affirm to be possible, and acknowledging not only into the previous argument, but into any future not only that the soul existed before birth, but also that the one; either we were incapable of forming a judgment, or souls of some exist, and will continue to exist after death, there were no grounds of belief.

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ECHECRATES: There I feel with you—by heaven I do, ment, and the readiness with which he healed it. He might Phaedo, and when you were speaking, I was beginning to ask be compared to a general rallying his defeated and broken myself the same question: What argument can I ever trust army, urging them to accompany him and return to the field again? For what could be more convincing than the argument of argument.

of Socrates, which has now fallen into discredit? That the soul is a harmony is a doctrine which has always had a wonderful ECHECRATES: What followed?

attraction for me, and, when mentioned, came back to me at once, as my own original conviction. And now I must begin PHAEDO: You shall hear, for I was close to him on his right again and find another argument which will assure me that hand, seated on a sort of stool, and he on a couch which was when the man is dead the soul survives. Tell me, I implore a good deal higher. He stroked my head, and pressed the you, how did Socrates proceed? Did he appear to share the hair upon my neck—he had a way of playing with my hair; unpleasant feeling which you mention? or did he calmly meet and then he said: To-morrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these the attack? And did he answer forcibly or feebly? Narrate what fair locks of yours will be severed.

passed as exactly as you can.

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

Not so, if you will take my advice.

PHAEDO: Often, Echecrates, I have wondered at Socrates, What shall I do with them? I said.

but never more than on that occasion. That he should be To-day, he replied, and not to-morrow, if this argument able to answer was nothing, but what astonished me was, dies and we cannot bring it to life again, you and I will both first, the gentle and pleasant and approving manner in which shave our locks; and if I were you, and the argument got he received the words of the young men, and then his quick away from me, and I could not hold my ground against sense of the wound which had been inflicted by the argu-Simmias and Cebes, I would myself take an oath, like the 75

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Argives, not to wear hair any more until I had renewed the deems to be his own most trusted and familiar friends, and conflict and defeated them.

he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, Yes, I said, but Heracles himself is said not to be a match and believes that no one has any good in him at all. You for two.

must have observed this trait of character?

Summon me then, he said, and I will be your Iolaus until I have.

the sun goes down.

And is not the feeling discreditable? Is it not obvious that I summon you rather, I rejoined, not as Heracles sum-such an one having to deal with other men, was clearly with-moning Iolaus, but as Iolaus might summon Heracles.

out any experience of human nature; for experience would That will do as well, he said. But first let us take care that have taught him the true state of the case, that few are the we avoid a danger.

good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the Of what nature? I said.

interval between them.

Lest we become misologists, he replied, no worse thing What do you mean? I said.

can happen to a man than this. For as there are misanthropists I mean, he replied, as you might say of the very large and or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, very small, that nothing is more uncommon than a very and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of large or very small man; and this applies generally to all ex-the world. Misanthropy arises out of the too great confi-tremes, whether of great and small, or swift and slow, or fair dence of inexperience;—you trust a man and think him al-and foul, or black and white: and whether the instances you together true and sound and faithful, and then in a little select be men or dogs or anything else, few are the extremes, while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another but many are in the mean between them. Did you never and another, and when this has happened several times to a observe this?

man, especially when it happens among those whom he Yes, I said, I have.

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And do you not imagine, he said, that if there were a com-wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to petition in evil, the worst would be found to be very few?

transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general: Yes, that is very likely, I said.

and for ever afterwards should hate and revile them, and Yes, that is very likely, he replied; although in this respect lose truth and the knowledge of realities.

arguments are unlike men—there I was led on by you to say Yes, indeed, I said; that is very melancholy.

more than I had intended; but the point of comparison was, Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of allow-that when a simple man who has no skill in dialectics being or of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no lieves an argument to be true which he afterwards imagines health or soundness in any arguments at all. Rather say that to be false, whether really false or not, and then another and we have not yet attained to soundness in ourselves, and that another, he has no longer any faith left, and great disputers, we must struggle manfully and do our best to gain health of as you know, come to think at last that they have grown to mind—you and all other men having regard to the whole of be the wisest of mankind; for they alone perceive the utter your future life, and I myself in the prospect of death. For at unsoundness and instability of all arguments, or indeed, of this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a all things, which, like the currents in the Euripus, are going philosopher; like the vulgar, I am only a partisan. Now the up and down in never-ceasing ebb and flow.

partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about That is quite true, I said.

the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince Yes, Phaedo, he replied, and how melancholy, if there be his hearers of his own assertions. And the difference between such a thing as truth or certainty or possibility of knowl-him and me at the present moment is merely this—that edge—that a man should have lighted upon some argument whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is or other which at first seemed true and then turned out to true, I am rather seeking to convince myself; to convince be false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want of my hearers is a secondary matter with me. And do but see 77

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how much I gain by the argument. For if what I say is true, hind her; and that this is death, which is the destruction not then I do well to be persuaded of the truth, but if there be of the body but of the soul, for in the body the work of nothing after death, still, during the short time that remains, destruction is ever going on. Are not these, Simmias and I shall not distress my friends with lamentations, and my Cebes, the points which we have to consider?

ignorance will not last, but will die with me, and therefore They both agreed to this statement of them.

no harm will be done. This is the state of mind, Simmias He proceeded: And did you deny the force of the whole and Cebes, in which I approach the argument. And I would preceding argument, or of a part only?

ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates: agree Of a part only, they replied.

with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth; or if not, And what did you think, he said, of that part of the argu-withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you ment in which we said that knowledge was recollection, and as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and like the bee, leave hence inferred that the soul must have previously existed my sting in you before I die.

somewhere else before she was enclosed in the body?

And now let us proceed, he said. And first of all let me be Cebes said that he had been wonderfully impressed by that sure that I have in my mind what you were saying. Simmias, part of the argument, and that his conviction remained ab-if I remember rightly, has fears and misgivings whether the solutely unshaken. Simmias agreed, and added that he him-soul, although a fairer and diviner thing than the body, be-self could hardly imagine the possibility of his ever thinking ing as she is in the form of harmony, may not perish first.

differently.

On the other hand, Cebes appeared to grant that the soul But, rejoined Socrates, you will have to think differently, was more lasting than the body, but he said that no one my Theban friend, if you still maintain that harmony is a could know whether the soul, after having worn out many compound, and that the soul is a harmony which is made bodies, might not perish herself and leave her last body be-out of strings set in the frame of the body; for you will surely 78

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never allow yourself to say that a harmony is prior to the onstrated at all, but rests only on probable and plausible elements which compose it.

grounds; and is therefore believed by the many. I know too Never, Socrates.

well that these arguments from probabilities are impostors, But do you not see that this is what you imply when you and unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they say that the soul existed before she took the form and body are apt to be deceptive—in geometry, and in other things of man, and was made up of elements which as yet had no too. But the doctrine of knowledge and recollection has been existence? For harmony is not like the soul, as you suppose; proven to me on trustworthy grounds; and the proof was but first the lyre, and the strings, and the sounds exist in a that the soul must have existed before she came into the state of discord, and then harmony is made last of all, and body, because to her belongs the essence of which the very perishes first. And how can such a notion of the soul as this name implies existence. Having, as I am convinced, rightly agree with the other?

accepted this conclusion, and on sufficient grounds, I must, Not at all, replied Simmias.

as I suppose, cease to argue or allow others to argue that the And yet, he said, there surely ought to be harmony in a soul is a harmony.

discourse of which harmony is the theme.

Let me put the matter, Simmias, he said, in another point There ought, replied Simmias.

of view: Do you imagine that a harmony or any other com-But there is no harmony, he said, in the two propositions position can be in a state other than that of the elements, that knowledge is recollection, and that the soul is a har-out of which it is compounded?

mony. Which of them will you retain?

Certainly not.

I think, he replied, that I have a much stronger faith, Or do or suffer anything other than they do or suffer?

Socrates, in the first of the two, which has been fully dem-He agreed.

onstrated to me, than in the latter, which has not been dem-Then a harmony does not, properly speaking, lead the parts 79

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or elements which make up the harmony, but only follows and to be an evil soul: and this is said truly?

them.

Yes, truly.

He assented.

But what will those who maintain the soul to be a har-For harmony cannot possibly have any motion, or sound, mony say of this presence of virtue and vice in the soul?—

or other quality which is opposed to its parts.

will they say that here is another harmony, and another dis-That would be impossible, he replied.

cord, and that the virtuous soul is harmonized, and herself And does not the nature of every harmony depend upon being a harmony has another harmony within her, and that the manner in which the elements are harmonized?

the vicious soul is inharmonical and has no harmony within I do not understand you, he said.

her?

I mean to say that a harmony admits of degrees, and is I cannot tell, replied Simmias; but I suppose that some-more of a harmony, and more completely a harmony, when thing of the sort would be asserted by those who say that the more truly and fully harmonized, to any extent which is soul is a harmony.

possible; and less of a harmony, and less completely a har-And we have already admitted that no soul is more a soul mony, when less truly and fully harmonized.

than another; which is equivalent to admitting that harmony True.

is not more or less harmony, or more or less completely a But does the soul admit of deg