The Last Days of Socrates

by Plato

  ‘Well, we must go ahead,’ he continued. ‘First remind me of what you said, if you find my memory inaccurate. Simmias’s doubts, I believe, are based on the fear that, though the soul (d) is more divine and a nobler thing than the body, it may nevertheless be destroyed first, as being a kind of attunement. Cebes, on the other hand, appeared to agree with me that soul is more enduring than body, but to maintain that no one can be sure that, after repeatedly wearing out a great many bodies, it does not at last perish itself, leaving the last body behind; and he thinks that death may be precisely this, the destruction of the soul, because the body never stops perishing all the time. Am I right, Simmias and Cebes, in thinking that these are the objections which we have to investigate?’

  (e) They agreed that this was so.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘do you reject all our previous arguments, or only some of them?’

  ‘Only some of them,’ they said.

  ‘What is your opinion of that argument by which we claimed that learning is recollection, and that, if this is so, our souls must have existed somewhere else before they were 92(a) confined in the body?’

  ‘Speaking for myself,’ said Cebes, ‘I found it remarkably convincing at the time, and I stick to it still as I do to no other theory.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Simmias, ‘it is just the same with me; I should be very much surprised if I ever changed my opinion about that.’

  ‘But you will have to change it, my Theban friend,’ said Socrates, ‘if your belief still stands that an attunement is a composite thing, and that the soul is an attunement composed of our physical elements at a given tension. I imagine that you would not accept even from yourself the assertion that a (b) composite attunement existed before the elements of which it was to be composed. Or would you?’

  ‘Not for a moment, Socrates.’

  ‘Don’t you see that that is just what it amounts to when you say that the soul exists before it enters the human form or body, and also that it is composed of elements which do not yet exist? Surely an attunement is not at all like the object of your comparison. The instrument and the strings and their (c) untuned sounds come first; the attunement is the last of all to be constituted and the first to be destroyed. How will this account harmonize with the other?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Simmias.

  ‘And yet,’ said Socrates, ‘if any account ought to be harmonious, it should be an account of attunement!’

  ‘Yes, it should,’ said Simmias.

  ‘Well,’ said Socrates, ‘this one does not harmonize with your view. Make up your mind which theory you prefer: that learning is recollection, or that soul is an attunement.’

  ‘The former, without any hesitation, Socrates,’ he said. ‘The other appealed to me, without any proof to support it, (d) because it came with a certain likelihood and attractiveness; which is why it appeals to most people. But I realize that theories which rest their proof upon likelihood are impostors, and unless you are on your guard, they deceive you properly, both in geometry and everywhere else. On the other hand, the theory of recollection and learning derives from a hypothesis which is worthy of acceptance.120 (e) It was surely stated that the theory that our soul exists even before it enters the body has the same status as its grasp of that reality of which we say “as it is itself”;121 a view which I have, to the best of my belief, fully and rightly accepted. It seems therefore that I must not accept, either from myself or from anyone else, the assertion that soul is an attunement.’

  ‘There is this way of looking at it too, Simmias,’ said 93(a) Socrates. ‘Do you think that an attunement, or any other composite thing, should be in a condition different from that of its component elements?’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  ‘And it should not act, or be acted upon, I presume, differently from them?’

  He agreed.

  ‘So an attunement should not control its elements, but should follow their lead?’

  He assented.

  ‘There is no question of its conflicting with them, either in movement or in sound or in any other way?’122

  ‘None at all.’

  ‘Very well, then; is it not the nature of every attunement to be an attunement in so far as it is tuned?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Surely,’ said Socrates, ‘if it is tuned more, that is, in a (b) greater degree (supposing this to be possible), it must be more of an attunement; and if it is tuned less, that is, in a lesser degree, it must be less of an attunement.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘And is this the case with the soul – that one soul is, even minutely, more or less of a soul than another?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘Now please give me your closest attention,’ said Socrates. ‘Do we say that one kind of soul possesses intelligence and goodness, and is good, and that another possesses ignorance (c) and wickedness, and is bad? And is this true?’

  ‘Yes, it is true.’

  ‘Then how will a person who holds that the soul is an attunement account for the presence in it of goodness and badness? Will he describe them as yet another attunement or lack of it? Will he say that the good soul is in tune, and not only is an attunement itself, but contains another, whereas the bad soul is out of tune and does not contain another attunement?’

  ‘I really could not say,’ replied Simmias; ‘but obviously anyone who held that view would have to say something of the sort.’

  ‘But we have already agreed,’ said Socrates, ‘that no soul (d) can be more or less of a soul than another; and this is tantamount to agreeing that it can be no more or less of an attunement, nor can it be an attunement in a greater or lesser degree.123 Is that not so?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘And that what is neither more nor less of an attunement is neither more nor less in tune. Is that so?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does that which is neither more nor less in tune contain a greater or smaller proportion of attunement, or an equal one?’

  ‘An equal one.’

  (e) ‘Then since no soul is any more or less than just a soul, it is neither more nor less in tune.’

  ‘That is so.’

  ‘Under this condition it cannot contain a greater proportion of discord or attunement.’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘And again under this condition, can one soul contain a greater proportion of badness or goodness than another, assuming that badness is discord and goodness attunement?’

  ‘No, it cannot.’

  ‘Or rather, I suppose, Simmias, by strict reasoning no soul 94(a) will contain any share of badness, if it is an attunement; because surely since attunement is absolutely attunement and nothing else, it can never contain any share of discord.’

  ‘No, indeed.’

  ‘Nor can the soul, since it is absolutely soul, contain a share of badness.’

  ‘Not in the light of what we have said.’

  ‘So on this theory every soul of every living creature will be equally good – assuming that it is the nature of all souls to be equally souls and nothing else.’

  ‘I think that follows, Socrates.’

  ‘Do you also think that this view is right? Would the (b) argument ever have come to this if our hypothesis, that the soul is an attunement, had been correct?’

  ‘Not the least chance of it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Socrates, ‘do you hold that it is any other part of a man than the soul that governs him, especially if it is a wise one?’

  ‘No, I do not.’

  ‘Does it yield to the feelings of the body, or oppose them? I mean, for instance, that when a person is feverish and thirsty it impels him the other way, not to drink; and when he is hungry, not to eat; and there are thousands of other ways in (c) which we see the soul opposing the physical instincts.124 Is that not so?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Did we not also agree a little while ago that if it is an attunement it can never
sound a note that conflicts with the tension or relaxation or vibration or any other condition of its constituents, but must always follow them and never direct them?’

  ‘Yes, we did, of course.’

  ‘Well, surely we can see now that the soul works in just the opposite way. It directs all the elements of which it is said to (d) consist, opposing them in almost everything all through life, and exercising every form of control; sometimes by severe and unpleasant methods like those of physical training and medicine, and sometimes by milder ones; sometimes threatening, sometimes warning; and conversing with the desires and passions and fears as though it were quite separate and distinct from them. It is just like Homer’s description in the Odyssey where he says that Odysseus

  Then beat his breast, and thus reproved his heart.

  (e) ‘Endure, my heart; still worse hast thou endured.’125

  Do you suppose that when he wrote that he thought that the soul was an attunement, liable to be swayed by physical feelings? Surely he regarded it as capable of leading and controlling them; as something much too divine to rank as an attunement.’

  ‘That is certainly how it seems to me, Socrates.’

  ‘Good. In that case there is no justification for our saying that soul is a kind of attunement. We should neither agree 95(a) with Homer126 nor be consistent ourselves.’

  ’ ‘That is so.’

  Socrates begins his response to Cebes.

  ‘Well now,’ said Socrates, ‘we seem to have placated the Theban Harmonia127 with moderate success. But what about Cadmus, Cebes? How shall we placate him, and what argument shall we use?’

  ‘I think that you will find away,’ said Cebes. ‘This argument which you brought forward against the attunement theory far surpassed all my expectations. When Simmias was explaining his difficulties I wondered very much whether anyone (b) would be able to do anything with his argument; so I was quite astonished that it could not stand up against your very first attack. I should not be surprised if Cadmus’s argument met the same fate.’

  ‘My dear fellow,’ said Socrates, ‘don’t tempt fate, or some jinx will turn around the argument that’s on its way. However, that’s God’s affair; it is our task to come to close quarters in the Homeric manner and test the substance of what you say.

  ‘What you require, in a nutshell, is this. You consider that, unless the confidence of a philosopher, who at the point of (c) dying believes that after death he will be better off for having lived and died in philosophy rather than in any other pursuit, is to be a blind and foolish confidence, the soul must be proved to be indestructible and immortal. To show that it has great vitality and a godlike nature, and even that it existed before we were born128 – all this, you say, may very well indicate not that the soul is immortal, but merely that it is long-lived, and pre-existed somewhere for a prodigious period of time, enjoying a great measure of knowledge and activity. But all (d) this did not make it any the more immortal, indeed its very entrance into the human body was, like a disease, the beginning of its destruction; it lives this life in increasing weariness, and finally perishes in what we call death. You also say that, to our individual fears, it makes no difference whether it enters the body once or often; anyone who does not know and cannot prove that the soul is immortal must be afraid, unless he is a fool.

  (e) ‘That, I believe, is the substance of your objection, Cebes. I am deliberately reviewing it more than once, in order that nothing may escape us, and that you may add to it or subtract from it anything that you wish.’

  Cebes said: ‘But at the present moment there is no need for me to add or subtract anything; that is precisely my point of view.’

  After spending some time in reflection, Socrates said, ‘What you require is no light undertaking, Cebes. It involves a full 96(a) treatment of the reasons for generation and destruction. If you like, I will describe my own experiences in this connection; and then, if you find anything helpful in my account, you can use it to reassure yourself about your own objections.’

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ said Cebes, ‘I should like that very much.’

  Socrates’ progress in the philosophy of reasons or causes.129 Note that from the beginning he has been looking for the causes or explanations of coming-to-be, passing away, or being in existence: not just things coming-to-be, etc., but also the coming to be, etc. of those attributes which come to apply to them. He sought such causes first in the various theories of the Presocratic philosophers, but this gave rise to a new set of problems for him. The theory of Anaxagoras that intelligence governs the world awakens in him the outline of a different approach, by which physical things would be shown to conform with the requirements of intelligence, but Anaxagoras himself gives no lead in the application of such a method.

  ‘Then listen, and I will tell you. When I was young, Cebes, I had an extraordinary passion for that branch of learning which is called natural science; I thought it would be marvellous to know the reasons130 for which each thing comes and (b) ceases and continues to be.131 I was constantly veering to and fro, puzzling primarily over this sort of question: “Is it when heat and cold produce fermentation, as some have said, that living creatures are bred?132 Is it with the blood that we become aware, or with the air or the fire that is in us?133 Or is it none of these, but the brain that supplies our senses of hearing and sight and smell; and from these that memory and opinion arise, and from memory and opinion, when established, that knowledge comes?”134 Then again I would consider how these things are destroyed, and study celestial and terrestrial phenomena, until atlast I came to the conclusion (c) that I was uniquely unfitted for this form of inquiry. I will give you a sufficient indication of what I mean. I had understood some things plainly before, in my own and other people’s estimation; but now I was so befogged by these speculations that I unlearned even what I had thought I knew, especially about the reason for growth in human beings. Previously I had thought it obvious to anybody that it was due to eating and drinking; that when, from the food which we consume, flesh is added to (d) flesh and bone to bone, and when in the same way the other parts of the body are augmented by their appropriate particles, the bulk which was small is now large; and in this way the small man becomes a big one.135 That is what I used to believe; reasonably, don’t you think?’

  ‘I do,’ said Cebes.

  ‘Consider a little further. I had been content to think, when I saw a tall man standing beside a short one, that he was taller by a head;136 and similarly in the case of horses. (e) And it seemed to me even more obvious that ten is more than eight because it contains two more; and that two feet is bigger than one because it exceeds it by half its own length.’

  ‘And what do you believe about them now?’ asked Cebes.

  ‘Why, upon my word, that I am very far from supposing that I know the explanation of any of these things. I cannot even convince myself that when you add one to one either the first or the second one becomes two, or they both become 97(a) two by the addition of the one to the other. I find it hard to believe that, although when they were separate each of them was one and they were not two, now that they have come together the reason for their becoming two is simply the union explained by their juxtaposition. Nor can I believe now, when you divide one, that this time the reason for its becoming two (b) is the division; because this reason for its becoming two is the opposite of the former one: then it was because they were brought close together and added one to the other, but now it is because they are taken apart and separated one from the other.137 Nor can I now persuade myself that I understand how it is that things become one; nor, in short, why anything else comes or ceases or continues to be, according to this method of inquiry. So I reject it altogether, and muddle out a haphazard method of my own.

  ‘However, I once heard someone reading from some book (c) – of Anaxagoras, he claimed – and asserting that it is Intelligence that organizes things and is the reason for everything.138 This explanation pleased me. Somehow it seemed right that Int
elligence should be the reason for everything; and I reflected that if this is so, in the course of its arrangement Intelligence sets everything in order and arranges each individual thing in the way that is best for it. Therefore if anyone wished to discover the reason why any given thing came, continued, or (d) ceased to be, he must find out how it was best for that thing to be, or to act or be acted upon in any way. On this view there was only one thing for a man to consider, with regard both to himself and to anything else, namely the best and highest good; although this would necessarily imply knowing what is less good, since both were covered bythe same knowledge.

  ‘When I weighed this up, I assumed to my delight that here I had found an authority on causation who was after my own heart – Anaxagoras. (e) I assumed that he would begin by informing us whether the earth is flat or round139 and would then proceed to explain in detail the reason why it had to be with reference to what’s better – that is, that it was better that it should be like this. So if he asserted that the earth was in the centre, he would explain in detail that it was better for it 98(a) to be there; and if he made this clear, I was prepared to give up hankering after any other kind of reason. I was prepared also to learn about the sun and moon and the other heavenly bodies in this way, about their relative velocities and their orbits and all the other phenomena connected with them – how it is better for each one of them to act or be acted upon as it is. It never entered my head that a man who asserted that the ordering of things is due to Intelligence would offer any other explanation for them than that it is best for them to be as they are. I thought that by assigning a reason to each (b) phenomenon separately and to the universe as a whole he would make perfectly clear what is best for each and what is the universal good. I would not have parted with my hopes for a great sum of money. I lost no time in procuring the books,140 and began to read them as quickly as I possibly could, so that I might know as soon as possible about what’s best and what’s inferior.