Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/847



The Meno referred to the immortality and pre-existence of the soul as a traditional doctrine, and it was there associated with the possibility of inquiry. In the Phaedo Plato undertakes to substantiate this belief and base it anew by narrating the last hours of Socrates, who is represented as calmly discussing the question with his friends when his own death was immediately at hand. The argument turns chiefly on the eternity of knowledge, and is far from satisfying. For, granting that eternity of knowledge involves eternity of mind, does the eternity of mind assure continued being to the individual? Yet no unprejudiced reader of the Phaedo can doubt that Plato, at the time of writing it, sincerely believed in a conscious personal existence after death. The words of Socrates, when he declares his hope of going to be with other friends, are absolutely unambiguous, and his reply to Crito's question, “How shall we bury you?” has a convincing force beyond all dialectic: “I cannot persuade Crito that I here am Socrates—I who am now reasoning and ordering discourse. He imagines Socrates to be that other, whom he will see by and by, a corpse.” This and similar touches not only stamp the Phaedo as a marvel of art, but are indisputable evidence of the writer's profound belief. They may be inventions, but they have nothing “mythical” about them, any more than the charge of Socrates to his friends, that they would best fulfil his wishes by attending to their own lives.

In the Phaedo, more than elsewhere, Plato preaches withdrawal from the world. The Delian solemnity is to Socrates