Phaedo.
Do you not think so?
Certainly that is very likely.
And those who have chosen injustice and tyranny and robbery pass into
the bodies of wolves and hawks and kites. Where else can we imagine that they
go?
Beyond a doubt,
said
Cebes, they pass into such creatures.
Then,
said he, it is clear where all the others go, each
in accordance with its own habits?
Yes,
said Cebes, of course.
Then,
said he, the happiest of those, and
those who go to the best place, are those who have practiced,
by nature and habit, without philosophy or reason, the
social and civil virtues which are called moderation and
justice?
How are these
happiest?
Don’t you see? Is it
not likely that they pass again into some such social and gentle species as that
of bees or of wasps or ants, or into the human race again, and that worthy men
spring from them?
Yes.
And no one who has
not been a philosopher and who is not wholly pure when he departs, is allowed to
enter into the communion of the gods,
but
only the lover of knowledge. It is for this reason, dear Simmias and Cebes, that
those who truly love wisdom refrain from all bodily desires and resist them
firmly and do not give themselves up to them, not because they fear poverty or
loss of property, as most men, in their love of money, do; nor is it because
they fear the dishonor or disgrace of wickedness, like the lovers of honor and
power, that they refrain from them.
No, that would not be seemly for them, Socrates,
said
Cebes.Most assuredly not,
said he. And therefore those who
care for their own souls, and do not live in service to the body, turn their
backs upon all these men and do not walk in their ways, for they feel that they
know not whither they are going. They themselves believe that philosophy, with
its deliverance and purification, must not be resisted, and so they turn and
follow it whithersoever it leads.
How do they do this, Socrates?
I will tell you,
he replied. The lovers of
knowledge,
said he, perceive that when philosophy first takes
possession of their soul it is entirely
fastened and welded to the body and is compelled to regard realities through
the body as through prison bars, not with its own unhindered vision, and is
wallowing in utter ignorance. And philosophy sees that the most dreadful thing
about the imprisonment is the fact that it is caused by the lusts of the flesh,
so that the prisoner is the
chief assistant in his own imprisonment.