library_books Bookstacks

Section 72

"What do you mean?" he asked. "It is not difficult to understand. If there were falling asleep, but no waking up to balance it, you know that in the end all things would make the story of Endymion seem like a joke, and he would be nowhere to be seen, because everything else would have suffered the same fate as him: sleeping. And if all things were combined, but never separated, the saying of Anaxagoras would quickly come to pass: 'All things together.' In the same way, my dear Cebes, if all things that partake of life were to die, and having died, the dead remained in that form and did not come back to life, is there any strong necessity that all things would eventually be dead and nothing would be living? For if living things came from something else, and then those living things died, what could prevent all things from being spent in death?" "Nothing at all, Socrates, it seems to me. What you say seems to be completely true." "Yes, Cebes," he said, "it seems to me beyond any doubt, and we are not deceiving ourselves in agreeing to this. But it is truly the case: there is a coming back to life, the living are born from the dead, and the souls of the dead exist, and the good souls fare better, while the bad souls fare worse." Cebes added, "Yes, and according to that other argument you are often accustomed to speak of, Socrates—if it is true—that our learning is actually nothing other than recollection. According to this, we must have learned at some previous time what we now recollect. This would be impossible unless our soul existed somewhere before it was born in this human form. So from this argument too, the soul appears to be something immortal." "But Cebes," interrupted Simmias, "what are the proofs of this? Remind me, for I do not remember very well right now." "It relies on one excellent argument," said Cebes. "When people are questioned, if someone asks them properly, they say everything just as it is. If they did not have knowledge and correct reason within them, they could not do this. And if one takes them to geometric diagrams or something similar, it becomes clearest of all that this is so."