Phaedrus — Plato
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
p. 448Strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of speaking.
I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which the many feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking and misnaming. And thus one man makes a vortex all round and steadies the earth by the heaven ; another gives the air as a support to the earth, which is a sort of broad trough.
Any power which in disposing them as they are disposes them for the best never enters into their minds, nor do they imagine that there is any superhuman strength in that ; they rather expect to find another Atlas ^ of the world who is stronger and more everlasting and more containing than the good is, and are clearly of opinion that the obligatory and containing power of the good is as nothing ; and yet this is the principle which I would fain learn if any one would teach me.
But as I have failed either to discover myself, or to learn of any one else, the nature of the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have found to be the second best mode of inquiring into the cause. [Failing in his endeavor to comprehend the world by means of the senses, Socrates took refuge in the world of thought. By reflection he arrived at a principle which he regarded jjl as indisputable.
Whatever agreed with this he assumed to be true, whatever disagreed, false. He wishes now to explain what he means by this principle although it is nothing new. It is what he has always been repeating in his doctrine of ideas. He believes that corresponding to every class of material objects or qualities, there is a perfect and eternal being which he calls an idea. These ideas exist Independently of the world of sense, apart from and above it.
They are the perfect types of which the things in this world are imperfect copies. These perfect types are the causes of the existence of their earthly copies. For example, there is an *' Atlas: An ancient Greek divinity, who was supposed to support the heavens on his shoulders.
Socrates says that the philosophers referred to expect to supplant the legendary Atlas by a physical principle' He believes that the true Atlas which supports all things is the Good.
PH.^DO -- 449 absolute beauty, an absolute greatness, an absolute good, and the like. Now a thing can be beautiful only by reason of its participation in the absolute or perfect beauty, tliat is, the idea of beauty. A thing is made good or great only by the indwelling of the idea of goodness or greatness.
Socrates now applies his doctrine of ideas to the question of the soul's immortality, as follows : Ideas which are opposite in character never co-exist. They^mutually exclude one another and never "paS over the one into tKe otTieir. Moreover, things in which sucertain i^ea forever abides, will never admit the opposite of that idea.
For example, no odd number will ever admit the idea of the even, because the ideas of the odd and the even are essentially opposed. So Xhe soul, whose inseparable attribute is life, will never admit life's opposite, death.
Thus the soul is shown to be immortal, and since immortal, indestructible.] But then, O my friends, he said, if the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity !
And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does indeed appear to be awful.® If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls. But now^, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom.
For the soul when on her progress to the world below takes nothing with her but nurture and education ; which are indeed said greatly to benefit or greatly to injure the departed, at the very beginning of his pilgrimage in the other world.
For after death, as they say, the genius of each individual, to whom he belonged m life, leads him to a certain place in which the dead are gathered together for judgment, whence they go into the world below, following the guide, who is appointed to conduct them from this world to the other : and when they have there received their due and remained their ^ '• For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul." — Matt. xvi.
26. "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness. " — II. Peter iii. II. 29 p. 450time, another guide brings them back again after many revolutions of ages.
Now this journey to the other world is not, ^. as JEschylus says in the Telephus,* a single and straight path, — no guide would be wanted for that, and no one could miss a single path ; but there are many partings of the road, and windings, as I must infer from the rites and sacrifices which are offered to the gods below in places where three ways meet on earth.*' The wise and orderly soul is conscious of her situation, and follows in the path ; but the soul which desires the body, and which, as I was relating before, has long been fluttering about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after, many struggles and many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by her attendant genius, and when she arrives at the place where the other souls are gathered, if she be impure and have done impure deeds, or been concerned in foul murders or other crimes which are the brothers of these, and the works of brothers in crime, — from that soul every one flees and turns away ; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are fulfilled, and when they are fulfilled, she is borne irresistibly to her own fitting habitation ; as every pure and just soul which has passed through life in the company and under the guidance of the gods has also her own proper home. [Socrates gives a mythical description of the earth, the heavens, and the interior of the earth with its seas and rivers.
This is followed by an account of how the dead are judged. io8- Those who have committed the greatest crimes are ^ hurled into Tartarus never to return. Those who have lived neither well nor ill, are punished for their wrong deeds and rewarded for the good. Those who have led holy lives, especially those who have been purified by philosophy, live forever in mansions fair beyond description.
Socrates continues thus :] Wherefore, Simmias, seeing all these things, what ought not we to do in order to obtain virtue and wisdom in this life ? Fair is the prize, and the hope great. *" Telephus (tSl'e-fus) : a lost tragedy by /Eschylus. See Rep., II., note 3. ** It was customary to perform rites once a month in honor of certain gods of the lower world. These ceremonies took place at road crossings.
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.