“But what,” said he, “of all the things that are in man, is there any
thing else that you say bears rule except the soul, especially if it be
wise?”
“I should say not.”
“Whether by yielding to the passions in the body, or by opposing them?
My meaning is this, for instance, when heat and thirst are present, by
drawing it the contrary way, so as to hinder it from drinking, and when
hunger is present, by hindering it from eating; and in ten thousand
other instances we see the soul opposing the desires of the body. Do we
not?”
“Certainly.”
“But have we not before allowed that if the soul were harmony, it would
never utter a sound contrary to the tension, relaxation, vibration, or
any other affection to which its component parts are subject, but would
follow, and never govern them?”
“We did allow it,” he replied, “for how could we do otherwise?”
“What, then, does not the soul now appear to act quite the contrary,
ruling over all the parts, from which any one might say it subsists, and
resisting almost all of them through the whole of life, and exercising
dominion over them in all manner of ways, punishing some more severely
even with pain, both by gymnastics and medicine, and others more mildly,
partly threatening, and partly admonishing the desires, angers, and
fears, as if, being itself of a different nature, it were conversing
with something quite different? 99. Just as Homer has done in the
Odyssey[35], where he speaks of Ulysses: ‘Having struck his breast, he
chid his heart in the following words, Bear up, my heart; ere this thou
hast borne far worse.’ Do you think that he composed this in the belief
that the soul was harmony, and capable of being led by the passions of
the body, and not rather that it was able to lead and govern them, as
being something much more divine than to be compared with harmony?”
-----
Footnote 35:
Lib. xx. v. 7.
-----
“By Jupiter, Socrates, it appears so to me.”
“Therefore, my excellent friend, it is on no account correct for us to
say that the soul is a kind of harmony; for as it appears, we should
neither agree with Homer, that divine poet, nor with ourselves.”
“Such is the case,” he replied.
“Be it so, then,” said Socrates, “we have already, as it seems,
sufficiently appeased this Theban harmony. But how, Cebes, and by what
arguments shall we appease this Cadmus[36]?”
-----
Footnote 36:
Harmony was the wife of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes; Socrates,
therefore, compares his two Theban friends, Simmias and Cebes, with
them, and says that having overcome Simmias, the advocate of Harmony,
he must now deal with Cebes, who is represented by Cadmus.
-----
100. “You appear to me,” replied Cebes, “to be likely to find out; for
you have made out this argument against harmony wonderfully beyond my
expectation. For when Simmias was saying what his doubts were, I
wondered very much whether any one would be able to answer his
reasoning. It therefore appeared to me unaccountable that he did not
withstand the very first onset of your argument. I should not,
therefore, be surprised if the arguments of Cadmus met with the same
fate.”
“My good friend,” said Socrates, “do not speak so boastfully, lest some
envious power should overthrow the argument that is about to be urged.
These things, however, will be cared for by the deity, but let us,
meeting hand to hand, in the manner of Homer, try whether you say any
thing to the purpose. This, then, is the sum of what you enquire: you
require it to be proved that our soul is imperishable and immortal; if a
philosopher that is about to die, full of confidence and hope that after
death he shall be far happier than if he had died after leading a
different kind of life, shall not entertain this confidence foolishly
and vainly. 101. But to shew that the soul is something strong and
divine, and that it existed before we men were born, you say not at all
hinders, but that all these things may evince, not its immortality, but
that the soul is durable, and existed an immense space of time before,
and knew and did many things. But that, for all this, it was not at all
the more immortal, but that its very entrance into the body of a man was
the beginning of its destruction, as if it were a disease, so that it
passes through this life in wretchedness, and at last perishes in that
which is called death. But you say that it is of no consequence whether
it comes into a body once or often, with respect to our occasion of
fear: for it is right he should be afraid, unless he is foolish, who
does not know, and cannot give a reason to prove, that the soul is
immortal. Such, I think, Cebes, is the sum of what you say; and I
purposely repeat it often, that nothing may escape us, and, if you
please, you may add to or take from it.”
Cebes replied, “I do not wish at present either to take from or add to
it; that is what I mean.”
102. Socrates, then, having paused for some time, and considered
something within himself, said, “You enquire into no easy matter, Cebes;
for it is absolutely necessary to discuss the whole question of
generation and corruption. If you please, then, I will relate to you
what happened to me with reference to them; and afterwards, if any thing
that I shall say shall appear to you useful, towards producing
conviction on the subject you are now treating of, make use of it.”
“I do indeed wish it,” replied Cebes.
“Hear my relation then. When I was a young man, Cebes, I was wonderfully
desirous of that wisdom which they call a history of nature: for it
appeared to me to be a very sublime thing to know the causes of every
thing, why each thing is generated, why it perishes, and why it exists.
And I often tossed myself upwards and downwards, considering first such
things as these, whether when heat and cold have undergone a certain
corruption, as some say, then animals are formed; and whether the blood
is that by means of which we think, or air, or fire, or none of these,
but that it is the brain that produces the perceptions of hearing,
seeing, and smelling, and that from these come memory and opinion, and
from memory and opinion, when in a state of rest, in the same way
knowledge is produced? 103. And again considering the corruptions of
these, and the affections incidental to the heavens and the earth, I at
length appeared to myself so unskilful in these speculations, that
nothing could be more so. But I will give you a sufficient proof of
this: for I then became, by these very speculations, so very blind with
respect to things which I knew clearly before, as it appeared to myself
and others, that I unlearnt even the things which I thought I knew
before, both on many other subjects and also this, why a man grows. For
before I thought this was evident to every one, that it proceeds from
eating and drinking; for that, when, from the food, flesh is added to
flesh, bone to bone, and so on in the same proportion, what is proper to
them is added to the several other parts, then the bulk which was small
becomes afterwards large, and thus that a little man becomes a big one.
Such was my opinion at that time: does it appear to you correct?”
“To me it does,” said Cebes.
104. “Consider this farther. I thought that I had formed a right
opinion, when on seeing a tall man standing by a short one, I judged
that he was taller by the head, and in like manner one horse than
another: and still more clearly than this, ten appeared to me to be more
than eight, by two being added to them, and that two cubits are greater
than one cubit, by exceeding it a half.”
“But now,” said Cebes, “what think you of these matters?”
“By Jupiter,” said he, “I am far from thinking that I know the cause of
these, for that I cannot even persuade myself of this, when a person has
added one to one, whether the one to which the addition has been made
has become two, or whether that which has been added, and that to which
the addition has been made, have become two by the addition of the one
to the other. For I wonder, if when each of these was separate from the
other, each was one, and they were not yet two, but when they have
approached nearer each other, this should be the cause of their becoming
two, namely, the union by which they have been placed nearer one
another. 105. Nor yet, if any person should divide one, am I able to
persuade myself that this, their division, is the cause of its becoming
two. For this cause is the contrary to the former one of their becoming
two; for then it was because they were brought nearer to each other, and
the one was added to the other; but now it is, because one is removed
and separated from the other. Nor do I yet persuade myself, that I know
why one is one, nor, in a word, why any thing else is produced or
perishes, or exists, according to this method of proceeding; but I mix
up another method of my own at random, for this I can on no account give
in to.
“But having once heard a person reading from a book, written, as he
said, by Anaxagoras, and which said that it is intelligence that sets in
order and is the cause of all things, I was delighted with this cause,
and it appeared to me in a manner to be well that intelligence should be
the cause of all things, and I considered with myself, if this is so,
that the regulating intelligence orders all things, and disposes each in
such way as will be best for it. 106. If any one, then, should desire to
discover the cause of every thing, in what way it is produced, or
perishes, or exists, he must discover this respecting it, in what way it
is best for it either to exist, or to suffer, or do any thing else; from
this mode of reasoning, then, it is proper that a man should consider
nothing else, both with respect to himself and others, than what is most
excellent and best: and it necessarily follows that this same person
must also know that which is worst, for that the knowledge of both of
them is the same. Thus reasoning with myself, I was delighted to think I
had found in Anaxagoras a preceptor who would instruct me in the causes
of things, agreeably to my own mind, and that he would inform me, first,
whether the earth is flat or round, and when he had informed me, would
moreover explain the cause and necessity of its being so, arguing on the
principle of the better, and shewing that it is better for it to be such
as it is, and if he should say that it is in the middle, that he would
moreover explain how it is better for it to be in the middle; and if he
should make all this clear to me, I was prepared no longer to require
any other species of cause. 107. I was in like manner prepared to
enquire respecting the sun, and moon, and the other stars, with respect
to their velocities in reference to each other and their revolutions,
and other conditions, in what way it is better for both to act and be
affected as it does and is. For I never thought that after he had said
that these things were set in order by intelligence, he would introduce
any other cause for them than that it is best for them to be as they
are: hence, I thought, that in assigning the cause to each of them, and
to all in common, he would explain that which is best for each, and the
common good of all. And I would not have given up my hopes for a good
deal, but having taken up his books with great eagerness, I read through
them as quickly as I could; that I might as soon as possible know the
best, and the worst.
108. “From this wonderful hope, however, my friend, I was speedily
thrown down, when, as I advance and read over his works, I meet with a
man who makes no use of intelligence, nor assigns any causes for the
ordering of all things, but makes the causes to consist of air, ether,
and water, and many other things equally absurd. And he appeared to me
to be very like one who should say, that whatever Socrates does he does
by intelligence, and then, attempting to describe the causes of each
particular action, should say, first of all, that for this reason I am
now sitting here, because my body is composed of bones and sinews, and
that the bones are hard, and have joints separate from each other, but
that the sinews, being capable of tension and contraction, cover the
bones, together with the flesh and skin which contains them. The bones,
therefore, being suspended in their sockets, the nerves relaxing and
tightening enable me to bend my limbs as I now do, and from this cause I
sit here bent up. 109. And if again, he should assign other similar
causes for my conversing with you, assigning as causes voice, and air,
and hearing, and ten thousand other things of the kind, omitting to
mention the real causes, that since it appeared better to the Athenians
to condemn me, I therefore thought it better to sit here, and more just
to remain and submit to the punishment which they have ordered; for, by
the dog, I think these sinews and bones would have been long ago either
in Megara or Bœotia, borne thither by an opinion of that which is best,
if I had not thought it more just and honourable to submit to whatever
sentence the city might order, than to flee and run stealthily away. But
to call such things causes is too absurd. But if any one should say that
without possessing such things as bones and sinews, and whatever else I
have, I could not do what I pleased, he would speak the truth; but to
say that I do as I do through them, and that I act thus by intelligence,
and not from the choice of what is best, would be a great and extreme
disregard of reason. 110. For this would be not to be able to
distinguish that the real cause is one thing, and that another without
which a cause could not be a cause: which indeed the generality of men
appear to me to do, fumbling as it were in the dark, and making use of
strange names, so as to denominate them as the very cause. Wherefore one
encompassing the earth with a vortex from heaven, makes the earth remain
fixed; but another, as if it were a broad trough, rests it upon the air
as its base: but the power by which these things are now so disposed
that they may be placed in the best manner possible, this they neither
enquire into, nor do they think that it requires any superhuman
strength; but they think they will some time or other find out an Atlas
stronger and more immortal than this, and more capable of containing all
things, and in reality, the good, and that which ought to hold them
together and contain them, they take no account of at all. I then should
most gladly have become the disciple of any one who would teach me of
such a cause, in what way it is. But when I was disappointed of this,
and was neither able to discover it myself, nor to learn it from
another, do you wish, Cebes, that I should shew you in what way I set
out upon a second voyage in search of the cause?”