PHAEDO 47
72 de73Plato,Phaedo, translated by F.J. Church (Pearson/Library of the Liberal Arts, 1951).
PHAEDO (selections)
Characters
Phaedo (The Narrator)
Apollodorus
Cebes
Echecrates
Crito
Socrates
Simmias
The Servent of the Eleven
Scene—The Prison of Socrates[Socrates is speaking]... My dear Cebes, if all things in which there is any life were to
die, and when they were dead were to remain in that form and not come to life again,
would not the necessary result be that everything at last would be dead, and nothing
alive? For if living things were generated from other sources than death, and were to
die, the result is inevitable that all things would be consumed by death. Is it not so?
It is indeed, I think, Socrates, said Cebes; I think that what you say is perfectly true.
Yes, Cebes, he said, I think it is certainly so. We are not misled into this conclu-
sion. The dead do come to life again, and the living are generated from them, and the
souls of the dead exist; and with the souls of the good it is well, and with the souls of the
evil it is evil.
And besides, Socrates, rejoined Cebes, if the doctrine which you are fond of stat-
ing, that our learning is only a process of recollection, be true, then I suppose we must
have learned at some former time what we recollect now. And that would be impossible
unless our souls had existed somewhere before they came into this human form. So that
is another reason for believing the soul immortal.
But, Cebes, interrupted Simmias, what are the proofs of that? Recall them to me;
I am not very clear about them at present.
One argument, answered Cebes, and the strongest of all, is that if you question
men about anything in the right way, they will answer you correctly of themselves. But
they would not have been able to do that unless they had had within themselves knowl-
edge and right reason. Again, show them such things as geometrical diagrams, and the
proof of the doctrine is complete.
And if that does not convince you, Simmias, said Socrates, look at the matter in
another way and see if you agree then. You have doubts, I know, how what is called
knowledge can be recollection.
Nay, replied Simmias, I do not doubt. But I want to recollect the argument about
recollection. What Cebes undertook to explain has nearly brought your theory back to
me and convinced me. But I am nonetheless ready to hear you undertake to explain it.
In this way, he returned. We are agreed, I suppose, that if a man remembers any-
thing, he must have known it at some previous time.
Certainly, he said.
bc