Footnote 243:
Cp. Dante, _Purg._ 3, 19 foll. The idea is Pythagorean (see _Quaest.
Graec._ 40, p. 300).
Footnote 244:
Cp. Plato, _Gorg._ 524 D.
Footnote 245:
See H. Richards in _Class. Rev._, vol. 29, p. 236.
Footnote 246:
Cp. p. 215, n. 1.
Footnote 247:
Cp. p. 89.
Footnote 248:
Probably a Sibylline verse. See Suetonius, _Life of Vespasian_.
Footnote 249:
Reading ἅτε δή with C. F. Hermann.
Footnote 250:
Cp. Aristot. _Hist. Anim._ 2, 14, 505 b 13, and 10, 37, 621 a 6.
FROM THE DIALOGUE ‘ON THE SOUL’
A FRAGMENT
[Preserved by Stobaeus, _Florileg._ 119.[251]]
I. When Timon had spoken thus, Patrocleas replied: ‘Your argument is as
forcible as it is ancient, yet there are difficulties. For if the
doctrine of immortality is so very old, how is it that the fear of death
is “oldest of terrors”[252]? Unless, of course, it is this which has
engendered all other terrors. For there is nothing “fresh or new” in our
mourning for the dead, or in the use of those sad sinister forms of
speech, “Poor man!” “Unfortunate man!”’
II. ‘But there’, said Timon, ‘we shall find a confusion of ideas between
what perishes and what does not. Now when we speak of the dead as having
“passed away” and being “gone”, there is clearly no suggestion of
anything actually harsh, only of a change or transition of some sort.
Where that change takes place for those who undergo it, and whether it
be for worse or better, let us consider by looking into the other words
used. Our actual word for death[253], in the first place, does not
appear to point to a movement downward, or beneath the earth, but rather
to a mounting upward towards God of that which passes. Thus we may
reasonably suppose that the soul darts out and runs upward, as though a
bent spring had been released, when the body breathes it out, and itself
draws an upward vital breath. Next, look at the opposite of death, which
is generation; this word, on the contrary, expresses a tendency
downward, an inclination to earth[254] of that which at the time of
death again speeds upward. Hence, too, we call our natal day by a name
which means a beginning of evils and of great troubles.[255] Perhaps we
shall see the same thing even more clearly from another set of words. A
man when he dies is said to be “released”, and death called a
“release”—if you ask the question “from what?”, a release from
body[256]—for body is called dĕmas, because the soul is kept in bondage
in it, contrary to nature, nothing being forcibly detained in a place
which is natural to it. A further play upon this “bondage” and “force”
gives the word “life”, as Homer,[257] I think, uses Hesperus for the
feminine “evening”, and so, in contrast to “life”, the dead is said to
come to his rest, released from a great and unnatural stress. So with
the change and reconstitution of the soul into the Whole; we say that it
has perished when it has made its way thither; while here it does not
know this unless at the actual approach of death, when it undergoes such
an experience as those do who are initiated into great mysteries. Thus
death and initiation closely correspond, word to word,[258] and thing to
thing. At first there are wanderings, and laborious circuits, and
journeyings through the dark, full of misgivings where there is no
consummation; then, before the very end, come terrors of every kind,
shivers, and trembling, and sweat, and amazement. After this, a
wonderful light meets the wanderer; he is admitted into pure meadow
lands, where are voices, and dances, and the majesty of holy sounds and
sacred visions. Here the newly initiate, all rites completed, is at
large; he walks at large like the dedicated victim with a crown on his
head, and joins in high revelry; he converses with pure and holy men,
and surveys the uninitiate unpurified crowd here below in the dirt and
darkness, trampled by its own feet and packed together; through fear of
death remaining in its ills, because it does not believe in the
blessings which are beyond. For that the conjunction of soul with body,
and its imprisonment, are against nature, you may clearly see from
this.’
III. ‘From what?’ said Patrocleas. ‘From the fact that of all our
experiences sleep is the most agreeable. First, it always extinguishes
any perception of pain, because its pleasure is mingled with so much
that is familiar, secondly, it overpowers all other appetites, even the
most vehement. For even those who are devoted to the body become
disinclined for pleasure when sleep comes on, and when they slumber
reject loving embraces. Why dwell on this? When sleep takes possession,
it excludes even the pleasure which comes from learning, and discussion,
and philosophic thought, as though a smooth deep stream swept the soul
along. All pleasure, perhaps, is by its essence and nature a respite
from pain, but of sleep this is absolutely true. For, though nothing
exciting or delightful should approach from without, yet we feel
pleasure in a sound sleep; sleep seems to remove a condition of toil and
hardness. And that condition is no other than that which binds soul to
body. In sleep the soul is separated, and speeds upward, and is gathered
unto itself after having been strained to fit the body, and dispersed
among the senses. Yet some assert that, on the contrary, sleep immingles
soul with body. They are wrong. The body bears its witness the other
way, by its lack of sensation, its coldness, and heaviness, and pallor
proving that the soul leaves it in death, and shifts its quarters in
sleep. This produces the pleasure; it is a release and respite for the
soul, as though it laid down a burthen which it must again resume and
shoulder. For when it dies it runs away from the body for good; when it
is asleep, it plays truant. Therefore death is sometimes accompanied by
pains, sleep always by pleasure; in the former case the bond is snapped
altogether, in the latter it gives, and is slackened, and becomes
easier, as the senses are loosened like parting knots, and the strain
which ties soul to body is gone.’
IV. ‘Then how is it’, said Patrocleas, ‘that we do not feel discomfort
or pain from being awake?’ ‘How is it’, said Timon, ‘that when the hair
is cut, the head feels lightness and relief, yet there was no sense of
oppression at all while the hair was long? Or that men released from
bonds feel pleasure, yet there is no pain when the chains are on? Or why
is there a stir of applause when light is brought suddenly into a
banquet, yet its absence did not appear to cause pain or trouble to the
eye? There is one cause, my friend, in all these cases; that gradual
habituation made the unnatural familiar to the sense, so that it felt
absolutely no distress then, but felt pleasure when there was release
and a restoration to nature. The strangeness is seen at once when the
proper condition comes, the presence of what pained and pressed by
contrast with the pleasure. It is exactly so with the soul: during its
association with mortal passions, and parts, and organs, that which is
unnatural and strange produces no apparent pressure because of that long
familiarity; yet when discharged from the activities of the body, it
feels ease, and relief, and pleasure. By them it is distressed, and
about these it toils, and from these it craves leisure and rest. For all
that concerns its own natural activities—observation, reasoning, memory,
speculation—it is unwearied and insatiable. Satiety is nothing but a
weariness of pleasure, when soul feels with body. To its own pleasures
soul never cries “Enough”; but while it is involved in body, it is in
the plight of Ulysses.[259] As he clung to the fig-tree, and hugged it,
not from love of the tree, but fearing Charybdis down below, so soul
clings to body and embraces it, from no goodwill to it or gratitude, but
in horror of the uncertainty of death,
_For life the gods conceal from mortal men_,
says the wise Hesiod.[260] They have not strained soul to body by fleshy
bonds, one bond they have contrived and one encompassing device, the
uncertainty of what comes after death, and our slowness to believe;
since, “if the soul were persuaded”, as Heraclitus[261] says, “of all
the things which await men when they have died, no force would keep it
back.”’
Footnote 251:
Where it is ascribed to Themistius. It was reclaimed for Plutarch by
Wyttenbach in the Preface to his edition of the _De Sera Numinum
Vindicta_—Leiden 1772.
Footnote 252:
In the Dialogue (_Ne suaviter quidem_, c. 26) in which the Epicureans
are attacked, the ‘hope of eternal existence’ or ‘desire to be’, is
spoken of as the ‘oldest and greatest of loves’.
Footnote 253:
θάνατος—ἀναθεῖν εἰς θεόν.
Footnote 254:
γένεσις—γῆ, νεῦσις. Cp. p. 210, l. 6.
Footnote 255:
γενέθλιον—γένεσις ἄθλων.
Footnote 256:
Reading ἂν δὲ ἔρῃ, καὶ σώματος for ἂν δὲ ἔρημαι σώματος. See the
Lex.-Plat. _s.v._ ἔρομαι.
Footnote 257:
e.g. _Od._ 1, 423.
Footnote 258:
τελευτᾶν—τελεῖσθαι.
Footnote 259:
_Od._ 12, 432 foll.
Footnote 260:
_W. and D._ 42.
Footnote 261:
Fr. 122.