I have.

And is not the feeling discreditable? Is it not obvious that such an

one having to deal with other men, was clearly without any experience of

human nature; for experience would have taught him the true state of

the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great

majority are in the interval between them.

What do you mean? I said.

I mean, he replied, as you might say of the very large and very small,

that nothing is more uncommon than a very large or very small man; and

this applies generally to all extremes, whether of great and small, or

swift and slow, or fair and foul, or black and white: and whether

the instances you select be men or dogs or anything else, few are the

extremes, but many are in the mean between them. Did you never observe

this?

Yes, I said, I have.

And do you not imagine, he said, that if there were a competition in

evil, the worst would be found to be very few?

Yes, that is very likely, I said.

Yes, that is very likely, he replied; although in this respect arguments

are unlike 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

afterwards 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

instability 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 how melancholy, if there be such a thing as

truth or certainty or possibility of knowledge--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 for ever afterwards

should hate and revile them, and lose truth and the knowledge of

realities.

Yes, indeed, I said; that is very melancholy.

Let us then, in the first place, he said, be careful of allowing or of

admitting into our souls the notion that there is no health or soundness

in any arguments at all. Rather say that we have not yet attained to

soundness in ourselves, and that we must struggle manfully and do our

best to gain health of mind--you and all other men having regard to the

whole of your future life, and I myself in the prospect of 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. Now 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 merely

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 much I gain by the

argument. 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 not distress my friends with lamentations,

and my ignorance will not last, but will die with me, 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. And first of all let me be sure that

I have in my mind what you were saying. Simmias, if I remember rightly,

has fears and misgivings whether the soul, although a fairer and diviner

thing than the body, being as she is in the form of harmony, may not

perish first. On the other hand, Cebes appeared to grant that the soul

was more lasting than the body, but he said that no one could know

whether the soul, after having worn out many bodies, might not perish

herself and leave her last body behind her; and that this is death,

which is the destruction not of the body but of the soul, for in the

body the work of destruction is ever going on. Are not these, Simmias

and Cebes, the points which we have to consider?

They both agreed to this statement of them.

He proceeded: And did you deny the force of the whole preceding

argument, or of a part only?

Of a part only, they replied.

And what did you think, he said, of that part of the argument in which

we said that knowledge was recollection, and hence inferred that the

soul must have previously existed somewhere else before she was enclosed

in the body?

Cebes said that he had been wonderfully impressed by that part of the

argument, and that his conviction remained absolutely unshaken. Simmias

agreed, and added that he himself could hardly imagine the possibility

of his ever thinking differently.

But, rejoined Socrates, you will have to think differently, my Theban

friend, if you still maintain that harmony is a compound, and that the

soul is a harmony which is made out of strings set in the frame of the

body; for you will surely never allow yourself to say that a harmony is

prior to the elements which compose it.

Never, Socrates.

But do you not see that this is what you imply when you say that the

soul existed before she took the form and body of man, and was made up

of elements which as yet had no existence? For harmony is not like

the soul, as you suppose; but first the lyre, and the strings, and the

sounds exist in a state of discord, and then harmony is made last of

all, and perishes first. And how can such a notion of the soul as this

agree with the other?

Not at all, replied Simmias.

And yet, he said, there surely ought to be harmony in a discourse of

which harmony is the theme.

There ought, replied Simmias.

But there is no harmony, he said, in the two propositions that knowledge

is recollection, and that the soul is a harmony. Which of them will you

retain?

I think, he replied, that I have a much stronger faith, Socrates, in the

first of the two, which has been fully demonstrated to me, than in

the latter, which has not been demonstrated at all, but rests only on

probable and plausible grounds; and is therefore believed by the many. I

know too well that these arguments from probabilities are impostors, and

unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they are apt to

be deceptive--in geometry, and in other things too. But the doctrine of

knowledge and recollection has been proven to me on trustworthy grounds;

and the proof was that the soul must have existed before she came into

the body, because to her belongs the essence of which the very name

implies existence. Having, as I am convinced, rightly accepted this

conclusion, and on sufficient grounds, I must, as I suppose, cease to

argue or allow others to argue that the soul is a harmony.

Let me put the matter, Simmias, he said, in another point of view: Do

you imagine that a harmony or any other composition can be in a state

other than that of the elements, out of which it is compounded?

Certainly not.

Or do or suffer anything other than they do or suffer?

He agreed.

Then a harmony does not, properly speaking, lead the parts or elements

which make up the harmony, but only follows them.

He assented.

For harmony cannot possibly have any motion, or sound, or other quality

which is opposed to its parts.

That would be impossible, he replied.

And does not the nature of every harmony depend upon the manner in which

the elements are harmonized?