Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/376

 ON PLATO'S PHAEDO. 375 they are ascribed to the soul. These apparent inconsistencies arise very much from our tending to understand Plato too literally when he speaks of parts of the soul. Indeed it should be noted that he more often says eiBrj or 761/77 ('forms' or 'kinds,' 'aspects' as we might say) than pepr). We may reconcile all these passages more or less as follows : The soul in its essence is Reason (i>oO?). By ad- mixture with the body it shows itself in the forms of passion and desire, which we may therefore ascribe to the soul or the body according as we are thinking of the soul embodied or distinct from the body. When the soul in a future life is spoken of as being punished, it must be the soul as having desires. The soul escapes, i.e., does not need punishment, just in so far as it is free from desire (appetite, e7ri6vfiiai) . Only the soul of the tyrant which is altogether given over to desire is punished for ever. (This is a characteristically Hel- lenic touch, and need not be rejected as by Mr. Archer-Hind. It is not more fanciful than any other part of the myths in the Gorgias and Republic. The tyrant is Plato's ideally bad man opposed to the ideally good man, the philosopher.) If then it is asked whether Plato thinks bodily existence necessary for the particular human soul, we can only answer by distinguishing the meanings of the words ' body ' and ' soul '. If by body be meant, as is ordinarily meant, our body as it exists now, then Plato does hold that the soul can exist apart from the body. If by soul be meant the soul as we know it with its passions and desires, then evidently some sort of body must be supposed for it, else there would be no passions and desires. If we ask whether Plato believes in a personal immortality, we should need to ask ourselves farther what we mean by personality ; and we should note that it is not a conception which has become at all prominent in ancient ethics. We might perhaps expect that a consistent Platonist would have held that, just in so far as the soul becomes purified from passion and desire, it loses its material- ity, its element of otherness (ddrepov), and thus becomes re- united to its divine source. This is an interpretation which the mythical element in Plato might suggest. Yet Plato himself argues (in Eep. x. 611 A) that the number of the souls remains always the same; and the greatest of the Neo- Platonists, Plotinus, holds explicitly that there exists a real plurality of souls, the highest being the soul of the world, of which the others are not mere parts. Was this a position retained out of respect for the authority of the divine Plato, or was it rather from an intuition that the Universal apart from individual manifestation is a logical abstraction ?