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Section 93

"Come then, by Zeus," he said. "It is said that one soul possesses intelligence and virtue and is good, while another possesses folly and wickedness and is bad. Are these things said truly?" "Truly indeed." "For those who posit that the soul is a harmony, what will they say these things in the soul—virtue and wickedness—are? Will they say they are another harmony and discord? That the good soul is harmonized, and being a harmony, has another harmony within it, while the bad soul is discordant and has no other harmony within it?" "I cannot say," said Simmias, "but clearly someone adopting that hypothesis would say something like that." "But we have already agreed," he said, "that one soul is not more or less a soul than another. And this is an admission that one harmony is not more or less, nor more fully or less fully, a harmony than another. Is that so?" "Certainly." "And what is neither more nor less a harmony is neither more nor less harmonized. Is that true?" "It is." "Does that which is neither more nor less harmonized have a greater or lesser share of harmony, or an equal share?" "An equal share." "Then since no soul is more or less a soul than any other, it is neither more nor less harmonized." "That is so." "Being in this condition, it could not have a greater share of discord or harmony." "No." "Consequently, could one soul share in wickedness or virtue more than another, if wickedness is discord and virtue is harmony?" "It could not." "Or rather, Simmias, by right reasoning, no soul will have any share of wickedness, if it is a harmony. For a harmony, being entirely a harmony, could never share in discord." "Certainly not." "Nor, surely, could a soul, being entirely a soul, share in wickedness." "How could it, from what has been agreed?" "From this reasoning, then, the souls of all living creatures will be equally good, if indeed souls are naturally equally souls." "It seems so to me, Socrates," he said. "Does it seem to you," he asked, "that this is well argued, and that this would happen to our argument if the hypothesis that the soul is a harmony were correct?" "Not in the least," he said.