Categoria: Fédon

This is your way of speaking ; and yet when you say that Simmias is greater than Socrates and less than Phaedo, do you not predicate of Simmias both greatness and smallness ? Yes, I do. But still you allow that Simmias does not really exceed Socrates, as the words may seem to imply, because…

One of the company, though I do not exactly remember which of them, on hearing this, said : By Heaven, is not this the direct contrary of what was admitted before — that out of the greater came the less and out of the less the greater, and that opposites are simply generated from opposites…

Wherefore, Simmias, seeing all these things, what ought not we to do in order to obtain virtue and wisdom in this life ? Fair is the prize, and the hope great. I do not mean to affirm that the description which I have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true — a…

Such is the name of the other world ; and when the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of each severally conveys them, first of all they have sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and piously or not. And those who appear to have lived neither well nor ill,…

Such is the nature of the whole earth, and of the things which are around the earth ; and there are divers regions in the hollows on the face of the globe everywhere, some of them deeper and also wider than that which we inhabit, others deeper and with a narrower opening than ours, and…

The tale, my friend, he said, is as follows : In the first place, the earth, when looked at from above, is like one of those balls which have leather coverings in twelve pieces, and is of divers colors, of which the colors which painters use on earth are only a sample. But there the…

Now the earth has divers wonderful regions, and is indeed in nature and extent very unlike the notions of geographers, as I believe on the authority of one who shall be nameless. What do you mean, Socrates ? said Simmias. I have myself heard many descriptions of the earth, but I do not know in…

I am convinced, Socrates, said Cebes, and have nothing more to object ; but if my friend Simmias, or anyone else, has any further objection, he had better speak out, and not keep silence, since I do not know how there can ever be a more fitting time to which he can defer the discussion,…

And now, he said, I think that I may begin again ; and to the question which I am about to ask I will beg you to give not the old safe answer, but another, of which I will offer you an example ; and I hope that you will find in what has been…

All of us, as we afterwards remarked to one another, had an unpleasant feeling at hearing them say this. When we had been so firmly convinced before, now to have our faith shaken seemed to introduce a confusion and uncertainty, not only into the previous argument, but into any future one ; either we were…

Socrates proceeded : I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of my soul ; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of…

Then I heard someone who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which he read that mind was the disposer and cause of all, and I was quite delighted at the notion of this, which appeared admirable, and I said to myself : If mind is the disposer, mind will dispose all…

Socrates paused awhile, and seemed to be absorbed in reflection. At length he said : This is a very serious inquiry which you are raising, Cebes, involving the whole question of generation and corruption, about which I will, if you like, give you my own experience ; and you can apply this, if you think…

Thus much, said Socrates, of Harmonia, your Theban goddess, Cebes, who has not been ungracious to us, I think ; but what shall I say to the Theban Cadmus, and how shall I propitiate him ? I think that you will discover a way of propitiating him, said Cebes ; I am sure that you…

But, rejoined Socrates, you will have to think differently, my Theban friend, if you still maintain that harmony is a compound, and that the soul is a harmony which is made out of strings set in the frame of the body ; for you will surely never allow yourself to say that a harmony is…