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611
Then since it is not destroyed by any evil whatever, either its own or alien, it is evident that it must necessarily exist always, and that if it always exists it is immortal. Necessarily, he said. Let this, then, I said, be assumed to be so. But if it is so, you will observe that these souls must always be the same. For if none perishes they could not, I suppose, become fewer nor yet more numerous.Cf. Carveth Read, Man and His Superstitions p. 104: Plato thought that by a sort of law of psychic conservation there must always be the same number of souls in world. There must therefore be reincarnation. . . . For if any class of immortal things increased you are aware that its increase would come from the mortal and all things would end by becoming immortal.Cf. Phaedo 72 C-D. You say truly. But, said I, we must not suppose this, for reason will not suffer it nor yet must we think that in its truest nature the soul is the kind of thing that teems with infinite diversity and unlikeness and contradiction in and with itself.The idea of self-contradiction is frequent in Plato. See What Plato said, p. 505, on Gorg. 482 B-C. How am I to understand that? he said. It is not easy, said I, for a thing to be immortal that is composed of many elements σύνθετον: Cf. Phaedo 78 C, Plotinus, Enneades i. 1. 12, Berkeley, Principles, 141: We have shown that the soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended; and it is consequently incorruptible. . . . cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance. See also Zeller, Ph. d. Gr. ii. 1, pp. 828-829. not put together in the best way, as now appeared to us603 D. see also Frutiger, Mythes de Platon, pp. 90 f. to be the case with the soul. It is not likely. Well, then, that the soul is immortal our recent argument and our otherSuch as are given in the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and perhaps elsewhere. proofs would constrain us to admit. But to know its true nature we must view it not marred by communion with the bodyCf. also Phaedo 82 E, 83 D-E, 81 C, and Wisdom of Solomon ix 14 φθαρτὸν γὰρ σῶμα βαρύνει ψυχήν, καὶ βρίθει τὸ γεῶδες σκῆνος νοῦν πολυφρόντιδα, for the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things. and other miseries as we now contemplate it, but consider adequately in the light of reason what it is when it is purified, and then you will find it to be a far more beautiful thing and will more clearly distinguish justice and injustice and all the matters that we have now discussed. But though we have stated the truth of its present appearance, its condition as we have now contemplated it resembles that of the sea-god GlaucusSee schol. Hermann vi. 362, Eurip. Or. 364 f., Apollonius, Argon. 1310 ff., Athenaeus 296 B and D, Anth. Pal. vi. 164, Frazer on Pausanias ix. 22. 7, Gädecker, Glaukos der Meeresgott, Göttingen, 1860. whose first nature can hardly be made out by those who catch glimpses of him, because the original members of his body are broken off and mutilated and crushed and in every way marred by the waves, and other parts have attached themselvesCf. Tim. 42 C προσφύντα. to him, accretions of shellsCf. Phaedr. 250 C ὀστρέου τρόπον δεδεσμευμένοι, Phaedo 110 A. and sea-weed and rocks, so that he is more like any wild creature than what he was by nature—even such, I say, is our vision of the soul marred by countless evils. But we must look elsewhere, Glaucon. Where? said he. To its love of wisdom. And we must note the things of which it has apprehensions, and the associations for which it yearns, as being itself akin to the divineCf. Phaedo 79 D, Laws 899 D, and 494 D τὸ σιγγενὲς τῶν λόγων. and the immortal and to eternal being, and so consider what it might be if it followed the gleam unreservedly and were raised by this impulse out of the depths of this sea in which it is now sunk, and were cleansed and scraped freeCf. Phileb. 55 C περικρούωμεν, 519 A περιεκόπη. of the rocks and barnacles which, because it now feasts on earth, cling to it in wild profusion of earthy and stony accretion by reason of these feastings that are accounted happy.Cf. Charm. 158 A, Laws 695 A, 783 A. See λεγόμενα ἀγαθά491 C, 495 A, Laws 661 C.
