Complete Works Page 16

  Socrates looked at us keenly, as was his habit, smiled and said: “What Simmias says is quite fair. If one of you is more resourceful than I am, why did he not answer him, for he seems to have handled the argument competently. However, I think that before we answer him, we should hear [e] Cebes’ objection, in order that we may have time to deliberate on an answer. When we have heard him we should either agree with them, if we think them in tune with us or, if not, defend our own argument. Come then, Cebes. What is troubling you?”

  I tell you, said Cebes, the argument seems to me to be at the same point [87] as before and open to the same objection. I do not deny that it has been very elegantly and, if it is not offensive to say so, sufficiently proved that our soul existed before it took on this present form, but I do not believe the same applies to its existing somewhere after our death. Not that I agree with Simmias’ objection that the soul is not stronger and much more lasting than the body, for I think it is superior in all these respects. “Why then,” the argument might say, “are you still unconvinced? Since you see that when the man dies, the weaker part continues to exist, do you not think that the more lasting part must be preserved during that time?” On this [b] point consider whether what I say makes sense.

  Like Simmias, I too need an image, for I think this argument is much as if one said at the death of an old weaver that the man had not perished but was safe and sound somewhere, and offered as proof the fact that the [c] cloak the old man had woven himself and was wearing was still sound and had not perished. If one was not convinced, he would be asked whether a man lasts longer than a cloak which is in use and being worn, and if the answer was that a man lasts much longer, this would be taken as proof that the man was definitely safe and sound, since the more temporary thing had not perished. But, Simmias, I do not think that is so, for consider what I say. Anybody could see that the man who said this was talking nonsense. That weaver had woven and worn out many such cloaks. He [d] perished after many of them, but before the last. That does not mean that a man is inferior and weaker than a cloak. The image illustrates, I think, the relationship of the soul to the body, and anyone who says the same thing about them would appear to me to be talking sense, that the soul lasts a long time while the body is weaker and more short-lived. He might say that each soul wears out many bodies, especially if it lives many years. If the body were in a state of flux and perished while the man was still [e] alive, and the soul wove afresh the body that is worn out, yet it would be inevitable that whenever the soul perished it would be wearing the last body it wove and perish only before this last. Then when the soul perished, the body would show the weakness of its nature by soon decaying and disappearing. So we cannot trust this argument and be confident that our [88] soul continues to exist somewhere after our death. For, if one were to concede, even more than you do, to a man using that argument, if one were to grant him not only that the soul exists in the time before we are born, but that there is no reason why the soul of some should not exist and continue to exist after our death, and thus frequently be born and die in turn; if one were to grant him that the soul’s nature is so strong that it can survive many bodies, but if, having granted all this, one does not further agree that the soul is not damaged by its many births and is not, in the end, altogether destroyed in one of those deaths, he might say that [b] no one knows which death and dissolution of the body brings about the destruction of the soul, since not one of us can be aware of this. And in that case, any man who faces death with confidence is foolish, unless he can prove that the soul is altogether immortal. If he cannot, a man about to die must of necessity always fear for his soul, lest the present separation of the soul from the body bring about the complete destruction of the soul.

  [c] When we heard what they said we were all depressed, as we told each other afterwards. We had been quite convinced by the previous argument, and they seemed to confuse us again, and to drive us to doubt not only what had already been said but also what was going to be said, lest we be worthless as critics or the subject itself admitted of no certainty.

  ECHECRATES: By the gods, Phaedo, you have my sympathy, for as I listen [d] to you now I find myself saying to myself: “What argument shall we trust, now that that of Socrates, which was extremely convincing, has fallen into discredit?” The statement that the soul is some kind of harmony has a remarkable hold on me, now and always, and when it was mentioned it reminded me that I had myself previously thought so. And now I am again quite in need, as if from the beginning, of some other argument to convince me that the soul does not die along with the man. Tell me then, by Zeus, how Socrates tackled the argument. Was he obviously distressed, as you say you people were, or was he not, but quietly came to the rescue [e] of his argument, and did he do so satisfactorily or inadequately? Tell us everything as precisely as you can.

  PHAEDO: I have certainly often admired Socrates, Echecrates, but never more than on this occasion. That he had a reply was perhaps not strange. [89] What I wondered at most in him was the pleasant, kind and admiring way he received the young men’s argument, and how sharply he was aware of the effect the discussion had on us, and then how well he healed our distress and, as it were, recalled us from our flight and defeat and turned us around to join him in the examination of their argument.

  ECHECRATES: How did he do this?

  PHAEDO: I will tell you. I happened to be sitting on his right by the couch on a low stool, so that he was sitting well above me. He stroked my head [b] and pressed the hair on the back of my neck, for he was in the habit of playing with my hair at times. “Tomorrow, Phaedo,” he said, “you will probably cut this beautiful hair.”

  Likely enough, Socrates, I said.

  Not if you take my advice, he said.

  Why not? said I.

  It is today, he said, that I shall cut my hair and you yours, if our argument dies on us, and we cannot revive it. If I were you, and the argument [c] escaped me, I would take an oath, as the Argives did, not to let my hair grow before I fought again and defeated the argument of Simmias and Cebes.

  But, I said, they say that not even Heracles could fight two people.

  Then call on me as your Iolaus, as long as the daylight lasts.

  I shall call on you, but in this case as Iolaus calling on Heracles.

  It makes no difference, he said, but first there is a certain experience we must be careful to avoid.

  What is that? I asked.

  That we should not become misologues, as people become misanthropes. [d] There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him to be wicked and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed to be one’s closest [e] friends, then, in the end, after many such blows, one comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any way at all. Have you not seen this happen?

  I surely have, I said.

  This is a shameful state of affairs, he said, and obviously due to an attempt to have human relations without any skill in human affairs, for such skill would lead one to believe, what is in fact true, that the very [90] good and the very wicked are both quite rare, and that most men are between those extremes.

  How do you mean? said I.

  The same as with the very tall and the very short, he said. Do you think anything is rarer than to find an extremely tall man or an extremely short one? Or a dog or anything else whatever? Or again, one extremely swift or extremely slow, ugly or beautiful, white or black? Are you not aware that in all those cases the most extreme at either end are rare and few, but those in between are many and plentiful?

  Certainly, I said.

  [b] Therefore, he said, if a contest of wickedness were established, there too the winners, you t
hink, would be very few?

  That is likely, said I.

  Likely indeed, he said, but arguments are not like men in this particular. I was merely following your lead just now. The similarity lies rather in this: it is as when one who lacks skill in arguments puts his trust in an argument as being true, then shortly afterwards believes it to be false—as sometimes it is and sometimes it is not—and so with another argument and then another. You know how those in particular who spend their time [c] studying contradiction in the end believe themselves to have become very wise and that they alone have understood that there is no soundness or reliability in any object or in any argument, but that all that exists simply fluctuates up and down as if it were in the Euripus10 and does not remain in the same place for any time at all.

  What you say, I said, is certainly true.

  It would be pitiable, Phaedo, he said, when there is a true and reliable argument and one that can be understood, if a man who has dealt with [d] such arguments as appear at one time true, at another time untrue, should not blame himself or his own lack of skill but, because of his distress, in the end gladly shift the blame away from himself to the arguments, and spend the rest of his life hating and reviling reasonable discussion and so be deprived of truth and knowledge of reality.

  Yes, by Zeus, I said, that would be pitiable indeed.

  [e] This then is the first thing we should guard against, he said. We should not allow into our minds the conviction that argumentation has nothing sound about it; much rather we should believe that it is we who are not yet sound and that we must take courage and be eager to attain soundness, [91] you and the others for the sake of your whole life still to come, and I for the sake of death itself. I am in danger at this moment of not having a philosophical attitude about this, but like those who are quite uneducated, I am eager to get the better of you in argument, for the uneducated, when they engage in argument about anything, give no thought to the truth about the subject of discussion but are only eager that those present will accept the position they have set forth. I differ from them only to this extent: I shall not be eager to get the agreement of those present that what I say is true, except incidentally, but I shall be very eager that I should myself be thoroughly convinced that things are so. For I am thinking—see in how contentious a spirit—that if what I say is true, it is a fine thing to be convinced; if, on the other hand, nothing exists after death, at least [b] for this time before I die I shall distress those present less with lamentations, and my folly will not continue to exist along with me—that would be a bad thing—but will come to an end in a short time. Thus prepared, Simmias and Cebes, he said, I come to deal with your argument. If you will take my advice, you will give but little thought to Socrates but much more to [c] the truth. If you think that what I say is true, agree with me; if not, oppose it with every argument and take care that in my eagerness I do not deceive myself and you and, like a bee, leave my sting in you when I go.

  We must proceed, he said, and first remind me of what you said if I do not appear to remember it. Simmias, as I believe, is in doubt and fear that the soul, though it is more divine and beautiful than the body, yet [d] predeceases it, being a kind of harmony. Cebes, I thought, agrees with me that the soul lasts much longer than the body, but that no one knows whether the soul often wears out many bodies and then, on leaving its last body, is now itself destroyed. This then is death, the destruction of the soul, since the body is always being destroyed. Are these the questions, Simmias and Cebes, which we must investigate?

  They both agreed that they were. [e]

  Do you then, he asked, reject all our previous statements, or some but not others?

  Some, they both said, but not others.

  What, he said, about the statements we made that learning is recollection and that, if this was so, our soul must of necessity exist elsewhere before [92] us, before it was imprisoned in the body?

  For myself, said Cebes, I was wonderfully convinced by it at the time and I stand by it now also, more than by any other statement.

  That, said Simmias, is also my position, and I should be very surprised if I ever changed my opinion about this.

  But you must change your opinion, my Theban friend, said Socrates, if you still believe that a harmony is a composite thing, and that the soul is a kind of harmony of the elements of the body in a state of tension, for surely you will not allow yourself to maintain that a composite harmony existed [b] before those elements from which it had to be composed, or would you?

  Never, Socrates, he said.

  Do you realize, he said, that this is what you are in fact saying when you state that the soul exists before it takes on the form and body of a man and that it is composed of elements which do not yet exist? A harmony is not like that to which you compare it; the lyre and the strings and the [c] notes, though still unharmonized, exist; the harmony is composed last of all, and is the first to be destroyed. How will you harmonize this statement with your former one?

  In no way, said Simmias.

  And surely, he said, a statement about harmony should do so more than any other.

  It should, said Simmias.

  So your statement is inconsistent? Consider which of your statements you prefer, that learning is recollection or that the soul is a harmony.

  [d] I much prefer the former, Socrates. I adopted the latter without proof, because of a certain probability and plausibility, which is why it appeals to most men. I know that arguments of which the proof is based on probability are pretentious and, if one does not guard against them, they certainly deceive one, in geometry and everything else. The theory of recollection and learning, however, was based on an assumption worthy of acceptance, for our soul was said to exist also before it came into the body, just as the reality does that is of the kind that we qualify by the [e] words “what it is,” and I convinced myself that I was quite correct to accept it. Therefore, I cannot accept the theory that the soul is a harmony either from myself or anyone else.

  What of this, Simmias? Do you think it natural for a harmony, or any [93] other composite, to be in a different state from that of the elements of which it is composed?

  Not at all, said Simmias.

  Nor, as I think, can it act or be acted upon in a different way than its elements?

  He agreed.

  One must therefore suppose that a harmony does not direct its components, but is directed by them.

  He accepted this.

  A harmony is therefore far from making a movement, or uttering a sound, or doing anything else, in a manner contrary to that of its parts.

  Far from it indeed, he said.

  Does not the nature of each harmony depend on the way it has been harmonized?

  I do not understand, he said.

  [b] Will it not, if it is more and more fully harmonized, be more and more fully a harmony, and if it is less and less fully harmonized, it will be less and less fully a harmony?

  Certainly.

  Can this be true about the soul, that one soul is more and more fully a soul than another, or is less and less fully a soul, even to the smallest extent?

  Not in any way.

  Come now, by Zeus, he said. One soul is said to have intelligence and virtue and to be good, another to have folly and wickedness and to be [c] bad. Are those things truly said?

  They certainly are.

  What will someone who holds the theory that the soul is a harmony say that those things are which reside in the soul, that is, virtue and wickedness? Are these some other harmony and disharmony? That the good soul is harmonized and, being a harmony, has within itself another harmony, whereas the evil soul is both itself a lack of harmony and has no other within itself?

  I don’t know what to say, said Simmias, but one who holds that assumption must obviously say something of that kind.

  We have previously agreed, he said, that one soul is not more and not [d] less a soul than another, and this means that one harmony is not more and more ful
ly, or less and less fully, a harmony than another. Is that not so?

  Certainly.

  Now that which is no more and no less a harmony is not more or less harmonized. Is that so?

  It is.

  Can that which is neither more nor less harmonized partake more or less of harmony, or does it do so equally?

  Equally.

  Then if a soul is neither more nor less a soul than another, it has been [e] harmonized to the same extent?

  This is so.

  If that is so, it would have no greater share of disharmony or of harmony?

  It would not.

  That being the case, could one soul have more wickedness or virtue than another, if wickedness is disharmony and virtue harmony?

  It could not.

  But rather, Simmias, according to correct reasoning, no soul, if it is a [94] harmony, will have any share of wickedness, for harmony is surely altogether this very thing, harmony, and would never share in disharmony.

  It certainly would not.