Phaedo.
Where then, Socrates,
said he,
shall we find a good singer of such charms, since you are leaving
us?
Hellas, Cebes,
he replied, is a large country, in
which there are many good men, and there are many foreign peoples also. You
ought to search through all of them in quest of such a charmer, sparing neither
money nor toil, for there is no greater need for which you could spend your
money. And you must seek among yourselves, too, for perhaps you would hardly
find others better able to do this than you.
That,
said Cebes, shall be done. But let us return to the
point where we left off,
if you are
willing.
Oh, I am willing, of
course.
Good,
said
he.Well then,
said Socrates,
must we not ask ourselves some such question as this? What kind of thing
naturally suffers dispersion, and for what kind of thing might we naturally fear
it, and again what kind of thing is not liable to it? And after this must we not
inquire to which class the soul belongs and base our hopes or fears for our
souls upon the answers to these questions?
You are quite right,
he replied.Now is not that which is compounded
and composite naturally liable to be decomposed, in the same way in which it
was compounded? And if anything is uncompounded is not that, if anything,
naturally unlikely to be decomposed?
I think,
said Cebes, that is true.
Then it is most probable that things which are
always the same and unchanging are the uncompounded things and the things that
are changing and never the same are the composite things?
Yes, I think so.
Let us then,
said he, turn to what we were
discussing before.
Is the absolute essence,
which we in our dialectic process of question and answer call true being, always
the same or is it liable to change? Absolute equality, absolute beauty, any
absolute existence, true being—do they ever admit of any change
whatsoever? Or does each absolute essence, since it is uniform and exists by
itself, remain the same and never in any way admit of any
change?
It must,
said
Cebes, necessarily remain the same,
Socrates.
But how about the
many things, for example, men, or horses, or cloaks, or any other such things,
which bear the same names as the absolute essences and are called beautiful or
equal or the like? Are they always the same? Or are they, in direct opposition
to the essences, constantly changing in themselves, unlike each other, and, so
to speak, never the same?
The
latter,
said Cebes; they are never the same.