Phaedrus — Plato

PHiEDO 445 arguments are like men — there I was led on by you to say more than I had intended ; but the point of comparison was, that when a simple man who has no skill in dialectics believes an argument to be true which he afterward imagines to be false, whether really false or not, and then another and another, he has no longer any faith left, and great disputers, as you know, come to think at last that they have grown to be the wisest of mankind ; for they alone perceive the utter unsoundness and instabihty of all arguments, or indeed, of all things, which, like the currents in the Euripus,^ are going up and down in never-ceasing ebb and flow.

That is quite true, I said.

Yes, Phaedo, he replied, and very melancholy too, if there be such a thing as truth or certainty or power of knowing at all, that a man should have lighted upon some argument or other which at first seemed true and then turned out to be false, and instead of blaming himself and his own want of wit, because he is annoyed, should at last be too glad to transfer the blame from himself to arguments in general ; and forever afterwards should hate and revile them, and lose the truth and knowledge of existence.

Yes, indeed, I said ; that is very melancholy. Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of admitting into our souls the notion that there is no truth or health or soundness in any arguments at all ; but let us rather say that there is as yet no health in us, and that we must quit ourselves like men and do our best to gain health, — you and all other men with a view to the whole of your future life, and I myself with a view to death.

For at this moment I am sensible that I have not the temper of a philosopher ; like the vulgar, I am only a partisan. For the partisan, when he is engaged in a dispute, cares nothing about the rights of the question, but is anxious only to convince his hearers of his own assertions.

And the difference between him and me at the present moment is only this, — that whereas he seeks to convince his hearers that what he says is true, I am rather seeking to convince myself; to convince my hearers is a secondary matter with me.

And do but see how " Euripus (fl-ri'pus) : the narrow strait which separates Bceotia (bed'shl-i^), a province of Greece, from the island Euboea (u-be'a), where the ancients believed that the current changed seven times a day.

p. 446much I gain by this. For if what I say is true, then I do well to be persuaded of the truth, but if there be nothing after death, still, during the short time that remains, I shall save my friends from lamentations, and my ignorance will not last, and therefore no harm will be done. This is the state of mind, Simmias and Cebes, in which I approach the argument.

And I would ask you to be thinking of the truth and not of Socrates : agree with me, if I seem to you to be speaking the truth ; or if not, withstand me might and main, that I may not deceive you as well as myself in my enthusiasm, and like the bee, leave my sting in you before I die. And now let us proceed, he said. [Socrates returns to the objection of Simmias which he answers very easily.

Harmony cannot exist prior to the instrument with which it is made. We must first have the 98 ^y^^ ^^^ strings. Harmony follows last of all as an effect. Now does the soul follow as an effect of the body ? Has it not been proved that the soul existed before birth, and that all our knowledge is but recollection of what we experienced before the soul entered the body ?

Simmias acknowledged that his theory of the soul as a harmony must be rejected because it is inconsistent with the doctrine of preexistence which to his mind has been proved beyond a doubt. Again, Socrates says, while one harmony may be more or less completely a harmony than another, one soul is no more or no less a soul than another. That is, a harmony admits of degrees, a soul does not, and therefore a soul is not a harmony.

Lastly, how can the soul be the harmony of the body when it continually opposes and constrains the passions ?

Harmony is subject to the lyre, but the soul is leader and master of the body — ** a far diviner thing than any harmony.*' Socrates turns next to discuss and answer the objection of Cebes, which he says involves one of the most important questions of philosophy, namely, how things come into being and perish, or the nature of generation and corruption.

Here he digresses to tell of his own experience when, as a young man, he sought to know the causes of all things — why they are created and why destroyed. His investigations and speculations led him into * many perplexities, so that he began to doubt

PHiEDO 447 even the most commonplace facts. Then he heard of the philosopher Anaxagoras,® who claimed that Mind was the cause and disposer of all things. Socrates was greatly delighted at this notion, and thought if mind were the disposer, surely mind would dispose all for the best.

He had great hopes that the new teacher would satisfactorily explain to him in detail all that he had been seeking to understand and prove how everything was for the best in nature and in man. He continues:] What hopes I had formed, and how grievously was I disappointed ! As I proceeded, I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order, but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other eccentricities.

I might compare him to a person who began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, but who, when he endeavored to explain the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones and muscles ; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and have hgaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them ; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my hmbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture : that is what he would say, and he would have a similar explanation of my talking to you^ which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is, that the Athenians have thought fit to ^ condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence ; for I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off to Megara or Bceotia,* — by the dog of Egypt they would, if they had been guided only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen as the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, to undergo any punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a " See Phaednis, note 55. •• Megara (m€g'a-ra) : a town twenty miles west of Athens.