Phaedo
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