spirit of philosophy will not fear death, but, on the contrary, will welcome it, yet he will not take
his own life, for that is held to be unlawful. His friends inquire why suicide is held to be unlawful,
and his answer, which is in accordance with Orphic doctrine, is almost exactly what a Christian
might say. "There is a doctrine whispered in secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open
the door and run away; this is a great mystery which I do not quite understand." He compares the
relation of man to God with that of cattle to their owner; you would be angry, he says, if your ox
took the liberty of putting himself out of the way, and so "there may be reason in saying that a
man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him, as he is now summoning
me." He is not grieved at death, because he is convinced "in the first place that I am going to other
gods who are wise and good (of which I am as certain as I can be of any such matters), and
secondly (though I am not so sure of this last) to men departed, better than those whom I leave
behind. I have good hope that there is yet something remaining for the dead, some far better thing
for the good than for the evil."
Death, says Socrates, is the separation of soul and body. Here we come upon Plato's dualism:
between reality and appearance, ideas and sensible objects, reason and sense-perception, soul and
body. These pairs are connected: the first in each pair is superior to the second both in reality and
in goodness. An ascetic morality was the natural consequence of this dualism. Christianity
adopted this doctrine in part, but never wholly. There were two obstacles. The first was that the
creation of the visible world, if Plato was right, must have been an evil deed, and therefore the
Creator could not be good. The second was that orthodox Christianity could never bring itself to
condemn marriage, though it held celibacy to be nobler. The Manichaeans were more consistent in
both respects.
The distinction between mind and matter, which has become a commonplace in philosophy and
science and popular thought, has a religious origin, and began as the distinction of soul and body.
The Orphic, as we saw, proclaims himself the child of earth and of the starry heaven; from earth
comes the body, from heaven the soul. It is this theory that Plato seeks to express in the language
of philosophy.
Socrates, in the Phaedo, proceeds at once to develop the ascetic implications of his doctrine, but
his asceticism is of a moderate and