Striking his breast, reproved his heart with the words: e "Endure, my heart; e'en worse thou didst once endure."
Do you think he'd have composed that, with the idea that the soul was attunement, the sort of thing that could be led by the feelings of the body rather than something that could lead and master them, 5 being itself far too divine a thing to rank as attunement?'
'Goodness no, Socrates, I don't!'
'In no way at all then, my friend, do we approve of the thesis 95 that soul is a kind of attunement; because it seems that we should agree neither with the divine poet Homer nor with ourselves.'
'That is so.'
'Well then,' said Socrates, 'we seem to have placated the Theban 5 lady Harmonia moderately well; but now, how about the question of Cadmus? How and with what argument, Cebes, shall we placate him?'
'You'll find a way, I think,' said Cebes; 'at any rate this argument of yours against attunement has surprised me beyond expectation. Because when Simmias was speaking in his perplexity, I was very b much wondering if anyone would be able to handle his argument; so it seemed to me quite remarkable that it immediately failed to withstand the first assault of your own argument. Accordingly, I shouldn't wonder if the argument of Cadmus suffered the same fate.' 5 'No big talking, my friend,' said Socrates, 'in case some evil eye should turn the coming argument to rout. But that shall be God's concern; for ourselves, let's come to close quarters, in Homeric fashion, and try to see if, in fact, there's anything in what you say.
The sum and substance of what you're after is surely this: you want it proved that our soul is imperishable and immortal, if a philo- c sophic man about to die, confidently believing that after death he'll fare much better yonder than if he were ending a life lived differently, isn't to be possessed of a senseless and foolish confidence. As for showing that the soul is something strong and god-like, and 5 existed even before we were born as men, nothing prevents all that, you say, from indicating not immortality, but only that soul is long-lived and existed somewhere for an immense length of time in the past, and knew and did all kinds of things; even so, it was none the more immortal for all that, but its very entry into a human body d was the beginning of its perishing, like an illness: it lives this life in distress, and finally perishes in what is called death. And, you say, it makes no difference, so far as our individual fears are concerned, whether it enters a body once or many times: anyone who neither 5 knows nor can give proof that it's immortal should be afraid, unless he has no sense.
'Something like this, Cebes, is what I think you're saying; and I'm e purposely reviewing it more than once, so that nothing may escape us, and so that you may add or take away anything you wish.'
To this Cebes replied: 'No, there's nothing at present that I 5 want to take away or add; those are my very points.'
Here Socrates paused for a long time examining something in his own mind. He then said: 'It's no trivial matter, this quest of yours, Cebes: it calls for a thorough inquiry into the whole question of the reason for coming-to-be and destruction.55 So I will, if you like, 96 relate my own experiences on these matters: and then, if any of the things I say seem helpful to you, you can use them for conviction on the points you raise.'
'Well, I certainly should like that,' said Cebes. 5
'Then listen to my story. When I was young, Cebes, I was remarkably keen on the kind of wisdom known as natural science;56 it seemed to me splendid to know the reasons for each thing, why each thing comes to be, why it perishes, and why it exists. And I 10 was always shifting back and forth, examining, for a start, questions b like these: is it, as some said, whenever the hot and the cold give rise to putrefaction, that living creatures develop? And is it blood that
5 we think with, or air, or fire? Or is it none of these, but the brain that provides the senses of hearing and seeing and smelling, from which memory and judgement come to be; and is it from memory and judgement, when they've acquired stability, that knowledge comes to be accordingly? Next, when I went on to examine the c destruction of these things, and what happens in the heavens and the earth, I finally judged myself to have absolutely no gift for this kind of inquiry. I'll tell you a good enough sign of this: there had been things that I previously did know for sure, at least as I myself 5 and others thought; yet I was then so utterly blinded by this inquiry, that I unlearned even those things I formerly supposed I knew, including, amongst many other things, why it is that a human being grows. That, I used earlier to suppose, was obvious to everyone: d it was because of eating and drinking; whenever, from food, flesh came to accrue to flesh, and bone to bone, and similarly on the same principle the appropriate matter came to accrue to each of the other parts, it was then that the little bulk later came to be big; and 5 in this way the small human being comes to be large.57 That was what I supposed then: reasonably enough, don't you think?'
'I do,' said Cebes.
'Well, consider these further cases: I used to suppose it was an adequate view, whenever a large man standing beside a small one e appeared to be larger just by a head; similarly with two horses. And, to take cases even clearer than these, it seemed to me that ten was greater than eight because of the accruing of two to the latter, and that two cubits were larger than one cubit, because of their exceeding the latter by half.' 5 'Well, what do you think about them now?' said Cebes.
'I can assure you that I'm far from supposing I know the reason for any of these things, when I don't even accept from myself that when you add one to one, it's either the one to which the addition is made that's come to be two,58 or the one that's been added and 97 the one to which it's been added, that have come to be two, because of the addition of one to the other. Because I wonder if, when they were apart from each other, each was one and they weren't two then; whereas when they came close to each other, this then became 5 a reason for their coming to be two—the union in which they were
juxtaposed. Nor again can I any longer be persuaded, if you divide one, that this has now become a reason for its coming to be two, namely division; because if so, we have a reason opposite to the previous one for its coming to be two; then it was their being brought b close to each other and added, one to the other; whereas now it's their being drawn apart, and separated each from the other. Why, I can't even persuade myself any longer that I know why it is that one comes to be; nor, in short, why anything else comes to be, or 5 perishes, or exists, following that method of inquiry. Instead I rashly adopt a different method, a jumble of my own, and in no way incline towards the other.
'One day, however, I heard someone reading from a book he said was by Anaxagoras, according to which it is, in fact, Intelligence that c orders and is the reason for everything. Now this was a reason that pleased me; it seemed to me, somehow, to be a good thing that Intelligence should be the reason for everything. And I thought that, if that's the case, then Intelligence in ordering all things must order 5 them and place each individual thing in the best way possible; so if anyone wanted to find out the reason why each thing comes to be or perishes or exists, this is what he must find out about it: how is it best for that thing to exist, or to act or be acted upon in any way?s9 d On this theory, then, a man should consider nothing else, whether in regard to himself or anything else, but the best, the highest good; though the same man must also know the worse, as they are objects of the same knowledge. Reckoning thus, I was pleased to 5 think I'd found, in Anaxagoras, an instructor to suit my own intelligence in the reason for the things that are. And I thought he'd inform me, first, whether the earth is flat or round, and when he'd informed me, he'd go on to expound the reason why it must be so, e telling me what was better—better, that is, that it should be like this; and if he said it was in the centre, he'd go on to expound the view that a central position for it was better. If he could make these things clear to me, I was prepared to hanker no more after any other 98 kind of reason. What's more, I was prepared to find out in just the same way about the sun, the moon, and the stars, about their relative velocity and turnings and the other things that happen to them, and how it's better for each of them to act and be acted upon 5