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he has thus certainly demonstrated the survival of the man, who is the more
lasting, because the less lasting remains. But that, Simmias, as I would beg
you to remark, is a mistake; any one can see that he who talks thus is talking
nonsense. For the truth is, that the weaver aforesaid, having woven and worn
many such coats, outlived several of them, and was outlived by the last; but a
man is not therefore proved to be slighter and weaker than a coat. Now the
relation of the body to the soul may be expressed in a similar figure; and any
one may very fairly say in like manner that the soul is lasting, and the body
weak and shortlived in comparison. He may argue in like manner that every
soul wears out many bodies, especially if a man live many years. While he is
alive the body deliquesces and decays, and the soul always weaves another
garment and repairs the waste. But of course, whenever the soul perishes, she
must have on her last garment, and this will survive her; and then at length,
when the soul is dead, the body will show its native weakness, and quickly
decompose and pass away. I would therefore rather not rely on the argument
from superior strength to prove the continued existence of the soul after death.
For granting even more than you affirm to be possible, and acknowledging
not only that the soul existed before birth, but also that the souls of some
exist, and will continue to exist after death, and will be born and die again and
again, and that there is a natural strength in the soul which will hold out and
be born many times—nevertheless, we may be still inclined to think that she
will weary in the labours of successive births, and may at last succumb in one
of her deaths and utterly perish; and this death and dissolution of the body
which brings destruction to the soul may be unknown to any of us, for no one
of us can have had any experience of it: and if so, then I maintain that he who
is confident about death has but a foolish confidence, unless he is able to
prove that the soul is altogether immortal and imperishable. But if he cannot
prove the soul’s immortality, he who is about to die will always have reason
to fear that when the body is disunited, the soul also may utterly perish.
All of us, as we afterwards remarked to one another, had an unpleasant
feeling at hearing what they said. When we had been so firmly convinced
before, now to have our faith shaken seemed to introduce a confusion and
uncertainty, not only into the previous argument, but into any future one;
either we were incapable of forming a judgment, or there were no grounds of
belief.
ECHECRATES: There I feel with you—by heaven I do, Phaedo, and when
you were speaking, I was beginning to ask myself the same question: What
argument can I ever trust again? For what could be more convincing than the
argument of Socrates, which has now fallen into discredit? That the soul is a
harmony is a doctrine which has always had a wonderful attraction for me,
and, when mentioned, came back to me at once, as my own original
468
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book The Complete Plato"
The Complete Plato
- Title
- The Complete Plato
- Author
- Plato
- Date
- ~347 B.C.
- Language
- English
- License
- PD
- Size
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Pages
- 1612
- Keywords
- Philosophy, Antique, Philosophie, Antike, Dialogues, Metaphysik, Metaphysics, Ideologie, Ideology, Englisch
- Categories
- Geisteswissenschaften
- International