Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/361

 360 D. G. EITCHIE : superior to the body, and that even in life that which makes each one of us to be what we are is only the soul ; and that the body follows us about in the likeness of each of us, and, therefore, when we are dead, the bodies of the dead are rightly said to be our shades or images ; for that the true and immortal being of each one of us, which is called the soul, goes on her way to other Gods, that before them she may give an account an inspiring hope to the good, but very terrible to the bad, as the laws of our fathers tell us, which also say that not much can be done in the way of help- ing a man after he is dead. But the living he should be helped by all his kindred, that while in life he may be the holiest and justest of men, and after death may have no great sins to be punished in the world below." This passage does seem to rest the doctrine about the soul merely on the authority of the legislator. But while Plato holds that for the mass of mankind, who have only ' opinion ' or ' belief on all matters, such authority is sufficient, surely he does not mean us to think that the Socrates of the Phacdo, who is dying as a condemned heretic, holds the doctrine of immortality only as something imposed by old tradition. If so, all the lengthy arguments would be very much out of place. Though, in the Laws, Plato puts the views about the future life as ' a medicinal myth ' for the multitude, they may still be ' a myth of approximation ' for the philosopher. And in any case, the Laws cannot be taken as certain evidence of what Plato held when he wrote the Pliaedo. Let us assume, then, that what is said about the life before and after the present life is intended as an approximation to the truth. The difficulty remains to decide where myth ends and where logic begins. Critics have been too apt to suppose that Plato himself could always have drawn the line exactly. Our language and our thinking are conditioned by our ordinary experiences ; and when we have to speak of that which belongs to the insensible, we find ourselves com- pelled, however much we try to avoid it, to use phraseology belonging properly only to the sensible. We have to talk of the mind, which we know not to be in space, as if it were in space and had parts and divisions ; and we have to apply to what our logic compels us to recognise as independent of time conceptions and images which have strictly no mean- ing except as applied to what Plato calls " the moving image of Eternity ". In illustration one need only refer again to such phrases as ' a priori,'' 'presupposed,' to see how we our- selves are obliged to use ' the verbal lie'. Philosophy can- not dispense with metaphor. Only we should try to use our