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Updated: June 4, 2025
Besides, I have mistresses who will not suffer me to be from them neither day nor night, and who against myself make use of the very charms and sorceries that I have taught them." "And have you any knowledge in those things, too?" said she. "Why do Apollodorus and Antisthenes," answered Socrates, "never leave me? why do Cebes and Simmias forsake Thebes for my company?
And now, O my judges, I desire to prove to you that the real philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die, and that after death he may hope to obtain the greatest good in the other world. And how this may be, Simmias and Cebes, I will endeavour to explain.
"Whether, then, is there any thing contrary to life or not?" "There is," he replied. "What?" "Death." "The soul, then, will never admit the contrary of that which it brings with it, as has been already allowed?" "Most assuredly," replied Cebes. "What, then? How do we denominate that which does not admit the idea of the even?" "Uneven," he replied.
Or if there were composition only, and no division of substances, then the chaos of Anaxagoras would come again. And in like manner, my dear Cebes, if all things which partook of life were to die, and after they were dead remained in the form of death, and did not come to life again, all would at last die, and nothing would be alive what other result could there be?
Ech. Were any strangers present? Phæd. Yes: Simmias the Theban, Cebes, and Phaedondes: and from Megara, Euclides and Terpsion. Ech. But what! were not Aristippus and Cleombrotus present? Phæd. No: for they were said to be at Ægina. Ech. Was anyone else there? Phæd. I think that these were nearly all who were present. Ech. Well, now, what do you say was the subject of conversation? Phæd.
Thus, Socrates, the contrary of what you just now said is likely to be the case; for it becomes the wise to be grieved at dying, but the foolish to rejoice." Socrates, on hearing this, appeared to me to be pleased with the pertinacity of Cebes, and looking toward us said: "Cebes, you see, always searches out arguments, and is not at all willing to admit at once anything one has said."
This, then, being conceded by Cebes, Socrates argues that every thing that is beautiful is so from partaking of abstract beauty, and great from partaking of magnitude, and little from partaking of littleness.
Cebes added: Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in which we have learned that which we now recollect. But this would be impossible unless our soul had been in some place before existing in the form of man; here then is another proof of the soul's immortality.
He remarks on the unaccountable alternation and connection between pleasure and pain, and adds that Æsop, had he observed it, would have made a fable from it. This remark reminds Cebes of Socrates's having put some of Æsop's fables into metre since his imprisonment, and he asks, for the satisfaction of the poet Evenus, what has induced him to do so.
Then reflect, Cebes: of all which has been said is not this the conclusion? that the soul is in the very likeness of the divine, and immortal, and intellectual, and uniform, and indissoluble, and unchangeable; and that the body is in the very likeness of the human, and mortal, and unintellectual, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable. Can this, my dear Cebes, be denied? It cannot.
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