Phaedo.
When the soul
and the body are joined together, nature directs the
one to serve and be ruled, and the other to rule and be master. Now this being
the case, which seems to you like the divine, and which like the mortal? Or do
you not think that the divine is by nature fitted to rule and lead, and the
mortal to obey and serve?
Yes, I
think so.
Which, then, does the soul
resemble?
Clearly, Socrates, the
soul is like the divine and the body like the mortal.
Then see, Cebes, if this is not the conclusion from all
that we have said,
that the soul is most like
the divine and immortal and intellectual and uniform and indissoluble and ever
unchanging, and the body, on the contrary, most like the human and mortal and
multiform and unintellectual and dissoluble and ever changing. Can we say
anything, my dear Cebes, to show that this is not so?
No, we cannot.
Well then, since this is the case, is it not natural for the body to
meet with speedy dissolution and for the soul, on the contrary, to be entirely
indissoluble, or nearly so?
Of
course.
Observe,
he went
on, that when a man dies, the visible part of him, the body, which lies
in the visible world and which we call the corpse, which is naturally subject to
dissolution and decomposition, does not undergo these processes at once, but
remains for a considerable time, and even for a very long time, if death takes
place when the body is in good condition, and at a favorable time of the year.
For when the body is shrunk and embalmed, as is done in Egypt, it remains almost entire for an
incalculable time. And even if the body decay,
some parts of it, such as the bones and sinews and all that, are, so to speak,
indestructible. Is not that true?
Yes.
But the soul, the
invisible, which departs into another place which is, like itself, noble and
pure and invisible, to the realm of the god of the other world in truth, to the
good and wise god, whither, if God will, my soul is soon to go,—is this
soul, which has such qualities and such a nature, straightway scattered and
destroyed when it departs from the body, as most men say?
Far from it, dear Cebes and Simmias, but the truth is much
rather this—if it departs pure, dragging with it nothing of the body,
because it never willingly associated with the body in life, but avoided it and
gathered itself into itself alone, since this has always been its constant
study—but this means nothing else than that it pursued philosophy rightly
and
really
practiced being in a state of death: or is not this the practice of
death?