Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/373

 372 D. G. RITCHIE : cance comes from the connexion established between the soul and the ideas. Neither in the Pliacdrus nor in the Republic do the arrju- ments used for immortality turn on the theory of ideas. The argument in the Pkaedrus, which is put forward as the pro- minent argument by Cicero (in his Tusc. Disp., i. 23. also translated by him in Rep., vi. 25), may however be connected with the concluding argument of the Phaedo. " The soul is immortal because it is self-moving " (Phaedr., 245 C) may be considered as only one form of stating the argument from the idea of life. If we look for a modern parallel, we may perhaps find it in the argument from freedom (criticised by Lotze, Met., Engl. Transl., p. 420) an argument which of itself will not prove a personal or even an individual immor- tality. Only ' Thought ' is free, and even Thought in its use by us is conditioned by material phenomena. The argument in Republic, x. 1 is that nothing can be destroyed except by its own proper evil. The body is destroyed by its proper evil, disease. The evil of the soul is wickedness ; but men do not die simply by being wicked, else wickedness would be a less terrible thing than it is, and there would be no need of the executioner. Thus the soul, not being destroyed by its own evil, cannot be destroyed at all. The argument is so far the converse of the argument in the Phaedo. There it is argued that the soul, because not admitting death, is indestructible: here that the soul, because not in fact destroyed, does not admit of death. By itself it seems a very feeble argument. It would only prove that in this life the soul is not destroyed ; and though it might sug- gest a future life, it would not prove immortality, because the destruction of the soul by wickedness might go on after death. Indeed from the position in Rep. i., that evil is a principle of weakness and dissolution, it might be argued that evil must in course of time destroy the soul. It has been ingeniously suggested by a friend of mine that it might be retorted to Plato that if sin does not destroy the soul, sin cannot be the evil of the soul but must be proper and natural to it. On the other hand, we find a German writer, Julius Muller (quoted by Prof. Geddes, p. 26), using a parallel argument to Plato's : "So indestructible is the Personal Individual, that it is able to place itself through that which i Teichmiiller (pp. 121, 127) considers Rep. 611 C and 612 an argument : "The ideal principle is divine"; also 7?^. 611 A-C : "The becoming remains always identical in quantity". Surely these are not "Beweise"?