For after death, as they say, the genius of each individual, to whom he belonged in life, leads him to a certain place in which the dead are gathered together for judgment, whence they go into the world below, following the guide who is appointed to conduct them from this world to the other : and when they have there received their due and remained their time, another guide brings them back again after many revolutions of ages. Now this journey to the other world is not, as Aeschylus says in the “Telephus,” a single and straight path — no guide would be wanted for that, and no one could miss a single path ; but there are many partings of the road, and windings, as I must infer from the rites and sacrifices which are offered to the gods below in places where three ways meet on earth. The wise and orderly soul is conscious of her situation and follows in the path ; but the soul which desires the body, and which, as I was relating before, has long been fluttering about the lifeless frame and the world of sight, is after many struggles and many sufferings hardly and with violence carried away by her attendant genius, and when she arrives at the place where the other souls are gathered, if she be impure and have done impure deeds, or been concerned in foul murders or other crimes which are the brothers of these, and the works of brothers in crime — from that soul everyone flees and turns away ; no one will be her companion, no one her guide, but alone she wanders in extremity of evil until certain times are fulfilled, and when they are fulfilled, she is borne irresistibly to her own fitting habitation ; as every pure and just soul which has passed through life in the company and under the guidance of the gods has also her own proper home.
Jowett: Phaedo (107d-116a) — Mito do destino final das almas
- Jowett: Phaedo (95a-95e) — Discussão da concepção de Cebes
- Jowett: Phaedo (95e-97b) — Problema da geração e da corrupção
- Jowett: Phaedo (97b-99d) — A promessa de Anaxágoras
- Jowett: Phaedo (99d-102b) — O método
- Le sage devant les embarras de la vie corporelle.
- Prelúdio da última conversa (60b-61c)
- Victor Cousin : PHÉDON ou de l’âme