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Section 70

"We can recall an ancient story that says souls arrive there from here, and then come back here again and are born from the dead. If this is so—that the living are born from the dead—must not our souls exist there? For they could not be born again if they did not exist. This would be a sufficient proof that these things are so, if it became truly manifest that the living are born from nothing else but the dead. But if this is not the case, we will need another argument." "Certainly," said Cebes. "To understand this more easily," said Socrates, "do not consider it only in human beings, but in all animals and plants. In everything that comes into being, let us see if all things that have opposites come into being from nowhere else but from their opposites. For example, the noble is opposite to the shameful, the just to the unjust, and there are countless others. Let us see whether it is necessary that whatever has an opposite comes to be from nothing else but from its opposite. When something becomes larger, must it not have previously been smaller, and then become larger from being smaller?" "Yes." "And if it becomes smaller, it must have previously been larger, and become smaller afterward?" "It is so," he said. "And the weaker from the stronger, and the swifter from the slower?" "Certainly." "And if something becomes worse, does it not come from being better? And if more just, from more unjust?" "How could it not?" "Then we have adequately established this: all things come to be in this way, opposites from opposites." "Entirely." "What about the processes between them? Between every pair of opposites, since they are two, are there not two processes of coming to be, from one to the other, and back from the second to the first? Between a larger thing and a smaller thing, there is increasing and decreasing, and so we call one process increasing and the other decreasing." "Yes," he said. "And being separated and being combined, cooling and heating, and all such things—even if we do not always have names for them, must it not necessarily be so in fact? That they come into being from each other, and there is a coming-to-be involving both of them?" "Certainly," he said.