And can all this be true, think you? he said; for these
are the consequences which seem to follow from the assumption
that the soul is a harmony?
It cannot be true.
Once more, he said, what ruler is there of the elements of
human nature other than the soul, and especially the wise
soul? Do you know of any?
Indeed, I do not.
And is the soul in agreement with the affections of the
body? or is she at variance with them? For example, when
the body is hot and thirsty, does not the soul incline us
against drinking? and when the body is hungry, against
eating? And this is only one instance out of ten thousand of
the opposition of the soul to the things of the body.
Very true.
[Sidenote: _Enough of Harmonia._]
But we have already acknowledged that the soul, being a
harmony, can never utter a note at variance with the tensions
and relaxations and vibrations and other affections of the
strings out of which she is composed; she can only follow,
she cannot lead them?
It must be so, he replied.
[Sidenote: The soul leads and does not follow. She constrains and
reprimands the passions.]
And yet do we not now discover the soul to be doing the
exact opposite—leading the elements of which she is believed
to be composed; almost always opposing and coercing them
in all sorts of ways throughout life, sometimes more violently
with the pains of medicine and gymnastic; then again more
gently; now threatening, now admonishing the desires,
passions, fears, as if talking to a thing which is not herself,
as Homer in the Odyssey represents Odysseus doing in the
words—
‘He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart:
Endure, my heart; far worse hast thou endured!’
Do you think that Homer wrote this under the idea that the
soul is a harmony capable of being led by the affections of
the body, and not rather of a nature which should lead and
master them—herself a far diviner thing than any harmony?
Yes, Socrates, I quite think so.
Then, my friend, we can never be right in saying that the
soul is a harmony, for we should contradict the divine 95
Homer, and contradict ourselves.
True, he said.
Thus much, said Socrates, of Harmonia, your Theban
goddess, who has graciously yielded to us; but what shall I
say, Cebes, to her husband Cadmus, and how shall I make
peace with him?
I think that you will discover a way of propitiating him,
said Cebes; I am sure that you have put the argument with
Harmonia in a manner that I could never have expected.
For when Simmias was mentioning his difficulty, I quite
imagined that no answer could be given to him, and therefore
I was surprised at finding that his argument could not
sustain the first onset of yours, and not impossibly the other,
whom you call Cadmus, may share a similar fate.
[Sidenote: Recapitulation of the argument of Cebes.]
[Sidenote: _Let us now proceed to the Theban Cadmus._]
Nay, my good friend, said Socrates, let us not boast, lest
some evil eye should put to flight the word which I am about
to speak. That, however, may be left in the hands of those
above; while I draw near in Homeric fashion, and try the
mettle of your words. Here lies the point:—You want to
have it proven to you that the soul is imperishable and immortal,
and the philosopher who is confident in death appears
to you to have but a vain and foolish confidence, if he believes
that he will fare better in the world below than one who has
led another sort of life, unless he can prove this: and you
say that the demonstration of the strength and divinity of
the soul, and of her existence prior to our becoming men,
does not necessarily imply her immortality. Admitting the
soul to be longlived, and to have known and done much in a
former state, still she is not on that account immortal; and
her entrance into the human form may be a sort of disease
which is the beginning of dissolution, and may at last, after
the toils of life are over, end in that which is called death.
And whether the soul enters into the body once only or
many times, does not, as you say, make any difference in
the fears of individuals. For any man, who is not devoid of
sense, must fear, if he has no knowledge and can give no
account of the soul’s immortality. This, or something like
this, I suspect to be your notion, Cebes; and I designedly
recur to it in order that nothing may escape us, and that
you may, if you wish, add or subtract anything.
But, said Cebes, as far as I see at present, I have nothing
to add or subtract: I mean what you say that I mean.
Socrates paused awhile, and seemed to be absorbed in
reflection. At length he said: You are raising a tremendous
question, Cebes, involving the whole nature of
generation and corruption, about which, if you like, I will 96
give you my own experience; and if anything which I say is
likely to avail towards the solution of your difficulty you may
make use of it.
I should very much like, said Cebes, to hear what you have
to say.
[Sidenote: The speculations of Socrates about physics made him forget the
commonest things.]
[Sidenote: _Socrates incapable of enquiring into nature._]
Then I will tell you, said Socrates. When I was young,
Cebes, I had a prodigious desire to know that department of
philosophy which is called the investigation of nature; to
know the causes of things, and why a thing is and is
created or destroyed appeared to me to be a lofty profession;
and I was always agitating myself with the consideration
of questions such as these:—Is the growth of
animals the result of some decay which the hot and cold
principle contracts, as some have said? Is the blood the
element with which we think, or the air, or the fire? or
perhaps nothing of the kind—but the brain may be the
originating power of the perceptions of hearing and sight
and smell, and memory and opinion may come from them,
and science may be based on memory and opinion when they
have attained fixity. And then I went on to examine the
corruption of them, and then to the things of heaven and
earth, and at last I concluded myself to be utterly and absolutely
incapable of these enquiries, as I will satisfactorily
prove to you. For I was fascinated by them to such a degree
that my eyes grew blind to things which I had seemed to
myself, and also to others, to know quite well; I forgot what
I had before thought self-evident truths; e. g. such a fact as
that the growth of man is the result of eating and drinking;
for when by the digestion of food flesh is added to flesh and
bone to bone, and whenever there is an aggregation of congenial
elements, the lesser bulk becomes larger and the small
man great. Was not that a reasonable notion?
Yes, said Cebes, I think so.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of explaining relative notions.]
Well; but let me tell you something more. There was a
time when I thought that I understood the meaning of greater
and less pretty well; and when I saw a great man standing
by a little one, I fancied that one was taller than the other by
a head; or one horse would appear to be greater than
another horse: and still more clearly did I seem to perceive
that ten is two more than eight, and that two cubits are more
than one, because two is the double of one.
And what is now your notion of such matters? said Cebes.
I should be far enough from imagining, he replied, that I
knew the cause of any of them, by heaven I should; for I
cannot satisfy myself that, when one is added to one, the one
to which the addition is made becomes two, or that the two 97
units added together make two by reason of the addition. I
cannot understand how, when separated from the other, each
of them was one and not two, and now, when they are
brought together, the mere juxtaposition or meeting of them
should be the cause of their becoming two: neither can I
understand how the division of one is the way to make two;
for then a different cause would produce the same effect,—as
in the former instance the addition and juxtaposition of one
to one was the cause of two, in this the separation and subtraction
of one from the other would be the cause. Nor am
I any longer satisfied that I understand the reason why one
or anything else is either generated or destroyed or is at all,
but I have in my mind some confused notion of a new
method, and can never admit the other.
[Sidenote: _The inconsistency of Anaxagoras._]
[Sidenote: The great expectations which Socrates had from the doctrine of
Anaxagoras, that all was Mind.]
Then I heard some one reading, as he said, from a book
of Anaxagoras, that mind was the disposer and cause of all,
and I was delighted at this notion, which appeared quite
admirable, and I said to myself: If mind is the disposer,
mind will dispose all for the best, and put each particular in
the best place; and I argued that if any one desired to find
out the cause of the generation or destruction or existence of
anything, he must find out what state of being or doing or
suffering was best for that thing, and therefore a man had only
to consider the best for himself and others, and then he
would also know the worse, since the same science comprehended
both. And I rejoiced to think that I had found in
Anaxagoras a teacher of the causes of existence such as I desired,
and I imagined that he would tell me first whether the
earth is flat or round; and whichever was true, he would
proceed to explain the cause and the necessity of this being
so, and then he would teach me the nature of the best and
show that this was best; and if he said that the earth was in
the centre, he would further explain that this position was
the best, and I should be satisfied with the explanation
given, and not want any other sort of cause. And I thought 98
that I would then go on and ask him about the sun and moon
and stars, and that he would explain to me their comparative
swiftness, and their returnings and various states, active and
passive, and how all of them were for the best. For I could
not imagine that when he spoke of mind as the disposer of
them, he would give any other account of their being as they
are, except that this was best; and I thought that when he
had explained to me in detail the cause of each and the
cause of all, he would go on to explain to me what was best
for each and what was good for all. These hopes I would
not have sold for a large sum of money, and I seized the
books and read them as fast as I could in my eagerness to
know the better and the worse.
[Sidenote: _Confusion of the causes and conditions of actions._]
[Sidenote: The greatness of his disappointment.]
What expectations I had formed, and how grievously was
I disappointed! As I proceeded, I found my philosopher
altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order,
but having recourse to air, and ether, and water, and other
eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who began
by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the
actions of Socrates, but who, when he endeavoured to explain
the causes of my several actions in detail, went on to
show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones
and muscles; and the bones, as he would say, are hard and
have joints which divide them, and the muscles are elastic,
and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or
environment of flesh and skin which contains them; and as
the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or
relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and
this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture—that is
what he would say; and he would have a similar explanation
of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and
air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other
causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause,
which is, that the Athenians have thought fit to condemn me,
and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to
remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to
think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone 99
off long ago to Megara or Boeotia—by the dog they would,
if they had been moved only by their own idea of what was
best, and if I had not chosen the better and nobler part,
instead of playing truant and running away, of enduring any
punishment which the state inflicts. There is surely a
strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It
may be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the
other parts of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But
to say that I do as I do because of them, and that this is the
way in which mind acts, and not from the choice of the best,
is a very careless and idle mode of speaking. I wonder that
they cannot distinguish the cause from the condition, which
the many, feeling about in the dark, are always mistaking
and misnaming. And thus one man makes a vortex all
round, and steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives
the air as a support to the earth, which is a sort of broad
trough. Any power which in arranging them as they are
arranges them for the best never enters into their minds;
and instead of finding any superior strength in it, they rather
expect to discover another Atlas of the world who is stronger
and more everlasting and more containing than the good;—of
the obligatory and containing power of the good they think
nothing; and yet this is the principle which I would fain
learn if any one would teach me. But as I have failed either
to discover myself, or to learn of any one else, the nature of
the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have found
to be the second best mode of enquiring into the cause.