'Then do you reject all of the previous arguments, or only some of them?'
'Some of them,' they said, 'but not others.' 5 'Well what do you say, then, about the argument in which we said that learning was recollection, and that this being so, our souls must 92 exist somewhere else before being imprisoned in the body?'
'For my part,' said Cebes, 'I was wonderfully convinced by it at the time, and remain so now, as by no other argument.'
'And I'm of the same mind,' said Simmias; 'and I'd be very sur- 5 prised if I ever came to think otherwise about that.'
To this Socrates answered: 'But you'll have to think otherwise, my Theban friend, if you stick to this idea that attunement is a composite thing, and that soul is a kind of attunement composed of the bodily elements held in tension; because you surely won't allow b yourself to say that an attunement existed as a composite, before the elements of which it was to be composed; or will you?'
'Certainly not, Socrates.'
'Then do you see that this is implied by your assertion, when you 5 say that the soul exists before entering human form and body, yet that it is a composite of things that don't yet exist? Surely your attunement isn't, in fact, the same kind of thing as that to which you liken it: rather, the lyre, and its strings and notes, come into c being first, as yet untuned, whereas the attunement is put together last of all, and is the first to perish. So how's this theory of yours
going to harmonize with that one?'
'In no way,' said Simmias.
'Yet surely, if there's one theory that ought to be in harmony, it's 5 a theory about attunement.'
'So it ought,' said Simmias.
'Well, this one of yours isn't in harmony; but see which of the theories you prefer: that learning is recollection, or that soul is attunement.' 10
'The former, by a long way, Socrates. Because I acquired the latter without any proof, but from a certain likelihood48 and d plausibility about it, whence its appeal for most people;49 but I'm aware that arguments basing their proofs upon likelihoods are impostors, and if one doesn't guard against them, they completely deceive one, in geometry as well as in all other subjects. But the 5 argument about recollection and learning has come from a hypothesis worthy of acceptance. Because it was, of course, asserted that our soul existed even before it entered the body, just as surely as its object exists—the Being, bearing the name of "what it is";so and this, I'm convinced, I have accepted rightly and for adequate reason. So e it would seem, consequently, that I must allow neither myself nor anyone else to say that soul is attunement.'
'Again now, look at it this way, Simmias. Do you think it befits an attunement, or any other compound, to be in any state other 93 than that of the elements of which it's composed?'
'Certainly not.'
'Nor yet, I presume, to act, or be acted upon, in any way differently from the way they may act or be acted upon?' 5
He assented.
'An attunement therefore should not properly direct the things of which it's composed, but should follow them.'
He agreed.
'Then an attunement can't possibly undergo contrary movement or utter sound or be opposed in any other way to its own parts.'
'It can't possibly.' 10
'Again now, isn't it natural for every attunement to be an attunement just as it's been tuned?'
'I don't understand.'
'Isn't it the case that if it's been tuned more and to a greater b extent,51 assuming that to be possible,52 it will be more an attunement and a greater one; whereas if less and to a smaller extent, it will be a lesser and smaller one?'
'Certainly.'
'Well, is this the case with soul—that even in the least degree, one 5 soul is either to a greater extent and more than another, or to a smaller extent and less, just itself-namely, a soul?'
'In no way whatever.'
'Well, but is one soul said to have intelligence and goodness and to be good, while another is said to have folly and wickedness and c to be bad? And are we right in saying those things?'
'Quite right.'
'Then what will any of those who maintain that soul is attunement say these things are, existing in our souls—goodness and bad- 5 ness? Are they, in turn, a further attunement and non-attunement? And is one soul, the good one, tuned, and does it have within itself, being an attunement, a further attunement, whereas the untuned one is just itself, and lacking a further attunement within it?'
'I couldn't say myself,' said Simmias; 'but obviously anyone 10 maintaining the hypothesis would say something of that sort.' d 'But it's already been agreed that no one soul is more or less a soul than another; and this is the admission that no one attunement is either more or to a greater extent, or less or to a smaller extent, an attunement than another.53 Isn't that so?' 5 'Certainly.'
'But that which is neither more nor less an attunement has been neither more nor less tuned; is that so?'
'It is.'
'But does that which has been neither more nor less tuned 10 participate in attunement to a greater or to a smaller degree, or to an equal degree?'
'To an equal degree.'
'But then, given that no one soul is either more or less itself, e namely a soul, than another, it hasn't been more or less tuned either?'
'That is so.'
'And this being its condition, surely it couldn't participate more either in non-attunement or in attunement?'
'Indeed not.'
'And this again being its condition, could any one soul participate to a greater extent than another in badness or goodness, assuming that badness is non-attunement, while goodness is attunement?'
'It couldn't.'
'Or rather, surely, following sound reasoning, Simmias, no soul will participate in badness, assuming it is attunement; because naturally an attunement, being completely itself, namely an attunement, could never participate in non-attunement.'
'No indeed.'
'Nor then, of course, could a soul, being completely a soul, participate in badness.'
'How could it, in view of what's already been said?'
'By this argument, then, we find that all souls of all living things will be equally good, assuming that it's the nature of souls to be equally themselves, namely souls.'
'So it seems to me, Socrates.'
'Yes, and do you approve of this assertion, or think this would happen to the argument, if the hypothesis that soul is attunement were correct?'
'Not in the least.'
'Again now, would you say that of all the things in a man it is anything but soul, especially if it's a wise one, that rules him?'54
'I wouldn't.'
'Does it comply with the bodily feelings or does it oppose them? I mean, for example, when heat and thirst are in the body, by pulling the opposite way, away from drinking, and away from eating when it feels hunger; and surely in countless other ways we see the soul opposing bodily feelings, don't we?'
'We certainly do.'
'And again, didn't we agree earlier that if it is attunement, it would never utter notes opposed to the tensions, relaxations, strikings, and any other affections of its components, but would follow and never dominate them?'
'We did of course agree.'
'Well now, don't we find it, in fact, operating in just the opposite 10 way, dominating all those alleged sources of its existence, and d opposing them in almost everything throughout all of life, mastering them in all kinds of ways, sometimes disciplining more harshly and painfully with gymnastics and medicine, sometimes more mildly, now threatening and now admonishing, conversing with our appetites 5 and passions and fears, as if with a separate thing? That, surely, is the sort of thing Homer has represented in the Odyssey, where he says that Odysseus: