Page:The works of Plato, A new and literal version, (vol 1) (Cary, 1854).djvu/62

50 parts of the body, and so may perish with the body as the harmony of a lyre does when the lyre itself is broken. And Cebes, though he admits that the soul is more durable than the body, yet objects that it is not therefore of necessity immortal but may in time wear out, and it is by no means clear that this is not its last period.

These objections produce a powerful effect on the rest of the company, but Socrates, undismayed, exhorts them not to suffer themselves to be deterred from seeking the truth by any difficulties they may meet with; and then proceeds to shew, in a moment, the fallacy of Simmias' objection. It was before admitted, he says, that the soul existed before the body, but harmony is produced after the lyre is formed, so that the two cases are totally different. And further, there are various degrees of harmony, but every soul is as much a soul as any other. But then what will a person who holds this doctrine, that the soul is harmony, say of virtue and vice in the soul? Will he call them another kind of harmony and discord? If so, he will contradict himself, for it is admitted that one soul is not more or less a soul than another, and therefore one cannot be more or less harmonized than another, and one could not admit of a greater degree of virtue or vice than another; and indeed a soul, being harmony, could not partake of vice at all, which is discord.

Socrates, having thus satisfactorily answered the argument adduced by Simmias, goes on to rebut that of Cebes, who objected that the soul might in time wear out. In order to do this, he relates that when a young man he attempted to investigate the causes of every thing, why they exist and why they perish; and in the course of his researches finding the futility of attributing the existence of things to what are called natural causes, he resolved on endeavouring to find out the reasons of things. He therefore assumed that there is a certain abstract beauty, and goodness, and magnitude, and