Republic

Then since it is not destroyed by any evil whatever, either its own or alien, it is evident that it must necessarily exist always, and that if it always exists it is immortal.Necessarily, he said. Let this, then, I said, be assumed to be so. But if it is so, you will observe that these souls must always be the same. For if none perishes they could not, I suppose, become fewer nor yet more numerous.[*](Cf. Carveth Read, Man and His Superstitions p. 104: Plato thought that by a sort of law of psychic conservation there must always be the same number of souls in world. There must therefore be reincarnation. . . . ) For if any class of immortal things increased you are aware that its increase would come from the mortal and all things would end by becoming immortal.[*](Cf. Phaedo 72 C-D.) You say truly. But, said I, we must not suppose this, for reason will not suffer it nor yet must we think that in its truest nature the soul is the kind of thing that teems with infinite diversity and unlikeness and contradiction in and with itself.[*](The idea of self-contradiction is frequent in Plato. See What Plato said, p. 505, on Gorg. 482 B-C.) How am I to understand that? he said. It is not easy, said I, for a thing to be immortal that is composed of many elements[*](σύνθετον: Cf. Phaedo 78 C, Plotinus, Enneades i. 1. 12, Berkeley, Principles, 141: We have shown that the soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended; and it is consequently incorruptible. . . . cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance. See also Zeller, Ph. d. Gr. ii. 1, pp. 828-829.) not put together in the best way, as now appeared to us[*](603 D. see also Frutiger, Mythes de Platon, pp. 90 f.) to be the case with the soul. It is not likely. Well, then, that the soul is immortal our recent argument and our other[*](Such as are given in the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and perhaps elsewhere.) proofs would constrain us to admit. But to know its true nature we must view it not marred by communion with the body[*](Cf. also Phaedo 82 E, 83 D-E, 81 C, and Wisdom of Solomon ix 14 φθαρτὸν γὰρ σῶμα βαρύνει ψυχήν, καὶ βρίθει τὸ γεῶδες σκῆνος νοῦν πολυφρόντιδα, for the corruptible body presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things.) and other miseries as we now contemplate it, but consider adequately in the light of reason what it is when it is purified, and then you will find it to be a far more beautiful thing and will more clearly distinguish justice and injustice and all the matters that we have now discussed. But though we have stated the truth of its present appearance, its condition as we have now contemplated it resembles that of the sea-god Glaucus[*](See schol. Hermann vi. 362, Eurip. Or. 364 f., Apollonius, Argon. 1310 ff., Athenaeus 296 B and D, Anth. Pal. vi. 164, Frazer on Pausanias ix. 22. 7, Gädecker, Glaukos der Meeresgott, Göttingen, 1860.) whose first nature can hardly be made out by those who catch glimpses of him, because the original members of his body are broken off and mutilated and crushed and in every way marred by the waves, and other parts have attached themselves[*](Cf. Tim. 42 C προσφύντα.) to him, accretions of shells[*](Cf. Phaedr. 250 C ὀστρέου τρόπον δεδεσμευμένοι, Phaedo 110 A.) and sea-weed and rocks, so that he is more like any wild creature than what he was by nature—even such, I say, is our vision of the soul marred by countless evils. But we must look elsewhere, Glaucon. Where? said he. To its love of wisdom. And we must note the things of which it has apprehensions, and the associations for which it yearns, as being itself akin to the divine[*](Cf. Phaedo 79 D, Laws 899 D, and 494 D τὸ σιγγενὲς τῶν λόγων.) and the immortal and to eternal being, and so consider what it might be if it followed the gleam unreservedly and were raised by this impulse out of the depths of this sea in which it is now sunk, and were cleansed and scraped free[*](Cf. Phileb. 55 C περικρούωμεν, 519 A περιεκόπη.) of the rocks and barnacles which, because it now feasts on earth, cling to it in wild profusion of earthy and stony accretion by reason of these feastings that are accounted happy.[*](Cf. Charm. 158 A, Laws 695 A, 783 A. See λεγόμενα ἀγαθά491 C, 495 A, Laws 661 C.)

And then one might see whether in its real nature[*](Cf. Phaedo 246 A.In Tim. 72 D Plato says that only God knows the truth about the soul. See Laws 641 D, and Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 42.) it is manifold[*](Cf. Phaedr. 271 A.) or single in its simplicity, or what is the truth about it and how.[*](ὅπῃ καὶ ὅπως: cf. 621 B, Phaedo 100 D, Tim. 37 A-B, Laws 652 A, 834 E, 899 A and B.) But for the present we have, I think, fairly well described its sufferings and the forms it assumes in this human life of ours.We certainly have, he said. Then, said I, we have met all the other demands of the argument, and we have not invoked the rewards and reputes of justice as you said Homer and Hesiod[*](363 B-C.) do, but we have proved that justice in itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul ought to do justice whether it possess the ring of Gyges[*](359 D f.) or not,[*](Cf. 367 E.) or the helmet of Hades[*](Iliad v. 845, Blaydes on Aristoph. Acharn. 390.) to boot. Most true, he said. Then, said I, Glaucon, there can no longer be any objection,[*](Cf. Soph. 243 A, Laws 801 E ἄνευ φθόνων, Eurip. Hippol. 497 οὐκ ἐπίφθονον, Aeschines, De falsa legatione 167 (49). Friedländer, Platon, ii. p. 406 does object and finds the passage inconsistent with the idealism of 592 and with Laws 899 D ff. and 905 B. Cf. Renan, Averroes, pp. 156-157, Guyau, Esquisse d’une morale, pp. 140-141. See Unity of Plato’s Thought, p. 80 and n. 612, Idea of Justice in Plato’s Republic, pp. 197-198. Gomperz, ignoring this passage and interpreting the Republic wholly from 367 E, strangely argues that Phaedo 107 C proves that the Phaedo must have been composed at a time when Plato was less sure of the coincidence of justice and happiness. A religious thinker may in his theodicy justify the ways of God to man by arguing that worldly happiness is not the real happiness, and yet elsewhere remark that, as a rule, the righteous is not forsaken even in this world. Cf. Psalm 37.25 ff., Prov. 10.3 and passim. See Renan, Hist. du Peuple d’Israel, p. 376: Il en est de ces passages comme de tant de préceptes de l’Evangile, insensés si on en fait des articles de code, excellents si on n’y voit, que l’expression hyperbolique de hauts sentiments moraux.) can there, to our assigning to justice and virtue generally, in addition, all the various rewards and wages that they bring to the soul from men and gods, both while the man still lives and, after his death? There certainly can be none, he said. Will you, then, return to me what you borrowed[*](Cf. Polit. 267 A.) in the argument? What, pray? I granted to you that the just man should seem and be thought to be unjust and the unjust just; for you thought that, even if the concealment of these things from gods and men was an impossibility in fact, nevertheless, it ought to be conceded for the sake of the argument,[*](τοῦ λόγου ἕνεκα: not the same as λόγου ἕνεκα. See on 581 C, p. 374, note a.) in order that the decision might be made between absolute justice and absolute injustice. Or do you not remember? It would be unjust of me,[*](Cf. εἰ μὴ ἀδικῶ 608 D.) he said, if I did not. Well, then, now that they have been compared and judged, I demand back from you in behalf of justice the repute that she in fact enjoys[*](For the idiom ὥσπερ ἔχει δόξης cf. 365 A ὡς . . . ἔχουσι τιμῆς, 389 C ὅπως . . . πράξεως ἔχει, Thucyd. i. 22 ὡς . . . μνήμης ἔχοι. For the thought cf. Isoc. viii. 33.) from gods and men, and I ask that we admit that she is thus esteemed in order that she may gather in the prizes[*](Cf. Phileb. 22 B and E.) which she wins from the seeming and bestows on her possessors, since she has been proved to bestow the blessings that come from the reality and not to deceive those who truly seek and win her. That is a just demand, he said. Then, said I, will not the first of these restorations be that the gods certainly[*](γεvi termini. Cf. 379 A and Class. Phil. x. p. 335.) are not unaware[*](Cf. 365 D.) of the true character of each of the two, the just and the unjust? We will restore that, he said. And if they are not concealed, the one will be dear to the gods[*](Cf. Phileb. 39 E.) and the other hateful to them, as we agreed in the beginning.[*](Cf. 352 B.) That is so.