avoiding, herself gathered into herself (for such abstraction has been
the study of her life). And what does this mean but that she has been a
true disciple of philosophy and has practised how to die easily? And is
not philosophy the practice of death?
Certainly.
That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible worldto
the divine and immortal and rational: thither arriving, she lives in
bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and
wild passions and all other human ills, and forever dwells, as they say
of the initiated, in company with the gods. 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 as this will depart pure and unalloyed?
That is impossible, he replied.
She is engrossed by the corporeal, which the continual association and
constant care of the body have made natural to her.
Very true.
And this, my friend, may be conceived to be that heavy, weighty, earthy
element of sight by which such 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, in the
neighborhood of 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.
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, who 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 the desire which haunts them is satisfied and
they are imprisoned in another body. And they may be supposed to be
fixed in the same natures which they had in their former life.
What natures do you mean, Socrates?
I mean to say 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 that 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; that is doubtless the place of natures such as theirs.
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.
Even among them some are happier than others; and the happiest both in
themselves and their place of abode 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.
Why are they the happiest?
Because they may be expected to pass into some gentle, social nature
which is like their own, such as that of bees or ants, or even back
again into the form of man, and just and moderate men spring from them.
That is not impossible.
But he who is a philosopher or lover of learning, and is entirely pure
at departing, is alone permitted to reach the gods. And this is the
reason, Simmias and Cebes, why the true votaries of philosophy abstain
from all fleshly lusts, and endure 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 honor, because they dread the dishonor or disgrace of evil
deeds.
No, Socrates, that would not become them, said Cebes.
No, indeed, he replied; and therefore they who have a care of their
souls, and do not merely live in the fashions of 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 to her they incline,
and whither she leads they follow her.
What do you mean, Socrates?
I will tell you, he said. The lovers of knowledge are conscious that
their souls, when philosophy receives them, are simply fastened and
glued to their bodies: the soul is only able to view existence through
the bars of a prison, and not in her own nature; she is wallowing in the
mire of all ignorance; and philosophy, seeing the terrible nature of her
confinement, and that the captive through desire is led to conspire in
her own captivity (for the lovers of knowledge are aware that this was
the original state of the soul, and that when she was in this state
philosophy received and gently counseled her, and wanted to release her,
pointing out to her that the eye is full of deceit, and also the ear and
other senses, and persuading her to retire from them in all but the
necessary use of them and to be gathered up and collected into herself,
and to trust only to herself and her own intuitions of absolute
existence, and mistrust that which comes to her through others and is
subject to vicissitude) -- philosophy shows her that this is visible and
tangible, but that what she sees in her own nature is intellectual 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 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 he has suffered an evil greater far, which is the
greatest and worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks.
And what is that, Socrates? said Cebes.
Why, this: When the feeling of pleasure or pain in the soul is most
intense, all of us naturally suppose that the object of this intense
feeling is then plainest and truest: but this is not the case.
Very true.
And this is the state in which the soul is most enthralled by the body.
How is that?
Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and
rivets the soul to the body, and engrosses her and makes her believe
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 ways, and is not likely ever to be pure at her departure
to the world below, but is always saturated with the body; so that she
soon sinks into another body and there germinates and grows, and has
therefore no part in the communion of the divine and pure and simple.
That is 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! For not in that way does the soul of a philosopher
reason; 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 make herself a calm of
passion and follow Reason, and dwell in her, beholding the true and
divine (which is not matter of opinion), and thence derive nourishment.
Thus she seeks to live while she lives, and after death she hopes to go
to her own kindred 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 and most of us appeared to be meditating on what had
been said; only Cebes and Simmias spoke a few words to one another. And
Socrates observing this asked them what they thought of the argument,
and whether there was anything wanting? For, said he, much is still open
to suspicion and attack, if anyone were disposed to sift the matter
thoroughly. If you are talking of something else I would rather not
interrupt you, but if you are still doubtful about the argument do not
hesitate to say exactly what you think, and let us have anything better
which you can suggest; and if I am likely to 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 he wanted to have answered and which neither of us liked
to ask, fearing that our importunity might be troublesome under present
circumstances.
Socrates smiled and said: O Simmias, how strange that is; I am not very
likely to persuade other men that I do not regard my present situation
as a misfortune, if I am unable to persuade you, and you will keep
fancying that I am at all more troubled now than at any other time. 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 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 and have the
gift of prophecy and anticipate the good things of another world,
therefore 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. Cease to
mind then about this, but speak and ask anything which you like, while
the eleven magistrates of Athens allow.
Well, Socrates, said Simmias, then I will tell you my difficulty, and
Cebes will tell you his. For I dare say that you, Socrates, feel, as I
do, how very hard or almost 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 attained one of two
things: either he should discover or learn the truth about them; or, if
this is impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable
of human notions, 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, as I should not like 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 not sufficient.
In this respect, replied Simmias: Might not a person use the same
argument about harmony and the lyre -- might he not say that harmony is
a thing invisible, incorporeal, fair, divine, abiding 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 someone
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; for you cannot imagine, as we would say,
that the lyre without the strings, and the broken strings themselves,
remain, and yet that the harmony, which is of heavenly and immortal
nature and kindred, has perished -- and perished too before the mortal.
The harmony, he would say, certainly exists somewhere, and the wood and
strings will decay before that decays. For I suspect, Socrates, that the
notion of the soul which we are all of us inclined to entertain, would
also be yours, and that you too would conceive the body to be strung up,
and held together, by the elements of hot and cold, wet and dry, and the
like, and that the soul is the harmony or due proportionate admixture of
them. And, if this is true, the inference clearly is that when the
strings of the body are unduly loosened or overstrained through disorder
or other injury, then the soul, though most divine, like other harmonies
of music or of the 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. Now if anyone maintained that the
soul, being the harmony of the elements of the body, first perishes in
that which is called death, how shall we answer him?
Socrates looked round 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
abler 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 against the argument -- this will give us time for
reflection, and when both of them have spoken, we may either assent to
them if their words appear to be in consonance with the truth, or if
