Phaedo. For,
if pure knowledge is impossible while the body is with us, one of two thing must
follow, either it cannot be acquired at all or only when we are dead; for then
the soul
will
be by itself apart from the body, but not before. And while we live, we shall, I
think, be nearest to knowledge when we avoid, so far as possible, intercourse
and communion with the body, except what is absolutely necessary, and are not
filled with its nature, but keep ourselves pure from it until God himself sets
us free. And in this way, freeing ourselves from the foolishness of the body and
being pure, we shall, I think, be with the pure and shall know of ourselves all
that is pure,—
and that is, perhaps,
the truth. For it cannot be that the impure attain the pure.
Such words as
these, I think, Simmias, all who are rightly lovers of knowledge must say to
each other and such must be their thoughts. Do you not agree?Most assuredly, Socrates.
Then,
said Socrates, if this is true, my
friend, I have great hopes that when I reach the place to which I am going, I
shall there, if anywhere, attain fully to that which has been my chief object in
my past life, so that the journey which is now
imposed upon me is begun with good hope; and the like hope exists for every
man who thinks that his mind has been purified and made ready.
Certainly,
said Simmias.And does not the purification consist in this which has
been mentioned long ago in our discourse, in separating, so far as possible, the
soul from the body and teaching the soul the habit of collecting and bringing
itself together from all parts of the body, and living, so far as it can, both
now
and hereafter, alone by itself, freed
from the body as from fetters?
Certainly,
said he.Well,
then, this is what we call death, is it not, a release and separation from the
body?
Exactly so,
said
he.But, as we hold, the true
philosophers and they alone are always most eager to release the soul, and just
this—the release and separation of the soul from the body—is their
study, is it not?
Obviously.
Then, as I
said in the beginning, it would be absurd if a man who had been all his life
fitting himself to live as nearly
in a state
of death as he could, should then be disturbed when death came to him. Would it
not be absurd?
Of
course.
In fact, then,
Simmias,
said he, the true philosophers practice dying, and death
is less terrible to them than to any other men. Consider it in this way.