And those who have chosen the portion of injustice, and
tyranny, and violence, will pass into wolves, or into hawks
and kites;—whither else can we suppose them to go?
Yes, said Cebes; with such natures, beyond question.
And there is no difficulty, he said, in assigning to all of
them places answering to their several natures and propensities?
There is not, he said.
Some are happier than others; and the happiest both in
themselves and in the place to which they go are those who
have practised the civil and social virtues which are called
temperance and justice, and are acquired by habit and attention
without philosophy and mind[27].
[Sidenote: _The deliverance of the soul by philosophy._]
Why are they the happiest?
Because they may be expected to pass into some gentle
and social kind which is like their own, such as bees or wasps
or ants, or back again into the form of man, and just and
moderate men may be supposed to spring from them.
Very likely.
No one who has not studied philosophy and who is not
entirely pure at the time of his departure is allowed to enter
the company of the Gods, but the lover of knowledge only.
And this is the reason, Simmias and Cebes, why the true
votaries of philosophy abstain from all fleshly lusts, and hold
out against them and refuse to give themselves up to them,—not
because they fear poverty or the ruin of their families,
like the lovers of money, and the world in general; nor like
the lovers of power and honour, because they dread the dishonour
or disgrace of evil deeds.
No, Socrates, that would not become them, said Cebes.
No indeed, he replied; and therefore they who have any
care of their own souls, and do not merely live moulding and
fashioning the body, say farewell to all this; they will not
walk in the ways of the blind: and when philosophy offers
them purification and release from evil, they feel that they
ought not to resist her influence, and whither she leads they
turn and follow.
What do you mean, Socrates?
[Sidenote: _Why the philosopher is temperate._]
[Sidenote: The new consciousness which is awakened by philosophy.]
[Sidenote: The philosopher considers not only the consequences of
pleasures and pains, but, what is far worse, the false lights in which
they show objects.]
I will tell you, he said. The lovers of knowledge are conscious
that the soul was simply fastened and glued to the
body—until philosophy received her, she could only view real
existence through the bars of a prison, not in and through
herself; she was wallowing in the mire of every sort of
ignorance, and by reason of lust had become the principal
accomplice in her own captivity. This was her original 83
state; and then, as I was saying, and as the lovers of
knowledge are well aware, philosophy, seeing how terrible
was her confinement, of which she was to herself the cause,
received and gently comforted her and sought to release her,
pointing out that the eye and the ear and the other senses
are full of deception, and persuading her to retire from them,
and abstain from all but the necessary use of them, and be
gathered up and collected into herself, bidding her trust in
herself and her own pure apprehension of pure existence, and
mistrust whatever comes to her through other channels
and is subject to variation; for such things are visible and
tangible, but what she sees in her own nature is intelligible
and invisible. And the soul of the true philosopher thinks
that she ought not to resist this deliverance, and therefore abstains
from pleasures and desires and pains and fears, as far
as she is able; reflecting that when a man has great joys or
sorrows or fears or desires, he suffers from them, not merely
the sort of evil which might be anticipated—as for example,
the loss of his health or property which he has sacrificed to
his lusts—but an evil greater far, which is the greatest and
worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks.
What is it, Socrates? said Cebes.
The evil is that when the feeling of pleasure or pain is
most intense, every soul of man imagines the objects of this
intense feeling to be then plainest and truest: but this is not
so, they are really the things of sight.
Very true.
And is not this the state in which the soul is most enthralled
by the body?
How so?
Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail
which nails and rivets the soul to the body, until she becomes
like the body, and believes that to be true which the
body affirms to be true; and from agreeing with the body
and having the same delights she is obliged to have the same
habits and haunts, and is not likely ever to be pure at her
departure to the world below, but is always infected by the
body; and so she sinks into another body and there germinates
and grows, and has therefore no part in the communion
of the divine and pure and simple.
Most true, Socrates, answered Cebes.
And this, Cebes, is the reason why the true lovers of
knowledge are temperate and brave; and not for the reason
which the world gives.