temperate because "each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails and rivets the soul to the
body, until she becomes like the body, and believes that to be true which the body affirms to be
true."
At this point, Simmias brings up the Pythagorean opinion that the soul is a harmony, and urges: if
the lyre is broken, can the harmony survive? Socrates replies that the soul is not a harmony, for a
harmony is complex, but the soul is simple. Moreover, he says, the view that the soul is a harmony
is incompatible with its pre-existence, which was proved by the doctrine of reminiscence; for the
harmony does not exist before the lyre.
Socrates proceeds to give an account of his own philosophical development, which is very
interesting, but not germane to the main argument. He goes on to expound the doctrine of ideas,
leading to the conclusion "that ideas exist, and that other things participate in them and derive
their names from them." At last he describes the fate of souls after death: the good to heaven, the
bad to hell, the intermediate to purgatory.
His end, and his farewells, are described. His last words are: "Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius;
will you remember to pay the debt?" Men paid a cock to Asclepius when they recovered from an
illness, and Socrates has recovered from life's fitful fever.
"Of all the men of his time," Phaedo concludes, "he was the wisest and justest and best."
The Platonic Socrates was a pattern to subsequent philosophers for many ages. What are we to
think of him ethically? (I am concerned only with the man as Plato portrays him.) His merits are
obvious. He is indifferent to worldly success, so devoid of fear that he remains calm and urbane
and humourous to the last moment, caring more for what he believes to be truth than for anything
else whatever. He has, however, some very grave defects. He is dishonest and sophistical in
argument, and in his private thinking he uses intellect to prove conclusions that are to him
agreeable, rather than in a disinterested search for knowledge. There is something smug and
unctuous about him, which reminds one of a bad type of cleric. His courage in the face of death
would have been more remarkable if he had not believed that he was going to enjoy eternal bliss
in the company of the gods. Unlike some of his predecessors, he was not scientific in his thinking,