Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/360

 ON PLATO'S PHAEDO. 359 the Buddhists recognise, there are degrees of moral quality. Again Zeller asks : "Are the souls of the beasts (ace. to Tim. 90 E. ff.) all descended from former human souls and so all intelligent and immortal according to their original being, or (Phaedr. 249 B) only some of them?" Plato might answer that all souls, which are now souls of beasts, may quite well once have been human. The passage in the P/iaedrus only implies that, if there were any soul of a beast that had never been human, it could never become human. Thus, though it may represent a different view from that of the Timaeus, it is not necessarily inconsistent with it. But the want of formal consistency in the mythology may be taken as indicating, what Plato himself suggests at the beginning of the Timaeus (29 C), that it is not to be taken too literally. We have here only ' probability,' not truth. The key to the interpretation of Plato's myths seems to be given us in the Republic (382 C, D) where, after condemning altogether " the lie in the soul," i.e., ignorance, he allows that " the lie in words " may be used in two cases : (1) as a medi- cine ((j>dp/j.aKov) against enemies and to deceive men for their own good, as we do with sick persons and madmen ; (2) as an approximation to the truth : where it is impossible to express the truth exactly, we may give something which, though false, resembles the truth as far as possible. Teich- miiller l holds that the myths about the soul belong to the first class, like the myth of the earth-born men (Rep. 414 C ff.) which justifies the caste-system. The story of the earth- born men is obviously a dogma to be imposed authoritatively by the legislator on the ignorant classes ; but the accounts of the origin and destiny of the soul seem to us to be ' permis- sible lies ' of the second kind, as is suggested by the passage just referred to in the Timaeus and in the end of the Phaedo itself (114 D) : "A man of sense ought not to say, nor will I be too confident, that the description which I have given of the soul and her mansions is exactly true. But I do say that, inasmuch as the soul is shown to be immortal, he may venture to think, not improperly or unworthily, that some- thing of the kind is true. The venture is a glorious one, and he ought to comfort himself with words like these, which is the reason why I lengthen out the tale." There is certainly a passage in the Laws (959 A), to which Teichmiiller refers, which seems to favour his view. With regard to the burial of the dead it is there written : " Now we must believe the legislator when he tells us that the soul is in all respects 1 Studien zur Geschichte der Begriffe, p. 163.