Phaedo

Plato · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

ECHECRATES: Were you there yourself, Phaedo, with Socrates on the day he drank the poison in the prison, or did you hear about it from someone else? PHAEDO: I was there myself, Echecrates. ECHECRATES: Then what did the man say before his death? And how did he die? I would love to hear it. Hardly any of our Phliasian citizens travel to Athens these days, and no visitor has come from there in a long while who could give us any clear report about it — except that he drank poison and died. Beyond that, nobody could tell us anything.

PHAEDO: So you didn't even learn how the trial went? ECHECRATES: Yes, someone did report that to us, and we were surprised that he apparently died so long after it was over. Why was that, Phaedo? PHAEDO: A stroke of chance in his case, Echecrates. It happened that on the day before the trial, the stern of the ship the Athenians send to Delos was wreathed. ECHECRATES: What ship is that? PHAEDO: It's the ship, so the Athenians say, in which Theseus once sailed to Crete with those famous fourteen young people, and saved them and saved himself too. The story goes that they vowed to Apollo then that if they were saved, they would send a sacred mission to Delos every year — and ever since, right up to now, they send it to the god annually. Once the mission begins, they have a law that the city must stay pure during that time, and no one may be publicly executed until the ship reaches Delos and comes back again. Sometimes that takes a long while, when winds happen to hold them back. The mission begins when the priest of Apollo wreathes the stern of the ship, and that, as I say, happened to occur on the day before the trial. That's why Socrates spent so long in prison between his trial and his death. ECHECRATES: But what about the death itself, Phaedo? What was said and done, and which of the man's close friends were with him? Or wouldn't the authorities allow anyone in — did he die with no friends beside him? PHAEDO: Not at all. There were people with him, quite a few in fact. ECHECRATES: Then please do your best to tell us the whole thing as exactly as you can — unless you happen to be pressed for time. PHAEDO: No, I'm free, and I'll try to tell you the story. Remembering Socrates — whether I'm speaking of him myself or listening to someone else — is always the greatest pleasure I have. ECHECRATES: Well, Phaedo, you have listeners who feel the same way. So try to go through it all as precisely as you can. PHAEDO: I can tell you, what I felt while I was there was extraordinary. I felt no pity, though I was present at the death of a close friend — because the man seemed happy to me, Echecrates, in his bearing and in his words, so fearlessly and nobly did he meet his end. It struck me that even in going down to Hades he was not going without divine favor, and that when he arrived there he would fare well, if anyone ever has.

PHAEDO: For that reason nothing like grief came over me, as you'd expect for someone present at a scene of mourning — but no pleasure either, of the kind we usually had when we were doing philosophy together, though the conversation was of that sort. Instead I had a genuinely strange feeling, an unfamiliar blend mixed from pleasure and pain together, as I kept thinking that in a moment this man was going to die. And nearly all of us there were in the same state, sometimes laughing, sometimes in tears — one of us especially, Apollodorus. You know the man, I suppose, and what he's like. ECHECRATES: Of course I do. PHAEDO: Well, he was completely overcome, and I was shaken myself, and so were the others. ECHECRATES: Who happened to be there, Phaedo? PHAEDO: Of the local men, this Apollodorus was there, and Critobulus and his father, and also Hermogenes, Epigenes, Aeschines, and Antisthenes. Ctesippus of Paeania was there too, and Menexenus, and some other locals. Plato, I believe, was ill. ECHECRATES: Were any foreigners present? PHAEDO: Yes — Simmias the Theban, and Cebes, and Phaedondes; and from Megara, Euclides and Terpsion. ECHECRATES: What about Aristippus and Cleombrotus — were they there? PHAEDO: No. They were said to be in Aegina. ECHECRATES: Anyone else? PHAEDO: I think those were about all who came. ECHECRATES: Well then — what do you say the conversation was? PHAEDO: I'll try to tell you everything from the beginning. On the previous days, the others and I had made a habit of visiting Socrates, gathering at dawn at the courthouse where the trial had been held, since it was near the prison. We would wait around each day until the prison opened, passing the time with one another, because it didn't open early; and when it did open, we would go in to Socrates and usually spend the whole day with him. On that day we gathered earlier than usual, because the evening before, when we left the prison, we had learned that the ship had arrived from Delos. So we passed the word to each other to come as early as possible to the usual place. We came, and the doorkeeper who usually answered to us came out and told us to wait and not go in until he himself gave the word — 'because the Eleven,' he said, 'are unchaining Socrates and giving instructions for him to die today.'

PHAEDO: He didn't keep us long, though; he came back and told us to go in. When we entered, we found Socrates just released from his chains, and Xanthippe — you know her — sitting beside him with his little boy on her lap. When Xanthippe saw us, she cried out and said the sort of thing women always do: 'Socrates, this is the last time your friends will speak to you, and you to them!' Socrates glanced at Crito and said, 'Crito, have someone take her home.' And some of Crito's people led her away, wailing and beating her breast. Socrates sat up on the bed, bent his leg, and rubbed it with his hand, and as he rubbed it he said, 'What a strange thing it seems to be, men, this thing people call pleasant. How remarkably it's related to what seems to be its opposite, the painful: the two of them refuse to visit a person at the same time, yet if you chase one and catch it, you're pretty much forced to take the other too, as if the pair of them were attached at a single head. I think,' he said, 'that if Aesop had noticed this, he would have composed a fable about it: the god wanted to reconcile them in their war, and when he couldn't, he fastened their heads together — and that's why, wherever one of them turns up, the other follows along behind. Just as it seems with me: there was pain in my leg from the chain, and now here comes pleasure, evidently following right after it.' Cebes broke in: 'By Zeus, Socrates, I'm glad you reminded me. About those poems you've composed — setting Aesop's fables to verse, and the hymn to Apollo — several people have already asked me, and Evenus did just the other day: what were you thinking, writing them after you came here, when you'd never written anything before? So if you care at all that I have an answer for Evenus when he asks me again — and I know very well he will — tell me what to say.' 'Tell him the truth, Cebes,' he said. 'I didn't write them wanting to rival him or his poems — I knew that wouldn't be easy — but to test what certain dreams meant, and to clear my conscience, in case this was the music they had been ordering me all along to make. It was like this: the same dream kept visiting me throughout my past life, appearing now in one form, now in another, but always saying the same thing: Socrates, it said, make music, and work at it.'

PHAEDO: 'And in the time before now, I took it to be urging and cheering me on in exactly what I was already doing — the way people cheer on runners — that the dream was encouraging me in what I was doing, to make music, since philosophy is the greatest music, and that was what I was practicing. But now, after the trial was over and the god's festival was delaying my death, it seemed to me that in case the dream had been ordering me all along to make music in the common sense, I ought not to disobey it but should do it: it was safer not to depart before clearing my conscience by composing poems in obedience to the dream. So first I composed one for the god whose festival this was; and after the god, reflecting that a poet, if he's really to be a poet, must make stories and not arguments, and that I was no storyteller myself, I took the stories I had at hand and knew by heart — Aesop's — and versified the first ones I came across. So tell Evenus that, Cebes, and tell him farewell, and, if he's sensible, to follow me as quickly as he can. I'm off today, it seems — the Athenians command it.' And Simmias said, 'What a thing to urge on Evenus, Socrates! I've met the man often, and from what I've seen of him, he won't be at all willing to take your advice.' 'What?' he said. 'Isn't Evenus a philosopher?' 'I think so,' said Simmias. 'Then Evenus will be willing — and so will everyone who engages in this business worthily. But he probably won't do violence to himself; they say that isn't permitted.' As he said this, he lowered his legs to the ground, and sitting that way he carried on the rest of the conversation. Then Cebes asked him, 'What do you mean, Socrates — that it isn't permitted to do violence to oneself, but the philosopher would be willing to follow the dying?' 'Why, Cebes — haven't you and Simmias heard about such things? You studied with Philolaus.' 'Nothing definite, Socrates.' 'Well, I speak of it only from hearsay myself; but what I happen to have heard I don't mind telling. Indeed, it's probably most fitting for someone about to travel to that other place to inquire and tell stories about the journey there — what sort of thing we imagine it to be. What else would one do with the time until sunset?' 'Then on what possible ground do they say it isn't permitted to kill oneself, Socrates? I have indeed heard — to answer the question you just asked — both from Philolaus, when he was living with us, and from certain others as well, that one ought not to do this. But I've never heard anything definite about it from anyone.'

PHAEDO: Well, you must be eager to hear it, he said, and perhaps you'll get your wish. Though it may strike you as strange that this alone, of all things, should be simple — that it is never the case for a human being, as it is for other things, that sometimes and for some people it's better to be dead than alive, and yet for those for whom it's better to be dead, it seems it would be wrong for them to do themselves this good turn, and instead they must wait for someone else to do it for them. And Cebes, laughing quietly, said, in his own dialect, Zeus knows! And Socrates said, Put that way, it certainly sounds unreasonable — and yet perhaps there's some sense in it after all. There's a doctrine spoken of in secret about this, that we human beings are in a kind of guard-post, and one must not release oneself from it or run away — that idea seems weighty to me and not easy to see through. Still, this much seems right to me, Cebes: that the gods are the ones who look after us, and that we humans are among the gods' possessions. Doesn't that seem so to you? It does to me, said Cebes. Well then, he said, if one of your own possessions killed itself, without your having indicated that you wanted it dead, wouldn't you be angry with it, and punish it if you had some means of punishment? Certainly, he said. Then perhaps, in that light, it isn't unreasonable to say that no one should kill himself before a god sends some necessity upon him, such as the one now present for us. Well, that does seem plausible, Cebes said. But what you were just saying — that philosophers would readily be willing to die — that seems odd, Socrates, if what we just agreed makes sense: that god is the one looking after us, and we are his possessions. For it makes no sense that the most sensible people wouldn't be upset at leaving this service, in which they are overseen by the best overseers there are among beings — the gods. Surely such a person doesn't think he'll take better care of himself once set free. No, a foolish person might think that one should flee from one's master, without reasoning that one shouldn't flee from what is good but should stay with it as much as possible — so that fleeing would be thoughtless of him. But a sensible person would surely want always to be with what is better than himself. And so, Socrates, it seems the opposite of what you were just saying should be true: it's fitting for the sensible to be upset at dying, and for the foolish to rejoice.

PHAEDO: When Socrates heard this, he seemed to me pleased with Cebes' persistence, and glancing at us he said, Cebes is always hunting down some argument or other, and he's not at all quick to be convinced by whatever anyone says. And Simmias said, Well, Socrates, this time I think Cebes actually has a point. What could truly wise men want, in fleeing from masters better than themselves, and getting free of them so easily? And I think Cebes is aiming his argument at you — that you take it so lightly, leaving both us and those good rulers you yourself admit are gods. You're right to say so, he said; I take it you mean I ought to make a defense against this, as if in a courtroom. Exactly, said Simmias. Come then, he said, let me try to make my defense more persuasive to you than it was to the jury. For, he said, Simmias and Cebes, if I didn't expect to arrive, first, among other gods both wise and good, and then among human beings who have died who are better than the ones here, I'd be wrong not to be upset at death. But as it is, you may be sure I expect to arrive among good men — though I wouldn't insist too strongly on that — but that I will arrive among gods who are altogether good masters, this, if anything of the kind, I would insist on firmly. So that's why I'm not equally troubled, and instead I'm full of hope that there is something for those who have died, and, as the old saying goes, something far better for the good than for the wicked. Well then, Socrates, said Simmias, do you intend to keep this thought to yourself as you go, or would you share it with us too? It seems to me this would be a good shared by us as well, and at the same time it would serve as your defense, if you persuade us of what you're saying. I'll try, he said. But first let's see what Crito here wants — he's seemed to want to say something for a while now. What else, Socrates, said Crito, except what the man who's going to give you the poison has been telling me for a while now — that you should be told to talk as little as possible. He says people get more heated when they talk, and nothing like that should interfere with the drug; otherwise those who do that sort of thing sometimes have to drink it two or even three times. And Socrates said, Let him be — just let him prepare his dose so it can be given twice, or even three times if need be. I pretty much knew you'd say that, said Crito, but he's been bothering me about it for a while. Let him be, he said.

PHAEDO: Well then, I want to give my defense now to you, my judges, to show why it seems reasonable to me that a man who has genuinely spent his life in philosophy should be confident as he faces death, and full of hope that once he dies he will gain the greatest goods over there. How this could be so, Simmias and Cebes, I'll try to explain. It seems that those who engage with philosophy in the right way happen, without others noticing, to be practicing nothing other than dying and being dead. So if this is true, it would surely be strange to be eager, throughout one's whole life, for nothing but this, and then, when it actually arrives, to be upset about the very thing one had long been eager for and practicing. And Simmias laughed and said, By Zeus, Socrates, you've made me laugh just now, though I wasn't really in the mood. I think most people, hearing that, would think it very well said about those who practice philosophy — and our own countrymen would agree entirely — that philosophers really do long for death, and that it hasn't escaped them that they deserve it. And they'd be right to say so, Simmias, except for the part about it not escaping them. For it has escaped them in what sense the true philosophers long for death, and in what sense they deserve it, and what sort of death it is. Let's speak among ourselves, he said, and pay no more attention to them. Do we think death is something? Certainly, said Simmias, taking up the question. Is it anything other than the separation of the soul from the body? And that being dead is this: the body having come to be by itself, separated from the soul, and the soul being by itself, separated from the body? Is death anything other than this? No, this is it, he said. Consider then, my good man, whether you agree with me on this — for I think it's from this that we'll get more insight into what we're examining. Does it seem fitting for a philosopher to be seriously concerned with the pleasures people call such, for instance those of food and drink? Least of all, Socrates, said Simmias. And what about the pleasures of sex? Not at all. And what about the other kinds of bodily care and adornment — does such a man think them worth honoring? Things like fine clothes and shoes and other bodily ornaments — does he seem to you to value them, or to despise them, except so far as there's great necessity to have anything to do with them? I think the true philosopher despises them, he said. Doesn't it seem to you, then, that such a man's whole concern is not with the body, but, so far as he can, turned away from it and toward the soul? It does to me.

PHAEDO: So doesn't the philosopher show himself, first of all in matters like these, as releasing his soul from association with the body, more than other people do? So it appears. And most people think, Simmias, that someone for whom none of these things is pleasant, who takes no part in them, doesn't deserve to live — that a man who cares nothing for the pleasures that come through the body is close to being dead already. Quite true, what you say. But what about the acquisition of understanding itself? Is the body a hindrance or not, if one takes it along as a partner in the search? Here's what I mean: do sight and hearing hold any truth for human beings, or is it just as the poets are always chanting to us, that we neither hear nor see anything accurately? And yet if these bodily senses aren't accurate or clear, the others will hardly be better, since they're all inferior to these. Don't you think so? I do, he said. When, then, does the soul grasp the truth? For whenever it tries to examine anything together with the body, it's clearly deceived by it. True. Isn't it in reasoning, then, if anywhere, that something of the things that are becomes clear to it? Yes. And it reasons best, surely, when none of these things troubles it — neither hearing nor sight, nor pain nor any pleasure — but when it is, as much as possible, alone by itself, letting the body go, and, so far as it can, having no association or contact with it, reaches out toward what is. That's so. So here too the philosopher's soul dishonors the body most, and flees from it, seeking to be by itself. It appears so. And what about things like this, Simmias? Do we say there's such a thing as the just itself, or not? We certainly do, by Zeus. And again something beautiful, and something good? Of course. Have you ever yet seen any of these with your eyes? Never, he said. Or grasped them by any other bodily sense? I mean all of them together — size, health, strength, and in one word the being of each thing, what each really is. Is their truest reality contemplated through the body, or is it rather this way: whoever among us prepares himself most fully and precisely to think through, in itself, the very thing he's investigating, that person will come closest to knowing each thing? Certainly.

PHAEDO: "Would the man who does this most purely, then, be the one who goes at each thing as much as possible with pure thought itself, not laying any sight alongside his thinking, nor dragging in any other sense together with his reasoning, but who uses thought alone by itself, unmixed, and tries to hunt down each of the things that are, each one itself by itself, unmixed, cut off as far as possible from eyes and ears and, so to speak, from the whole body, on the ground that the body throws the soul into confusion and does not let it acquire truth and understanding whenever it keeps it company — isn't this the man, Simmias, if anyone will, who will lay hold of what is?" "What you say is extraordinarily true, Socrates," said Simmias. "Then," he said, "from all this some such belief must arise in men who are genuinely lovers of wisdom, so that they say things like this to one another: that there seems to be a kind of path leading us, together with the argument, in our inquiry — that as long as we have the body, and our soul is fouled up together with such an evil, we will never adequately gain what we desire, and this, we say, is the truth. For the body fills us with countless distractions just to feed it, and then, if diseases fall upon it, they block our hunt for what is. It fills us with erotic longings and appetites and fears and images of every sort and a great deal of nonsense, so that, as the saying truly goes, no thinking whatsoever ever actually arises in us because of it. Wars, factions, and battles are caused by nothing but the body and its appetites. For all wars come about because of the acquisition of wealth, and we are forced to acquire wealth because of the body, since we are enslaved to its service — and because of all this we have no leisure for philosophy. And the worst thing of all is that even if we do get some leisure from it and turn to look into something, in our inquiries the body keeps forcing its way in everywhere, causing turmoil and confusion, and it startles us so that we cannot see the truth on account of it. No, it has really been shown to us that if we are ever going to know something purely, we must be rid of the body and view the things themselves with the soul by itself. And then, it seems, we will have what we desire and claim to be lovers of — understanding — once we have died, as the argument shows, though not while we are alive.

PHAEDO: "For if it isn't possible to know anything purely in company with the body, then one of two things is true: either knowledge cannot be acquired anywhere at all, or only after death. For then the soul will be by itself, apart from the body, and not before. And while we are alive, it seems, we will be as close as possible to knowing only if we have as little as possible to do with the body and do not share in it, except where absolute necessity requires, and do not let ourselves be infected with its nature, but stay pure of it, until the god himself releases us. And in this way, once we are freed from the body's folly and made pure, we will presumably be in the company of others like ourselves, and will know through ourselves the whole of what is unmixed — and that, perhaps, is the truth. For it is probably not permitted for the impure to touch the pure. Such things, Simmias, I think all who rightly love learning must say and believe among themselves. Or don't you think so?" "Nothing could be more so, Socrates." "Then," said Socrates, "if this is true, my friend, there is great hope that when I arrive where I am going, I will there, if anywhere, adequately gain that for the sake of which we have taken such great pains in our past life, so that this journey now laid upon me comes with good hope — and for any other man too who believes his mind has been prepared, as it were, purified." "Certainly," said Simmias. "And is this not what purification turns out to be — the very thing we've been saying for a while now — separating the soul as much as possible from the body, and habituating it to gather and collect itself together, out of every part of the body, by itself, and to dwell, as far as it can, both now and hereafter, alone by itself, released as if from chains, from the body?" "Certainly," he said. "And isn't this exactly what is called death — the release and separation of soul from body?" "Absolutely," he said. "And it is always, we say, those who practice philosophy in the right way, and only they, who are most eager to release it, and this very thing is the philosophers' pursuit — the release and separation of soul from body. Isn't that so?" "It appears so." "Then, as I was saying at the beginning, wouldn't it be absurd for a man to spend his life preparing himself to live as close as possible to being dead, and then, when death arrives for him, to resent it?" "Absurd — of course." "So in truth, Simmias," he said, "those who practice philosophy rightly are practicing dying, and death is, for them, the least fearsome thing in the world of all things. Consider it from the following.

PHAEDO: "If they are everywhere at odds with the body, and desire to have the soul by itself alone, and if, when this actually happens, they were to be afraid and resentful, wouldn't it be quite unreasonable of them not to go gladly to the place where, once they arrive, there is hope of attaining what they loved throughout their life — and they loved understanding — and of being rid of that with which they were at odds, now that it no longer accompanies them? Many men, when their human loves — boys, wives, sons — have died, have been willing of their own accord to go down to Hades, driven by just this hope: of seeing there those they longed for, and being with them. And yet will someone who is truly in love with understanding, and who has grasped this very same hope firmly — that he will meet with it nowhere else worth mentioning except in Hades — will he resent dying, and not go there gladly? We must think he will, my friend, if he is truly a philosopher. For he will be quite convinced of this: that he will meet with understanding in its pure form nowhere else but there. And if this is so, as I was just saying, wouldn't it be quite unreasonable for such a man to fear death?" "Quite unreasonable indeed, by Zeus," he said. "So isn't this," he said, "sufficient evidence for you, about any man you see resenting the prospect of dying, that he was, after all, no lover of wisdom but a lover of the body? And this same man happens, no doubt, to be a lover of money too, and a lover of honor — one or the other of these, or both." "It is certainly as you say," he said. "Then, Simmias," he said, "doesn't what is called courage belong most of all to men disposed in just this way?" "Absolutely, surely," he said. "And self-control too — the very thing most people call self-control, not being flustered over one's appetites but holding them cheap and in orderly check — doesn't that belong only to those who hold the body cheapest and live in philosophy?" "It must," he said. "For if you're willing," he said, "to consider the courage and self-control of everyone else, they will strike you as strange." "How so, Socrates?" "You know," he said, "that everyone else regards death as one of the great evils?" "Very much so," he said. "So isn't it out of fear of greater evils that the courageous among them endure death, whenever they do endure it?" "That's so." "So it is by being afraid, and through fear, that all of them are courageous — except the philosophers. And yet it's absurd for someone to be courageous through fear and cowardice." "Quite so." "And what about the well-behaved among them? Haven't they suffered the same thing — are they self-controlled through a kind of self-indulgence? Yet we say that's impossible — but all the same, something like this happens to them regarding this simple-minded self-control: fearing to be deprived of certain other pleasures, and desiring them, they hold off from some pleasures because they are mastered by others.

PHAEDO: "And yet they call it self-indulgence to be ruled by pleasures — but it turns out that, being mastered by certain pleasures, they master other pleasures. And this is like what was just being said — that in a way it is through self-indulgence that they have been made self-controlled." "So it seems." "My blessed Simmias, I'm afraid this isn't the right exchange for virtue — trading pleasures for pleasures, pains for pains, and fear for fear, greater for smaller, as if they were coins — but that there is only one currency that is correct, for which all these must be exchanged: understanding. And with this, and in exchange for this, everything is truly bought and sold — courage and self-control and justice, and, in short, true virtue, together with understanding, whether pleasures and fears and all other such things are added or taken away. But when they are separated from understanding and exchanged one for another, such virtue is nothing but a kind of sketch, and is in fact slavish, and has nothing sound or true in it — while the truth is really some kind of purification from all such things, and self-control and justice and courage, and understanding itself, are a kind of purification. And it seems to me that the men who established the rites of initiation for us were no fools, but were, in fact, hinting long ago that whoever arrives in Hades uninitiated and unperfected will lie in the mud, while the one who arrives there purified and perfected will dwell among the gods. For, as those concerned with the rites say, 'many carry the wand, but the bacchants are few' — and these, in my opinion, are none other than those who have practiced philosophy in the right way. I have done everything in my power, in my life, to become one of these, leaving nothing undone, and have striven in every way to do so. Whether I have striven rightly, and whether we have achieved anything, we will know clearly, once we arrive there, a little later, god willing, as I believe. This, then, Simmias and Cebes," he said, "is my defense — that it is reasonable for me not to take it hard or resent leaving you and the masters here, believing that there too, no less than here, I will meet with good masters and companions. Most people find this hard to believe. So if I am at all more convincing to you in my defense than I was to the Athenian jurors, that would be good."

PHAEDO: When Socrates had said this, Cebes took it up and said, "Socrates, everything else seems to me well said, but what you say about the soul causes people a great deal of disbelief — the fear that once it is freed from the body, it is no longer anywhere at all, but is destroyed and perishes on that very day a man dies, the moment it is freed from the body, and that as it goes out it scatters and disperses like breath or smoke, flying off and vanishing, and is no longer anywhere at all. For if it really existed somewhere, gathered together by itself and rid of those evils you were just describing, that would be a great and beautiful hope, Socrates, that what you say is true. But this surely needs no small amount of reassurance and proof — that the soul exists once the man has died, and retains some power and understanding." "What you say is true, Cebes," said Socrates. "But what shall we do, then? Do you want us to talk the matter through together, whether it's likely to be so or not?" "I, for one," said Cebes, "would be glad to hear what view you hold about it." "I don't think," said Socrates, "that anyone hearing me now, not even if he were a comic poet, could say I am babbling and talking about things that don't concern me. So if you think it best, we should look into it closely. Let's examine it this way: whether the souls of men who have died exist in Hades or not. Now there is an old tradition, which we recall, that souls arriving there come from here, and then come back here again, and are born from the dead. And if this is so — that the living are born again from the dead — wouldn't our souls have to exist there? For surely they could not be born again if they did not exist, and this would be sufficient proof that this is so, if it should truly become clear that the living come from nowhere else but from the dead. But if this is not so, some other argument would be needed." "Quite so," said Cebes. "Well then," he said, "don't consider this just in the case of human beings, if you want to understand it more easily, but in the case of all animals and plants too, and, in short, let us look at everything that comes to be, and see whether everything comes to be in this way — from nothing else but from its opposite, in the case of all things that happen to have such a thing, as, say, the beautiful is opposite to the ugly, and the just to the unjust, and countless other things are like this. Let us examine this, then: whether it is necessary that everything that has an opposite comes to be from nothing else but its own opposite. For instance, when something comes to be larger, isn't it necessary that it was smaller before, and only afterward becomes larger?" "Yes."

So if something becomes smaller, it must have been bigger before and become smaller afterward? That's how it is, he said. And the weaker comes from the stronger, and the faster from the slower? Certainly. And what about this: if something becomes worse, doesn't it come from something better, and if more just, from something less just? Of course. So we have this well enough established, that everything comes to be this way, opposite things from their opposites? Certainly. Now then: is there also something like this in them — that between every pair of opposites, since there are two of them, there are two processes of becoming, one from each toward the other, and then back again from that one to the first? Between something bigger and something smaller there's growth and shrinking, and we call one of these growing, the other shrinking? Yes, he said. And likewise separating and combining, cooling and heating, and so on for everything, even where we don't have names for it in some cases — still, in practice, it must hold everywhere, that these things come to be out of each other, and there's a process of becoming from each into the other. Certainly, he said. Well then, he said, is there something opposite to being alive, the way being awake is opposite to being asleep? Certainly, he said. What is it? Being dead, he said. So these come from each other, since they're opposites, and there are two processes of becoming between the two of them? Of course. Now then, he said, I'll tell you the one pair of opposites I was just talking about, and its two processes — Socrates said this — and you tell me the other. I mean sleeping and waking: waking comes from sleeping, and sleeping comes from waking, and their two processes are falling asleep and waking up. Is that clear enough for you, or not? Certainly. Now you tell me the same way about life and death. Don't you say that being dead is opposite to being alive? I do. And that they come from each other? Yes. So what comes from the living? The dead, he said. And what, he said, from the dead? I have to admit, he said, the living. So living things and living people come from the dead, Cebes? So it appears, he said. Then our souls exist in Hades. It seems so. And of the two processes involved here, isn't one of them at least perfectly clear? Dying is clear enough, surely, isn't it? Certainly, he said. So what shall we do, he said? Shall we fail to supply the opposite process, and let nature limp along lopsided this way? Or must we grant some process opposite to dying? We must, surely, he said. What is it? Coming back to life.

So, he said, if there is such a thing as coming back to life, this would be a process from the dead into the living — this coming-back-to-life? Certainly. Then we agree on this too: the living come from the dead no less than the dead come from the living. And given this, it seemed to be sufficient proof that the souls of the dead must exist somewhere, from which they come back again. I think, Socrates, he said, that this follows necessarily from what we've agreed. Now look at it this way, Cebes, he said, and see that we haven't agreed to this unfairly, as I see it. Suppose things didn't always pay each other back this way, one becoming from the other in a circle, but instead there were a straight-line process going only one way, from one thing to its opposite, without ever bending back or curving around — you realize that in the end everything would take on the same form and suffer the same fate, and becoming would stop altogether? What do you mean? he said. It's not hard to grasp what I mean, he said. Suppose, for instance, there were falling asleep, but waking up never paid it back by coming from the sleeping thing — you see that in the end everything would make Endymion look like a joke, and he'd be nowhere in particular, because everything else would have suffered the same thing as he did: sleeping. And if everything combined but nothing ever separated, the state of affairs Anaxagoras describes would quickly come about — all things together. And in the same way, dear Cebes, if everything that had a share of life died, and once dead, the dead things stayed in that condition and never came back to life, wouldn't it be quite inevitable that everything would eventually be dead, and nothing alive? Because if living things came from other things, but the living things kept dying, what could possibly prevent everything from being used up in death? There's no way around it, Socrates, said Cebes — you seem to me to be entirely right. Yes, Cebes, he said, I think it's absolutely so, and we're not agreeing to this deceived — it really is true that there's such a thing as coming back to life, that the living come from the dead, that the souls of the dead exist, and that it goes better for the good souls and worse for the bad ones. And what's more, Socrates, said Cebes, taking it up, if that theory is true which you're always saying, that our learning is really nothing but recollection, then by this argument too we must have learned at some earlier time what we're now recollecting.

But that's impossible, unless our soul existed somewhere before it came to be in this human form — so on this count too the soul looks like something immortal. But Cebes, said Simmias, taking it up, what are the proofs of this? Remind me — I don't remember them very clearly at the moment. In one word, said Cebes, and a beautiful one: if you question people properly, they'll tell you, all on their own, exactly how things stand — and yet if they didn't have knowledge already in them, along with a correct account, they wouldn't be able to do this. And then, if you bring them to diagrams or anything of that sort, right there it becomes perfectly clear that this is so. But if you're not convinced by that, Simmias, said Socrates, see whether you agree looking at it this way instead. Do you doubt how so-called learning could be recollection? It's not that I doubt you, said Simmias, but I need to have this very experience the argument is about — being reminded. And in fact, from what Cebes has started to say, I'm already remembering and I'm convinced — but I'd like to hear all the same how you were going to argue it. Like this, he said. We agree, I take it, that if someone is going to remember something, he must have known it at some earlier time. Certainly, he said. Do we also agree on this — that whenever knowledge comes about in a certain way, it's recollection? What way do I mean? This: if someone, on seeing or hearing something, or getting some other perception of it, doesn't just recognize that thing but also thinks of something else, of which the knowledge is not the same but different, don't we rightly say that he was reminded of the thing he formed a notion of? What do you mean? Something like this. Knowledge of a person is one thing, knowledge of a lyre another. Of course. Well, you know what happens to lovers whenever they see a lyre, or a cloak, or anything else their beloved is used to using — they recognize the lyre, and in their mind they form the image of the boy whose lyre it was. That's recollection — just as someone, seeing Simmias, is often reminded of Cebes, and there would be countless other examples like that. Countless indeed, by Zeus, said Simmias. So, he said, isn't something like that a kind of recollection — especially when it happens to someone regarding things that, through time and inattention, he had already forgotten? Certainly, he said. Well then, he said — is it possible, on seeing a painted horse or a painted lyre, to be reminded of a person, and on seeing a painted Simmias, to be reminded of Cebes? Certainly.

And also, on seeing a painted Simmias, to be reminded of Simmias himself? That's possible too, he said. So doesn't it follow, in all these cases, that recollection can come both from things that are like the thing recollected and from things that are unlike it? It does. But whenever someone is reminded of something from things like it, isn't it necessary that he also experience this in addition — noticing whether the thing falls short, in its likeness, of the thing he was reminded of, or not? Necessarily, he said. Now look, he said, whether this is so. We say there is such a thing as equal — I don't mean a stick equal to a stick, or a stone to a stone, or anything of that kind, but something else beyond all these, the equal itself. Shall we say it's something, or nothing? We'll certainly say it's something, by Zeus, said Simmias — remarkably so. And do we actually know what it is? Certainly, he said. Where did we get the knowledge of it from? Isn't it from the things we were just talking about — seeing sticks or stones or other things that are equal, we formed the notion of that other thing from these, something different from them? Or doesn't it seem different to you? Look at it this way too. Don't equal stones and sticks sometimes, while remaining the same, appear equal to one person and not to another? Certainly. But now — did the equals themselves ever appear unequal to you, or equality appear as inequality? Never, Socrates. So these equal things are not the same, he said, as the equal itself. It doesn't appear so to me at all, Socrates. And yet, he said, it's from these equal things, different as they are from that equal, that you've nonetheless formed the notion of it and grasped it? That's very true, he said. And this either because it's like them, or unlike them? Certainly. It makes no difference, he said — as long as, seeing one thing, you think of another from that sight, whether like or unlike, it must be that this has become an act of recollection. Certainly. Well then, he said — do we experience something like this with the equal things in sticks and the like that we were just talking about? Do they appear to us to be equal in the way the equal itself is, or do they fall short of being such a thing as the equal, or not at all? They fall quite short, he said. So don't we agree that whenever someone, seeing something, thinks, 'this thing I'm now looking at is trying to be like some other thing among the things that are, but falls short and cannot be like that thing, being inferior to it' — the person thinking this must already have had prior knowledge of that thing which he says the other resembles, but imperfectly? Necessarily. Well then — is this the very experience we've had ourselves, regarding equal things and the equal itself? Absolutely.

PHAEDO: So it's necessary that we knew the equal beforehand, before that time when we first saw equal things and realized that all of them are straining to be like the equal, but fall short of it. Yes, that's so. But we also agree on this: that we couldn't have gotten the notion from anywhere else, nor is it possible to get it any other way, except from seeing or touching or some other sense—and I count all the senses as one for this purpose. They're the same, Socrates, at least for what the argument is trying to show. Well then, it's from the senses that we must come to realize that everything given in the senses is straining toward that which the equal itself is, and falls short of it. Isn't that how we put it? Yes. So before we began to see and hear and use our other senses, we must somehow have already acquired knowledge of the equal itself—what it is—if we were going to refer the equal things we perceive back to it, on the grounds that they're all eager to be like it but come up short. That follows necessarily from what we've already agreed, Socrates. But didn't we start seeing and hearing and having our other senses the moment we were born? Certainly. And we're saying we had to have gotten knowledge of the equal before that? Yes. So it seems we must have possessed it before we were born. It does seem so. Now if we acquired it before birth and had it when we came to be, then we knew, both before birth and right at birth, not only the equal and the greater and the less but all things of that kind—for our argument now concerns the beautiful itself and the good itself no less than the equal, and the just and the holy, and, as I say, everything we stamp with the seal 'what it is' when we ask questions and when we answer them. So we must have acquired knowledge of all these before we were born. That's so. And if, having acquired it, we hadn't each time forgotten it, we'd always be born knowing it and would know it throughout our lives—for this is what knowing is: to have gotten hold of some piece of knowledge and to keep it, not to have lost it. Isn't that what we mean by forgetting, Simmias—the loss of knowledge? Certainly, Socrates, he said. But if, I imagine, we got it before being born and lost it in the process of being born, and then later, by using our senses concerning those very things, we recover the knowledge we once had before—wouldn't what we call learning be the recovery of knowledge that is already our own? And wouldn't we be right to call this remembering? Quite right.

PHAEDO: For it has turned out to be possible, hasn't it, that a person who perceives something—sees it, or hears it, or takes it in through some other sense—can, from that, come to think of something else that had slipped his mind, something related to it though unlike it, or something it resembles. So, as I say, one of two things must be true: either we're born already knowing these things and know them throughout our lives, or afterward, the people we say are learning are doing nothing but remembering, and learning would just be recollection. That's certainly how it looks, Socrates. Which do you choose then, Simmias? That we're born knowing, or that we later recollect what we had come to know earlier? I can't choose right now, Socrates. Well, can you choose this, and tell me what you think about it: a man who knows something—could he give an account of what he knows, or not? Certainly he must be able to, Socrates. And do you think everyone can give an account of the things we've just been discussing? I wish they could, said Simmias, but I'm much more afraid that by this time tomorrow there won't be a single person left able to do it properly. So you don't think everyone knows these things, Simmias? Not at all. So they're remembering what they once learned? Necessarily. When did our souls acquire this knowledge? Not, surely, since we became human beings. No, certainly not. Before that, then. Yes. So our souls existed, Simmias, even before they took human form, apart from bodies, and they possessed understanding. Unless we acquire this knowledge at the very moment we're born, Socrates—that time is still left open. Well, my friend—but at what other time do we lose it? We're not born already having it, as we've just agreed—do we lose it at the very moment we get it, or can you name some other time? None at all, Socrates—I didn't notice I was saying nothing. Well then, is this how it stands for us, Simmias? If those things we're always going on about really exist—the beautiful, the good, and all that kind of reality—and we refer everything we perceive back to that reality, discovering that it existed beforehand and belongs to us, and we compare our perceptions to it, then it follows necessarily that, just as these things exist, so too our soul existed before we were born; but if they don't exist, this whole argument would have been made in vain. Isn't that how it stands, and isn't it equally necessary that these things exist and that our souls existed before we were born, and that if the one is false, so is the other?

PHAEDO: It seems to me, Socrates, said Simmias, that the same necessity holds in both cases, and the argument takes splendid refuge in the fact that our soul's existence before our birth stands or falls together with the reality you're now describing. There's nothing I find so evident as this—that all such things exist as fully as possible: the beautiful, the good, and all the others you were just naming—and I think it's been adequately demonstrated. And what about Cebes? said Socrates. Cebes has to be persuaded too. Adequately, I think, said Simmias, though he's the most stubborn of men when it comes to distrusting arguments. Still, I think he's sufficiently convinced that our soul existed before we were born. But whether it will still exist once we've died—that, I think, hasn't been shown even to his own satisfaction, Socrates. The point Cebes raised earlier still stands—the worry most people have, that the soul might scatter the moment a person dies, and that this might be the end of its existence. What's to stop it from coming into being and being assembled from somewhere else, and existing before it enters a human body, and yet, once it arrives there and departs again, from itself coming to an end and being destroyed? Well said, Simmias, said Cebes. It does look as if only half of what needs proving has been shown—that our soul existed before we were born—but it still needs to be shown, in addition, that it will exist just as much after we die as it did before we were born, if the proof is to be complete. It has been shown, Simmias and Cebes, said Socrates—even now, if you're willing to combine this argument with the one we agreed on earlier, that everything living comes from what is dead. For if the soul exists even before this life, and if, in coming to life and being born, it can come from nowhere else but from death and being dead, then surely it must exist after death too, since it has to come to life again. So what you're asking has already been shown, even now. Still, I think you and Simmias would enjoy working this argument over still further—you have the fear children have, that when the soul leaves the body the wind will really blow it apart and scatter it, especially if a person happens to die not in calm weather but in a great storm. And Cebes laughed and said: Talk us out of it, Socrates, as if we were afraid—or rather, not as if we ourselves were afraid, but as if there's a child in each of us who's frightened of such things. Try to persuade him not to fear death as if it were a bogeyman. But you must, said Socrates, chant a charm over him every day, until you've charmed the fear away.

PHAEDO: But where, Socrates, said Cebes, shall we find a good singer of such charms, now that you're leaving us? Greece is a large place, Cebes, he said, and there are good men in it, and there are many foreign peoples too—you must search through all of them looking for such a charmer, sparing neither money nor effort, since there's nothing on which you could spend your money to better purpose. And you must search among yourselves as well, for you might not easily find people more capable of doing this than you are. Well, that we'll see to, said Cebes—but let's go back to where we left off, if that's what pleases you. Of course it pleases me—why wouldn't it? Good, he said. Now, said Socrates, this is the sort of question we need to ask ourselves: what kind of thing is it that suffers this fate, being scattered apart, and what kind of thing should we be afraid might suffer it, and what kind should not? And after that we should examine which kind the soul is, and on that basis feel confident or afraid on our soul's behalf. That's true, he said. Now, isn't it fitting that whatever is composite, put together out of parts, should by its nature suffer this—being split apart the same way it was put together? And if something happens to be non-composite, it alone, if anything, is fit not to suffer this. That's how it seems to me, said Cebes. And isn't it likely that the things which are always the same and stay in the same state are the non-composite ones, while the things that are sometimes one way and sometimes another and are never the same are the composite ones? Yes, that's how it seems to me too. Let's go back, then, he said, to the same things we were discussing before. That reality itself, whose being we account for in our questions and answers—does it always stay the same, in the same state, or does it change from one condition to another? The equal itself, the beautiful itself, each thing itself, what it is, being itself—does it ever admit any change whatsoever? Or does each of them, being what it is, single in form, remaining by itself, stay always the same in the same state, and never in any way admit any alteration at all? It must stay the same, in the same state, Socrates, said Cebes. But what about the many beautiful things—people, or horses, or cloaks, or anything else of that kind—or equal things, or beautiful things, or anything sharing the same name as those realities? Do they stay the same, or is it just the opposite with them—that they're never, so to speak, the same as themselves or as each other in any way at all? These, in turn, said Cebes, are never the same.

PHAEDO. "So these things you could touch, and see, and perceive with your other senses — but the things that stay always the same, there's no way to grasp them except by the reasoning of the mind. They're invisible, not things you see." "What you say is entirely true," he said. "Shall we then posit two kinds of things that are — one visible, one invisible?" "Let's posit that," he said. "And the invisible always stays the same, the visible never does?" "Let's posit that too," he said. "Well then," he went on, "aren't we ourselves partly body and partly soul?" "Nothing else," he said. "Which of the two kinds would we say the body is more like, more akin to?" "That's obvious to everyone," he said, "the visible." "And the soul? Visible or invisible?" "Not visible to human eyes, Socrates," he said. "But we meant visible and invisible relative to human nature — or did you have some other standard in mind?" "Human nature." "Then what do we say about the soul — visible or invisible?" "Not visible." "Invisible, then?" "Yes." "So the soul is more like the invisible, and the body more like the visible." "That's altogether necessary, Socrates." "Now didn't we also say a while back that when the soul uses the body to examine something — through sight or hearing or any other sense, since examining something through sense-perception is exactly what using the body means — it gets dragged by the body toward things that never stay the same, and it wanders and gets confused and dizzy, as if drunk, from contact with things of that sort?" "Certainly." "But when it examines things on its own, it travels there, to what is pure and everlasting and immortal and unchanging, and being akin to it, it stays with it always, whenever it's on its own and free to be — and it stops wandering, and in the presence of those things it stays constant and unchanging, since it's in contact with things of that sort. And isn't this condition of the soul called wisdom?" "Absolutely — beautifully and truly said, Socrates." "So which kind, going by what we said before and what we're saying now, does the soul seem to you more like, more akin to?" "I think anyone, Socrates — even the dullest — would agree, following this line of reasoning, that the soul is altogether and entirely more like the thing that always stays the same than the thing that doesn't." "And the body?" "Like the other kind."

PHAEDO. "Now look at it this way too. Whenever soul and body are together, nature assigns one to be ruled and enslaved, the other to rule and be master. Judging by that, which one seems to you like the divine, and which like the mortal? Don't you think the divine is naturally suited to rule and lead, while the mortal is suited to be ruled and enslaved?" "I do." "Then which does the soul resemble?" "Clearly, Socrates, the soul resembles the divine, and the body the mortal." "Then consider, Cebes," he said, "whether it follows from everything we've said that the soul is most like the divine, the immortal, the intelligible, the uniform, the indissoluble, and what stays always the same as itself, while the body, on the other hand, is most like the human, the mortal, the multiform, the unintelligible, the dissoluble, and what never stays the same as itself. Can we say anything against that, dear Cebes, to show it isn't so?" "We can't." "Well then — given that this is so, isn't it fitting for the body to dissolve quickly, while the soul is entirely indissoluble, or close to it?" "Of course." "Do you notice, then," he said, "that when a person dies, the visible part of him, the body, lying there in the visible world — what we call a corpse, which is naturally due to dissolve and fall apart and be dispersed — doesn't suffer any of that right away, but stays intact for a good long time, quite a long time in fact, if the person dies with his body in good condition and at a favorable season. Once the body shrinks and is embalmed, like the mummies in Egypt, it stays whole almost indefinitely, and even if some parts decay, the bones and sinews and everything like that are, so to speak, practically immortal — isn't that so?" "Yes." "But the soul — the invisible part — which departs to another place of that kind, noble and pure and invisible, truly to Hades, into the presence of the good and wise god, where, god willing, my own soul must soon go too — this soul of ours, so constituted, does it really, the moment it leaves the body, get blown apart and destroyed, as most people claim? Far from it, dear Cebes and Simmias — the truth is much more like this: if it departs pure, dragging nothing of the body along with it, since it had no willing part in the body's company during life but fled from it and gathered itself into itself, always practicing just this — and that's nothing other than practicing philosophy rightly, truly training to die with ease — or isn't that exactly what the practice of death would be?

PHAEDO. "Absolutely." "Then in that condition it departs to what is like itself, the invisible, the divine, the immortal, the wise, and arriving there it gets to be happy, freed from wandering and folly and fears and wild desires and all the other human troubles, and as they say of the initiated, it truly spends the rest of time in the company of the gods. Shall we say it's like this, Cebes, or otherwise?" "Like this, by Zeus," said Cebes. "But if it departs from the body defiled and impure, I think — because it was always in the body's company, and tended it, and loved it, and was bewitched by it and by its desires and pleasures, so that it thought nothing was true except the bodily — the sort of thing one can touch and see and drink and eat and use for sex — while it had grown accustomed to hating and fearing and fleeing what's dark to the eyes and invisible, but intelligible and grasped by philosophy — do you think a soul in that state will depart pure and by itself?" "Not in the least," he said. "No, I think it will be thoroughly permeated by the bodily, which its constant company and intimacy with the body, through long practice, has made grow into it as though part of its nature." "Quite so." "And we should think of this element, my friend, as heavy and burdensome and earthy and visible — and it's this that weighs such a soul down and drags it back into the visible region, out of fear of the invisible and of Hades, so that, as the story goes, it hovers around graves and tombs, where indeed shadowy phantoms of souls have been seen — the sort of apparitions produced by souls that were not released purely but still cling to something of the visible, which is why they can be seen." "That's likely, Socrates." "Likely indeed, Cebes — and these certainly aren't the souls of the good, but of the base, forced to wander around such places, paying the penalty for their former bad upbringing. And they wander like that until, through desire for what accompanies them — their bodily element — they're bound once more into a body. And they're bound, naturally enough, into characters resembling whatever they practiced during life." "What sort of thing do you mean by that, Socrates?" "For instance, those who devoted themselves to gluttony and violence and drunkenness, without any restraint, are likely to slip into the bodies of donkeys and beasts of that kind.

PHAEDO. "Or don't you think so?" "What you say is entirely likely." "And those who valued injustice and tyranny and plunder above all slip into the bodies of wolves and hawks and kites — or where else would we say such souls go?" "No doubt," said Cebes, "into creatures like that." "So it's clear enough," he said, "where each of the others would go too, following the likeness of their practices?" "Clear enough," he said, "of course." "So the happiest of these, and the ones going to the best place, are those who have practiced the ordinary civic virtue people call temperance and justice — which comes from habit and practice, without philosophy or reason?" "How are these the happiest?" "Because it's likely they return again into some similarly organized, gentle species — bees, perhaps, or wasps, or ants — or even back into the human race, and become decent, moderate men." "Likely enough." "But to enter the race of the gods is not permitted to anyone who hasn't practiced philosophy and departed entirely pure — only to the lover of learning. And this, my friends Simmias and Cebes, is exactly why true philosophers hold back from all the bodily desires, and master them, and don't surrender themselves to them — not out of fear of ruining their households or of poverty, the way most people, the money-lovers, do; nor out of dread of dishonor or disgrace, the way the power-lovers and honor-lovers do — that's why they hold back from them." "No, that wouldn't be fitting for them, Socrates," said Cebes. "No indeed, by Zeus," he said. "So for all these reasons, Cebes, those who care at all for their own soul, and don't live shaping their lives around the body, bid farewell to all that and don't walk the same road as people who don't know where they're going. Instead, believing they mustn't act against philosophy and the liberation and purification it offers, they turn and follow wherever it leads." "How so, Socrates?" "I'll tell you," he said. "Lovers of learning know that when philosophy takes hold of their soul, it finds it literally bound up and glued fast within the body, forced to examine the things that are through the body as through a prison cell rather than by itself, through itself, and wallowing in utter ignorance. And philosophy sees the terrible cunning of this imprisonment — that it works through desire, so that the prisoner himself becomes his own chief accomplice in being bound.

PHAEDO. So, as I was saying, lovers of learning know that when philosophy takes hold of their soul in that condition, it gently encourages it and tries to set it free, showing that observation through the eyes is full of deception, and observation through the ears and the other senses is full of deception too, and persuading the soul to withdraw from the senses except so far as it must use them, and urging it to gather and collect itself into itself, and to trust nothing but itself, whatever it, alone by itself, understands of any reality by itself — and to consider nothing true that it examines through other means, since such things vary from one setting to another; the former sort of thing being perceptible and visible, the latter, what the soul itself sees, being intelligible and invisible. Since the soul of the true philosopher believes it shouldn't resist this liberation, it holds itself back, as far as it can, from pleasures and desires and pains and fears, reasoning that whenever someone feels pleasure or fear or pain or desire intensely, the harm isn't simply what one might suppose — falling ill, say, or wasting money through indulging desires — but something else, the greatest and most extreme of all evils, which one suffers and doesn't even reckon with." "What is that, Socrates?" said Cebes. "That every human soul, whenever it feels intense pleasure or pain about something, is forced at the same time to believe that whatever caused this feeling most strongly is the clearest and truest thing there is — when it isn't. And this is especially true of visible things, isn't it?" "Certainly." "And isn't it in this very experience that the soul gets most tightly bound by the body?" "How so?" "Because each pleasure and pain, like a nail, pins the soul to the body and rivets it there, and makes it bodily, so that it comes to believe that whatever the body says is true. For by sharing the body's opinions and taking pleasure in the same things, it's forced, I think, to become like the body in character and habit, and never to arrive purely in Hades, but always to depart full of the body, so that it soon falls back into another body and, as if sown there, takes root — and because of all this, it has no share in the company of the divine and pure and uniform." "That's the truest thing you've said, Socrates," said Cebes. "For these reasons, then, Cebes, the rightful lovers of learning are disciplined and courageous — not for the reasons most people give. Or do you think otherwise?"

PHAEDO. No, I certainly wouldn't think that. That's not how the soul of a philosopher would reason. It wouldn't imagine that while philosophy must undo these bonds, the soul, once freed, should hand itself back over to pleasures and pains and bind itself up again, doing an endless task like some Penelope working her loom in reverse. No — such a soul secures a calm apart from these disturbances, follows reasoning and stays always within it, gazing on what is true, divine, and beyond opinion, and feeding on that. It believes it must live this way as long as it lives, and when it dies, arriving at what is akin to itself and of that same nature, it will be free of human troubles. After such a upbringing, Simmias and Cebes, it has nothing terrible to fear — that once separated from the body it might be torn apart, scattered by the winds, blown away and gone, existing nowhere anymore. When Socrates had said this, there was silence for a long while. Socrates himself seemed, as far as one could tell, still absorbed in what had been said, and so were most of us. But Cebes and Simmias were talking quietly to each other. Socrates noticed and asked, "What is it? Do you feel something was said inadequately? There are still plenty of grounds for doubt and objection in it, if someone means to examine it thoroughly. If you two are considering something else, never mind — but if you're stuck on some point in what's been said, don't hesitate to speak up yourselves and go through it, if you see some way it might have been put better, and include me too, if you think I can help you find your way more easily." Simmias said, "Well, Socrates, I'll tell you the truth. Each of us has been stuck for a while now, and each has been pushing the other to ask you, because we're eager to hear your answer but reluctant to trouble you, afraid it might be unwelcome given your present circumstances." Socrates laughed softly at this and said, "Simmias, that's rich! I'd have a hard time persuading other people that I don't consider my present fate a misfortune, when I can't even persuade you two — you're afraid I'm in a worse mood now than earlier in my life. It seems you think I'm a poorer prophet than the swans, who, when they sense that they must die, sing then more than ever, and more beautifully than before, rejoicing that they are about to go to the god whose servants they are."

PHAEDO. But people, because of their own fear of death, tell lies about the swans too — they say the swans, grieving over death, sing their last song out of sorrow. They don't stop to consider that no bird sings when it's hungry, or cold, or suffering some other pain — not even the nightingale, or the swallow, or the hoopoe, which people also claim sing out of sorrow. But it doesn't seem to me that these birds sing because they're in pain, and neither do the swans. I think that because they belong to Apollo, they have the gift of prophecy, and knowing in advance the good things in Hades, they sing and rejoice on that day more than ever before. And I count myself a fellow servant of the swans, consecrated to the same god, with no worse a gift of prophecy from our master than theirs, and no less cheerful about leaving this life than they are. So, for that reason, feel free to say and ask whatever you like, as long as the Eleven of Athens allow it." "Well said," Simmias replied. "I'll tell you what troubles me, and then Cebes here can say where he doesn't accept what's been argued. It seems to me, Socrates, that on matters like these, achieving clear certainty in this life is either impossible or extremely difficult — and yet not to test in every way what's said about them, and not to give up before one has examined the question from every angle and run out of options, is the mark of a very feeble man. On such questions one ought to accomplish one of these things: learn how the truth stands, or discover it oneself, or if that's impossible, then at least take the best and least refutable of human accounts, and riding on that as if on a raft, brave the danger of sailing through life — unless someone could make the crossing more safely and with less risk on some sturdier vessel, some divine account. And so now I won't be ashamed to ask, since you yourself invite it, and I won't blame myself later for not saying now what I think. Because, Socrates, when I examine what's been said, both on my own and together with Cebes here, it doesn't seem to me to have been argued adequately." Socrates said, "Perhaps you're right, my friend. But tell me where exactly it falls short."

PHAEDO. "Here," he said, "in the very point where one might make this same argument about attunement and a lyre and its strings — that the attunement is something invisible, bodiless, altogether beautiful and divine, present in the tuned lyre, while the lyre itself and its strings are bodies, bodily, composite, earthy, akin to what is mortal. Now suppose someone breaks the lyre, or cuts and snaps the strings, and then insists, using your same argument, that the attunement must still exist and can't have perished — for there'd be no way for the lyre to still exist with its strings broken, and the strings themselves, being mortal in nature, to still exist, while the attunement, akin and related to what is divine and immortal, has perished — perished before the mortal thing itself! Rather, he'd say, the attunement itself must still exist somewhere, and the wood and strings will rot away long before anything happens to it. And indeed, Socrates, I think you yourself have considered this — that we tend to suppose the soul is something very much like this: that as our body is held in tension and bound together by hot and cold, dry and wet, and things of that sort, our soul is a blending and attunement of these very things, whenever they're blended together well and in the right proportion. If, then, the soul turns out to be a kind of attunement, clearly, whenever our body is relaxed or strained beyond measure by illnesses and other afflictions, the soul must at once perish, however divine it may be — just as other attunements perish, both those in musical notes and those in the works of craftsmen generally — while the remains of each body last a long time, until they're burned up or rot away. So consider what we should say in response to this argument, if someone claims the soul, being a blending of the elements in the body, perishes first of all in what we call death." Socrates looked at him steadily, as he often did, and smiled. "What Simmias says is fair enough," he said. "If any of you is more resourceful than I am, why didn't he answer? He does seem to have laid hold of the argument rather well. Still, I think that before answering, we should first hear what fault Cebes here finds with the argument, so that in the time it takes, we can think over what to say — and then, once we've heard them both, either agree with them if they seem to be in tune with the truth, or if not, defend the argument on its behalf. Come then, Cebes," he said, "tell us what's been troubling you and making you doubt." "I'll tell you," said Cebes.

PHAEDO. "It seems to me that the argument is still in the same place, and has, as we said before, the same fault to answer for. That our soul existed even before it came into this visible form — I don't take back that this has been shown quite elegantly, and, if it's not too bold to say, quite adequately. But that it still exists somewhere even after we die — that I don't think has been shown. I don't agree with Simmias's objection that the soul isn't stronger and longer-lasting than the body — on all these points I think it differs enormously from the body. So then, the argument might say, why do you still doubt, when you see that after a man dies, the weaker part of him still exists? Doesn't it seem necessary to you that the longer-lasting part should still be preserved for that same length of time? Well, consider this point, and see if there's anything in it — because, it seems, I too, like Simmias, need an image. It seems to me that this is rather like someone saying, about an old weaver who has died, that the man hasn't perished but exists somewhere safe, and offering as proof the cloak he wove and wore himself, which is still intact and hasn't perished — and if someone doubted him, he'd ask which lasts longer, a man or a cloak in use and worn regularly, and when the answer comes back that the man lasts much longer, he'd think he had proven that the man, of all things, must surely still be safe, since the shorter-lived thing hasn't perished. But I don't think that's how it is, Simmias — think it over yourself, what I'm saying. Anyone would recognize that whoever says this is talking nonsense. Because this weaver, having worn out and woven many such cloaks, outlived all of those many cloaks, but died before the last one — and that doesn't make a man any inferior to a cloak, or weaker. And I think the soul stands to the body in just this same relation, and anyone saying the same things about them would seem to me to be saying something reasonable — that the soul is long-lasting, while the body is weaker and shorter-lived. But he might add that each soul wears out many bodies, especially if it lives many years — for if the body flows and perishes while the person is still living, and the soul is always reweaving what wears out, then it would necessarily follow that whenever the soul perishes, it happens to be wearing its last garment, and it perishes before that one alone — and once the soul has perished, then finally the body would show its weak nature and quickly rot away and vanish.

PHAEDO. And so this argument doesn't yet give us grounds to feel confident that once we die, our soul still exists somewhere. Suppose someone granted the speaker even more than you've granted — allowed not only that our souls existed in the time before we were born, but also that nothing prevents some souls from continuing to exist after we die, and existing in the future, and being born again many times over, and dying again — since the soul is by nature strong enough to endure many births — but even granting all that, he might refuse to concede this further point: that the soul doesn't suffer wear from its many births, and that in the end, in one of its deaths, it perishes utterly. And this death, this dissolution of the body which brings ruin to the soul — no one, he might say, could know when it happens, since none of us can perceive it. And if that's how things are, then no one facing death has any right to be confident without being foolish, unless he can prove that the soul is altogether immortal and indestructible. Otherwise, anyone who is about to die must always be afraid for his own soul, that in this present separation from the body it might perish utterly. All of us, hearing them say this, felt distressed — as we said to each other afterward — because we had been thoroughly convinced by the earlier argument, and now they seemed to stir us up again and cast us into doubt, not only about what had already been said but about what was still to come, making us wonder whether we were worthless judges of the matter, or whether the subject itself simply admitted no certainty. ECHECRATES. By the gods, Phaedo, I sympathize with you. Even now, hearing you tell it, I find myself asking: what argument can we still trust? The argument Socrates gave, so persuasive as it was, has now fallen into doubt. This idea — that our soul is some kind of attunement — has a remarkable hold on me, now and always; hearing it again just now reminded me that I had already believed something like it myself before. So I badly need some other argument, starting fresh, to persuade me that the soul of someone who dies doesn't die along with him. So tell me, for god's sake, how did Socrates take up the argument? And did he too, as you say you all did, show any sign of distress, or did he come to its defense calmly? Did he defend it adequately, or only partially? Tell us everything, as precisely as you can."

PHAEDO: Yes, Echecrates, and though I'd marveled at Socrates many times before, I never admired him more than I did that day, being there. That he had something to say — well, that's not so strange, perhaps. But what amazed me most was, first, how gladly and warmly and appreciatively he took in the young men's argument; then how sharply he noticed what we'd suffered from those arguments; and then how well he healed us, calling us back as if we'd fled the field defeated, and urging us to follow along and examine the argument together. ECHECRATES: How did he do it? PHAEDO: I'll tell you. I happened to be sitting on his right, on a low stool beside the bed, and he was sitting well above me. So he stroked my head and gathered up the hair at my neck — he liked to play with my hair whenever the chance came — and said, 'Tomorrow, perhaps, Phaedo, you'll cut off these beautiful locks.' 'It seems so, Socrates,' I said. 'Not if you listen to me.' 'What then?' I said. 'Today,' he said, 'I'll cut off mine, and you those, if our argument dies on us and we can't bring it back to life. And if I were you and the argument slipped away from me, I'd swear an oath, like the Argives, not to let my hair grow again until I'd won my rematch against the argument of Simmias and Cebes.' 'But,' I said, 'they say not even Heracles is a match for two.' 'Then call on me,' he said, 'as your Iolaus, while there's still daylight.' 'I call on you, then,' I said, 'not as Heracles, but as Iolaus calling on Heracles.' 'It won't make any difference,' he said. 'But first let's guard against a certain danger.' 'What danger?' I said. 'That we not become,' he said, 'haters of argument, the way some people become haters of humanity. There's no worse thing that can happen to a person than to come to hate argument. Hatred of argument and hatred of people arise the same way. Hatred of people creeps in when someone trusts another completely, without real skill in judging people, believing him to be entirely true, sound, and reliable, and then, a little later, finds him corrupt and untrustworthy — and then another one the same way. And when this happens to someone often, and especially at the hands of those he'd have counted closest and dearest, he ends up, worn down by repeated blows, hating everyone, and believing there's nothing sound in anybody at all. Haven't you noticed this happening?' 'I certainly have,' I said. 'Well then,' he said, 'isn't it a shameful thing, and plain that such a person was trying to deal with people without any skill in human affairs?'

PHAEDO: 'For if he'd used some skill in dealing with them, he'd have judged the matter as it really stands — that the very good and the very bad are each very few, and those in between are the most.' 'How do you mean?' I said. 'It's like it is,' he said, 'with the very small and the very large. Do you think anything is rarer than finding a person or a dog, or anything else, that's extremely large or extremely small? Or extremely fast or slow, or ugly or beautiful, or white or black? Haven't you noticed that in all such cases, the extremes at either end are rare and few, while the ones in between are abundant and many?' 'I certainly have,' I said. 'So don't you think,' he said, 'that if a contest in wickedness were held, very few would come out on top there too?' 'Likely so,' I said. 'Likely indeed,' he said. 'But in this respect arguments aren't like people — here I was simply following your lead just now — rather, the resemblance is this: when someone trusts some argument to be true without having the skill to judge arguments, and then a little later it seems false to him — sometimes rightly, sometimes not — and then another, and then another — you know how it is, especially with those who've spent their time on arguments that argue both sides of everything: eventually they think themselves the wisest of all, and imagine they alone have grasped that nothing at all is sound or stable, neither among things nor among arguments, but that everything that is turns up and down exactly as in the Euripus, and never stays put for any time at all.' 'What you say is entirely true,' I said. 'Then, Phaedo,' he said, 'wouldn't it be a pitiful thing if, when there is some argument that is true and stable and can be understood, a person who then runs into certain arguments that seem at one time true and at another time not, doesn't blame himself or his own lack of skill, but ends up — because of the pain of it — gladly shifting the blame away from himself onto the arguments themselves, and spends the rest of his life hating and abusing arguments, and so is robbed of the truth and knowledge of the things that are?' 'By Zeus,' I said, 'that would be pitiful indeed.' 'So first of all,' he said, 'let's guard against this, and not let into our minds the idea that there's likely nothing sound in arguments, but rather that we ourselves are not yet sound, and that we must be brave and eager to become sound — you and the others for the sake of your whole life still ahead, and I myself for the sake of death itself, since as things stand I'm in danger of behaving, about this very matter, not like a lover of wisdom but like the utterly uneducated, who simply love to win.'

PHAEDO: 'For when people like that dispute about something, they don't care at all how the matter they're arguing about actually stands — what they're eager for is that the position they themselves have staked out should seem right to those present. And I think that right now I differ from them only in this one respect: I won't be eager to make what I say seem true to those present, except as a side effect, but rather to make it seem so to myself, as much as possible. For I reckon it this way, my dear friend — see how self-interested this is — if what I say happens to be true, then it's good to be persuaded of it; but if there's nothing at all for someone who has died, then at least for this time before death itself I'll be less unpleasant to the people here by my grieving, and this folly of mine won't last on with me — that would be a bad thing — but will perish shortly after. So prepared, Simmias and Cebes,' he said, 'I come to the argument. But you, if you listen to me, will give little thought to Socrates and much more to the truth: if I seem to you to say something true, agree with it; if not, resist it with every argument you have, taking care that in my eagerness I don't deceive both myself and you alike, and fly off leaving my sting behind, like a bee. Well, we must press on,' he said. 'First remind me of what you were saying, if I don't seem to remember it. Simmias, I believe, distrusts and fears that the soul, though more divine and more beautiful than the body, might nonetheless perish first, being a kind of harmony. Cebes, it seemed to me, agreed with me on this much — that the soul lasts longer than the body — but held that this remains unclear to everyone: whether the soul, after wearing out many bodies, many times over, and leaving behind the last body, might not then itself perish, and this very thing be death — the destruction of the soul — since the body, at least, never stops perishing all the time. Is there anything else, Simmias and Cebes, that we need to examine besides this?' Both agreed that this was so. 'Well then,' he said, 'do you accept all the earlier arguments, or some but not others?' 'Some,' they said, 'but not others.'

PHAEDO: 'What do you say, then,' he said, 'about that argument in which we claimed that learning is recollection, and that if this is so, our soul must necessarily exist somewhere else before it was bound within the body?' 'For my part,' said Cebes, 'I was wonderfully persuaded by it at the time, and now I stand by it as by no other argument.' 'And I too,' said Simmias, 'feel the same way, and I'd be quite surprised if I ever came to think differently about that one.' And Socrates said, 'But you're bound, my Theban friend, to think differently, if this belief still holds — that harmony is a composite thing, and that the soul is a kind of harmony made up out of the things strung together in the body. For surely you won't accept your own claim that a harmony existed already composed before the things existed out of which it had to be composed — will you accept that?' 'Not at all, Socrates,' he said. 'Do you notice, then,' he said, 'that this is what you end up saying, when you claim the soul existed before it came into a human shape and body, and yet also that it's composed of things that don't yet exist? For harmony isn't the sort of thing you're comparing it to; rather, the lyre and its strings and its notes come into being first, still unattuned, and only last of all is the harmony put together, and it's the first thing to be destroyed. So how will this argument of yours harmonize with that one?' 'Not at all,' said Simmias. 'And yet,' he said, 'it's fitting that it should be in tune, if any argument is to be in tune with the one about harmony.' 'It is fitting,' said Simmias. 'Well then, this one is not in tune with yours. So consider which of the two arguments you choose — that learning is recollection, or that the soul is a harmony.' 'The former, Socrates, by far,' he said. 'For this one came to me without proof, resting on a certain plausibility and attractiveness, which is why it appeals to most people too; but I'm well aware that arguments that base their proofs on mere plausibility are frauds, and if one isn't on guard against them, they deceive very thoroughly — in geometry and everywhere else as well. But the argument about recollection and learning was stated on the basis of a hypothesis worth accepting. For it was said, I believe, that our soul exists even before it comes into the body, just as its very essence, which bears the name of what-it-is, exists — and this I've accepted, I'm convinced, on sufficient and correct grounds. So it seems I'm bound, for these reasons, to accept neither from myself nor from anyone else the claim that the soul is a harmony.' 'What about this, then, Simmias,' he said, 'looking at it this way?'

PHAEDO: 'Do you think it fitting for a harmony, or any other composite, to be in some other condition than that of the things out of which it's composed?' 'Not at all.' 'Nor, I suppose, to do anything, or to undergo anything, beyond what those components do or undergo?' He agreed. 'Then it isn't fitting for a harmony to lead the things out of which it's composed, but rather to follow them.' He agreed to this too. 'So a harmony is very far from being able to move, or sound, or be opposed in any other way to its own parts.' 'Very far indeed,' he said. 'Well then — isn't each harmony by nature just whatever it's been tuned to be?' 'I don't follow,' he said. 'I mean,' he said, 'if it's tuned more, and to a greater degree — if that's even possible — wouldn't it be more of a harmony, and a greater one; and if less, and to a lesser degree, wouldn't it be less of one, and a lesser one?' 'Certainly.' 'Is this true of the soul, then — that one soul is, even in the smallest degree, more or less this very thing, soul, than another?' 'Not in the least,' he said. 'Come then, by Zeus: one soul is said to possess intelligence and virtue, and to be good; another, folly and depravity, and to be bad. And is this said truly?' 'Truly indeed.' 'Now, of those who hold that the soul is a harmony, what will anyone say these things — virtue and vice — actually are, present in souls? Will he say they're some further harmony and disharmony? And that the good soul, being itself a harmony, contains within itself, harmony that it is, yet another harmony, while the bad one is itself unattuned and contains no further harmony within it?' 'I can't say,' said Simmias, 'but clearly something of that kind is what a person holding that view would say.' 'But it's already been agreed,' he said, 'that no soul is any more or less soul than another — and this agreement means precisely that no harmony is any more or to a greater degree, or less or to a lesser degree, harmony than another harmony. Isn't that so?' 'Certainly.' 'And that whatever is no more and no less a harmony is neither more nor less attuned — is that so?' 'It is.' 'And what is neither more nor less attuned has no greater or lesser share of harmony, but an equal share?' 'An equal share.' 'So then, since one soul is, in this very respect — being soul — no more and no less than another, it's also no more and no less attuned?' 'Just so.' 'And being in this condition, it would have no greater share of either disharmony or harmony?' 'No, it wouldn't.' 'And being in this condition again, could one soul have any greater share of vice or virtue than another, if vice is disharmony and virtue is harmony?' 'No greater share at all.'

PHAEDO: More than that, Simmias—by strict logic, no soul would have any share in vice at all, if it really is an attunement. For an attunement, being completely and purely just that—attunement—could never take on any lack of attunement. No, it couldn't. And surely a soul, being completely and purely a soul, could never take on vice either. How could it, given what we've said? So by this argument all souls of all living things will turn out equally good, if it's true that souls are all alike by nature just this one thing, soul. That's how it looks to me, Socrates, he said. And do you think it sound, said Socrates, for the argument to say this, and would it have to end up saying it if the hypothesis that soul is an attunement were correct? Not in the least, he said. Well then, he said, of all the things in a human being, would you say anything else rules them besides the soul, especially a wise soul? No, I wouldn't. Does it rule by yielding to the body's feelings, or by opposing them? I mean something like this: when there's heat and thirst in the body, the soul pulls the opposite way, toward not drinking, and when there's hunger, toward not eating, and we see it opposing the body in countless other ways too—don't we? Certainly. Now didn't we agree earlier that an attunement, if it really is one, could never sound contrary to the tensions, slackenings, pluckings, or any other affections of the very things it's composed from, but must follow them and never govern them? We agreed to that—of course we did. Well then? Doesn't the soul now appear to us to do the complete opposite—governing all the very things people say it's composed from, opposing almost all of them throughout life, and lording it over them in every way, sometimes punishing them harshly and painfully—through physical training and medicine—and sometimes more gently, sometimes threatening and sometimes admonishing, addressing the appetites, the angers, and the fears as though it were one thing talking to another, altogether separate thing? That's just what Homer wrote in the Odyssey, where he says of Odysseus: he struck his chest and rebuked his heart with these words: 'Endure, my heart—you've borne worse than this before.' Do you think he wrote that thinking of the soul as an attunement, something that would be driven by the body's feelings, rather than as something that drives and masters them—something far too divine a thing to be a mere attunement? Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, that's how it seems to me too.

PHAEDO: So it's simply not right, my excellent friend, for us to say that the soul is any kind of attunement—for then, it seems, we'd agree with neither divine Homer nor with ourselves. That's how it stands, he said. Well now, said Socrates, we seem to have appeased Harmonia of Thebes reasonably well. But what about Cadmus, Cebes—how are we going to win him over, and with what argument? I think you'll find a way, said Cebes—at any rate, that argument you just gave against the attunement theory was a marvelous surprise to me. When Simmias was speaking and stuck on his problem, I really wondered whether anyone would be able to make any use of his argument at all. So it struck me as quite strange that it couldn't withstand even the very first attack of your argument. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if Cadmus's argument met the same fate. My good man, said Socrates, don't tempt fate, or some jealous power may overturn the argument we're about to make. Well, that's for the god to worry about—as for us, let's go at it Homeric-style, closing in to see whether there's anything to what you say. Here, then, is the sum of what you're asking: you want it shown that our soul is indestructible and immortal, so that a philosopher on the point of dying, confident and believing that after death he'll fare far better there than if he'd lived and died some other kind of life, won't be showing a foolish, empty-headed confidence. Showing that the soul is something strong and godlike, and that it existed even before we became human, doesn't in your view—so you say—prevent all of this from indicating merely that the soul is long-lasting and existed for some unimaginable stretch of time before, knowing and doing all sorts of things—but was no more immortal for that, and in fact its very entry into a human body was the beginning of its destruction, like a disease; and that it lives out this life in misery and finally perishes altogether in what we call death. And you say it makes no difference to each of our individual fears whether it enters a body once or many times; for anyone who isn't foolish ought to be afraid, if he can't give an account showing the soul is immortal, and has no knowledge of it. Something like that, I think, Cebes, is what you're saying; and I'm deliberately going back over it several times so that nothing slips past us, and so you can add or take away anything you like. And Cebes said, No, there's nothing I want to take away or add right now—that is exactly what I'm saying. Then Socrates paused for a long while, considering something to himself, and said, It's no small thing you're after, Cebes; for it requires a full inquiry into the cause of coming-to-be and passing-away generally.

PHAEDO: So, if you like, I'll go through my own experience with these matters for you; then, if anything I say strikes you as useful, you can use it toward persuading yourself of what you're arguing. Yes, said Cebes, I would like that. Then listen, as I tell it. When I was young, Cebes, I had an extraordinary appetite for that kind of wisdom people call the study of nature; it seemed to me a magnificent thing to know the causes of each thing—why each thing comes to be, why it perishes, why it exists at all. And I kept flipping back and forth, examining questions like these first: is it when heat and cold undergo some kind of fermentation, as some people said, that living things are formed together? And is it blood we think with, or air, or fire? Or none of these, but rather the brain that provides our senses of hearing and seeing and smelling, and out of these arise memory and belief, and out of memory and belief once they've settled down, knowledge comes to be along these lines? And then again, examining how all these things perish, and studying the phenomena of the heavens and the earth, I ended up concluding that I was, if anything, spectacularly unsuited for this kind of inquiry. And I'll give you good enough proof of that: matters I previously understood clearly enough—or so I thought, and so others thought too—I was, through this inquiry, so thoroughly blinded that I actually unlearned things I had thought I knew before, among many others, why a human being grows. That, I used to think, was obvious to anyone: because of eating and drinking. When, from food, flesh is added to flesh and bone to bone, and in the same way each of the other parts gets its own proper matter added to it, then, I thought, the mass that was small later becomes large, and that's how a small person becomes a big one. That's what I used to think—doesn't that seem reasonable to you? It does to me, said Cebes. Consider this too, then. I used to think it was reasonable enough that, whenever a tall man stood next to a short one, he'd appear taller by a head, and one horse taller than another the same way; and even more obviously than that—ten seemed to me more than eight because two had been added to it, and a two-cubit length greater than a one-cubit length because it exceeded it by half its own measure. Well, said Cebes, what do you think about all that now?

PHAEDO: I'm a long way, by Zeus, he said, from thinking I know the cause of any of that—I who don't even accept it of myself that when you add one to one, either the one it was added to has become two, or the one that was added, or that the one added and the one it was added to became two by the addition of the one to the other. I find it strange that when each of them was separate from the other, each was, presumably, one, and they weren't two then, but once they came close to each other, this—their coming together, their being placed near one another—turned out to be the cause of their becoming two. Nor, again, can I be persuaded that if you split one in two, this—the splitting—has now become the cause of there being two; for that's the opposite cause from the one before, which made for becoming two. Then it was because they were brought together near one another and one was added to the other; now it's because one is drawn apart and separated from the other. Nor can I any longer convince myself that I understand why a unit comes to be at all—nor, in a word, why anything else comes to be or perishes or exists, following this method of inquiry—but I've cobbled together some other approach of my own, haphazardly, and this old method I don't accept in any way at all. But once, hearing someone reading aloud from a book—by Anaxagoras, he said it was—and saying that it is Mind that orders and is the cause of everything, I was delighted with this explanation, and it seemed to me in a way to be a good thing, that Mind should be the cause of everything; and I thought that if this were so, then Mind, in ordering everything, would order and arrange each thing in whatever way was best for it; so if anyone wanted to find the cause of anything—why it comes to be, perishes, or exists—what he'd need to find out about it was how it was best for it to be, or to undergo or do anything else whatsoever; and by this reasoning a person need consider nothing else about anything, himself included, except what is best and most excellent—though necessarily the same person would also know what is worse, since the knowledge of both is the same. Reasoning this way, I was delighted to think I had found in Anaxagoras a teacher after my own mind about the cause of things, one who would tell me, first, whether the earth is flat or round, and having told me that, would go on to explain the cause and the necessity of it, telling me what was better, and that it was better for it to be such as it is; and if he said it was in the middle, he would go on to explain how it was better for it to be in the middle; and if he could show me all this, I was prepared never again to go looking for any other kind of cause.

PHAEDO: And so I had gotten myself ready to ask the same kind of question about the sun, and the moon, and the other stars — about their speeds relative to one another, their turnings, and whatever else happens to them — in what way it is better for each of them to act and be acted upon as it does. I never imagined that, having said mind arranged them, he would then bring in some other cause for them than that it is best for them to be as they are. So I thought that in assigning the cause for each of them, and for the whole together, he would go on to explain what is best for each and what is good for all in common. I wouldn't have sold my hopes for a great deal — no, I got hold of the books as eagerly as I could and read them as fast as I was able, so that I might know, as soon as possible, the best and the worse. Well, my friend, I was carried along from a marvelous hope, only to find, as I went on reading, a man making no use of mind at all, nor crediting it with any responsibility for ordering things, but instead blaming air, and aether, and water, and a great many other absurd things. It struck me as exactly like someone saying that Socrates does everything he does by mind, and then, trying to give the causes of each of the things I do, saying first that the reason I'm sitting here now is that my body is made up of bones and sinews, and the bones are solid and have joints separating them from each other, while the sinews, being able to stretch and relax, wrap around the bones along with the flesh and the skin that holds them together; so, since the bones hang loose at their joints, when the sinews slacken and tighten they somehow make it possible for me to bend my limbs now, and that's why, bent up in this way, I'm sitting here. And he would give you other causes just like that for my talking with you — sounds, and air, and hearing, and a thousand other such things — never mentioning the true causes: that since the Athenians decided it was better to condemn me, for that very reason I in turn decided it was better to sit here, and more just to stay and submit to whatever penalty they order. Because — by the dog! — I think these sinews and bones would long since have been off in Megara or among the Boeotians, carried there by their opinion of what's best, if I hadn't thought it more just and finer to submit to whatever penalty the city imposes rather than to flee and run away.

PHAEDO: To call things like that causes is altogether absurd. If someone said that without having such things as bones and sinews and the rest I have, I wouldn't be able to do what I've decided to do, he'd be speaking the truth. But to say that it's because of these things that I do what I do — and that I do it by mind, rather than by choosing the best — would be a great and careless failure of argument. It amounts to being unable to distinguish between what the real cause is and that without which the cause could never be a cause at all. Most people, groping around in the dark, as it were, seem to me to call that other thing by a name that doesn't belong to it, as though it were the cause itself. That's why one man wraps a vortex around the earth and makes the heavens hold it in place, while another props the air up under it like a flat kneading-trough on a stand. But the power by which things are now arranged in the best possible way — that power they neither look for, nor believe holds any divine strength; instead they think they'll someday discover an Atlas mightier and more immortal and holding everything together better than that — and they give no thought at all to the fact that it is truly the good and the fitting that binds and holds things together. Now I would gladly have become a student of that kind of cause, whatever it might be, from anyone at all. But since I was deprived of it, and proved unable either to find it myself or to learn it from anyone else, do you want me, he said, to give you a demonstration of the second course I took in my search for the cause, Cebes? By all means, he said, I want that very much. Well then, he said, after I had given up examining things as they are, I thought I ought to be careful not to suffer what happens to people who watch and study an eclipse of the sun — some of them ruin their eyes, unless they look at its image in water or something of that sort. I had some such thought myself, and I was afraid I might be blinded in my soul altogether by looking at things with my eyes and trying to grasp them with each of my senses. So it seemed to me I ought to take refuge in accounts, and look for the truth of things within them.

PHAEDO: Now perhaps the way I compare it isn't quite right in one respect — I don't fully agree that someone who examines things in accounts is examining them in images any more than someone who examines them in facts. But at any rate, that's the direction I set out in: taking as a foundation, each time, whatever account I judge to be strongest, I set down as true whatever seems to me to agree with it — both concerning cause and concerning everything else that is — and whatever doesn't agree, as not true. But I want to explain what I mean more clearly, since I don't think you follow me yet. No, by Zeus, said Cebes, not entirely. Well, he said, here's what I mean — nothing new, but the same things I've never stopped saying, both elsewhere and in the discussion we just had. I'm going to try to show you the kind of cause I've been working with, and I'll go back again to those much-talked-of things, and start from them, taking as given that there is such a thing as the beautiful itself, by itself, and the good, and the great, and all the rest. If you grant me these and agree that they exist, I hope from them to show you the cause, and to discover that the soul is immortal. Well, said Cebes, since you have my agreement, you'd better not delay in finishing. Then look, he said, at what follows from that, and see if you agree with me. It seems to me that if there is anything beautiful besides the beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than that it shares in that beautiful — and I say the same of everything. Do you agree with that kind of cause? I agree, he said. Well then, he said, I no longer understand, and I can't recognize those other clever causes people give. If someone tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a blooming color, or a shape, or anything else of that sort, I dismiss all that — it only confuses me — and I hold, simply, plainly, and perhaps naively, to this one point: that nothing else makes a thing beautiful except the presence of that beautiful — or its association, or however it may be attached — I won't insist on the exact manner — only that it is by the beautiful that all beautiful things become beautiful. That seems to me the safest answer I can give, both to myself and to anyone else, and holding to it I believe I'll never fall; it's safe to answer, both for me and for anyone, that it is by the beautiful that beautiful things become beautiful. Don't you think so too? I do. And is it by greatness that great things are great, and greater things greater, and by smallness that smaller things are smaller? Yes.

PHAEDO: Then you too would not accept it if someone said that one person is taller than another by a head, and the shorter one shorter by that same head — you'd protest that all you mean is that whatever is greater than another is greater by nothing other than greatness, and is greater because of that, because of greatness, and whatever is smaller is smaller by nothing other than smallness, and is smaller because of that, because of smallness — for fear, I imagine, that some opposing argument might confront you, if you say someone is taller by a head, since then, first, the greater would be greater by the very same thing that makes the smaller smaller, and further, a small thing — a head — would be what makes the taller person taller, and that would be a monstrosity, that something great should be great by something small. Wouldn't you be afraid of that? And Cebes laughed and said, I would. Then, he said, wouldn't you be afraid to say that ten is more than eight by two, and that this is the cause of its exceeding eight, rather than saying it's by number, and because of number? And that a length of two cubits is greater than one cubit by half its length, rather than by magnitude? The same fear applies, surely. Certainly, he said. And what about this — if one is added to one, wouldn't you be wary of saying that the addition is the cause of there being two, or, if one is split in two, that the splitting is the cause? Wouldn't you cry out loudly that you know of no other way anything comes to be except by partaking of the particular reality of whatever it is that it comes to share in, and that in these cases you have no other cause for there coming to be two except partaking of twoness, and that whatever is going to be two must partake of that, and whatever is going to be one must partake of oneness — and that you'd leave all this business of splittings and additions and other such cleverness aside, letting those wiser than yourself answer in those terms, while you, being afraid, as the saying goes, of your own shadow and of your own inexperience, would cling to that safe foundation of your hypothesis and answer accordingly. But if someone attacked the hypothesis itself, you'd let it go and not answer, until you'd examined what follows from it, to see whether the consequences agree with one another or not; and when you had to give an account of the hypothesis itself, you'd do it the same way — setting down another hypothesis in turn, whichever seemed best among the higher ones, until you arrived at something adequate — and you wouldn't muddle things together, the way debaters do, by talking at once about the starting point and about what follows from it, if indeed you wanted to discover something real. That kind of person, perhaps, gives no thought or care to that at all — clever enough, in their wisdom, to stir everything together and still manage to please themselves. But you, if you're a philosopher, would, I think, do as I say.

PHAEDO: What you say is entirely true, said both Simmias and Cebes together. ECHECRATES: Yes, by Zeus, Phaedo, and rightly so — it seems to me astonishing how clearly he put that, even for someone with only a little understanding. PHAEDO: Quite so, Echecrates, and everyone present thought so too. ECHECRATES: Yes, and so do we, who weren't there, hearing it now. But what was said after that? PHAEDO: As I recall, once this had been granted to him, and it was agreed that each of the forms is something, and that other things, by partaking of them, take their name from them, he went on to ask: If that's how you put it, then whenever you say Simmias is taller than Socrates but shorter than Phaedo, don't you mean that both are present in Simmias at that time — both tallness and shortness? I do. But surely, he said, you agree that the statement 'Simmias exceeds Socrates' is not, in truth, as it's phrased in words? For Simmias doesn't naturally exceed him by being Simmias, but by the tallness he happens to have; nor does he exceed Socrates because Socrates is Socrates, but because Socrates has smallness compared to his tallness? True. Nor again is he exceeded by Phaedo because Phaedo is Phaedo, but because Phaedo has tallness compared to Simmias's smallness? That's so. So Simmias comes to be called both small and tall, being between the two — presenting his smallness to be exceeded by the other's tallness, and offering his tallness to exceed the other's smallness. And smiling, he added, I seem to be talking like a book, but at any rate that's how it is. Cebes agreed. I say this because I want you to see things as I do. It seems to me not only that tallness itself is never willing to be tall and short at once, but also that the tallness in us never admits smallness, nor is willing to be exceeded; instead, one of two things happens — either it flees and withdraws when its opposite, smallness, approaches, or it perishes at that approach; but it will not, by standing its ground and admitting smallness, become other than it was. Just as I myself, by admitting and standing my ground under smallness, and still being just who I am, am this same person, small — whereas that other thing, tallness, has not dared, being tall, to be small. In the same way, the smallness in us is never willing to become or to be tall, nor is any other opposite, while remaining what it was, willing at the same time to become and to be its opposite — instead it either withdraws or perishes in that very experience.

PHAEDO: "That's exactly how it looks to me," said Cebes. And someone among those present, on hearing this, spoke up — I don't clearly remember who it was: "By the gods, didn't we agree earlier in the discussion on the very opposite of what's being said now — that the bigger comes from the smaller and the smaller from the bigger, and that this is simply how opposites come to be: out of their opposites? But now, it seems to me, we're saying that could never happen." Socrates turned his head toward him, listened, and said, "Bravely recalled! But you're not noticing the difference between what's being said now and what was said then. Back then we said that an opposite thing comes to be from an opposite thing; now we're saying that the opposite itself could never become opposite to itself — neither the one in us nor the one in nature. Back then, my friend, we were talking about the things that have the opposites in them, calling them by the names of those opposites; now we're talking about the opposites themselves, the ones whose presence gives the things their names. And it's these themselves, we say, that would never be willing to accept coming-to-be from one another." And with that he looked at Cebes and said, "Cebes, did anything this man said trouble you too?" "No, not this time," said Cebes, "though I don't deny that plenty of things do trouble me." "So we've agreed on this without qualification," he said: "an opposite will never be opposite to itself." "Absolutely." "Now consider this further point for me," he said, "and see whether you'll agree. Is there something you call hot, and something cold?" "There is." "The same things as snow and fire?" "By Zeus, no." "So the hot is something other than fire, and the cold something other than snow?" "Yes." "But I think you'd grant this: snow, being what it is, will never take in the hot — as we were saying before — and still be what it was, snow and hot as well; when the hot approaches, it will either get out of its way or be destroyed." "Certainly." "And fire, in turn, when the cold approaches it, will either withdraw or perish; it will never dare to take in coldness and still be what it was, fire and cold too." "That's true," he said. "Then it holds for some things of this kind," he said, "that it's not only the form itself that's entitled to its own name for all time, but also something else, which is not the form yet always has its character whenever it exists. Maybe what I mean will be clearer in this example: the odd, presumably, must always get this name we're now giving it — right?" "Certainly."

PHAEDO: "But is it the only thing that does — this is my question — or is there something else, which is not the same as the odd, yet which we must always call by its own name and by this name 'odd' too, because it's so constituted by nature that it's never separated from the odd? I mean the sort of thing that happens with the number three, and with many other things. Look at the three. Doesn't it seem to you that it must always be addressed both by its own name and by the name of the odd, even though the odd is not the same as the three? Still, that's how the three and the five and the whole half of the number series are constituted: each of them, without being what the odd is, is always odd. And again, two and four and the whole other column of number, without being what the even is — still each of them is always even. Do you grant this or not?" "Of course," he said. "Then watch closely," he said, "for what I want to make clear. It's this: it appears that not only do those opposites refuse to accept one another, but also whatever things, without being opposite to each other, always contain the opposites — these too, it seems, refuse to accept the character that's opposite to the one in them; when it advances, they either perish or retreat. Won't we say that three will be destroyed first, will suffer anything whatever, sooner than stay put and become even while still being three?" "Absolutely," said Cebes. "And yet," he said, "two is not the opposite of three." "No indeed." "So it's not only the opposite forms that don't stand firm when they advance on each other; certain other things too don't stand firm when the opposites advance." "Very true," he said. "Then do you want us to define, if we can, what kind of things these are?" "Certainly." "Well then, Cebes," he said, "would they be these: whatever a thing takes hold of, it forces it to have not only its own character but also, always, the character of some opposite?" "What do you mean?" "Just what we were saying a moment ago. You know, surely, that whatever the character of three takes hold of must be not only three but also odd." "Certainly." "Then upon such a thing, we say, the character opposite to the form that produces this will never come." "No." "And what produced it was the odd?" "Yes." "And opposite to this is the character of the even?" "Yes." "So the character of the even will never come upon the three." "No indeed." "So the three has no share in the even." "None." "So the three is un-even." "Yes."

PHAEDO: "Now for what I said we should define — what kind of things, without being opposite to something, nevertheless don't accept it, the opposite. For instance, just now: the three, though not opposite to the even, still doesn't accept it any more for that, since it always brings up the opposite against it; likewise the two against the odd, and fire against the cold, and a great many others. Well, see whether you'd define it this way: not only does the opposite not accept its opposite, but also whatever brings up some opposite against that which it enters — the thing that brings it up will itself never accept the oppositeness of what it brings. Refresh your memory again; it does no harm to hear it more than once. Five won't accept the character of the even, nor ten, its double, the character of the odd. This double, of course, is itself opposite to something else, but all the same it won't accept the character of the odd. Nor will one-and-a-half and the other such things, the half, accept the character of the whole; and the third-part likewise, and everything of that sort — if you follow me and agree it's so." "I agree entirely," he said, "and I follow." "Then tell me again from the beginning," he said. "And don't answer me in the terms of my question, but do as I do. I say this because, beyond that first answer I described, the safe one, I now see another kind of safety arising from what we've just said. If you asked me what it is whose presence in a body makes it hot, I won't give you that safe, ignorant answer — 'heat' — but a subtler one, drawn from our present results: 'fire.' And if you ask what it is whose presence in a body makes it sick, I won't say 'sickness' but 'fever.' And what it is whose presence in a number makes it odd, I won't say 'oddness' but 'the unit' — and so on. See whether by now you understand well enough what I want." "Quite well enough," he said. "Then answer," he said: "what is it whose presence in a body makes it alive?" "Soul," he said. "And is this always so?" "Of course," he said. "So whatever the soul takes hold of, it always comes to it bringing life?" "It does indeed," he said. "And is there something opposite to life, or nothing?" "There is," he said. "What?" "Death." "Then the soul will never accept the opposite of what it always brings — that follows from what we agreed before?" "Most emphatically," said Cebes. "Well then: what did we just now call the thing that doesn't accept the character of the even?" "Un-even," he said. "And what doesn't accept the just, and whatever doesn't accept the musical?" "Unmusical," he said, "and the other, unjust." "Good. And what do we call whatever doesn't accept death?" "Deathless," he said. "And the soul doesn't accept death?" "No." "So the soul is deathless." "Deathless." "Good," he said. "Shall we say this has been proved? What do you think?" "Proved, and very adequately, Socrates."

PHAEDO: "Then what, Cebes?" he said. "If the un-even were necessarily indestructible, wouldn't three be indestructible?" "Of course." "And if the un-hot too were necessarily indestructible, then whenever someone brought heat against snow, the snow would withdraw safe and unmelted? It wouldn't be destroyed, nor would it stay put and take in the heat." "True," he said. "And in the same way, I think, if the un-coolable were indestructible, then whenever something cold advanced on the fire, it would never be put out or destroyed; it would go off and depart intact." "Necessarily," he said. "Then aren't we compelled," he said, "to say the same about the deathless? If the deathless is also indestructible, it's impossible for the soul to be destroyed when death comes against it. For by what we've said, it will not accept death and will not be dead — just as three, we said, will not be even, nor will the odd; just as fire will not be cold, nor the heat in the fire. 'But what prevents this,' someone might say: 'the odd doesn't become even when the even advances — that's agreed — but what prevents it from perishing, and an even thing coming to be in its place?' Against someone who said that, we couldn't fight it out and insist that it doesn't perish; for the un-even is not indestructible. If that had been agreed between us, we could easily have argued that when the even advances, the odd and the three go off and depart; and about fire and the hot and the rest we'd have argued the same way. Isn't that so?" "Certainly." "So now, about the deathless: if we agree that it's also indestructible, then the soul, besides being deathless, would be indestructible too; but if not, another argument would be needed." "But none is needed on that account," he said. "Hardly anything could refuse destruction if the deathless, which is eternal, is going to accept destruction." "And the god, I think," said Socrates, "and the form of life itself, and anything else that is deathless — everyone would agree these never perish." "Everyone indeed, by Zeus," he said, "all human beings, and still more, I imagine, the gods." "Then since the deathless is also imperishable, what else could the soul be, if it really is deathless, than indestructible as well?" "It must be, absolutely." "So when death comes against a man, the mortal part of him, it seems, dies, while the deathless part goes off and departs safe and undestroyed, yielding its place to death." "So it appears."

PHAEDO: "Then beyond all doubt, Cebes," he said, "the soul is deathless and indestructible, and our souls really will exist in Hades." "For my part, Socrates," Cebes said, "I have nothing further to say against that, and no way of doubting the argument. But if Simmias here or anyone else has something to say, it would be well not to keep silent about it — I don't know to what other occasion than the present one a person could put off speaking or hearing about such things, if he wants to say or hear anything at all." "But indeed," said Simmias, "I too no longer have any grounds for doubt, given what has been said. And yet, because of the sheer magnitude of the subjects the argument concerns, and because I have a low opinion of human weakness, I find myself still compelled to hold some private doubt about what has been said." "Not only that, Simmias," said Socrates, "but you are right to say so — and even our first assumptions, trustworthy as they seem to you, still need to be examined more clearly. If you take them apart thoroughly enough, I think you will follow the argument as far as it is possible for a human being to follow it; and if that itself becomes clear, you will look for nothing further." "That's true," he said. "But here is something, gentlemen, that it's right to think through: if the soul is immortal, it needs care — not only for the time we call 'living,' but for all time — and the danger of neglecting it would now indeed seem terrible. For if death were a release from everything, it would be a windfall for the wicked to die, being freed at once from the body and, along with the soul, from their own wickedness. But since the soul plainly is deathless, it has no escape from evils and no safety except by becoming as good and as wise as possible. For the soul goes down to Hades possessing nothing else at all but its education and upbringing — and these, it is said, help or harm the dead person the most, right from the very beginning of the journey to that place. And this is how the story goes: when each person dies, the guardian spirit that was allotted to him in life undertakes to lead him to a certain place, where those gathered must be judged and then travel on to Hades with the guide appointed to conduct people from here to there. Having there met with what they must meet, and having remained as long as is required, another guide brings them back here again, after many long cycles of time.

PHAEDO: "But in fact the journey is not as the Telephus of Aeschylus describes it — he says a single path leads to Hades, but it seems to me neither single nor simple. If it were, there would be no need of guides — no one could ever go astray if there were but one road. As it is, it seems to have many branches and forks — I judge this from the rites and customs practiced here. Now the soul that is orderly and wise follows along and is not ignorant of what confronts it, but the soul that clings to the body with desire — as I said before — flutters around it and around the visible world for a long time, and after much resistance and much suffering, is led away by force and with difficulty by the spirit assigned to it. And when it arrives where the others are, if it is impure and has done something of that sort — if it has been stained with unjust killings or committed other such acts, sister deeds done by sister souls — everyone shuns it and turns away, unwilling to be either its companion or its guide, and it wanders alone, gripped by utter helplessness, until certain periods of time have passed, and when these arrive it is swept by necessity into the dwelling that suits it. But the soul that has passed through life in purity and moderation, finding gods for companions and guides, settles each in the place fitting for it. For there are many wonderful places on the earth, and the earth itself is neither of the kind nor the size that is commonly supposed by those who habitually talk about it — of this I have been persuaded by someone." And Simmias said, "What do you mean by this, Socrates? I too have heard a great deal about the earth, but not the things that persuade you — so I'd be glad to hear." "Well, Simmias, it doesn't seem to me to take the skill of Glaucus just to narrate what it is; but to show that it's true seems harder to me than the skill of Glaucus could manage — and at the same time I probably wouldn't be capable of it, and even if I knew how, my life, Simmias, seems to me too short for such a long account. Still, nothing stops me from telling you the shape I am persuaded the earth has, and its regions."

PHAEDO: "Well," said Simmias, "that much will do." "I am persuaded, then," he said, "first, that if the earth is round and lies in the middle of the heavens, it needs neither air nor any other such force to keep it from falling, but that the uniformity of the heavens with themselves in every direction, and the equilibrium of the earth itself, are sufficient to hold it up. For a thing in equilibrium, set in the middle of something uniform, will have no more reason to tilt one way than another, but being in the same relation all around, it will remain untilted. This, then, is the first thing I am persuaded of." "And rightly so," said Simmias. "Further," he said, "that it is enormously large, and that we who live between the Pillars of Heracles and the river Phasis inhabit only a small portion of it, dwelling around the sea like ants or frogs around a pond, while many other people live elsewhere in many such regions. For everywhere around the earth there are many hollows of every shape and size, into which water and mist and air have flowed together; but the earth itself lies pure in the pure heaven, in which the stars are, which most of those accustomed to speak of such things call the aether. Our world is the sediment of that aether, always flowing together into the hollows of the earth. So we who live in these hollows are unaware of it, and think we live up on the surface of the earth — just as if someone living in the middle of the ocean floor thought he lived on the surface of the sea, and seeing the sun and the other stars through the water, took the sea for the sky, and because of his slowness and weakness had never reached the surface of the sea nor ever risen up out of the water to look out at our world here and see how much purer and more beautiful it is than his own, nor had he heard this from anyone who had seen it. This is exactly our condition: living in some hollow of the earth, we think we live on its surface, and we call the air 'heaven,' as though it were the true heaven through which the stars move — when really, through weakness and slowness, we are unable to pass all the way through the air to its outer edge. For if someone reached its summit, or grew wings and flew up, he would look out and see — just as fish here, poking their heads out of the sea, see the things of our world — so he too would see the things up there, and if his nature could bear to go on gazing, he would recognize that that is the true heaven, and the true light, and the true earth.

PHAEDO: "For this earth of ours, and its stones, and this whole region here, are corroded and eaten away, just as things in the sea are by the brine, and nothing worthwhile grows in the sea, nor is anything there, one might say, complete — only caverns and sand and endless mud and slime, wherever there is earth at all, and nothing there measures up in beauty to what we have here. But that world up there would show itself to be far more superior still to ours. In fact, if it's fitting to tell a tale, it's worth hearing, Simmias, what things are like on the earth that lies beneath that heaven." "Well, Socrates," said Simmias, "we would certainly be glad to hear this tale." "It is said, then, my friend, first that the earth itself, viewed from above, looks like one of those balls stitched from twelve pieces of leather — many-colored, marked off in patches of color, of which the colors we have here are like samples, the sort painters use. There, the whole earth is made of such colors, and far brighter and purer ones than these: one region is sea-purple and wonderfully beautiful, another gold-colored, another white — whiter than chalk or snow — and made up likewise of the other colors, even more numerous and more beautiful than any we have seen. And even these very hollows of the earth, being full of water and air, present a kind of color, gleaming amid the variety of the other colors, so that the whole appears as one continuous, varied surface. And in an earth of this kind, the things that grow, grow in proportion — trees and flowers and fruits; and the mountains too, and the stones, have in the same proportion a smoothness, a translucence, and colors more beautiful; of which the small stones we prize here — carnelian, jasper, emerald, and all such — are fragments; but there, every stone is like this, and even more beautiful still. The reason for this is that those stones are pure and not eaten away and corroded, as ours are, by decay and brine flowing down together here, which bring disfigurement and disease to stones and earth alike, and to the other animals and plants as well.

PHAEDO: "And the earth itself is adorned with all these things, and further with gold and silver and all such other things besides. For these lie exposed to view by nature, being many in number and great in size and scattered everywhere over the earth, so that to see it is a sight for the eyes of the blessed. And there are many other living creatures upon it, and human beings too — some dwelling inland, others along the air as we do along the sea, and others on islands which the air flows around, close by the mainland; and, in a word, what water and the sea are to us for our needs, the air is to them there, and what air is to us, the aether is to them. And their seasons are blended in such a way that they are free of sickness and live for a much longer time than people here, and in sight, hearing, wisdom, and all such things, they are as far superior to us as air is purer than water, and aether than air. They also have groves and temples of the gods, in which the gods truly dwell, and they have oracles, prophecies, and direct perceptions of the gods, and such communion with them face to face; and they see the sun and moon and stars as they truly are, and their happiness in every other respect matches this. Such, then, is the nature of the whole earth and of what surrounds it; and within it, arranged around its whole circuit, are many regions in its hollow places — some deeper and more open than the one we live in, others deeper still but with a narrower opening than ours, and some shallower in depth than ours but broader. All of these are connected to one another underground by many passages, some narrower, some wider, and have channels through which much water flows from one into another as if into mixing bowls, and there are immense rivers of water, hot and cold, flowing forever beneath the earth, and great rivers of fire, and many rivers of liquid mud, some purer and some filthier — like the rivers of mud that flow ahead of the lava in Sicily, and the lava stream itself. From these, each of the regions is filled in turn, as the circular flow happens to reach each one at each time. And all of this moves up and down like a kind of swing set within the earth; and this swinging motion comes about, in fact, through some such natural cause as this.

One of the chasms of the earth happens to be the largest of all, and it runs straight through the whole earth—the one Homer describes when he speaks of it as "far off, where the deepest pit lies beneath the ground." This chasm, both Homer elsewhere and many other poets, have called Tartarus. All the rivers flow together into this chasm, and flow out of it again, and each takes on the character of whatever kind of earth it flows through. The reason all the streams flow out from there and back into it again is that this fluid mass has no bottom and no floor to rest on. So it sways and surges up and down, and the air and wind around it do the same thing—for the wind follows along with it both when it rushes toward one side of the earth and when it rushes toward the other, and just as with people breathing, the wind that flows there is always being breathed out and breathed in, so too, swaying together with the fluid, the wind produces terrifying, uncontrollable blasts as it goes in and out. So whenever the water withdraws to the region called the lower one, it flows into the channels on that side and through the earth and fills them, just as people do when they pour water through irrigation channels; and whenever in turn it leaves that side and rushes toward this one, it fills the channels here again, and once filled, these flow through their passages and through the earth, and arriving each at the places toward which they've been channeled, they form seas and lakes and rivers and springs. From there they sink back down through the earth again—some circling through longer and more numerous regions, others through shorter and fewer—and empty back into Tartarus, some far below the point where they were drawn off, others only a little below. But all of them flow in below the point where they flowed out, and some come out on the opposite side from where they went in, others on the same side; and there are some that circle all the way around, coiling once or even several times around the earth like snakes, before plunging down as far as they can and emptying in again. It's possible to go down as far as the middle from either direction, but no farther—since beyond that point, the ground rises upward for streams flowing from both directions alike.

Now besides these there are many other great streams of every kind. But among this multitude there happen to be four in particular, the largest of which, and the one that flows in the outermost circle around everything, is called Ocean. Directly across from this one, flowing in the opposite direction, is the Acheron, which flows through desolate regions and, running underground, reaches the Acherusian Lake, where the souls of most of the dead arrive, and after remaining there for certain appointed periods—some longer, some shorter—are sent out again into the births of living creatures. A third river empties out between these two, and near its outlet it pours into a vast region burning with much fire, and forms a lake bigger than our own sea, boiling with water and mud. From there it moves in a circle, thick and muddy, coiling around the earth until it reaches, among other places, the edge of the Acherusian Lake, without mixing with its waters; and after coiling many times underground it empties still lower than Tartarus. This is the river they call Pyriphlegethon, and its offshoots are what spout up as streams of lava wherever they happen to break through the earth. Directly opposite this one, the fourth river empties first into a place terrible and wild, they say, colored entirely like dark blue steel—the river they call the Styx, and the lake formed where it empties, Styx as well. After plunging in there and taking on fearsome powers in its water, it sinks under the earth, and coiling around moves opposite to Pyriphlegethon, meeting it from the other side in the Acherusian Lake; and its water too mixes with nothing, but it also circles all the way around and empties into Tartarus opposite Pyriphlegethon. Its name, as the poets say, is Cocytus. Given that these things are arranged this way, when the dead arrive at the place where each one's guiding spirit brings them, first they are judged—those who lived well and righteously, and those who did not. Those judged to have lived a middling life travel to the Acheron, and boarding whatever serves as their vessels, arrive on these at the lake, and there they dwell and are purified, paying the penalty for any wrongs they've done and being released from them, and receiving rewards for their good deeds, each according to merit. But those judged incurable because of the magnitude of their crimes—having committed many great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless murders, or other such things—these are hurled by their fitting destiny into Tartarus, from which they never emerge.

Those judged to have committed curable but serious wrongs—say, striking a father or mother in anger and then living the rest of their life in regret, or becoming a killer in some similar way—these must fall into Tartarus, but after falling and spending a year there, the current casts them out again, the killers by way of Cocytus, those who struck father or mother by way of Pyriphlegethon; and when, carried along, they come opposite the Acherusian Lake, there they cry out and call—some to those they killed, others to those they wronged—and calling out, they beg and plead to be allowed to come out into the lake and be received. And if they persuade them, they come out and their sufferings cease; but if not, they're swept back again into Tartarus and from there again into the rivers, and this keeps happening to them until they persuade those they wronged—for this is the sentence the judges set upon them. But those judged to have lived an exceptionally righteous life are the ones who are freed and released from these regions within the earth, as though from prisons, and arrive above at the pure dwelling place, settling upon the earth's surface. And among these, the ones who have been sufficiently purified by philosophy live thereafter entirely without bodies, and arrive at dwellings still more beautiful than these, which it isn't easy to describe, nor is there time enough right now. For the sake of all we've gone through, then, Simmias, one must do everything possible to have a share of virtue and wisdom in this life—for the prize is fine and the hope is great. To insist that these things are exactly as I've described them wouldn't suit a sensible man; but that something like this, or something of this kind, is true of our souls and their dwellings, given that the soul plainly is immortal, this seems to me both fitting and worth risking belief in—for it's a noble risk—and one should say such things over to oneself like a charm, which is why I've drawn out this story so long. For these reasons, then, a man ought to feel confident about his own soul if throughout his life he has dismissed the other pleasures, the ones concerned with the body and its adornments, treating them as foreign to him and more likely to do harm than good, and has instead thrown himself into the pleasures of learning, adorning his soul not with something foreign but with its own proper ornament—self-control, justice, courage, freedom, and truth—and so awaits his journey to Hades, ready to set out whenever fate calls.

"As for the rest of you, Simmias and Cebes and everyone else," he said, "each of you will make that journey at some time in the future. But now already—as a tragic poet might put it—fate is calling me, and it's about time I turned to my bath. It seems better to bathe before drinking the poison, rather than giving the women the trouble of washing a corpse." When he'd said this, Crito spoke up: "Well then, Socrates—what instructions do you have for these men or for me, about your children or anything else, that we could carry out for you most gladly?" "Nothing new, Crito," he said, "just what I always say—that if you take care of yourselves, whatever you do will be done as a favor to me and mine and to yourselves, even if you make no promises now; but if you neglect yourselves and refuse to live, so to speak, following the tracks laid out by what's been said both now and in the past, then no matter how much and how earnestly you agree now, it will do no good at all." "We'll certainly try hard to do as you say," said Crito. "But how shall we bury you?" "However you like," he said, "provided you can catch me and I don't slip away from you." And laughing quietly, and glancing over at us, he said, "I can't convince Crito, gentlemen, that I am this Socrates here, the one now talking with you and arranging each point of the discussion—he thinks I'm that other one he'll see shortly, a corpse, and he's asking how to bury that. And all this that I've been saying at length, that once I drink the poison I'll no longer stay with you but will be off and away to some blessed state of happiness—all this, it seems, I've been saying to him for nothing, meant only to comfort you and myself at once. So please stand surety for me to Crito," he said, "the opposite kind of surety from the one he offered the jury—he pledged that I would stay; you pledge that I will not stay once I'm dead, but will be gone and away, so that Crito can bear it more easily, and not be distressed on my behalf when he sees my body being burned or buried, as if I were suffering something terrible, or say at the funeral that he's laying out Socrates, or carrying him out, or burying him. For you should know well, my good Crito," he said, "that speaking carelessly isn't only a fault in itself, but it does some harm to the soul as well.

"No, you must have courage, and say that you're burying my body—and bury it however you please, whatever way seems most proper to you." Having said this, he got up and went into another room to bathe, and Crito followed him, while he told us to wait. So we waited, talking among ourselves about what had been said and going over it again, and at other times dwelling on the calamity that had befallen us, feeling quite simply as though we were about to live out the rest of our lives deprived of a father, like orphans. When he had bathed and his children were brought to him—he had two small sons and one older one—and the women of his household arrived, he spoke with them in Crito's presence and gave instructions about whatever he wished, then told the women and children to leave, and came back to us himself. It was now near sunset, since he had spent a long time inside. He came in and sat down, freshly bathed, and there wasn't much conversation after that before the attendant of the Eleven came in, stood beside him, and said, "Socrates, I won't have the same complaint against you that I have against others—that they get angry at me and curse me when, following the orders of the officials, I tell them to drink the poison. But you, I've come to know in this time as the noblest and gentlest and best man of all who have ever come here, and now especially I'm sure you're not angry at me, but at those responsible—for you know who they are. So now, since you know what message I've come to bring, farewell, and try to bear what must be borne as easily as you can." And bursting into tears, he turned and left. Socrates looked up at him and said, "Farewell to you too—we'll do as you say." And turning to us, he said, "What a civilized man. The whole time I've been here he's come to see me, and sometimes talked with me, and been the best of men, and now see how nobly he weeps for me. But come, Crito, let's do as he says—let someone bring the poison, if it's been prepared; if not, let the man prepare it." And Crito said, "But Socrates, I think the sun is still on the mountains and hasn't set yet. And besides, I know others who have drunk it quite late, well after being told to, and have eaten well and drunk well, and some have even had time with whomever they desired. Please, there's no need to hurry—there's still time."

PHAEDO: And Socrates said, "That's reasonable enough, Crito. The men you're talking about think they gain something by doing it that way. But I have good reason not to do it myself -- I don't think I'll gain anything by drinking a little later, except to make myself look ridiculous, clinging to life and sparing a life that has nothing left in it. Come now, do as I say, and don't do otherwise." Hearing this, Crito nodded to the slave standing nearby. The slave went out, and after some time returned with the man who was to administer the poison, carrying it ready-ground in a cup. When Socrates saw the man he said, "Well, my good fellow, you understand these things -- what should I do?" "Nothing," the man said, "except drink it and walk about until your legs feel heavy, then lie down. It will act on its own." And with that he held out the cup to Socrates. He took it, quite calmly, Echecrates -- not a tremor, no change in color or expression -- and looking up at the man from under his brow the way he always did, he said, "What do you say about pouring a libation from this drink to someone? Is that allowed, or not?" "Socrates," the man said, "we grind only as much as we judge the right amount to drink." "I understand," he said. "But surely it's permitted, and right, to pray to the gods that my journey from this world to the other be a fortunate one. That's my prayer -- may it turn out that way." And with these words, he raised the cup to his lips and drank it down, quite readily and without any trouble at all. Up to that point most of us had been fairly able to hold back our tears, but when we saw him drinking, and that he had drunk it, we couldn't hold back any longer -- for my part, the tears came pouring down against my will, so that I covered my face and wept for myself -- not for him, but for my own fortune, at being deprived of a companion like that. Crito had gotten up even before I did, since he couldn't hold back his tears either. Apollodorus, who hadn't stopped weeping even before this, now burst into loud sobbing and anger, and there wasn't a single person present he didn't break down -- except Socrates himself. He said, "What are you doing, you strange men? It was mainly for this reason that I sent the women away, so they wouldn't behave so improperly -- I've heard that one should die in reverent silence. Be calm, and be strong." Hearing this, we felt ashamed and held back our tears. He walked about, and when he said his legs were getting heavy, he lay down on his back -- that's what the man told him to do -- and the same man, the one who had given him the poison, kept his hand on him, and after a while examined his feet and legs, then pressed hard on his foot and asked if he could feel it. He said no.

PHAEDO: After that he pressed his shins, and moving upward like this he showed us that he was growing cold and stiff. He touched him himself and said that when it reached his heart, he would be gone. Now the coldness had nearly reached his abdomen, when he uncovered his face -- he had been covered -- and said -- these were his last words -- "Crito, we owe a rooster to Asclepius. Please pay the debt, and don't neglect it." "It will be done," said Crito. "But see if you have anything else to say." To this question he gave no further answer. After a little while he stirred, and the man uncovered him -- his eyes had fixed and were staring. Seeing this, Crito closed his mouth and his eyes. That, Echecrates, was the end of our companion, a man who, we would say, was of all those of his time whom we ever knew, the best, and also the wisest and the most just.

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