That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world--to
the divine and immortal and rational: thither arriving, she is secure of
bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and
wild passions and all other human ills, and for ever dwells, as they say
of the initiated, in company with the gods (compare Apol.). Is not this
true, Cebes?
Yes, said Cebes, beyond a doubt.
But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her
departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is
in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures
of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in
a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste, and use for the
purposes of his lusts,--the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear
and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark
and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy;--do you suppose
that such a soul will depart pure and unalloyed?
Impossible, he replied.
She is held fast by the corporeal, which the continual association and
constant care of the body have wrought into her nature.
Very true.
And this corporeal element, my friend, is heavy and weighty and earthy,
and is that element of sight by which a soul is depressed and dragged
down again into the visible world, because she is afraid of the
invisible and of the world below--prowling about tombs and sepulchres,
near which, as they tell us, are seen certain ghostly apparitions
of souls which have not departed pure, but are cloyed with sight and
therefore visible.
(Compare Milton, Comus:--
'But when lust,
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose,
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel vaults and sepulchres,
Lingering, and sitting by a new made grave,
As loath to leave the body that it lov'd,
And linked itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.')
That is very likely, Socrates.
Yes, that is very likely, Cebes; and these must be the souls, not of the
good, but of the evil, which are compelled to wander about such places
in payment of the penalty of their former evil way of life; and they
continue to wander until through the craving after the corporeal which
never leaves them, they are imprisoned finally in another body. And they
may be supposed to find their prisons in the same natures which they
have had in their former lives.
What natures do you mean, Socrates?
What I mean is that men who have followed after gluttony, and
wantonness, and drunkenness, and have had no thought of avoiding them,
would pass into asses and animals of that sort. What do you think?