(150e) so you too must first have the mist removed which now enwraps yOUR SOUL, and then you will be ready to receive the means whereby you will discern both evil and good. For at present I do not think you could do so. ALCIBIADES II
(364a) Socrates : You are in a state of blessedness, Hippias, if at every Olympiad you come to the sanctuary with fair hopes concerning yOUR SOUL and its wisdom ; and I should be surprised if any of the physical athletes when he goes to that same place to take part in the contests, has such fearless confidence in his body as you have in your intellect. LESSER HIPPIAS
Socrates : Then that assertion, that the powerful and useful are beautiful without qualification, is gone ; but was this, Hippias, what OUR SOUL wished to say, that the useful and the powerful for doing something good is the beautiful ? GREATER HIPPIAS
Soc. I wish you would frankly tell me, Ion, what I am going to ask of you : When you produce the greatest effect upon the audience in the recitation of some striking passage, such as the apparition of Odysseus leaping forth on the floor, recognized by the suitors and casting his arrows at his feet, or the description of Achilles rushing at Hector, or the sorrows of Andromache, Hecuba, or Priam, — are you in your right mind ? Are you not carried out of yourself, and does not yOUR SOUL in an ecstasy seem to be among the persons or places of which you are speaking, whether they are in Ithaca or in Troy or whatever may be the scene of the poem ? ION
Soc. Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which, as I am saying, receive the power of the original magnet from one another ? The rhapsode like yourself and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet himself is the first of them. Through all these the God sways the souls of men in any direction which he pleases, and makes one man hang down from another. Thus there is a vast chain of dancers and masters and undermasters of choruses, who are suspended, as if from the stone, at the side of the rings which hang down from the Muse. And every poet has some Muse from whom he is suspended, and by whom he is said to be possessed, which is nearly the same thing ; for he is taken hold of. And from these first rings, which are the poets, depend others, some deriving their inspiration from Orpheus, others from Musaeus ; but the greater number are possessed and held by Homer. Of whom, Ion, you are one, and are possessed by Homer ; and when any one repeats the words of another poet you go to sleep, and know not what to say ; but when any one recites a strain of Homer you wake up in a moment, and yOUR SOUL leaps within you, and you have plenty to say ; for not by art or knowledge about Homer do you say what you say, but by divine inspiration and by possession ; just as the Corybantian revellers too have a quick perception of that strain only which is appropriated to the God by whom they are possessed, and have plenty of dances and words for that, but take no heed of any other. And you, Ion, when the name of Homer is mentioned have plenty to say, and have nothing to say of others. You ask, “Why is this ?” The answer is that you praise Homer not by art but by divine inspiration. ION
You are going to commit yOUR SOUL to the care of a man whom you call a Sophist. And yet I hardly think that you know what a Sophist is ; and if not, then you do not even know to whom you are committing yOUR SOUL and whether the thing to which you commit yourself be good or evil. PROTAGORAS
Then I proceeded to say : Well, but are you aware of the danger which you are incurring ? If you were going to commit your body to some one, who might do good or harm to it, would you not carefully consider and ask the opinion of your friends and kindred, and deliberate many days as to whether you should give him the care of your body ? But when the soul is in question, which you hold to be of far more value than the body, and upon the good or evil of which depends the well-being of your all, — about this never consulted either with your father or with your brother or with any one of us who are your companions. But no sooner does this foreigner appear, than you instantly commit yOUR SOUL to his keeping. In the evening, as you say, you hear of him, and in the morning you go to him, never deliberating or taking the opinion of any one as to whether you ought to intrust yourself to him or not ; — you have quite made up your mind that you will at all hazards be a pupil of Protagoras, and are prepared to expend all the property of yourself and of your friends in carrying out at any price this determination, although, as you admit, you do not know him, and have never spoken with him : and you call him a Sophist, but are manifestly ignorant of what a Sophist is ; and yet you are going to commit yourself to his keeping. PROTAGORAS
Socrates : Your lover is rather he who loves yOUR SOUL ? ALCIBIADES I
(131d) Socrates : Whereas he who loves yOUR SOUL will not quit you so long as it makes for what is better ? ALCIBIADES I
His approving answers reassured me, and I began by degrees to regain confidence, and the vital heat returned. Such, Charmides, I said, is the nature of the charm, which I learned when serving with the army from one of the physicians of the Thracian king Zamolxis, who are to be so skilful that they can even give immortality. This Thracian told me that in these notions of theirs, which I was just now mentioning, the Greek physicians are quite right as far as they go ; but Zamolxis, he added, our king, who is also a god, says further, “that as you ought not to attempt to cure the eyes without the head, or the head without the body, so neither ought you to attempt to cure the body without the soul ; and this,” he said, “is the reason why the cure of many diseases is unknown to the physicians of Hellas, because they are ignorant of the whole, which ought to be studied also ; for the part can never be well unless the whole is well.” For all good and evil, whether in the body or in human nature, originates, as he declared, in the soul, and overflows from thence, as if from the head into the eyes. And therefore if the head and body are to be well, you must begin by curing the soul ; that is the first thing. And the cure, my dear youth, has to be effected by the use of certain charms, and these charms are fair words ; and by them temperance is implanted in the soul, and where temperance is, there health is speedily imparted, not only to the head, but to the whole body. And he who taught me the cure and the charm at the same time added a special direction : “Let no one,” he said, “persuade you to cure the head, until he has first given you his soul to be cured by the charm. For this,” he said, “is the great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the body.” And he added with emphasis, at the same time making me swear to his words, “Let no one, however rich, or noble, or fair, persuade you to give him the cure, without the charm.” Now I have sworn, and I must keep my oath, and therefore if you will allow me to apply the Thracian charm first to yOUR SOUL, as the stranger directed, I will afterwards proceed to apply the cure to your head. But if not, I do not know what I am to do with you, my dear Charmides. CHARMIDES
Soc. The reason is, Callicles, that the love of Demus which abides in yOUR SOUL is an adversary to me ; but I dare say that if we recur to these same matters, and consider them more thoroughly, you may be convinced for all that. Please, then, to remember that there are two processes of training all things, including body and soul ; in the one, as we said, we treat them with a view to pleasure, and in the other with a view to the highest good, and then we do not indulge but resist them : was not that the distinction which we drew ? GORGIAS
Cebes added : Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in which we learned that which we now recollect. But this would be impossible unless OUR SOUL was in some place before existing in the human form ; here, then, is another argument of the soul’s immortality. PHAEDO
Very true, Simmias, said Cebes ; that OUR SOUL existed before we were born was the first half of the argument, and this appears to have been proven ; that the soul will exist after death as well as before birth is the other half of which the proof is still wanting, and has to be supplied. PHAEDO
Then, Cebes, beyond question the soul is immortal and imperishable, and OUR SOULs will truly exist in another world ! PHAEDO
Ten thousand years must elapse before the soul of each one can return to the place from whence she came, for she cannot grow her wings in less ; only the soul of a philosopher, guileless and true, or the soul of a lover, who is not devoid of philosophy, may acquire wings in the third of the recurring periods of a thousand years ; he is distinguished from the ordinary good man who gains wings in three thousand years : — and they who choose this life three times in succession have wings given them, and go away at the end of three thousand years. But the others receive judgment when they have completed their first life, and after the judgment they go, some of them to the houses of correction which are under the earth, and are punished ; others to some place in heaven whither they are lightly borne by justice, and there they live in a manner worthy of the life which they led here when in the form of men. And at the end of the first thousand years the good souls and also the evil souls both come to draw lots and choose their second life, and they may take any which they please. The soul of a man may pass into the life of a beast, or from the beast return again into the man. But the soul which has never seen the truth will not pass into the human form. For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be able to proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conception of reason ; — this is the recollection of those things which OUR SOUL once saw while following God — when regardless of that which we now call being she raised her head up towards the true being. And therefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings ; and this is just, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities, clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and in beholding which He is what He is. And he who employs aright these memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries and alone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests and is rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him ; they do not see that he is inspired. PHAEDRUS
Thus great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship of a lover will confer upon you, my youth. Whereas the attachment of the non-lover, which is alloyed with a worldly prudence and has worldly and niggardly ways of doling out benefits, will breed in yOUR SOUL those vulgar qualities which the populace applaud, will send you bowling round the earth during a period of nine thousand years, and leave, you a fool in the world below. PHAEDRUS
Str. When we say that he deceives us with an illusion, and that his art is illusory, do we mean that OUR SOUL is led by his art to think falsely, or what do we mean ? SOPHIST
All these are to be reckoned among the second and co-operative causes which God, carrying into execution the idea of the best as far as possible, uses as his ministers. They are thought by most men not to be the second, but the prime causes of all things, because they freeze and heat, and contract and dilate, and the like. But they are not so, for they are incapable of reason or intellect ; the only being which can properly have mind is the invisible soul, whereas fire and water, and earth and air, are all of them visible bodies. The lover of intellect and knowledge ought to explore causes of intelligent nature first of all, and, secondly, of those things which, being moved by others, are compelled to move others. And this is what we too must do. Both kinds of causes should be acknowledged by us, but a distinction should be made between those which are endowed with mind and are the workers of things fair and good, and those which are deprived of intelligence and always produce chance effects without order or design. Of the second or co-operative causes of sight, which help to give to the eyes the power which they now possess, enough has been said. I will therefore now proceed to speak of the higher use and purpose for which God has given them to us. The sight in my opinion is the source of the greatest benefit to us, for had we never seen the stars, and the sun, and the heaven, none of the words which we have spoken about the universe would ever have been uttered. But now the sight of day and night, and the months and the revolutions of the years, have created number, and have given us a conception of time, and the power of enquiring about the nature of the universe ; and from this source we have derived philosophy, than which no greater good ever was or will be given by the gods to mortal man. This is the greatest boon of sight : and of the lesser benefits why should I speak ? even the ordinary man if he were deprived of them would bewail his loss, but in vain. Thus much let me say however : God invented and gave us sight to the end that we might behold the courses of intelligence in the heaven, and apply them to the courses of our own intelligence which are akin to them, the unperturbed to the perturbed ; and that we, learning them and partaking of the natural truth of reason, might imitate the absolutely unerring courses of God and regulate our own vagaries. The same may be affirmed of speech and hearing : they have been given by the gods to the same end and for a like reason. For this is the principal end of speech, whereto it most contributes. Moreover, so much of music as is adapted to the sound of the voice and to the sense of hearing is granted to us for the sake of harmony ; and harmony, which has motions akin to the revolutions of OUR SOULs, is not regarded by the intelligent votary of the Muses as given by them with a view to irrational pleasure, which is deemed to be the purpose of it in our day, but as meant to correct any discord which may have arisen in the courses of the soul, and to be our ally in bringing her into harmony and agreement with herself ; and rhythm too was given by them for the same reason, on account of the irregular and graceless ways which prevail among mankind generally, and to help us against them. TIMAEUS
Soc. Memory and perception meet, and they and their attendant feelings seem to almost to write down words in the soul, and when the inscribing feeling writes truly, then true opinion and true propositions which are the expressions of opinion come into OUR SOULs — but when the scribe within us writes falsely, the result is false. PHILEBUS
Ath. What will be the manner of life among men who may be supposed to have their food and clothing provided for them in moderation, and who have entrusted the practice of the arts to others, and whose husbandry, committed to slaves paying a part of the produce, brings them a return sufficient for men living temperately ; who, moreover, have common tables in which the men are placed apart, and near them are the common tables of their families, of their daughters and mothers, which day by day, the officers, male and female, are to inspect — they shall see to the behaviour of the company, and so dismiss them ; after which the presiding magistrate and his attendants shall honour with libations those Gods to whom that day and night are dedicated, and then go home ? To men whose lives are thus ordered, is there no work remaining to be done which is necessary and fitting, but shall each one of them live fattening like a beast ? Such a life is neither just nor honourable, nor can he who lives it fail of meeting his due ; and the due reward of the idle fatted beast is that he should be torn in pieces by some other valiant beast whose fatness is worn down by brave deeds and toil. These regulations, if we duly consider them, will never be exactly carried into execution under present circumstances, nor as long as women and children and houses and all other things are the private property of individuals ; but if we can attain the second-best form of polity, we shall be very well off. And to men living under this second polity there remains a work to be accomplished which is far from being small or insignificant, but is the greatest of all works, and ordained by the appointment of righteous law. For the life which may be truly said to be concerned with the virtue of body and soul is twice, or more than twice, as full of toil and trouble as the pursuit after Pythian and Olympic victories, which debars a man from every employment of life. For there ought to be no bye-work interfering with the greater work of providing the necessary exercise and nourishment for the body, and instruction and education for the soul. Night and day are not long enough for the accomplishment of their perfection and consummation ; and therefore to this end all freemen ought to arrange the way in which they will spend their time during the whole course of the day, from morning till evening and from evening till the morning of the next sunrise. There may seem to be some impropriety in the legislator determining minutely the numberless details of the management of the house, including such particulars as the duty of wakefulness in those who are to be perpetual watchmen of the whole city ; for that any citizen should continue during the whole of any night in sleep, instead of being seen by all his servants, always the first to awake and get up — this, whether the regulation is to be called a law or only a practice, should be deemed base and unworthy of a freeman ; also that the mistress of the house should be awakened by her handmaidens instead of herself first awakening them, is what the slaves, male and female, and the serving-boys, and, if that were possible, everybody and everything in the house should regard as base. If they rise early, they may all of them do much of their public and of their household business, as magistrates in the city, and masters and mistresses in their private houses, before the sun is up. Much sleep is not required by nature, either for OUR SOULs or bodies, or for the actions which they perform. For no one who is asleep is good for anything, any more than if he were dead ; but he of us who has the most regard for life and reason keeps awake as long he can, reserving only so much time for sleep as is expedient for health ; and much sleep is not required, if the habit of moderation be once rightly formed. Magistrates in states who keep awake at night are terrible to the bad, whether enemies or citizens, and are honoured and reverenced by the just and temperate, and are useful to themselves and to the whole state. LAWS BOOK VII
And indeed there is much good reason to suppose that formerly, (988c) when men had their first conceptions of how the gods came to exist and with what qualities, and whence, and to what kind of actions they proceeded, they were spoken of in a manner not approved or welcomed by the wise, nor were even the views of those who came later, among whom the greatest dignity was given to fire and water and the other elements, while the wonderful soul was accounted inferior ; and higher and more honored with them was a motion assigned to the body for moving itself by heat and chills and everything of that kind, (988d) instead of that which the soul had for moving both the body and itself. But now that we account it no marvel that the soul, once it is in the body, should stir and move about this and itself, neither does OUR SOUL on any reckoning mistrust her power of moving about any weight. And therefore, since we now claim that, as the soul is cause of the whole, and all good things are causes of like things, while on the other hand evil things are causes of other things like them, it is no marvel (988e) that soul should be cause of all motion and stirring — that the motion and stirring towards the good are the function of the best soul, and those to the opposite are the opposite — it must be that good things have conquered and conquer things that are not their like. EPINOMIS BOOK XII
When Er and the spirits arrived, their duty was to go at once to Lachesis ; but first of all there came a prophet who arranged them in order ; then he took from the knees of Lachesis lots and samples of lives, and having mounted a high pulpit, spoke as follows : “Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius ; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honors or dishonors her he will have more or less of her ; the responsibility is with the chooser — God is justified.” When the Interpreter had thus spoken he scattered lots indifferently among them all, and each of them took up the lot which fell near him, all but Er himself (he was not allowed), and each as he took his lot perceived the number which he had obtained. Then the Interpreter placed on the ground before them the samples of lives ; and there were many more lives than the souls present, and they were of all sorts. There were lives of every animal and of man in every condition. And there were tyrannies among them, some lasting out the tyrant’s life, others which broke off in the middle and came to an end in poverty and exile and beggary ; and there were lives of famous men, some who were famous for their form and beauty as well as for their strength and success in games, or, again, for their birth and the qualities of their ancestors ; and some who were the reverse of famous for the opposite qualities. And of women likewise ; there was not, however, any definite character in them, because the soul, when choosing a new life, must of necessity become different. But there was every other quality, and they all mingled with one another, and also with elements of wealth and poverty, and disease and health ; and there were mean states also. And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of our human state ; and therefore the utmost care should be taken. Let each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if peradventure he may be able to learn and may find someone who will make him able to learn and discern between good and evil, and so to choose always and everywhere the better life as he has opportunity. He should consider the bearing of all these things which have been mentioned severally and collectively upon virtue ; he should know what the effect of beauty is when combined with poverty or wealth in a particular soul, and what are the good and evil consequences of noble and humble birth, of private and public station, of strength and weakness, of cleverness and dullness, and of all the natural and acquired gifts of the soul, and the operation of them when conjoined ; he will then look at the nature of the soul, and from the consideration of all these qualities he will be able to determine which is the better and which is the worse ; and so he will choose, giving the name of evil to the life which will make his soul more unjust, and good to the life which will make his soul more just ; all else he will disregard. For we have seen and know that this is the best choice both in life and after death. A man must take with him into the world below an adamantine faith in truth and right, that there too he may be undazzled by the desire of wealth or the other allurements of evil, lest, coming upon tyrannies and similar villanies, he do irremediable wrongs to others and suffer yet worse himself ; but let him know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible, not only in this life but in all that which is to come. For this is the way of happiness. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X
And thus, Glaucon, the tale has been saved and has not perished, and will save us if we are obedient to the word spoken ; and we shall pass safely over the river of Forgetfulness, and OUR SOUL will not be defiled. Wherefore my counsel is that we hold fast ever to the heavenly way and follow after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is immortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort of evil. Thus shall we live dear to one another and to the gods, both while remaining here and when, like conquerors in the games who go round to gather gifts, we receive our reward. And it shall be well with us both in this life and in the pilgrimage of a thousand years which we have been describing. THE REPUBLIC BOOK X