Emphasis of Sokrates in insisting on freedom of debate, active exercise of reason, and independent judgment for each reasoner.

Indeed this freedom of debate and fulness of search — the paramount value of “reasoned truth” — the necessity of keeping up the force of individual reason by constant argumentative exercise — and the right of independent judgment for hearer as well as speaker — stand emphatically proclaimed in these last words of the dying philosopher. He does not announce the immortality of the soul as a dogma of imperative orthodoxy; which men, whether satisfied with the proofs or not, must believe, or must make profession of believing, on pain of being shunned as a moral pestilence, and disqualified from giving testimony in a court of justice. He sets forth his own conviction, with the grounds on which he adopts it. But he expressly recognises the existence of dissentient opinions: he invites his companions to bring forward every objection: he disclaims all special purpose of impressing his own conclusions upon their minds: nay, he expressly warns them not to be biassed by their personal sympathies, then wound up to the highest pitch, towards himself. He entreats them to preserve themselves from becoming tinged with misology, or the hatred of free argumentative discussion: and he ascribes this mental vice to the early habit of easy, uninquiring, implicit, belief: since a man thus ready of faith, embracing opinions without any discriminative test, presently finds himself driven to abandon one opinion after another, until at last he mistrusts all opinions, and hates the process of discussing them, laying the blame upon philosophy instead of upon his own intellect.10

Anxiety of Sokrates that his friends shall be on their guard against being influenced by his authority — that they shall follow only the convictions of their own reason.

“For myself” (says Sokrates) “I fear that in these my last hours I depart from the true spirit of philosophy — like unschooled men, who, when in debate, think scarcely at all how the real question stands, but care only to make their own views triumphant in the minds of the auditors. Between them and me there is only thus much of difference. I regard it as a matter of secondary consequence, whether my conclusions appear true to my hearers; but I shall do my best to make them appear as much as possible true to myself.11 My calculation is as follows: mark how selfish it is. If my conclusion as to the immortality of the soul is true, I am better off by believing it: if I am in error, and death be the end of me, even then I shall avoid importuning my friends with grief, during these few remaining hours: moreover my error will not continue with me — which would have been a real misfortune — but will be extinguished very shortly. Such is the frame of mind, Simmias and Kebês, with which I approach the debate. Do you follow my advice: take little thought of Sokrates, but take much more thought of the truth. If I appear to you to affirm any thing truly, assent to me: but if not, oppose me with all your powers of reasoning: Be on your guard lest, through earnest zeal, I should deceive alike myself and you, and should leave the sting in you, like a bee, at this hour of departure.”

Remarkable manifestation of earnest interest for reasoned truth and the liberty of individual dissent.

This is a remarkable passage, as illustrating the spirit and purpose of Platonic dialogues. In my preceding Chapters, I have already shown, that it is no part of the aim of Sokrates to thrust dogmas of his own into other men’s minds as articles of faith. But then, most of these Chapters have dwelt upon Dialogues of Search, in which Sokrates has appeared as an interrogator, or enquirer jointly with others: scrutinising their opinions, but disclaiming knowledge or opinions of his own. Here, however, in the Phædon, the case is altogether different. Sokrates is depicted as having not only an affirmative opinion, but even strong conviction, on a subject of great moment: which conviction, moreover, he is especially desirous of preserving unimpaired, during his few remaining hours of life. Yet even here, he manifests no anxiety to get that conviction into the minds of his friends, except as a result of their own independent scrutiny and self-working reason. Not only he does not attempt to terrify them into believing, by menace of evil consequences if they do not — but he repudiates pointedly even the gentler machinery of conversion, which might work upon their minds through attachment to himself and reverence for his authority. His devotion is to “reasoned truth”: he challenges his friends to the fullest scrutiny by their own independent reason: he recognises the sentence which they pronounce afterwards as valid for them, whether concurrent with himself or adverse. Their reason is for them, what his reason is for him: requiring, both alike (as Sokrates here proclaims), to be stimulated as well as controlled by all-searching debate — but postulating equal liberty of final decision for each one of the debaters. The stress laid by Plato upon the full liberty of dissenting reason, essential to philosophical debate — is one of the most memorable characteristics of the Phædon. When we come to the treatise De Legibus (where Sokrates does not appear), we shall find a totally opposite view of sentiment. In the tenth book of that treatise Plato enforces the rigid censorship of an orthodox persecutor, who makes his own reason binding and compulsory on all.

Phædon and Symposion — points of analogy and contrast.

The natural counterpart and antithesis to the Phædon, is found in the Symposion.12 In both, the personality of Sokrates stands out with peculiar force: in the one, he is in the fulness of life and enjoyment, along with festive comrades — in the other, he is on the verge of approaching death, surrounded by companions in deep affliction. The point common to both, is, the perfect self-command of Sokrates under a diversity of trying circumstances. In the Symposion, we read of him as triumphing over heat, cold, fatigue, danger, amorous temptation, unmeasured potations of wine, &c.:13 in the Phædon, we discover him rising superior to the fear of death, and to the contagion of an afflicted company around him. Still, his resolute volition is occasionally overpowered by fits of absorbing meditation, which seize him at moments sudden and unaccountable, and chain him to the spot for a long time. There is moreover, in both dialogues, a streak of eccentricity in his character, which belongs to what Plato calls the philosophical inspiration and madness, rising above the measure of human temperance and prudence.14 The Phædon depicts in Sokrates the same intense love of philosophy and dialectic debate, as the Symposion and Phædrus: but it makes no allusion to that personal attachment, and passionate admiration of youthful beauty, with which, according to those two dialogues, the mental fermentation of the philosophical aspirant is asserted to begin.15 Sokrates in the Phædon describes the initial steps whereby he had been led to philosophical study:16 but the process is one purely intellectual, without reference to personal converse with beloved companions, as a necessity of the case. His discourse is that of a man on the point of death — “abruptis vitæ blandimentis”17 — and he already looks upon his body, not as furnishing the means of action and as requiring only to be trained by gymnastic discipline (as it appears in the Republic), but as an importunate and depraving companion, of which he is glad to get rid: so that the ethereal substance of the soul may be left to its free expansion and fellowship with the intelligible world, apart from sense and its solicitations.

Phædon — compared with Republic and Timæus. No recognition of the triple or lower souls. Antithesis between soul and body.

We have here one peculiarity of the Phædon, whereby it stands distinguished both from the Republic and the Timæus. The antithesis on which it dwells is that of the soul or mind, on one hand — the body on the other. The soul or mind is spoken of as one and indivisible: as if it were an inmate unworthily lodged or imprisoned in the body. It is not distributed into distinct parts, kinds, or varieties: no mention is made of that tripartite distribution which is so much insisted on in the Republic and Timæus:— the rational or intellectual (encephalic) soul, located in the head — the courageous or passionate (thoracic), between the neck and the diaphragm — the appetitive (abdominal), between the diaphragm and the navel. In the Phædon, the soul is noted as the seat of reason, intellect, the love of wisdom or knowledge, exclusively: all that belongs to passion and appetite, is put to account of the body:18 this is distinctly contrary to the Philêbus, in which dialogue Sokrates affirms that desire or appetite cannot belong to the body, but belongs only to the soul. In Phædon, nothing is said about the location of the rational soul, in the head, — nor about the analogy between its rotations in the cranium and the celestial rotations (a doctrine which we read both in the Timæus and in the Republic): on the contrary, the soul is affirmed to have lost, through its conjunction with the body, that wisdom or knowledge which it possessed during its state of pre-existence, while completely apart from the body, and while in commerce with those invisible Ideas to which its own separate nature was cognate.19 That controul which in the Republic is exercised by the rational soul over the passionate and appetitive souls, is in the Phædon exercised (though imperfectly) by the one and only soul over the body.20 In the Republic and Timæus, the soul is a tripartite aggregate, a community of parts, a compound: in the Phædon, Sokrates asserts it to be uncompounded, making this fact a point in his argument.21 Again, in the Phædon, the soul is pronounced to be essentially uniform and incapable of change: as such, it is placed in antithesis with the body, which is perpetually changing: while we read, on the contrary, in the Symposion, that soul and body alike are in a constant and unremitting variation, neither one nor the other ever continuing in the same condition.22

Different doctrines of Plato about the soul. Whether all the three souls are immortal, or the rational soul alone.

The difference which I have here noted shows how Plato modified his doctrine to suit the purpose of each dialogue. The tripartite soul would have been found inconvenient in the Phædon, where the argument required that soul and body should be as sharply distinguished as possible. Assuming passion and appetite to be attributes belonging to the soul, as well as reason — Sokrates will not shake them off when he becomes divorced from the body. He believes and expects that the post-existence of the soul will be, as its pre-existence has been, a rational existence — a life of intellectual contemplation and commerce with the eternal Ideas: in this there is no place for passion and appetite, which grow out of its conjunction with the body. The soul here represents Reason and Intellect, in commerce with their correlates, the objective Entia Rationis: the body represents passion and appetite as well as sense, in implication with their correlates, the objects of sensible perception.23 Such is the doctrine of the Phædon; but Plato is not always consistent with himself on the point. His ancient as well as his modern commentators are not agreed, whether, when he vindicated the immortality of the soul, he meant to speak of the rational soul only, or of the aggregate soul with its three parts as above described. There are passages which countenance both suppositions.24 Plato seems to have leaned sometimes to the one view, sometimes to the other: besides which, the view taken in the Phædon is a third, different from both — viz.: That the two non-rational souls, the passionate and appetitive, are not recognised as existing.

The life and character of a philosopher is a constant struggle to emancipate his soul from his body. Death alone enables him to do this completely.

The philosopher (contends Sokrates) ought to rejoice when death comes to sever his soul altogether from his body: because he is, throughout all his life, struggling to sever himself from the passions, appetites, impulses and aspirations, which grow out of the body; and to withdraw himself from the perceptions of the corporeal senses, which teach no truth, and lead only to deceit or confusion: He is constantly attempting to do what the body hinders him from doing completely — to prosecute pure mental contemplation, as the only way of arriving at truth: to look at essences or things in themselves, by means of his mind or soul in itself apart from the body.25 Until his mind be purified from all association with the body, it cannot be brought into contact with pure essence, nor can his aspirations for knowledge be satisfied.26 Hence his whole life is really a training or approximative practice for death, which alone will enable him to realise such aspirations.27 Knowledge or wisdom is the only money in which he computes, and which he seeks to receive in payment.28 He is not courageous or temperate in the ordinary sense: for the courageous man, while holding death to be a great evil, braves it from fear of greater evils — and the temperate man abstains from various pleasures, because they either shut him out from greater pleasures, or entail upon him disease and poverty. The philosopher is courageous and temperate, but from a different motive: his philosophy purifies him from all these sensibilities, and makes him indifferent to all the pleasures and pains arising from the body: each of which, in proportion to its intensity, corrupts his perception of truth and falsehood, and misguides him in the search for wisdom or knowledge.29 While in the body, he feels imprisoned, unable to look for knowledge except through a narrow grating and by the deceptive media of sense. From this durance philosophy partially liberates him, — purifying his mind, like the Orphic or Dionysiac religious mysteries, from the contagion of body30 and sense: disengaging it, as far as may be during life, from sympathy with the body: and translating it out of the world of sense, uncertainty, and mere opinion, into the invisible region of truth and knowledge. If such purification has been fully achieved, the mind of the philosopher is at the moment of death thoroughly severed from the body, and passes clean away by itself, into commerce with the intelligible Entities or realities.

Souls of the ordinary or unphilosophical men pass after death into the bodies of different animals. The philosopher alone is relieved from all communion with body.

On the contrary, the soul or mind of the ordinary man, which has undergone no purification and remains in close implication with the body, cannot get completely separated even at the moment of death, but remains encrusted and weighed down by bodily accompaniments, so as to be unfit for those regions to which mind itself naturally belongs. Such impure minds or souls are the ghosts or shadows which haunt tombs; and which become visible, because they cling to the visible world, and hate the invisible.31 Not being fit for separate existence, they return in process of time into conjunction with fresh bodies, of different species of men or animals, according to the particular temperament which they carry away with them.32 The souls of despots, or of violent and rapacious men, will pass into the bodies of wolves or kites: those of the gluttonous and drunkards, into asses and such-like animals. A better fate will be reserved for the just and temperate men, who have been socially and politically virtuous, but simply by habit and disposition, without any philosophy or pure intellect: for their souls will pass into the bodies of other gentle and social animals, such as bees, ants, wasps,33 &c., or perhaps they may again return into the human form, and may become moderate men. It is the privilege only of him who has undergone the purifying influence of philosophy, and who has spent his life in trying to detach himself as much as possible from communion with the body — to be relieved after death from the obligation of fresh embodiment, that his soul may dwell by itself in a region akin to its own separate nature: passing out of the world of sense, of transient phenomena, and of mere opinion, into a distinct world where it will be in full presence of the eternal Ideas, essences, and truth; in companionship with the Gods, and far away from the miseries of humanity.34

Special privilege claimed for philosophers in the Phædon apart from the virtuous men who are not philosophers.

Such is the creed which Sokrates announces to his friends in the Phædon, as supplying good reason for the readiness and satisfaction with which he welcomes death. It is upon the antithesis between soul (or mind) and body, that the main stress is laid. The partnership between the two is represented as the radical cause of mischief: and the only true relief to the soul consists in breaking up the partnership altogether, so as to attain a distinct, disembodied, existence. Conformably to this doctrine, the line is chiefly drawn between the philosopher, and the multitude who are not philosophers — not between good and bad agents, when the good agents are not philosophers. This last distinction is indeed noticed, but is kept subordinate. The unphilosophical man of social goodness is allowed to pass after death into the body of a bee, or an ant, instead of that of a kite or ass;35 but he does not attain the privilege of dissolving connection altogether with body. Moreover the distinction is one not easily traceable: since Sokrates36 expressly remarks that the large majority of mankind are middling persons, neither good nor bad in any marked degree. Philosophers stand in a category by themselves: apart from the virtuous citizens, as well as from the middling and the vicious. Their appetites and ambition are indeed deadened, so that they agree with the virtuous in abstaining from injustice: but this is not their characteristic feature. Philosophy is asserted to impart to them a special purification, like that of the Orphic mysteries to the initiated: detaching the soul from both the body and the world of sense, except in so far as is indispensable for purposes of life: replunging the soul, as much as possible, in the other world of intelligible essences, real forms or Ideas, which are its own natural kindred and antecedent companions. The process whereby this is accomplished is intellectual rather than ethical. It is the process of learning, or (in the sense of Sokrates) the revival in the mind of those essences or Ideas with which it had been familiar during its anterior and separate life: accompanied by the total abstinence from all other pleasures and temptations.37 Only by such love of learning, which is identical with philosophy (φιλόσοφον, φιλομαθὲς), is the mind rescued from the ignorance and illusions unavoidable in the world of sense.

Simmias and Kebês do not admit readily the immortality of the soul, but are unwilling to trouble Sokrates by asking for proof. Unabated interest of Sokrates in rational debate.

In thus explaining his own creed, Sokrates announces a full conviction that the soul or mind is immortal, but he has not yet offered any proof of it: and Simmias as well as Kebês declare themselves to stand in need of proof. Both of them however are reluctant to obtrude upon him any doubts. An opportunity is thus provided, that Sokrates may exhibit his undisturbed equanimity — his unimpaired argumentative readiness — his keen anxiety not to relax the grasp of a subject until he has brought it to a satisfactory close — without the least reference to his speedily approaching death. This last-mentioned anxiety is made manifest in a turn of the dialogue, remarkable both for dramatic pathos and for originality.38 We are thus brought to the more explicit statement of those reasons upon which Sokrates relies.

Simmias and Kebês believe fully in the pre-existence of the soul, but not in its post-existence. Doctrine — That the soul is a sort of harmony — refuted by Sokrates.

If the arguments whereby Sokrates proves the immortality of the soul are neither forcible nor conclusive, not fully satisfying even Simmias39 to whom they are addressed — the adverse arguments, upon the faith of which the doctrine was denied (as we know it to have been by many philosophers of antiquity), cannot be said to be produced at all. Simmias and Kebês are represented as Sokratic companions, partly Pythagoreans; desirous to find the doctrine true, yet ignorant of the proofs. Both of them are earnest believers in the pre-existence of the soul, and in the objective reality of Ideas or intelligible essences. Simmias however adopts in part the opinion, not very clearly explained, “That the soul is a harmony or mixture”: which opinion Sokrates refutes, partly by some other arguments, partly by pointing out that it is inconsistent with the supposition of the soul as pre-existent to the body, and that Simmias must make his election between the two. Simmias elects without hesitation, in favour of the pre-existence: which he affirms to be demonstrable upon premisses or assumptions perfectly worthy of trust: while the alleged harmony is at best only a probable analogy, not certified by conclusive reasons.40 Kebês again, while admitting that the soul existed before its conjunction with the present body, and that it is sufficiently durable to last through conjunction with many different bodies — still expresses his apprehension that though durable, it is not eternal. Accordingly, no man can be sure that his present body is not the last with which his soul is destined to be linked; so that immediately on his death, it will pass away into nothing. The opinion of Kebês is remarkable, inasmuch as it shows how constantly the metempsychosis, or transition of the soul from one body to another, was included in all the varieties of ancient speculation on this subject.41