INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote: _Phaedo._]

[Sidenote: ANALYSIS.]

After an interval of some months or years, and at Phlius, =Steph.= 57

a town of Peloponnesus, the tale of the last hours of Socrates

is narrated to Echecrates and other Phliasians by Phaedo the

‘beloved disciple.’ The Dialogue necessarily takes the form of a

narrative, because Socrates has to be described acting as well as 58

speaking. The minutest particulars of the event are interesting

to distant friends, and the narrator has an equal interest in them.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 60-64._]

During the voyage of the sacred ship to and from Delos, which

has occupied thirty days, the execution of Socrates has been

deferred. (Cp. Xen. Mem. iv. 8. 2.) The time has been passed by

him in conversation with a select company of disciples. But now 59

the holy season is over, and the disciples meet earlier than usual

in order that they may converse with Socrates for the last time.

Those who were present, and those who might have been

expected to be present, are mentioned by name. There are

Simmias and Cebes (Crito 45 B), two disciples of Philolaus whom

Socrates ‘by his enchantments has attracted from Thebes’ (Mem.

iii. 11. 17), Crito the aged friend, the attendant of the prison, who

is as good as a friend—these take part in the conversation.

There are present also, Hermogenes, from whom Xenophon

derived his information about the trial of Socrates (Mem. iv. 8. 4),

the ‘madman’ Apollodorus (Symp. 173 D), Euclid and Terpsion

from Megara (cp. Theaet. sub init.), Ctesippus, Antisthenes,

Menexenus, and some other less-known members of the Socratic

circle, all of whom are silent auditors. Aristippus, Cleombrotus,

and Plato are noted as absent. Almost as soon as the friends of 60

Socrates enter the prison Xanthippè and her children are sent

home in the care of one of Crito’s servants. Socrates himself has

just been released from chains, and is led by this circumstance to

make the natural remark that ‘pleasure follows pain.’ (Observe

that Plato is preparing the way for his doctrine of the alternation

of opposites.) ‘Aesop would have represented them in a fable as

a creature with two bodies and a single head.’ The mention of Aesop

reminds Cebes of a question which had been asked by Evenus

the poet (cp. Apol. 20 A): ‘Why Socrates, who was not a

poet, while in prison had been putting Aesop into verse?’—‘Because

several times in his life he had been warned in dreams that 61

he should practise music; and as he was about to die and was not

certain of what was meant, he wished to fulfil the admonition in

the letter as well as in the spirit, by writing verses as well as by

cultivating philosophy. Tell this to Evenus; and say that I would

have him follow me in death.’ ‘He is not at all the sort of man to

comply with your request, Socrates.’ ‘Why, is he not a philosopher?’

‘Yes.’ ‘Then he will be willing to die, although he

will not take his own life, for that is held to be unlawful.’

Cebes asks why suicide is thought not to be right, if death is to 62

be accounted a good? Well, (1) according to one explanation,

because man is a prisoner, who must not open the door of his

prison and run away—this is the truth in a ‘mystery.’ Or (2)

rather, because he is not his own property, but a possession of

the gods, and has no right to make away with that which does

not belong to him. But why, asks Cebes, if he is a possession of

the gods, should he wish to die and leave them? for he is under

their protection; and surely he cannot take better care of himself

than they take of him. Simmias explains that Cebes is really 63

referring to Socrates, whom they think too unmoved at the

prospect of leaving the gods and his friends. Socrates answers

that he is going to other gods who are wise and good, and

perhaps to better friends; and he professes that he is ready to

defend himself against the charge of Cebes. The company shall

be his judges, and he hopes that he will be more successful in

convincing them than he had been in convincing the court.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 64-73._]

The philosopher desires death—which the wicked world will 64

insinuate that he also deserves: and perhaps he does, but not in

any sense which they are capable of understanding. Enough of

them: the real question is, What is the nature of that death

which he desires? Death is the separation of soul and body—and

the philosopher desires such a separation. He would like to

be freed from the dominion of bodily pleasures and of the senses,

which are always perturbing his mental vision. He wants to get 65

rid of eyes and ears, and with the light of the mind only to

behold the light of truth. All the evils and impurities and

necessities of men come from the body. And death separates him from 66

these corruptions, which in life he cannot wholly lay aside. Why

then should he repine when the hour of separation arrives? 67

Why, if he is dead while he lives, should he fear that other death,

through which alone he can behold wisdom in her purity? 68

Besides, the philosopher has notions of good and evil unlike

those of other men. For they are courageous because they are

afraid of greater dangers, and temperate because they desire 69

greater pleasures. But he disdains this balancing of pleasures

and pains, which is the exchange of commerce and not of virtue.

All the virtues, including wisdom, are regarded by him only as

purifications of the soul. And this was the meaning of the

founders of the mysteries when they said, ‘Many are the wand-bearers

but few are the mystics.’ (Cp. Matt. xxii. 14: ‘Many are

called, but few are chosen.’) And in the hope that he is one of

these mystics, Socrates is now departing. This is his answer to

any one who charges him with indifference at the prospect of

leaving the gods and his friends.

Still, a fear is expressed that the soul upon leaving the body 70

may vanish away like smoke or air. Socrates in answer appeals

first of all to the old Orphic tradition that the souls of the dead

are in the world below, and that the living come from them.

This he attempts to found on a philosophical assumption that

all opposites—e. g. less, greater; weaker, stronger; sleeping, 71

waking; life, death—are generated out of each other. Nor can

the process of generation be only a passage from living to dying,

for then all would end in death. The perpetual sleeper (Endymion) 72

would be no longer distinguished from the rest of

mankind. The circle of nature is not complete unless the living

come from the dead as well as pass to them.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 73-80._]

The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence is then adduced as a

confirmation of the pre-existence of the soul. Some proofs of

this doctrine are demanded. One proof given is the same as that 73

of the Meno (82 foll.), and is derived from the latent knowledge of

mathematics, which may be elicited from an unlearned person

when a diagram is presented to him. Again, there is a power of

association, which from seeing Simmias may remember Cebes, or

from seeing a picture of Simmias may remember Simmias. The 74

lyre may recall the player of the lyre, and equal pieces of wood

or stone may be associated with the higher notion of absolute

equality. But here observe that material equalities fall short of

the conception of absolute equality with which they are compared,

and which is the measure of them. And the measure or

standard must be prior to that which is measured, the idea of 75

equality prior to the visible equals. And if prior to them, then

prior also to the perceptions of the senses which recall them, and

therefore either given before birth or at birth. But all men have 76

not this knowledge, nor have any without a process of reminiscence;

which is a proof that it is not innate or given at birth,

unless indeed it was given and taken away at the same instant.

But if not given to men in birth, it must have been given before

birth—this is the only alternative which remains. And if we had

ideas in a former state, then our souls must have existed and

must have had intelligence in a former state. The pre-existence 77

of the soul stands or falls with the doctrine of ideas.

It is objected by Simmias and Cebes that these arguments only

prove a former and not a future existence. Socrates answers this

objection by recalling the previous argument, in which he had

shown that the living come from the dead. But the fear that the

soul at departing may vanish into air (especially if there is a wind

blowing at the time) has not yet been charmed away. He proceeds: 78

When we fear that the soul will vanish away, let us ask

ourselves what is that which we suppose to be liable to dissolution?

Is it the simple or the compound, the unchanging or

the changing, the invisible idea or the visible object of sense?

Clearly the latter and not the former; and therefore not the soul, 79

which in her own pure thought is unchangeable, and only when

using the senses descends into the region of change. Again, the

soul commands, the body serves: in this respect too the soul is 80

akin to the divine, and the body to the mortal. And in every

point of view the soul is the image of divinity and immortality,

and the body of the human and mortal. And whereas the body is

liable to speedy dissolution, the soul is almost if not quite

indissoluble. (Cp. Tim. 41 A.) Yet even the body may be preserved

for ages by the embalmer’s art: how unlikely, then, that the soul

will perish and be dissipated into air while on her way to the

good and wise God! She has been gathered into herself; holding

aloof from the body, and practising death all her life long, and she 81

is now finally released from the errors and follies and passions of

men, and for ever dwells in the company of the gods.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 80-85._]

But the soul which is polluted and engrossed by the corporeal,

and has no eye except that of the senses, and is weighed down

by the bodily appetites, cannot attain to this abstraction. In her

fear of the world below she lingers about the sepulchre, loath to

leave the body which she loved, a ghostly apparition, saturated

with sense, and therefore visible. At length entering into some

animal of a nature congenial to her former life of sensuality or 82

violence, she takes the form of an ass, a wolf or a kite. And of

these earthly souls the happiest are those who have practised

virtue without philosophy; they are allowed to pass into gentle

and social natures, such as bees and ants. (Cp. Rep. x. 619 C,

Meno 100 A.) But only the philosopher who departs pure is

permitted to enter the company of the gods. (Cp. Phaedrus 249.)

This is the reason why he abstains from fleshly lusts, and not

because he fears loss or disgrace, which is the motive of other

men. He too has been a captive, and the willing agent of his 83

own captivity. But philosophy has spoken to him, and he has

heard her voice; she has gently entreated him, and brought him

out of the ‘miry clay,’ and purged away the mists of passion and

the illusions of sense which envelope him; his soul has escaped

from the influence of pleasures and pains, which are like nails

fastening her to the body. To that prison-house she will not 84

return; and therefore she abstains from bodily pleasures—not

from a desire of having more or greater ones, but because she

knows that only when calm and free from the dominion of the

body can she behold the light of truth.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 85-93._]

Simmias and Cebes remain in doubt; but they are unwilling

to raise objections at such a time. Socrates wonders at their

reluctance. Let them regard him rather as the swan, who,

having sung the praises of Apollo all his life long, sings at his 85

death more lustily than ever. (Cp. 60 D.) Simmias acknowledges

that there is cowardice in not probing truth to the bottom.

‘And if truth divine and inspired is not to be had, then let a man

take the best of human notions, and upon this frail bark let him

sail through life.’ He proceeds to state his difficulty: It has 86

been argued that the soul is invisible and incorporeal, and

therefore immortal, and prior to the body. But is not the soul

acknowledged to be a harmony, and has she not the same

relation to the body, as the harmony—which like her is invisible—has

to the lyre? And yet the harmony does not survive the

lyre. Cebes has also an objection, which like Simmias he expresses

in a figure. He is willing to admit that the soul is more

lasting than the body. But the more lasting nature of the soul 87

does not prove her immortality; for after having worn out many

bodies in a single life, and many more in successive births and

deaths, she may at last perish, or, as Socrates afterwards restates

the objection, the very act of birth may be the beginning of her

death, and her last body may survive her, just as the coat of an

old weaver is left behind him after he is dead, although a man is 88

more lasting than his coat. And he who would prove the immortality

of the soul, must prove not only that the soul outlives

one or many bodies, but that she outlives them all.

The audience, like the chorus in a play, for a moment interpret

the feelings of the actors; there is a temporary depression, and 89

then the enquiry is resumed. It is a melancholy reflection that

arguments, like men, are apt to be deceivers; and those who

have been often deceived become distrustful both of arguments

and of friends. But this unfortunate experience should not make

us either haters of men or haters of arguments. The want of 90

health and truth is not in the argument, but in ourselves.

Socrates, who is about to die, is sensible of his own weakness; 91

he desires to be impartial, but he cannot help feeling that he has

too great an interest in the truth of the argument. And therefore

he would have his friends examine and refute him, if they think

that he is in error.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 93-98._]

At his request Simmias and Cebes repeat their objections.

They do not go to the length of denying the pre-existence of 92

ideas. Simmias is of opinion that the soul is a harmony of the

body. But the admission of the pre-existence of ideas, and

therefore of the soul, is at variance with this. (Cp. a parallel

difficulty in Theaet. 203, 204.) For a harmony is an effect, 93

whereas the soul is not an effect, but a cause; a harmony follows,

but the soul leads; a harmony admits of degrees, and the soul

has no degrees. Again, upon the supposition that the soul is

a harmony, why is one soul better than another? Are they more

or less harmonized, or is there one harmony within another?

But the soul does not admit of degrees, and cannot therefore be 94

more or less harmonized. Further, the soul is often engaged in

resisting the affections of the body, as Homer describes Odysseus

rebuking his heart.’ Could he have written this under the idea 95

that the soul is a harmony of the body? Nay rather, are we not

contradicting Homer and ourselves in affirming anything of the

sort?

The goddess Harmonia, as Socrates playfully terms the argument

of Simmias, has been happily disposed of; and now an

answer has to be given to the Theban Cadmus. Socrates recapitulates

the argument of Cebes, which, as he remarks, involves 96

the whole question of natural growth or causation; about this he

proposes to narrate his own mental experience. When he was

young he had puzzled himself with physics: he had enquired

into the growth and decay of animals, and the origin of thought,

until at last he began to doubt the self-evident fact that growth

is the result of eating and drinking; and so he arrived at the

conclusion that he was not meant for such enquiries. Nor was

he less perplexed with notions of comparison and number. At

first he had imagined himself to understand differences of greater

and less, and to know that ten is two more than eight, and the

like. But now those very notions appeared to him to contain a

contradiction. For how can one be divided into two? or two be 97

compounded into one? These are difficulties which Socrates

cannot answer. Of generation and destruction he knows nothing.

But he has a confused notion of another method in which matters

of this sort are to be investigated. (Cp. Rep. iv. 435 D; vii.

533 A; Charm. 170 foll.)

[Sidenote: _Analysis 98-102._]

Then he heard some one reading out of a book of Anaxagoras,

that mind is the cause of all things. And he said to himself: If

mind is the cause of all things, surely mind must dispose them all

for the best. The new teacher will show me this ‘order of the 98

best’ in man and nature. How great had been his hopes and how

great his disappointment! For he found that his new friend was

anything but consistent in his use of mind as a cause, and that he

soon introduced winds, waters, and other eccentric notions. (Cp.

Arist. Metaph. i. 4, 5.) It was as if a person had said that Socrates

is sitting here because he is made up of bones and muscles, 99

instead of telling the true reason—that he is here because the

Athenians have thought good to sentence him to death, and he has

thought good to await his sentence. Had his bones and muscles

been left by him to their own ideas of right, they would long ago

have taken themselves off. But surely there is a great confusion

of the cause and condition in all this. And this confusion also

leads people into all sorts of erroneous theories about the position

and motions of the earth. None of them know how much stronger

than any Atlas is the power of the best. But this ‘best’ is still

undiscovered; and in enquiring after the cause, we can only hope

to attain the second best.

Now there is a danger in the contemplation of the nature of things,

as there is a danger in looking at the sun during an eclipse, 100

unless the precaution is taken of looking only at the image reflected

in the water, or in a glass. (Cp. Laws x. 897 D; Rep. vii. 516 foll.)

‘I was afraid,’ says Socrates, ‘that I might injure the eye of the

soul. I thought that I had better return to the old and safe method

of ideas. Though I do not mean to say that he who contemplates

existence through the medium of ideas sees only through a glass

darkly, any more than he who contemplates actual effects.’

If the existence of ideas is granted to him, Socrates is of opinion

that he will then have no difficulty in proving the immortality of

the soul. He will only ask for a further admission:—that beauty

is the cause of the beautiful, greatness the cause of the great,

smallness of the small, and so on of other things. This is a safe 101

and simple answer, which escapes the contradictions of greater

and less (greater by reason of that which is smaller!), of addition

and subtraction, and the other difficulties of relation. These

subtleties he is for leaving to wiser heads than his own; he prefers

to test ideas by the consistency of their consequences, and, if

asked to give an account of them, goes back to some higher idea or

hypothesis which appears to him to be the best, until at last he

arrives at a resting-place. (Rep. vi. 510 foll.; Phil. 16 foll.)

[Sidenote: _Analysis 102-107._]

The doctrine of ideas, which has long ago received the assent of 102

the Socratic circle, is now affirmed by the Phliasian auditor to

command the assent of any man of sense. The narrative is continued;

Socrates is desirous of explaining how opposite ideas may

appear to co-exist but do not really co-exist in the same thing or

person. For example, Simmias may be said to have greatness

and also smallness, because he is greater than Socrates and less

than Phaedo. And yet Simmias is not really great and also small,

but only when compared to Phaedo and Socrates. I use the

illustration, says Socrates, because I want to show you not only

that ideal opposites exclude one another, but also the opposites in

us. I, for example, having the attribute of smallness remain small,

and cannot become great: the smallness which is in me drives out

greatness. 103

One of the company here remarked that this was inconsistent

with the old assertion that opposites generated opposites. But

that, replies Socrates, was affirmed, not of opposite ideas either in

us or in nature, but of opposition in the concrete—not of life and

death, but of individuals living and dying. When this objection

has been removed, Socrates proceeds: This doctrine of the mutual

exclusion of opposites is not only true of the opposites themselves,

but of things which are inseparable from them. For example,

cold and heat are opposed; and fire, which is inseparable from

heat, cannot co-exist with cold, or snow, which is inseparable

from cold, with heat. Again, the number three excludes the

number four, because three is an odd number and four is an even

number, and the odd is opposed to the even. Thus we are able to 104

proceed a step beyond ‘the safe and simple answer.’ We may

say, not only that the odd excludes the even, but that the number

three, which participates in oddness, excludes the even. And in 105

like manner, not only does life exclude death, but the soul, of

which life is the inseparable attribute, also excludes death. And

that of which life is the inseparable attribute is by the force of the

terms imperishable. If the odd principle were imperishable, then 106

the number three would not perish but remove, on the approach

of the even principle. But the immortal is imperishable; and

therefore the soul on the approach of death does not perish but

removes.

Thus all objections appear to be finally silenced. And now the 107

application has to be made: If the soul is immortal, ‘what manner

of persons ought we to be?’ having regard not only to time but to

eternity. For death is not the end of all, and the wicked is not

released from his evil by death; but every one carries with him

into the world below that which he is or has become, and that

only.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 107-112._]

For after death the soul is carried away to judgment, and when

she has received her punishment returns to earth in the course of

ages. The wise soul is conscious of her situation, and follows the 108

attendant angel who guides her through the windings of the world

below; but the impure soul wanders hither and thither without

companion or guide, and is carried at last to her own place, as the

pure soul is also carried away to hers. ‘In order that you may

understand this, I must first describe to you the nature and

conformation of the earth.’

Now the whole earth is a globe placed in the centre of the

heavens, and is maintained there by the perfection of balance. 109

That which we call the earth is only one of many small hollows,

wherein collect the mists and waters and the thick lower air; but

the true earth is above, and is in a finer and subtler element.

And if, like birds, we could fly to the surface of the air, in the

same manner that fishes come to the top of the sea, then we should

behold the true earth and the true heaven and the true stars. Our 110

earth is everywhere corrupted and corroded; and even the land,

which is fairer than the sea, for that is a mere chaos or waste of

water and mud and sand, has nothing to show in comparison of

the other world. But the heavenly earth is of divers colours,

sparkling with jewels brighter than gold and whiter than any snow,

having flowers and fruits innumerable. And the inhabitants 111

dwell some on the shore of the sea of air, others in ‘islets of the

blest,’ and they hold converse with the gods, and behold the sun,

moon and stars as they truly are, and their other blessedness is of

a piece with this.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 112-116._]

The hollows on the surface of the globe vary in size and shape

from that which we inhabit: but all are connected by passages

and perforations in the interior of the earth. And there is one

huge chasm or opening called Tartarus, into which streams of fire

and water and liquid mud are ever flowing; of these small portions

find their way to the surface and form seas and rivers and 112

volcanoes. There is a perpetual inhalation and exhalation of the

air rising and falling as the waters pass into the depths of the

earth and return again, in their course forming lakes and rivers,

but never descending below the centre of the earth; for on either

side the rivers flowing either way are stopped by a precipice.

These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal

ones, Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus

is the river which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite

direction, and after flowing under the earth through desert places,

at last reaches the Acherusian lake,—this is the river at which the 113

souls of the dead await their return to earth. Pyriphlegethon is a

stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the

depths of Tartarus. The fourth river, Cocytus, is that which is

called by the poets the Stygian river, and passes into and forms the

lake Styx, from the waters of which it gains new and strange

powers. This river, too, falls into Tartarus.

The dead are first of all judged according to their deeds, and

those who are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they

never come out. Those who have only committed venial sins are

first purified of them, and then rewarded for the good which they

have done. Those who have committed crimes, great indeed, but 114

not unpardonable, are thrust into Tartarus, but are cast forth at

the end of a year by way of Pyriphlegethon or Cocytus, and these

carry them as far as the Acherusian lake, where they call upon

their victims to let them come out of the rivers into the lake. And

if they prevail, then they are let out and their sufferings cease: if

not, they are borne unceasingly into Tartarus and back again,

until they at last obtain mercy. The pure souls also receive their

reward, and have their abode in the upper earth, and a select few

in still fairer ‘mansions.’

Socrates is not prepared to insist on the literal accuracy of this

description, but he is confident that something of the kind is true.

He who has sought after the pleasures of knowledge and rejected

the pleasures of the body, has reason to be of good hope at the

approach of death; whose voice is already speaking to him, and

who will one day be heard calling all men.

[Sidenote: _Analysis 117-118._]

The hour has come at which he must drink the poison, and not 115

much remains to be done. How shall they bury him? That is a

question which he refuses to entertain, for they are burying, not

him, but his dead body. His friends had once been sureties that 116

he would remain, and they shall now be sureties that he has run

away. Yet he would not die without the customary ceremonies of

washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of the poison? In 117

the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he utters in

the very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages. With

a sort of irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is 118

still unfulfilled, just as above (60 E) he desires before he

departs to compose a few verses in order to satisfy a scruple about

a dream—unless, indeed, we suppose him to mean, that he was now

restored to health, and made the customary offering to Asclepius

in token of his recovery.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]

1. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has sunk deep into the

heart of the human race; and men are apt to rebel against any examination

of the nature or grounds of their belief. They do not like to acknowledge

that this, as well as the other ‘eternal ideas’ of man, has a history

in time, which may be traced in Greek poetry or philosophy, and also in

the Hebrew Scriptures. They convert feeling into reasoning, and throw a

network of dialectics over that which is really a deeply-rooted instinct.

In the same temper which Socrates reproves in himself (91 B) they are

disposed to think that even fallacies will do no harm, for they will

die with them, and while they live they will gain by the delusion. And

when they consider the numberless bad arguments which have been pressed

into the service of theology, they say, like the companions of Socrates,

‘What argument can we ever trust again?’ But there is a better and higher

spirit to be gathered from the Phaedo, as well as from the other writings

of Plato, which says that first principles should be most constantly

reviewed (Phaedo 107 B, and Crat. 436), and that the highest subjects

demand of us the greatest accuracy (Rep. vi. 504 E); also that we must

not become misologists because arguments are apt to be deceivers.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

2. In former ages there was a customary rather than a reasoned belief in

the immortality of the soul. It was based on the authority of the Church,

on the necessity of such a belief to morality and the order of society,

on the evidence of an historical fact, and also on analogies and figures

of speech which filled up the void or gave an expression in words to a

cherished instinct. The mass of mankind went on their way busy with the

affairs of this life, hardly stopping to think about another. But in our

own day the question has been reopened, and it is doubtful whether the

belief which in the first ages of Christianity was the strongest motive

of action can survive the conflict with a scientific age in which the

rules of evidence are stricter and the mind has become more sensitive

to criticism. It has faded into the distance by a natural process as it

was removed further and further from the historical fact on which it has

been supposed to rest. Arguments derived from material things such as the

seed and the ear of corn or transitions in the life of animals from one

state of being to another (the chrysalis and the butterfly) are not ‘in

pari materia’ with arguments from the visible to the invisible, and are

therefore felt to be no longer applicable. The evidence to the historical

fact seems to be weaker than was once supposed: it is not consistent with

itself, and is based upon documents which are of unknown origin. The

immortality of man must be proved by other arguments than these if it

is again to become a living belief. We must ask ourselves afresh why we

still maintain it, and seek to discover a foundation for it in the nature

of God and in the first principles of morality.

3. At the outset of the discussion we may clear away a confusion. We

certainly do not mean by the immortality of the soul the immortality of

fame, which whether worth having or not can only be ascribed to a very

select class of the whole race of mankind, and even the interest in these

few is comparatively short-lived. To have been a benefactor to the world,

whether in a higher or a lower sphere of life and thought, is a great

thing: to have the reputation of being one, when men have passed out of

the sphere of earthly praise or blame, is hardly worthy of consideration.

The memory of a great man, so far from being immortal, is really limited

to his own generation:—so long as his friends or his disciples are alive,

so long as his books continue to be read, so long as his political or

military successes fill a page in the history of his country. The praises

which are bestowed upon him at his death hardly last longer than the

flowers which are strewed upon his coffin or the ‘immortelles’ which are

laid upon his tomb. Literature makes the most of its heroes, but the true

man is well aware that far from enjoying an immortality of fame, in a

generation or two, or even in a much shorter time, he will be forgotten

and the world will get on without him.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

4. Modern philosophy is perplexed at this whole question, which is

sometimes fairly given up and handed over to the realm of faith. The

perplexity should not be forgotten by us when we attempt to submit the

Phaedo of Plato to the requirements of logic. For what idea can we form

of the soul when separated from the body? Or how can the soul be united

with the body and still be independent? Is the soul related to the body

as the ideal to the real, or as the whole to the parts, or as the subject

to the object, or as the cause to the effect, or as the end to the means?

Shall we say with Aristotle, that the soul is the entelechy or form of

an organized living body? or with Plato, that she has a life of her own?

Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or that of the monad, the truer

expression? Is the soul related to the body as sight to the eye, or as

the boatman to his boat? (Arist. de Anim. ii. 1, 11, 12.) And in another

state of being is the soul to be conceived of as vanishing into infinity,

hardly possessing an existence which she can call her own, as in the

pantheistic system of Spinoza? or as an individual informing another

body and entering into new relations, but retaining her own character?

(Cp. Gorgias, 524 B, C.) Or is the opposition of soul and body a mere

illusion, and the true self neither soul nor body, but the union of the

two in the ‘I’ which is above them? And is death the assertion of this

individuality in the higher nature, and the falling away into nothingness

of the lower? Or are we vainly attempting to pass the boundaries of human

thought? The body and the soul seem to be inseparable, not only in fact,

but in our conceptions of them; and any philosophy which too closely

unites them, or too widely separates them, either in this life or in

another, disturbs the balance of human nature. No thinker has perfectly

adjusted them, or been entirely consistent with himself in describing

their relation to one another. Nor can we wonder that Plato in the

infancy of human thought should have confused mythology and philosophy,

or have mistaken verbal arguments for real ones.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

5. Again, believing in the immortality of the soul, we must still ask the

question of Socrates, ‘What is that which we suppose to be immortal?’

Is it the personal and individual element in us, or the spiritual and

universal? Is it the principle of knowledge or of goodness, or the union

of the two? Is it the mere force of life which is determined to be, or

the consciousness of self which cannot be got rid of, or the fire of

genius which refuses to be extinguished? Or is there a hidden being

which is allied to the Author of all existence, who is because he is

perfect, and to whom our ideas of perfection give us a title to belong?

Whatever answer is given by us to these questions, there still remains

the necessity of allowing the permanence of evil, if not for ever, at

any rate for a time, in order that the wicked ‘may not have too good a

bargain.’ For the annihilation of evil at death, or the eternal duration

of it, seem to involve equal difficulties in the moral government of

the universe. Sometimes we are led by our feelings, rather than by our

reason, to think of the good and wise only as existing in another life.

Why should the mean, the weak, the idiot, the infant, the herd of men

who have never in any proper sense the use of reason, reappear with

blinking eyes in the light of another world? But our second thought is

that the hope of humanity is a common one, and that all or none will be

partakers of immortality. Reason does not allow us to suppose that we

have any greater claims than others, and experience may often reveal

to us unexpected flashes of the higher nature in those whom we had

despised. Why should the wicked suffer any more than ourselves? had we

been placed in their circumstances should we have been any better than

they? The worst of men are objects of pity rather than of anger to the

philanthropist; must they not be equally such to divine benevolence?

Even more than the good they have need of another life; not that they

may be punished, but that they may be educated. These are a few of the

reflections which arise in our minds when we attempt to assign any form

to our conceptions of a future state.

There are some other questions which are disturbing to us because we

have no answer to them. What is to become of the animals in a future

state? Have we not seen dogs more faithful and intelligent than men,

and men who are more stupid and brutal than any animals? Does their

life cease at death, or is there some ‘better thing reserved’ also for

them? They may be said to have a shadow or imitation of morality, and

imperfect moral claims upon the benevolence of man and upon the justice

of God. We cannot think of the least or lowest of them, the insect, the

bird, the inhabitants of the sea or the desert, as having any place

in a future world, and if not all, why should those who are specially

attached to man be deemed worthy of any exceptional privilege? When we

reason about such a subject, almost at once we degenerate into nonsense.

It is a passing thought which has no real hold on the mind. We may argue

for the existence of animals in a future state from the attributes of

God, or from texts of Scripture (‘Are not two sparrows sold for one

farthing?’ &c.), but the truth is that we are only filling up the void

of another world with our own fancies. Again, we often talk about the

origin of evil, that great bugbear of theologians, by which they frighten

us into believing any superstition. What answer can be made to the old

commonplace, ‘Is not God the author of evil, if he knowingly permitted,

but could have prevented it?’ Even if we assume that the inequalities of

this life are rectified by some transposition of human beings in another,

still the existence of the very least evil if it could have been avoided,

seems to be at variance with the love and justice of God. And so we

arrive at the conclusion that we are carrying logic too far, and that

the attempt to frame the world according to a rule of divine perfection

is opposed to experience and had better be given up. The case of the

animals is our own. We must admit that the Divine Being, although perfect

himself, has placed us in a state of life in which we may work together

with him for good, but we are very far from having attained to it.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

6. Again, ideas must be given through something; and we are always

prone to argue about the soul from analogies of outward things which

may serve to embody our thoughts, but are also partly delusive. For we

cannot reason from the natural to the spiritual, or from the outward

to the inward. The progress of physiological science, without bringing

us nearer to the great secret, has tended to remove some erroneous

notions respecting the relations of body and mind, and in this we have

the advantage of the ancients. But no one imagines that any seed of

immortality is to be discerned in our mortal frames. Most people have

been content to rest their belief in another life on the agreement of

the more enlightened part of mankind, and on the inseparable connection

of such a doctrine with the existence of a God—also in a less degree on

the impossibility of doubting about the continued existence of those whom

we love and reverence in this world. And after all has been said, the

figure, the analogy, the argument, are felt to be only approximations in

different forms to an expression of the common sentiment of the human

heart. That we shall live again is far more certain than that we shall

take any particular form of life.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

7. When we speak of the immortality of the soul, we must ask further

what we mean by the word immortality. For of the duration of a living

being in countless ages we can form no conception; far less than a three

years’ old child of the whole of life. The naked eye might as well try to

see the furthest star in the infinity of heaven. Whether time and space

really exist when we take away the limits of them may be doubted; at any

rate the thought of them when unlimited is so overwhelming to us as to

lose all distinctness. Philosophers have spoken of them as forms of the

human mind, but what is the mind without them? As then infinite time,

or an existence out of time, which are the only possible explanations

of eternal duration, are equally inconceivable to us, let us substitute

for them a hundred or a thousand years after death, and ask not what

will be our employment in eternity, but what will happen to us in that

definite portion of time; or what is now happening to those who passed

out of life a hundred or a thousand years ago. Do we imagine that the

wicked are suffering torments, or that the good are singing the praises

of God, during a period longer than that of a whole life, or of ten

lives of men? Is the suffering physical or mental? And does the worship

of God consist only of praise, or of many forms of service? Who are the

wicked, and who are the good, whom we venture to divide by a hard and

fast line; and in which of the two classes should we place ourselves

and our friends? May we not suspect that we are making differences of

kind, because we are unable to imagine differences of degree?—putting

the whole human race into heaven or hell for the greater convenience of

logical division? Are we not at the same time describing them both in

superlatives, only that we may satisfy the demands of rhetoric? What

is that pain which does not become deadened after a thousand years? or

what is the nature of that pleasure or happiness which never wearies by

monotony? Earthly pleasures and pains are short in proportion as they

are keen; of any others which are both intense and lasting we have no

experience, and can form no idea. The words or figures of speech which we

use are not consistent with themselves. For are we not imagining Heaven

under the similitude of a church, and Hell as a prison, or perhaps a

madhouse or chamber of horrors? And yet to beings constituted as we are,

the monotony of singing psalms would be as great an infliction as the

pains of hell, and might be even pleasantly interrupted by them. Where

are the actions worthy of rewards greater than those which are conferred

on the greatest benefactors of mankind? And where are the crimes which

according to Plato’s merciful reckoning,—more merciful, at any rate,

than the eternal damnation of so-called Christian teachers,—for every

ten years in this life deserve a hundred of punishment in the life to

come? We should be ready to die of pity if we could see the least of the

sufferings which the writers of Infernos and Purgatorios have attributed

to the damned. Yet these joys and terrors seem hardly to exercise an

appreciable influence over the lives of men. The wicked man when old, is

not, as Plato supposes (Rep. i. 330 D, E), more agitated by the terrors

of another world when he is nearer to them, nor the good in an ecstasy at

the joys of which he is soon to be the partaker. Age numbs the sense of

both worlds; and the habit of life is strongest in death. Even the dying

mother is dreaming of her lost children as they were forty or fifty years

before, ‘pattering over the boards,’ not of reunion with them in another

state of being. Most persons when the last hour comes are resigned to the

order of nature and the will of God. They are not thinking of Dante’s

Inferno or Paradiso, or of the Pilgrim’s Progress. Heaven and hell are

not realities to them, but words or ideas; the outward symbols of some

great mystery, they hardly know what. Many noble poems and pictures have

been suggested by the traditional representations of them, which have

been fixed in forms of art and can no longer be altered. Many sermons

have been filled with descriptions of celestial or infernal mansions. But

hardly even in childhood did the thought of heaven and hell supply the

motives of our actions, or at any time seriously affect the substance of

our belief.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

8. Another life must be described, if at all, in forms of thought and not

of sense. To draw pictures of heaven and hell, whether in the language

of Scripture or any other, adds nothing to our real knowledge, but may

perhaps disguise our ignorance. The truest conception which we can form

of a future life is a state of progress or education—a progress from evil

to good, from ignorance to knowledge. To this we are led by the analogy

of the present life, in which we see different races and nations of

men, and different men and women of the same nation, in various states

or stages of cultivation; some more and some less developed, and all of

them capable of improvement under favourable circumstances. There are

punishments too of children when they are growing up inflicted by their

parents, of elder offenders which are imposed by the law of the land, of

all men at all times of life, which are attached by the laws of nature

to the performance of certain actions. All these punishments are really

educational; that is to say, they are not intended to retaliate on the

offender, but to teach him a lesson. Also there is an element of chance

in them, which is another name for our ignorance of the laws of nature.

There is evil too inseparable from good (cp. Lysis 220 E); not always

punished here, as good is not always rewarded. It is capable of being

indefinitely diminished; and as knowledge increases, the element of

chance may more and more disappear.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

For we do not argue merely from the analogy of the present state of this

world to another, but from the analogy of a probable future to which we

are tending. The greatest changes of which we have had experience as yet

are due to our increasing knowledge of history and of nature. They have

been produced by a few minds appearing in three or four favoured nations,

in a comparatively short period of time. May we be allowed to imagine

the minds of men everywhere working together during many ages for the

completion of our knowledge? May not the science of physiology transform

the world? Again, the majority of mankind have really experienced some

moral improvement; almost every one feels that he has tendencies to good,

and is capable of becoming better. And these germs of good are often

found to be developed by new circumstances, like stunted trees when

transplanted to a better soil. The differences between the savage and the

civilized man, or between the civilized man in old and new countries, may

be indefinitely increased. The first difference is the effect of a few

thousand, the second of a few hundred years. We congratulate ourselves

that slavery has become industry; that law and constitutional government

have superseded despotism and violence; that an ethical religion has

taken the place of Fetichism. There may yet come a time when the many may

be as well off as the few; when no one will be weighed down by excessive

toil; when the necessity of providing for the body will not interfere

with mental improvement; when the physical frame may be strengthened and

developed; and the religion of all men may become a reasonable service.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

Nothing therefore, either in the present state of man or in the

tendencies of the future, as far as we can entertain conjecture of

them, would lead us to suppose that God governs us vindictively in this

world, and therefore we have no reason to infer that he will govern us

vindictively in another. The true argument from analogy is not, ‘This

life is a mixed state of justice and injustice, of great waste, of

sudden casualties, of disproportionate punishments, and therefore the

like inconsistencies, irregularities, injustices are to be expected

in another;’ but ‘This life is subject to law, and is in a state of

progress, and therefore law and progress may be believed to be the

governing principles of another.’ All the analogies of this world would

be against unmeaning punishments inflicted a hundred or a thousand

years after an offence had been committed. Suffering there might be as

a part of education, but not hopeless or protracted; as there might be

a retrogression of individuals or of bodies of men, yet not such as to

interfere with a plan for the improvement of the whole (cp. Laws, x. 903).

9. But some one will say: That we cannot reason from the seen to the

unseen, and that we are creating another world after the image of this,

just as men in former ages have created gods in their own likeness. And

we, like the companions of Socrates, may feel discouraged at hearing

our favourite ‘argument from analogy’ thus summarily disposed of. Like

himself, too, we may adduce other arguments in which he seems to have

anticipated us, though he expresses them in different language. For we

feel that the soul partakes of the ideal and invisible; and can never

fall into the error of confusing the external circumstances of man with

his higher self; or his origin with his nature. It is as repugnant to us

as it was to him to imagine that our moral ideas are to be attributed

only to cerebral forces. The value of a human soul, like the value of a

man’s life to himself, is inestimable, and cannot be reckoned in earthly

or material things. The human being alone has the consciousness of truth

and justice and love, which is the consciousness of God. And the soul

becoming more conscious of these, becomes more conscious of her own

immortality.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

10. The last ground of our belief in immortality, and the strongest,

is the perfection of the divine nature. The mere fact of the existence

of God does not tend to show the continued existence of man. An evil

God or an indifferent God might have had the power, but not the will,

to preserve us. He might have regarded us as fitted to minister to

his service by a succession of existences,—like the animals, without

attributing to each soul an incomparable value. But if he is perfect,

he must will that all rational beings should partake of that perfection

which he himself is. In the words of the Timaeus, he is good, and

therefore he desires that all other things should be as like himself as

possible. And the manner in which he accomplishes this is by permitting

evil, or rather degrees of good, which are otherwise called evil. For all

progress is good relatively to the past, and yet may be comparatively

evil when regarded in the light of the future. Good and evil are relative

terms, and degrees of evil are merely the negative aspect of degrees

of good. Of the absolute goodness of any finite nature we can form no

conception; we are all of us in process of transition from one degree

of good or evil to another. The difficulties which are urged about the

origin or existence of evil are mere dialectical puzzles, standing in

the same relation to Christian philosophy as the puzzles of the Cynics

and Megarians to the philosophy of Plato. They arise out of the tendency

of the human mind to regard good and evil both as relative and absolute;

just as the riddles about motion are to be explained by the double

conception of space or matter, which the human mind has the power of

regarding either as continuous or discrete.

In speaking of divine perfection, we mean to say that God is just and

true and loving, the author of order and not of disorder, of good and

not of evil. Or rather, that he is justice, that he is truth, that he is

love, that he is order, that he is the very progress of which we were

speaking; and that wherever these qualities are present, whether in the

human soul or in the order of nature, there is God. We might still see

him everywhere, if we had not been mistakenly seeking for him apart from

us, instead of in us; away from the laws of nature, instead of in them.

And we become united to him not by mystical absorption, but by partaking,

whether consciously or unconsciously, of that truth and justice and love

which he himself is.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

Thus the belief in the immortality of the soul rests at last on the

belief in God. If there is a good and wise God, then there is a progress

of mankind towards perfection; and if there is no progress of men towards

perfection, then there is no good and wise God. We cannot suppose that

the moral government of God of which we see the beginnings in the world

and in ourselves will cease when we pass out of life.

11. Considering the ‘feebleness of the human faculties and the

uncertainty of the subject,’ we are inclined to believe that the fewer

our words the better. At the approach of death there is not much said;

good men are too honest to go out of the world professing more than they

know. There is perhaps no important subject about which, at any time,

even religious people speak so little to one another. In the fulness of

life the thought of death is mostly awakened by the sight or recollection

of the death of others rather than by the prospect of our own. We must

also acknowledge that there are degrees of the belief in immortality, and

many forms in which it presents itself to the mind. Some persons will say

no more than that they trust in God, and that they leave all to Him. It

is a great part of true religion not to pretend to know more than we do.

Others when they quit this world are comforted with the hope ‘That they

will see and know their friends in heaven.’ But it is better to leave

them in the hands of God and to be assured that ‘no evil shall touch

them.’ There are others again to whom the belief in a divine personality

has ceased to have any longer a meaning; yet they are satisfied that the

end of all is not here, but that something still remains to us, ‘and

some better thing for the good than for the evil.’ They are persuaded,

in spite of their theological nihilism, that the ideas of justice and

truth and holiness and love are realities. They cherish an enthusiastic

devotion to the first principles of morality. Through these they see, or

seem to see, darkly, and in a figure, that the soul is immortal.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

But besides differences of theological opinion which must ever prevail

about things unseen, the hope of immortality is weaker or stronger in men

at one time of life than at another; it even varies from day to day. It

comes and goes; the mind, like the sky, is apt to be overclouded. Other

generations of men may have sometimes lived under an ‘eclipse of faith,’

to us the total disappearance of it might be compared to the ‘sun falling

from heaven.’ And we may sometimes have to begin again and acquire the

belief for ourselves; or to win it back again when it is lost. It is

really weakest in the hour of death. For Nature, like a kind mother or

nurse, lays us to sleep without frightening us; physicians, who are the

witnesses of such scenes, say that under ordinary circumstances there is

no fear of the future. Often, as Plato tells us, death is accompanied

‘with pleasure.’ (Tim. 81 D.) When the end is still uncertain, the cry

of many a one has been, ‘Pray, that I may be taken.’ The last thoughts

even of the best men depend chiefly on the accidents of their bodily

state. Pain soon overpowers the desire of life; old age, like the child,

is laid to sleep almost in a moment. The long experience of life will

often destroy the interest which mankind have in it. So various are the

feelings with which different persons draw near to death; and still more

various the forms in which imagination clothes it. For this alternation

of feeling cp. the Old Testament,—Psalm vi. 5, xvi. 10, xc.; Isaiah

xxxviii. 18; Eccles. viii. 8 ff., iii. 19, iv. 2.

12. When we think of God and of man in his relation to God; of the

imperfection of our present state and yet of the progress which is

observable in the history of the world and of the human mind; of the

depth and power of our moral ideas which seem to partake of the very

nature of God Himself; when we consider the contrast between the physical

laws to which we are subject and the higher law which raises us above

them and is yet a part of them; when we reflect on our capacity of

becoming the ‘spectators of all time and all existence,’ and of framing

in our own minds the ideal of a perfect Being; when we see how the human

mind in all the higher religions of the world, including Buddhism,

notwithstanding some aberrations, has tended towards such a belief—we

have reason to think that our destiny is different from that of animals;

and though we cannot altogether shut out the childish fear that the soul

upon leaving the body may ‘vanish into thin air,’ we have still, so far

as the nature of the subject admits, a hope of immortality with which we

comfort ourselves on sufficient grounds. The denial of the belief takes

the heart out of human life; it lowers men to the level of the material.

As Goethe also says, ‘He is dead even in this world who has no belief in

another.’

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

13. It is well also that we should sometimes think of the forms of

thought under which the idea of immortality is most naturally presented

to us. It is clear that to our minds the risen soul can no longer be

described, as in a picture, by the symbol of a creature half-bird,

half-human, nor in any other form of sense. The multitude of angels, as

in Milton, singing the Almighty’s praises, are a noble image, and may

furnish a theme for the poet or the painter, but they are no longer an

adequate expression of the kingdom of God which is within us. Neither is

there any mansion, in this world or another, in which the departed can

be imagined to dwell and carry on their occupations. When this earthly

tabernacle is dissolved, no other habitation or building can take them

in: it is in the language of ideas only that we speak of them.

First of all there is the thought of rest and freedom from pain;

they have gone home, as the common saying is, and the cares of this

world touch them no more. Secondly, we may imagine them as they were

at their best and brightest, humbly fulfilling their daily round of

duties—selfless, childlike, unaffected by the world; when the eye was

single and the whole body seemed to be full of light; when the mind was

clear and saw into the purposes of God. Thirdly, we may think of them

as possessed by a great love of God and man, working out His will at a

further stage in the heavenly pilgrimage. And yet we acknowledge that

these are the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard and therefore

it hath not entered into the heart of man in any sensible manner to

conceive them. Fourthly, there may have been some moments in our own

lives when we have risen above ourselves, or been conscious of our truer

selves, in which the will of God has superseded our wills, and we have

entered into communion with Him, and been partakers for a brief season

of the Divine truth and love, in which like Christ we have been inspired

to utter the prayer, ‘I in them, and thou in me, that we may be all made

perfect in one.’ These precious moments, if we have ever known them, are

the nearest approach which we can make to the idea of immortality.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

14. Returning now to the earlier stage of human thought which is

represented by the writings of Plato, we find that many of the same

questions have already arisen: there is the same tendency to materialism;

the same inconsistency in the application of the idea of mind; the same

doubt whether the soul is to be regarded as a cause or as an effect;

the same falling back on moral convictions. In the Phaedo the soul is

conscious of her divine nature, and the separation from the body which

has been commenced in this life is perfected in another. Beginning in

mystery, Socrates, in the intermediate part of the Dialogue, attempts to

bring the doctrine of a future life into connection with his theory of

knowledge. In proportion as he succeeds in this, the individual seems

to disappear in a more general notion of the soul; the contemplation

of ideas ‘under the form of eternity’ takes the place of past and

future states of existence. His language may be compared to that of

some modern philosophers, who speak of eternity, not in the sense of

perpetual duration of time, but as an ever-present quality of the soul.

Yet at the conclusion of the Dialogue, having ‘arrived at the end of the

intellectual world’ (Rep. vii. 532 B), he replaces the veil of mythology,

and describes the soul and her attendant genius in the language of the

mysteries or of a disciple of Zoroaster. Nor can we fairly demand of

Plato a consistency which is wanting among ourselves, who acknowledge

that another world is beyond the range of human thought, and yet are

always seeking to represent the mansions of heaven or hell in the colours

of the painter, or in the descriptions of the poet or rhetorician.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

15. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was not new to the Greeks

in the age of Socrates, but, like the unity of God, had a foundation in

the popular belief. The old Homeric notion of a gibbering ghost flitting

away to Hades; or of a few illustrious heroes enjoying the isles of the

blest; or of an existence divided between the two; or the Hesiodic, of

righteous spirits, who become guardian angels,—had given place in the

mysteries and the Orphic poets to representations, partly fanciful, of a

future state of rewards and punishments. (Laws ix. 870.) The reticence

of the Greeks on public occasions and in some part of their literature

respecting this ‘underground’ religion, is not to be taken as a measure

of the diffusion of such beliefs. If Pericles in the funeral oration

is silent on the consolations of immortality, the poet Pindar and the

tragedians on the other hand constantly assume the continued existence of

the dead in an upper or under world. Darius and Laius are still alive;

Antigone will be dear to her brethren after death; the way to the palace

of Cronos is found by those who ‘have thrice departed from evil.’ The

tragedy of the Greeks is not ‘rounded’ by this life, but is deeply set

in decrees of fate and mysterious workings of powers beneath the earth.

In the caricature of Aristophanes there is also a witness to the common

sentiment. The Ionian and Pythagorean philosophies arose, and some new

elements were added to the popular belief. The individual must find an

expression as well as the world. Either the soul was supposed to exist in

the form of a magnet, or of a particle of fire, or of light, or air, or

water; or of a number or of a harmony of number; or to be or have, like

the stars, a principle of motion (Arist. de Anim. i. 1, 2, 3). At length

Anaxagoras, hardly distinguishing between life and mind, or between mind

human and divine, attained the pure abstraction; and this, like the other

abstractions of Greek philosophy, sank deep into the human intelligence.

The opposition of the intelligible and the sensible, and of God to the

world, supplied an analogy which assisted in the separation of soul and

body. If ideas were separable from phenomena, mind was also separable

from matter; if the ideas were eternal, the mind that conceived them was

eternal too. As the unity of God was more distinctly acknowledged, the

conception of the human soul became more developed. The succession, or

alternation of life and death, had occurred to Heracleitus. The Eleatic

Parmenides had stumbled upon the modern thesis, that ‘thought and being

are the same.’ The Eastern belief in transmigration defined the sense of

individuality; and some, like Empedocles, fancied that the blood which

they had shed in another state of being was crying against them, and

that for thirty thousand years they were to be ‘fugitives and vagabonds

upon the earth.’ The desire of recognizing a lost mother or love or

friend in the world below (Phaedo 68) was a natural feeling which, in

that age as well as in every other, has given distinctness to the hope

of immortality. Nor were ethical considerations wanting, partly derived

from the necessity of punishing the greater sort of criminals, whom no

avenging power of this world could reach. The voice of conscience, too,

was heard reminding the good man that he was not altogether innocent.

(Rep. i. 330.) To these indistinct longings and fears an expression was

given in the mysteries and Orphic poets: a ‘heap of books’ (Rep. ii. 364

E), passing under the names of Musaeus and Orpheus in Plato’s time, were

filled with notions of an under-world.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

16. Yet after all the belief in the individuality of the soul after

death had but a feeble hold on the Greek mind. Like the personality of

God, the personality of man in a future state was not inseparably bound

up with the reality of his existence. For the distinction between the

personal and impersonal, and also between the divine and human, was

far less marked to the Greek than to ourselves. And as Plato readily

passes from the notion of the good to that of God, he also passes almost

imperceptibly to himself and his reader from the future life of the

individual soul to the eternal being of the absolute soul. There has

been a clearer statement and a clearer denial of the belief in modern

times than is found in early Greek philosophy, and hence the comparative

silence on the whole subject which is often remarked in ancient writers,

and particularly in Aristotle. For Plato and Aristotle are not further

removed in their teaching about the immortality of the soul than they are

in their theory of knowledge.

17. Living in an age when logic was beginning to mould human thought,

Plato naturally cast his belief in immortality into a logical form. And

when we consider how much the doctrine of ideas was also one of words,

it is not surprising that he should have fallen into verbal fallacies:

early logic is always mistaking the truth of the form for the truth

of the matter. It is easy to see that the alternation of opposites is

not the same as the generation of them out of each other; and that the

generation of them out of each other, which is the first argument in

the Phaedo, is at variance with their mutual exclusion of each other,

whether in themselves or in us, which is the last. For even if we admit

the distinction which he draws at p. 103, between the opposites and the

things which have the opposites, still individuals fall under the latter

class; and we have to pass out of the region of human hopes and fears to

a conception of an abstract soul which is the impersonation of the ideas.

Such a conception, which in Plato himself is but half expressed, is

unmeaning to us, and relative only to a particular stage in the history

of thought. The doctrine of reminiscence is also a fragment of a former

world, which has no place in the philosophy of modern times. But Plato

had the wonders of psychology just opening to him, and he had not the

explanation of them which is supplied by the analysis of language and

the history of the human mind. The question, ‘Whence come our abstract

ideas?’ he could only answer by an imaginary hypothesis. Nor is it

difficult to see that his crowning argument is purely verbal, and is but

the expression of an instinctive confidence put into a logical form:—‘The

soul is immortal because it contains a principle of imperishableness.’

Nor does he himself seem at all to be aware that nothing is added to

human knowledge by his ‘safe and simple answer,’ that beauty is the cause

of the beautiful; and that he is merely reasserting the Eleatic being

‘divided by the Pythagorean numbers,’ against the Heracleitean doctrine

of perpetual generation. The answer to the ‘very serious question’ of

generation and destruction is really the denial of them. For this he

would substitute, as in the Republic, a system of ideas, tested, not

by experience, but by their consequences, and not explained by actual

causes, but by a higher, that is, a more general notion. Consistency with

themselves is the only test which is to be applied to them. (Rep. vi. 510

foll., and Phaedo 101 foll.)

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

18. To deal fairly with such arguments, they should be translated as

far as possible into their modern equivalents. ‘If the ideas of men are

eternal, their souls are eternal, and if not the ideas, then not the

souls.’ Such an argument stands nearly in the same relation to Plato and

his age, as the argument from the existence of God to immortality among

ourselves. ‘If God exists, then the soul exists after death; and if there

is no God, there is no existence of the soul after death.’ For the ideas

are to his mind the reality, the truth, the principle of permanence, as

well as of intelligence and order in the world. When Simmias and Cebes

say that they are more strongly persuaded of the existence of ideas than

they are of the immortality of the soul, they represent fairly enough

the order of thought in Greek philosophy. And we might say in the same

way that we are more certain of the existence of God than we are of the

immortality of the soul, and are led by the belief in the one to a belief

in the other. The parallel, as Socrates would say, is not perfect, but

agrees in as far as the mind in either case is regarded as dependent on

something above and beyond herself. The analogy may even be pressed a

step further: ‘We are more certain of our ideas of truth and right than

we are of the existence of God, and are led on in the order of thought

from one to the other.’ Or more correctly: ‘The existence of right and

truth is the existence of God, and can never for a moment be separated

from Him.’

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

19. The main argument of the Phaedo is derived from the existence of

eternal ideas of which the soul is a partaker; the other argument of the

alternation of opposites is replaced by this. And there have not been

wanting philosophers of the idealist school who have imagined that the

doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a theory of knowledge, and

that in what has preceded Plato is accommodating himself to the popular

belief. Such a view can only be elicited from the Phaedo by what may be

termed the transcendental method of interpretation, and is obviously

inconsistent with the Gorgias and the Republic. Those who maintain it are

immediately compelled to renounce the shadow which they have grasped,

as a play of words only. But the truth is, that Plato in his argument

for the immortality of the soul has collected many elements of proof

or persuasion, ethical and mythological as well as dialectical, which

are not easily to be reconciled with one another; and he is as much in

earnest about his doctrine of retribution, which is repeated in all his

more ethical writings, as about his theory of knowledge. And while we

may fairly translate the dialectical into the language of Hegel, and the

religious and mythological into the language of Dante or Bunyan, the

ethical speaks to us still in the same voice, and appeals to a common

feeling.

20. Two arguments of this ethical character occur in the Phaedo. The

first may be described as the aspiration of the soul after another state

of being. Like the Oriental or Christian mystic, the philosopher is

seeking to withdraw from impurities of sense, to leave the world and the

things of the world, and to find his higher self. Plato recognizes in

these aspirations the foretaste of immortality; as Butler and Addison in

modern times have argued, the one from the moral tendencies of mankind,

the other from the progress of the soul towards perfection. In using

this argument Plato has certainly confused the soul which has left the

body, with the soul of the good and wise. (Cp. Rep. x. 611 C.) Such a

confusion was natural, and arose partly out of the antithesis of soul

and body. The soul in her own essence, and the soul ‘clothed upon’ with

virtues and graces, were easily interchanged with one another, because on

a subject which passes expression the distinctions of language can hardly

be maintained.

[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]

21. The other ethical proof of the immortality of the soul is derived

from the necessity of retribution. The wicked would be too well off

if their evil deeds came to an end. It is not to be supposed that an

Ardiaeus, an Archelaus, an Ismenias could ever have suffered the penalty

of their crimes in this world. The manner in which this retribution is

accomplished Plato represents under the figures of mythology. Doubtless

he felt that it was easier to improve than to invent, and that in

religion especially the traditional form was required in order to give

verisimilitude to the myth. The myth too is far more probable to that age

than to ours, and may fairly be regarded as ‘one guess among many’ about

the nature of the earth, which he cleverly supports by the indications of

geology. Not that he insists on the absolute truth of his own particular

notions: ‘no man of sense will be confident in such matters; but he will

be confident that something of the kind is true’ (114 D). As in other

passages (Gorg. 527 A, Tim. 29 D; cp. Crito, 107 B), he wins belief for

his fictions by the moderation of his statements; he does not, like Dante

or Swedenborg, allow himself to be deceived by his own creations.

* * * * *

The Dialogue must be read in the light of the situation. And first of

all we are struck by the calmness of the scene. Like the spectators at

the time, we cannot pity Socrates; his mien and his language are so

noble and fearless. He is the same that he ever was, but milder and

gentler, and he has in no degree lost his interest in dialectics; he will

not forego the delight of an argument in compliance with the jailer’s

intimation that he should not heat himself with talking. At such a time

he naturally expresses the hope of his life, that he has been a true

mystic and not a mere routineer or wand-bearer: and he refers to passages

of his personal history. To his old enemies the Comic poets, and to the

proceedings on the trial, he alludes playfully; but he vividly remembers

the disappointment which he felt in reading the books of Anaxagoras.

The return of Xanthippè and his children indicates that the philosopher

is not ‘made of oak or rock.’ Some other traits of his character may be

noted; for example, the courteous manner in which he inclines his head to

the last objector, or the ironical touch, ‘Me already, as the tragic poet

would say, the voice of fate calls;’ or the depreciation of the arguments

with which ‘he comforted himself and them;’ or his fear of ‘misology;’ or

his references to Homer; or the playful smile with which he ‘talks like

a book’ about greater and less; or the allusion to the possibility of

finding another teacher among barbarous races (cp. Polit. 262 D); or the

mysterious reference to another science (mathematics?) of generation and

destruction for which he is vainly feeling. There is no change in him;

only now he is invested with a sort of sacred character, as the prophet

or priest of Apollo the God of the festival, in whose honour he first of

all composes a hymn, and then like the swan pours forth his dying lay.

Perhaps the extreme elevation of Socrates above his own situation, and

the ordinary interests of life (compare his _jeu d’esprit_ about his

burial, in which for a moment he puts on the ‘Silenus mask’), create in

the mind of the reader an impression stronger than could be derived from

arguments that such a one has in him ‘a principle which does not admit of

death.’

* * * * *

[Sidenote: _Socrates and his friends._]

The other persons of the Dialogue may be considered under two heads: (1)

private friends; (2) the respondents in the argument.

First there is Crito, who has been already introduced to us in the

Euthydemus and the Crito; he is the equal in years of Socrates, and

stands in quite a different relation to him from his younger disciples.

He is a man of the world who is rich and prosperous (cp. the jest in the

Euthydemus, 304 C), the best friend of Socrates, who wants to know his

commands, in whose presence he talks to his family, and who performs

the last duty of closing his eyes. It is observable too that, as in the

Euthydemus, Crito shows no aptitude for philosophical discussions. Nor

among the friends of Socrates must the jailer be forgotten, who seems

to have been introduced by Plato in order to show the impression made

by the extraordinary man on the common. The gentle nature of the man

is indicated by his weeping at the announcement of his errand and then

turning away, and also by the words of Socrates to his disciples: ‘How

charming the man is! since I have been in prison he has been always

coming to me, and is as good as could be to me.’ We are reminded too that

he has retained this gentle nature amid scenes of death and violence by

the contrasts which he draws between the behaviour of Socrates and of

others when about to die.

[Sidenote: _Phaedo: Simmias: Cebes._]

Another person who takes no part in the philosophical discussion is the

excitable Apollodorus, the same who, in the Symposium, of which he is the

narrator, is called ‘the madman,’ and who testifies his grief by the most

violent emotions. Phaedo is also present, the ‘beloved disciple’ as he

may be termed, who is described, if not ‘leaning on his bosom,’ as seated

next to Socrates, who is playing with his hair. He too, like Apollodorus,

takes no part in the discussion, but he loves above all things to hear

and speak of Socrates after his death. The calmness of his behaviour,

veiling his face when he can no longer restrain his tears, contrasts

with the passionate outcries of the other. At a particular point the

argument is described as falling before the attack of Simmias. A sort of

despair is introduced in the minds of the company. The effect of this is

heightened by the description of Phaedo, who has been the eye-witness

of the scene, and by the sympathy of his Phliasian auditors who are

beginning to think ‘that they too can never trust an argument again.’ And

the intense interest of the company is communicated not only to the first

auditors, but to us who in a distant country read the narrative of their

emotions after more than two thousand years have passed away.

The two principal interlocutors are Simmias and Cebes, the disciples of

Philolaus the Pythagorean philosopher of Thebes. Simmias is described

in the Phaedrus (242 B) as fonder of an argument than any man living;

and Cebes, although finally persuaded by Socrates, is said to be the

most incredulous of human beings. It is Cebes who at the commencement

of the Dialogue asks why ‘suicide is held to be unlawful,’ and who

first supplies the doctrine of recollection in confirmation of the

pre-existence of the soul. It is Cebes who urges that the pre-existence

does not necessarily involve the future existence of the soul, as is

shown by the illustration of the weaver and his coat. Simmias, on the

other hand, raises the question about harmony and the lyre, which is

naturally put into the mouth of a Pythagorean disciple. It is Simmias,

too, who first remarks on the uncertainty of human knowledge, and only at

last concedes to the argument such a qualified approval as is consistent

with the feebleness of the human faculties. Cebes is the deeper and more

consecutive thinker, Simmias more superficial and rhetorical; they are

distinguished in much the same manner as Adeimantus and Glaucon in the

Republic.

[Sidenote: _Place of the Dialogue in the series._]

Other persons, Menexenus, Ctesippus, Lysis, are old friends; Evenus

has been already satirized in the Apology; Aeschines and Epigenes

were present at the trial; Euclid and Terpsion will reappear in the

Introduction to the Theaetetus, Hermogenes has already appeared in

the Cratylus. No inference can fairly be drawn from the absence of

Aristippus, nor from the omission of Xenophon, who at the time of

Socrates’ death was in Asia. The mention of Plato’s own absence seems

like an expression of sorrow, and may, perhaps, be an indication that the

report of the conversation is not to be taken literally.

The place of the Dialogue in the series is doubtful. The doctrine of

ideas is certainly carried beyond the Socratic point of view; in no other

of the writings of Plato is the theory of them so completely developed.

Whether the belief in immortality can be attributed to Socrates or not is

uncertain; the silence of the Memorabilia, and of the earlier Dialogues

of Plato, is an argument to the contrary. Yet in the Cyropaedia Xenophon

(viii. 7, 19 foll.) has put language into the mouth of the dying Cyrus

which recalls the Phaedo, and may have been derived from the teaching of

Socrates. It may be fairly urged that the greatest religious interest of

mankind could not have been wholly ignored by one who passed his life in

fulfilling the commands of an oracle, and who recognized a Divine plan in

man and nature. (Xen. Mem. I, 4.) And the language of the Apology and of

the Crito confirms this view.

[Sidenote: _Contents of the Dialogue._]

The Phaedo is not one of the Socratic Dialogues of Plato; nor, on the

other hand, can it be assigned to that later stage of the Platonic

writings at which the doctrine of ideas appears to be forgotten. It

belongs rather to the intermediate period of the Platonic philosophy,

which roughly corresponds to the Phaedrus, Gorgias, Republic, Theaetetus.

Without pretending to determine the real time of their composition, the

Symposium, Meno, Euthyphro, Apology, Phaedo may be conveniently read by

us in this order as illustrative of the life of Socrates. Another chain

may be formed of the Meno, Phaedrus, Phaedo, in which the immortality

of the soul is connected with the doctrine of ideas. In the Meno the

theory of ideas is based an the ancient belief in transmigration, which

reappears again in the Phaedrus as well as in the Republic and Timaeus,

and in all of them is connected with a doctrine of retribution. In

the Phaedrus the immortality of the soul is supposed to rest on the

conception of the soul as a principle of motion, whereas in the Republic

the argument turns on the natural continuance of the soul, which, if not

destroyed by her own proper evil, can hardly be destroyed by any other.

The soul of man in the Timaeus (42 foll.) is derived from the Supreme

Creator, and either returns after death to her kindred star, or descends

into the lower life of an animal. The Apology expresses the same view

as the Phaedo, but with less confidence; there the probability of death

being a long sleep is not excluded. The Theaetetus also describes, in a

digression, the desire of the soul to fly away and be with God—‘and to

fly to him is to be like him’ (176 B). The Symposium may be observed to

resemble as well as to differ from the Phaedo. While the first notion of

immortality is only in the way of natural procreation or of posthumous

fame and glory, the higher revelation of beauty, like the good in the

Republic, is the vision of the eternal idea. So deeply rooted in Plato’s

mind is the belief in immortality; so various are the forms of expression

which he employs.

[Sidenote: _The Dialogue a Drama._]

As in several other Dialogues, there is more of system in the Phaedo

than appears at first sight. The succession of arguments is based on

previous philosophies; beginning with the mysteries and the Heracleitean

alternation of opposites, and proceeding to the Pythagorean harmony and

transmigration; making a step by the aid of Platonic reminiscence, and

a further step by the help of the νοῦς of Anaxagoras; until at last we

rest in the conviction that the soul is inseparable from the ideas,

and belongs to the world of the invisible and unknown. Then, as in

the Gorgias or Republic, the curtain falls, and the veil of mythology

descends upon the argument. After the confession of Socrates that he

is an interested party, and the acknowledgment that no man of sense

will think the details of his narrative true, but that something of the

kind is true, we return from speculation to practice. He is himself

more confident of immortality than he is of his own arguments; and

the confidence which he expresses is less strong than that which his

cheerfulness and composure in death inspire in us.

Difficulties of two kinds occur in the Phaedo—one kind to be explained

out of contemporary philosophy, the other not admitting of an entire

solution. (1) The difficulty which Socrates says that he experienced

in explaining generation and corruption; the assumption of hypotheses

which proceed from the less general to the more general, and are tested

by their consequences; the puzzle about greater and less; the resort to

the method of ideas, which to us appear only abstract terms,—these are

to be explained out of the position of Socrates and Plato in the history

of philosophy. They were living in a twilight between the sensible and

the intellectual world, and saw no way of connecting them. They could

neither explain the relation of ideas to phenomena, nor their correlation

to one another. The very idea of relation or comparison was embarrassing

to them. Yet in this intellectual uncertainty they had a conception of a

proof from results, and of a moral truth, which remained unshaken amid

the questionings of philosophy. (2) The other is a difficulty which is

touched upon in the Republic as well as in the Phaedo, and is common to

modern and ancient philosophy. Plato is not altogether satisfied with his

safe and simple method of ideas. He wants to have proved to him by facts

that all things are for the best, and that there is one mind or design

which pervades them all. But this ‘power of the best’ he is unable to

explain; and therefore takes refuge in universal ideas. And are not we

at this day seeking to discover that which Socrates in a glass darkly

foresaw?

[Sidenote: _Artistic beauty of the Dialogue._]

Some resemblances to the Greek drama may be noted in all the Dialogues

of Plato. The Phaedo is the tragedy of which Socrates is the protagonist

and Simmias and Cebes the secondary performers, standing to them in the

same relation as to Glaucon and Adeimantus in the Republic. No Dialogue

has a greater unity of subject and feeling. Plato has certainly fulfilled

the condition of Greek, or rather of all art, which requires that scenes

of death and suffering should be clothed in beauty. The gathering of

the friends at the commencement of the Dialogue, the dismissal of

Xanthippè, whose presence would have been out of place at a philosophical

discussion, but who returns again with her children to take a final

farewell, the dejection of the audience at the temporary overthrow of

the argument, the picture of Socrates playing with the hair of Phaedo,

the final scene in which Socrates alone retains his composure—are

masterpieces of art. And the chorus at the end might have interpreted the

feeling of the play: ‘There can no evil happen to a good man in life or

death.’

‘The art of concealing art’ is nowhere more perfect than in those

writings of Plato which describe the trial and death of Socrates. Their

charm is their simplicity, which gives them verisimilitude; and yet

they touch, as if incidentally, and because they were suitable to the

occasion, on some of the deepest truths of philosophy. There is nothing

in any tragedy, ancient or modern, nothing in poetry or history (with

one exception), like the last hours of Socrates in Plato. The master

could not be more fitly occupied at such a time than in discoursing of

immortality; nor the disciples more divinely consoled. The arguments,

taken in the spirit and not in the letter, are our arguments; and

Socrates by anticipation may be even thought to refute some ‘eccentric

notions’ current in our own age. For there are philosophers among

ourselves who do not seem to understand how much stronger is the power of

intelligence, or of the best, than of Atlas, or mechanical force. How far

the words attributed to Socrates were actually uttered by him we forbear

to ask; for no answer can be given to this question. And it is better to

resign ourselves to the feeling of a great work, than to linger among

critical uncertainties.