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Phaedo. And so we are not yet justified in feeling sure, on the strength of this argument, that our souls will still exist somewhere after we are dead. For if one were to grant even more to a man who uses your argument, Socrates, and allow not only that our souls existed before we were born, but also that there is nothing to prevent some of them from continuing to exist and from being born and dying again many times after we are dead, because the soul is naturally so strong that it can endure repeated births,—even allowing this, one might not grant that it does not suffer by its many births and does not finally perish altogether in one of its deaths. But he might say that no one knows beforehand the particular death and the particular dissolution of the body which brings destruction to the soul, for none of us can perceive that. Now if this is the case, anyone who feels confident about death has a foolish confidence, unless he can show that the soul is altogether immortal and imperishable. Otherwise a man who is about to die must always fear that his soul will perish utterly in the impending dissolution of the body. Now all of us, as we remarked to one another afterwards, were very uncomfortable when we heard what they said; for we had been thoroughly convinced by the previous argument, and now they seemed to be throwing us again into confusion and distrust, not only in respect to the past discussion but also with regard to any future one. They made us fear that our judgment was worthless or that no certainty could be attained in these matters.
