Phaedo.
For this earth of ours, and the stones and the whole region where we live, are
injured and corroded, as in the sea things are injured by the brine, and nothing
of any account grows in the sea, and there is, one might say, nothing perfect
there, but caverns and sand and endless mud and mire, where there is earth also,
and there is nothing at all worthy to be compared with the beautiful things of
our world. But the things in that world above would be seen to be even more
superior to those in this world of ours.
If
I may tell a story, Simmias, about the things on the earth that is below the
heaven, and what they are like, it is well worth hearing.
By all means, Socrates,
said Simmias;
we should be glad to hear this story.
Well then, my friend,
said he, to begin with, the earth
when seen from above is said to look like those balls that are covered with
twelve pieces of leather; it is divided into patches of various colors, of which
the colors which we see here may be regarded as samples, such as painters use.
But there the whole earth is of such
colors, and they are much brighter and purer than ours; for one part is purple
of wonderful beauty, and one is golden, and one is white, whiter than chalk or
snow, and the earth is made up of the other colors likewise, and they are more
in number and more beautiful than those which we see here. For those very
hollows of the earth which are full of water and air, present an appearance
of color as they glisten amid the
variety of the other colors, so that the whole produces one continuous effect of
variety. And in this fair earth the things that grow, the trees, and flowers and
fruits, are correspondingly beautiful; and so too the mountains and the stones
are smoother, and more transparent and more lovely in color than ours. In fact,
our highly prized stones, sards and
jaspers,
and emeralds, and other gems, are fragments of those there, but there everything
is like these or still more beautiful. And the reason of this is that there the
stones are pure, and not corroded or defiled, as ours are, with filth and brine
by the vapors and liquids which flow together here and which cause ugliness and
disease in earth and stones and animals and plants.