Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/374

 ON PLATO'S PHAEDO, 373 is wicked in the most enduring contradiction with itself, without at the same time compromising its existence. That the human creature can surrender itself to that which is wicked with full determination, without annihilating itself, is in fact one of the most powerful and tremendous witnesses for the Indestructibility of Personal Existence." But here we see that a conception of the self-conscious Person is assumed before the argument from wickedness is applied ; and so it might be said for Plato that, as he assumes the necessary connexion between the soul and the eternal ideas, the fact that its own evil does not destroy the soulis a confirma- tion of its immortality. Yet it is striking and characteristic of his way of working that the arguments in the Phaedrus, Phaedo and Republic, which we may fairly suppose all to belong to the same general stage of his philosophy, are stated in complete independence of one another. The special interest of the Republic in connexion with our question is that here Plato comes most distinctly face to face with the ethical significance of the conception of immor- tality ; and it is therefore perhaps fitting that the argument should be rather ethical than metaphysical. Plato does not use at all the ethical argument as we have it in Kant, an argument which is so far the converse of Plato's argument from Eecollection. Plato's argument might become : We have ideals by which we judge the imperfections of our pre- sent life ; therefore we must have known them in a previous state. Kant's argument may be put in the form : We have ideals which we cannot realise in this present life ; therefore we must exist in a future state. And it is to be observed that Plato's argument turns on the character of knowledge even in moral matters, Kant's on the nature of conduct. In the early part of the Republic Plato is compelled to pro- test against the demoralising effect of popular and Orphic ideas about a future life, and appears therefore to reject alto- gether the ordinary beliefs about rewards and punishments in another world. But having shown that justice in itself, irrespective of consequences in this world or the next, is better than injustice, he now feels able to restore the element of truth, which he recognises in these old traditions, in a way which, so far from being demoralising, shall be morally edu- cative. It would be misunderstanding him however to sup- pose that either here or in the Phaedo he considers the moral value of the doctrine an argument for its truth. Plato is perfectly true to the Greek faith in Reason : having estab- lished the truth of the doctrine, as he thinks, independently, on intellectual grounds, he is ready to accept its moral value.