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Updated: June 25, 2025
But he, upon hearing this, gently smiled, and said, "Bless me, Simmias; with difficulty, indeed, could I persuade other men that I do not consider my present condition a calamity, since I am not able to persuade even you; but you are afraid lest I should be more morose now than during the former part of my life.
Then may we not say, Simmias, that if, as we are always repeating, there is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and an absolute essence of all things; and if to this, which is now discovered to have existed in our former state, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them, finding these ideas to be pre-existent and our inborn possession then our souls must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no force in the argument?
"Not only so, Simmias," said Socrates, "but you say this well; and, moreover, the first hypotheses, even though they are credible to you, should nevertheless be examined more carefully; and if you should investigate them sufficiently, I think you will follow my reasoning as far as it is possible for man to do so; and if this very point becomes clear, you will inquire no further."
My fortune is at your service, sufficient, I think, for the purpose; then if, out of regard to me, you do not think right to spend my money, these strangers here are ready to spend theirs. One of them, Simmias the Theban, has brought with him a sufficient sum for the very purpose. Cebes, too, is ready, and very many others.
"You say well," said Simmias, "and both I will tell you what are my doubts, and he, in turn, how far he does not assent to what has been said.
Simmias said laughingly: Though not in a laughing humour, you have made me laugh, Socrates; for I cannot help thinking that the many when they hear your words will say how truly you have described philosophers, and our people at home will likewise say that the life which philosophers desire is in reality death, and that they have found them out to be deserving of the death which they desire.
Or, to represent the same thing under a third supposition; if Socrates had professed to perform public miracles at Athens; if the friends of Socrates, Phaedo, Cebes, Crito, and Simmias, together with Plato, and many of his followers, relying upon the attestations which these miracles afforded to his pretensions, had, at the hazard of their lives, and the certain expense of their ease and tranquillity, gone about Greece, after his death, to publish and propagate his doctrines: and if these things had come to our knowledge, in the same way as that in which the life of Socrates is now transmitted to us through the hands of his companions and disciples, that is, by writings received without doubt as theirs, from the age in which they were published to the present, I should have believed this likewise.
So that, on this account, I am not so much troubled, but I entertain a good hope that something awaits those who die, and that, as was said long since, it will be far better for the good than the evil." "What then, Socrates," said Simmias, "would you go away keeping this persuasion to yourself, or would you impart it to us?
Whereas, Simmias, the rest of the world are of opinion that to him who has no sense of pleasure and no part in bodily pleasure, life is not worth having; and that he who is indifferent about them is as good as dead. That is also true. What again shall we say of the actual acquirement of knowledge? is the body, if invited to share in the enquiry, a hinderer or a helper?
And therefore I go on my way rejoicing, and not I only, but every other man who believes that his mind has been made ready and that he is in a manner purified. Certainly, replied Simmias.
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