Psyche, by Erwin Rohde—A Project Gutenberg eBook

8 It is probable that in the Πολιτεία two essentially distinct stages of Platonic doctrine are found side by side with only an external bond of union, and that in particular what is said in Bk. v, 471 C ff., to the end of Bk. vii about the φιλόσοφοι, their education and position in the state (and outside politics), is an extraneous addition to the completed picture of the καλλίπολις which is given in Bks. ii—v, 471 C: an afterthought not originally included in the plan of the whole book and not anticipated in the beginning of it. This seems to me to emerge unmistakably from a careful and unprejudiced study of the whole work and to have been completely demonstrated by Krohn and Pfleiderer. That Plato himself regarded the first sketch of an ideal state as a separate work (which may even have been actually published separately: Gellius, 14, 3, 3), is shown by the beginning of the Timaeus. Here—with the implication of quite a different staging of the dialogue and a different introduction from what we now read in Rp., Bk. i, c. 1—ii, c. 9—we have an exact recapitulation of the subject of the inquiry in the Πολιτεία from ii, 10, 367 E, to v, 460 C, with the definite statement (19 AB) that thus far and no farther had the discussion gone “yesterday”. The stages in which the whole work was composed seem then to be divisible as follows: (1) Sketch of the state of the 478 φύλακες (in brief) embodied in a dialogue between Sokrates, Kriton, Timaios, Hermokrates, and another companion: in subject matter agreeing (apart from the introduction) substantially with Rp. ii, 10, 367 E, to v, 460 C. (2) Continuation of this sketch in the story of ancient Athens and the people of Atlantis. Its completion is transferred elsewhere because in the meantime the Πολιτεία itself has been extended and into the empty framework of the Τίμ. thus left available the account of the creation of the world given by Timaios is very loosely inserted: the frame-narratives of the Τίμαιος and Κριτίας never being completed. (3) Continuation of the first sketch (still virtually along the lines originally laid down) in Rp. v, 460 D–471 C (in which 466 E ff. is a brief account of the behaviour of the state in time of war—a substitute for the longer and more detailed statement on the same subject in Tim. 20 B f.), and in viii, ix (the greater part), and x, second half (608 C ff.). (4) Finally the whole work receives its crown and completion in a section that was, however, not foreseen in the older parts of the design, for it disturbs part of that original design’s independence and validity and does more than merely supplement it—the introduction of the φιλόσοφοι and their special type of “virtue”, v, 471 C–vii fin.; ix, 580 D–588 A; x, part 1 (to 608 B).—Then came the final editing of the whole: insertion of the new introduction, i, 1–ii, 9 (not necessarily left until the completion of the whole); necessary bringing into harmony of the divergent elements by a few excisions, qualifications, etc.; and probably a literary revision and polishing of the whole book.—The whole thus finally produced reveals its origin clearly enough in the outgrowing of a first plan and its replacement by a second that has naturally suggested itself in the course of the author’s own continued development. At the same time Plato could claim that the whole edifice, in spite of much extension and rebuilding in a different style of architecture, should be considered as a unity in the form in which he finally left it (as a noteworthy monument, too, of his own alteration of view). He himself in the sublimest moments of his mystic flight in Bks. vi and vii in no sense rejects the groundwork of the καλλίπολις of ii–v (though not, indeed, designed originally as such), but merely reduces it to the position of a substructure which remains a necessary and sole foundation even for the mystic pinnacle and preserves its absolute validity for the great majority of the citizens who inhabit the καλλίπολις (for the φιλόσοφοι are still regarded as very few in number) for whom it is a school for the exhibition of political virtue.—In the first sketch, then, there is no trace of a doctrine of immortality that can be properly so called, and the popular belief in a continued life of the soul after death has for Plato, at this stage at least, no serious weight or importance. The φύλακες are not to trouble about what may follow death (iii, 1 ff.); the main purpose in view is to show that δικαιοσύνη is its own reward, and the rewards which are anticipated for it after death are only ironically alluded to (ii, 363 CD; cf. 366 AB); Sokrates means to do without such hopes (366 E ff.). The ἀθανασία ψυχῆς is only introduced as a paradox in x, 608 D (in the continuation of the first sketch) for which proof is sought; whereupon the importance of the question as to what may await the soul after death emerges (614 A ff.) as well as the necessity of taking thought not for this short life but ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἅπαντος χρόνον (608 C), of which nothing had been said or could have been said in iii–v. Finally in vi–vii the indestructibility of the soul is implied in its sublimest form. It is evident that Plato’s own views on these matters had undergone changes in the course of time, and that these 479 changes are reflected in the various strata of the Πολιτεία even after its final editing. (Cf. Krohn, Platon. Staat, p. 265; Pfleiderer, Platon. Frage, p. 23 f., 35 ff., 1888.)

9 The Appearance βούλεται, ὀρέγεται, προθυμεῖται εἶναι what its Idea is: Phd. 74 D, 75 AB. The Ideas are thus teleological causes like the divine νοῦς of Aristotle which, unmoved itself, κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον (just as matter has a desire for form, potentiality for actuality). Plato it is true did not keep to this method of illustrating rather than explaining the relation between the Appearance and the unmoved Idea.

10 νοήσει μετὰ λόγου περιληπτόν, Tim. 27 D. οὗ οὔποτ’ ἂν ἄλλῳ ἐπιλάβοιο ἢ τῷ τῆς διανοίας λογισμῷ, Phd. 79 A. αὐτὴ δι’ αὑτῆς ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ κοινὰ φαίνεται περὶ πάντων ἐπισκοπεῖν, Tht. 185 D.

11 The prius in the case of man is really the perception of his own mental activity in νόησις μετὰ λόγου as being a process essentially different from δόξα μετ’ αἰσθήσεως ἀλόγου. It is inference from the former alone that leads to the conclusion that the νοούμενα exist: Tim. 51 B–52 A. It is the Ideas that we grasp in abstract thought: αὐτὴ ἡ οὐσία ἧς λόγον δίδομεν καὶ ἐρωτῶντες καὶ ἀποκρινόμενοι, Phd. 78 D.

12 The ἐπιστήμη which διαλεκτική alone can give (Rp. 533 DE) is ἀναμάρτητος (Rp. 477 E).

13 Of the three εἴδη or γένη—the ὄν, the γιγνόμενον and the ἐν ᾧ γίγνεται (the χώρα) of Tim. 48 E f., 52 ABD)—the third at any rate is quite foreign to the soul. Like the World-Soul (Tim. 35 A), along with which it is “mixed” (41 D), the individual soul also is a middle term between the ἄμερες of the Idea and the κατὰ τὰ σώματα μεριστόν, having a share in both.

14 True, unalterable Being belongs only to the ἀειδές and therefore also to the soul: Phd. 79 A f.

15 Phd. c. 54–6 (105 B–107 B).

16 ὁμοιότερον ψυχὴ σώματός ἐστι τῷ ἀειδεῖ (and that = τῷ ἀεὶ ὡσαύτως ἔχοντι), Phd. 79 B. τῷ θείῳ καὶ ἀθανάτῳ καὶ νοητῷ καὶμονοειδεῖ καὶ ἀδιαλύτῳ καὶ ὡσαύτως κατὰ ταὐτὰ ἔχοντι ἑαυτῷ ὁμοιότατον ψυχή, 80 AB.

17 ἀγένητον, Phdr. c. 24, 245 D (ἀΐδιος simply, Rp. 611 B). The creation of the souls in Tim. is only intended to represent the origin of the spiritual from the δημιουργός (not the coming into being of the soul in time): see Siebeck, Ges. d. Psychol. i, 1, 275 ff. Still, it remains impossible to say whether Plato whenever he speaks of the pre-existence of the soul always means that the soul existed without beginning.

18 As to the relation of the individual soul to the soul of the universe, neither the mythical account in Timaeus nor the briefer allusion in Phileb. 30 A allows us to conclude that the soul of our body is “taken from” the soul of the σῶμα τοῦ παντός. In reality the fiction of a “World-Soul” is intended to serve quite other purposes than the derivation of the individual soul from a single common source.

19 Tim. 34 C; Lg. 891 A–896 C.

20 Acc. to the account in Phdr. 246 C, the soul suffers its downfall into the earthly existence if ὁ τῆς κάκης ἵππος, i.e. the ἐπιθυμία in the soul, tends towards the earth—247 B. It must, therefore, be the result of the preponderance of the appetitive impulses. This, however, can only happen if the λογιστικόν of the soul has become too weak to drive the soul-chariot any longer as its duty was. Hence the supporting wings, i.e. the νόησις, of the soul-horse fall off. It is thus a weakening of the cognitive part of the soul that causes its downfall into materiality (just as it is the measure of their capacity for knowledge that determines 480 the character of the ἐνσωμάτωσις of the souls, and their return to the τόπος ὑπερουράνιος is equally determined by their recovery of the purer form of knowledge: 248 C ff., 249 AC). Thus it is not, as in Empedokles, a religio-moral transgression that leads to the incarnation of the souls, but a failure of intellect, an intellectual fall in sin.

21 The soul is, acc. to the account in Tim., created in order that by animating and governing a body, it may complete the sum of creation: without the ζῷα the οὐρανός (the universe) would be ἀτελής, Tim. 41 B ff. Acc. to this teleological motivation of the being and the ἐνσωμάτωσις of the soul, this latter, the ἐνσωμάτωσις, would have belonged to the original plan of the δημιουργός and there would be no purpose in the creation of the souls (by the δημιουργός and the inferior gods) unless they were destined to the animation of the ζῷα and conjunction with σώματα. But it is obviously inconsistent with all this that the object of the soul’s endeavour should be to separate itself as soon as possible and as completely as possible from the body and everything material in order to get back again to immaterial life without any body—42 BD. This is a relic of the original theological view of the relation between body and soul. In Phd. (and usually in Plato) it displays itself unconcealed; but it was far too closely bound up with the whole of Plato’s ethic and metaphysics not to make its illicit appearance even when as in Tim. he wished to keep the physiological side to the fore.

22 Phdr. 245 C–246 A. The soul is τὸ αὑτὸ κινοῦν, and indeed continually, ἀεικίνητον, it is τοῖς ἄλλοις ὅσα κινεῖται πηγὴ καὶ ἀρχὴ κινήσεως (the body only seems to move itself, but it is really the soul within which moves it—246 C). If the soul were to perish, πᾶς οὐρανὸς πᾶσά τε γένεσις would be at a standstill. The conception of the “soul” as the ἀεικίνητον was already well and long established in Plato’s time (see above, chap. xii, n. 150). In the form in which he introduces it here (as a proof of the imperishability of the soul) he may have modelled his conception on that of Alkmaion (Arist., An. 405a, 29): see Hirzel, Hermes, xi, 244. But Plato here and throughout Phdr. is speaking of the individual soul (ψυχή collective singular). So too in Lg. 894 E ff., 896 A ff. (λόγος of the soul: ἡ δυναμένη αὐτὴ αὑτὴν κινεῖν κίνησις. It is the αιτία and the issue of all movement in the world, the source of life; for life belongs to that which αὐτό αὑτὸ κινεῖ 895 C.) As distinguished from the ψυχὴ ἐνοικοῦσα ἐν ἅπασι τοῖς κινουμένοις we do not hear of the (double) World-Soul until 896 E. There is in fact κίνησις in plenty in the world besides that of the animated organisms.

23 Phd. 93 B (c. 43) and often.

24 ψυχή on the one side, πᾶν τὸ ἄψυχον on the other. Phdr. 246 B and so generally.

25 Tim. 86 B ff. (c. 41).—In brief: κακὸς ἑκὼν οὐδείς, διὰ δὲ πονηρὰν ἕξιν τινὰ τοῦ σώματος καὶ ἀπαίδευτον τροφὴν (education of the soul) ὁ κακὸς γίγνεται κακός, 86 E.

26 τὸ σωματοειδὲς ὃ τῇ ψυχῇ ἡ ὁμιλία τε καὶ ξυνουσία τοῦ σώματος . . . ἐνεποίησε ξύμφυτον κτλ. Phd. 81 C, 83 D.

27 Pythagoreans, see above (chap. xi, n. 55); hardly Demokritos (Dox., p. 390, 14). The trichotomy can exist very well side by side with the dichotomy (which also appears) into λογιστικόν and αλόγιστικον, the last being simply divided again into θυμός and ἐπιθυμία.

28 In the first sketch of the Republic (ii–v). Here it is admittedly bound up with the three classes or castes of the state, but it has not been invented for the benefit of these classes. On the contrary, the 481 trichotomy of the soul is original and the division of the citizen body into three parts is derived and explained from it; cf. 435 E.—The view that Plato was never quite serious about the threefold division of the soul but always spoke of it as something semi-mythical or as a temporarily adopted hypothesis, will not appear plausible on an unprejudiced study of the passages in the Platonic writings that deal with the threefold division of the soul.

29 Rp. x, 611 A–E (c. 11), shows clearly that the reason which made Plato abandon his conception (given in the first sketch of the Rep. and still maintained in the Phaedrus) of the natural trichotomy of the soul into parts or divisions was the consideration of its immortality and vocation to intercourse with the θεῖον καὶ ἀθάνατον καὶ ἀεὶ ὄν.—The emotions and passions by which the soul is “fettered” ὑπὸ τοῦ σώματος, explain its tendency to clothe itself in another body after death, Phd. 83 C ff. If the emotions and passions were indissolubly linked to the soul the latter could never escape from the cycle of rebirths.—On the other hand, if only the λογιστικόν, as the only independently existing side of the soul, goes into the place of judgment in the other world there would seem to be no reason that should tempt this simple uncompounded soul to renewed ἐνσωμάτωσις, a process which implies materiality and desire. (This difficulty troubled Plotinos too.) Plato takes into view the possibility of an inner corruption of the pure and undivided intellectual soul which makes a future state of punishment and purgatory possible and intelligible and explains the existence (until a complete return to purity is achieved) of a tendency or constraint to renewed ἐνσωμάτωσις even without a permanent association with the θυμοειδές and the ἐπιθυμητικόν.

30 τῇ ἀληθεστάτῃ φύσει the soul is μονοειδές, Rep. x, c. 11 (611 B, 612 A). Hence it is τὸ παράπαν ἀδιάλυτος ἢ ἐγγύς τι τούτου, Phd. 80 B.

31 The intellect-soul ἀθάνατον ἀρχὴν θνητοῦ ζῴου is the creation of the δημιουργός; the other faculties of the soul, θυμός, ἐπιθυμία (and αἴσθησις therewith), ψυχῆς ὅσον θνητὸν (Tim. 61 C), are all added to the soul at the moment of its union with the body by the subordinate deities: Tim. 41 D–44 D; 69 A–70 D (c. 14, 15, 31). The same idea appears in Rp. x, 611 BC. τὸ ἀειγενὲς μέρος τῆς ψυχῆς is distinguished from the ζωογενές: Polit. 309 C.

32 τὸ σῶμα καὶ αἷ τούτου ἐπιθυμίαι, Phd. 66 C. The soul moved by passion suffers ὑπὸ σώματος, 83 CD. In death the soul is καθαρὰ πάντων τῶν περὶ τὸ σῶμα κακῶν καὶ ἐπιθυμιῶν, Crat. 404 A.

33 Tim. 43 C. It is only as a result of this violent and contradictory excitement through the physical perception of Becoming that the soul becomes ἄνους (which is originally foreign to it) ὅταν εἰς σῶμα ἐνδεθῇ θνητόν, 44 A. (It will in time become ἔμφρων once more and can become wise, 44 BC. In the case of the animals, which can be inhabited by the same soul, it will remain always ἄφρων—one may suppose.)

34 . . . σμικρὸν χρόνον, οὐδὲν μὲν οὖν πρὸς τὸν ἅπαντα (χρόνον). Rp. 498 D.

35 In accordance with popular thought (but obviously also in perfect seriousness and without any special concession) death is regarded as τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος ἀπαλλαγή, Phd. 64 C; Gorg. 524 B. Hence, it usually happens that the soul μηδέποτε εἰς Ἅιδου καθαρῶς ἀφικέσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀναπλέα ἐξιέναι, Phd. 83 D. (—ἀεὶ, i.e. with the exception of the few complete φιλόσοφοι that do not need further purification in Hades, and this is, in fact, the doctrine of the Phd. itself; cf. 114 C, 80 E, 81 A.)

36 Purgatory, punishment and rewards in the other world: Gorg. 482 523 ff.: Rp. x, c. 13 ff., 614 A ff. (vision of Er, son of Armenios in the continuation of the first version of the πολιτεία); Phd. 110 B–114 C. We must not here go into the details of the individual myths in which it is still perhaps possible to distinguish what parts Plato has taken out of ancient poetry and popular legend and what comes from theological and particularly Orphic doctrinal poetry—or even (Rp. x) from Oriental fables—and how much he has added independently on his own account. (A few remarks will be found in G. Ettig, Acherunt., Leipz. Stud. xiii, 305 ff.; cf. also Döring, Arch. Ges. Phil. 1393, p. 475 ff.; Dieterich, Nekyia, 112 ff.) He usually distinguishes three classes among the souls (only apparently two in Phdr. 249 A): those who are affected with curable faults, the hopelessly and incurable guilty (who are condemned to eternal punishment in Tartaros without rebirth: Gorg. 525 C ff.; Rp. 615 D; Phd. 113 E); and, thirdly the ὁσίως βεβιωκότες, δίκαιοι καὶ ὅσιοι. This is the system of Gorg. 525 BC, 526 C; Rp. 615 BC. (With these come also the ἄωροι, 615 C, who neither deserve punishment nor reward—of them Er said ἄλλα, οὐκ ἄξια μνήμης. Perhaps older theologians had already concerned themselves with these, not being satisfied with the fate assigned by popular mythology to the ἄωροι—see Append. vii—it would have been a natural subject for the professional attention of these Schoolmen of popular superstition.) In Phd. 113 D ff. the question is even more minutely dealt with. Here we have (1) οἱ μέσως βεβιωκότες (che visser’ senz’ infamia e senza lode), (2) οἱ ἀνιάτως ἔχοντες, (3) οἱ ἰάσιμα ἡμαρτηκότες, (4) οἱ διαφερόντως ὁσίως βεβιωκότες, and (5) the élite of these ὅσιοι, the real philosophers, οἱ φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθεράμενοι—these are not born again. To the other classes are assigned their appropriate purgation, reward or punishment. Here classes 2, 3, and 4 correspond to the three classes of Rp. and Gorg. (which may perhaps be modelled on the divisions popularized by older theological poetry—see above, chap. xii, n. 62). Novelties are the μέσως βεβιωκότες and the true philosophers. For these last the abode upon the μακάρων νῆσοι (Gorg. 526 C), or, what comes to the same thing, upon the surface of the earth (Phd. 114 BC), is no longer sufficient. They go ἐς μακάρων τινὰς εὐδαιμονίας (115 D), which means that they are really freed entirely from temporal existence and enter into the unchanging “Now” of eternity. (As far as the complete escape of the φιλόσοφοι is concerned the account in Rp. x, c. 13 [614 A–615 C] does not contradict that of Phd. The only reason why this is not mentioned in Rp. is that these absolutely enfranchized souls could not appear upon the λειμών there mentioned: 614 E.)—Of these various accounts that of Phd. seems to be the latest. In Lg. there is yet another indefinite allusion to the necessity of undergoing a judgment after death: 904 C ff.

37 Choice of their new state of life by the souls in the other world, Rp. 617 E ff.; Phdr. 249 B. The purpose of this arrangement is made clear by Rp. 617 E; αἰτία ἑλομένου· θεὸς ἀναίτιος (cf. Tim. 42 D). It is, in fact, a theodicy and at the same time secures the complete responsibility of every man for his own character and deeds (cf. 619 C). There is no idea of founding a determinist theory upon it.—The choice is guided by the special character of the soul (which it has developed in its previous life) and its tendencies (cf. Phd. 81 E; Lg. 904 BC). For the same reason there is no choice on the occasion of the soul’s first ἐνσωμάτωσις (Tim. 41 E): after that, in later births, a definite descent in well-marked stages in peius, can be observed, each conditioned by the degree of corruption attaching to the soul (Tim. 42 B ff.). 483 All of which can very well co-exist with a choice of its own fate by the soul conditioned by its own nature.

38 ξυμμετρία, Tim. 87 D.

39 At least three (as in Pi., O. ii, 75 ff.), acc. to Phdr. 249 A. Between each two births there is an intervening period of 1,000 years (Rp. 615 A; Phdr. 249 AB). This cuts away the ground from such myths as that of the various “lives” of Pythagoras (see Append. x).

40 Incarnation in animals, Phdr. 249 B; Rp. 618 A, 620 ff.; Phd. 81 E; Tim. 42 BC. That this part was any less seriously meant than any other part of his doctrine of metempsychosis is not in the least suggested by Plato himself. Acc. to Tim. 91 D–92 B, all the animals have souls that had once inhabited the bodies of men (see Procl., in Rp. ii, 332 Kroll; he is trying to harmonize Tim. and Phdr.). In fact, the idea that a man’s soul might inhabit an animal was precisely the great difficulty in Plato’s doctrine of the soul. If, as is said in Phdr. 249 BC, a real animal-soul cannot enter into a human body because it does not possess νόησις or the power of “dialectic” which constitutes the essential part of the human soul’s activity, how can a real human soul enter into an animal’s body when it is obvious that as an animal it can make no use of its νόησις? (For this very reason many Platonists—those who were not satisfied with ingenious or artificial interpretations: cf. Sallust., de Dis 20; Procl., in Tim. 329 DE—denied the entrance of the human soul into animals; cf. Aug. CD. X, 30, and partic. Nemes., p. 116 Matth. Lucr. iii, 760, already seems to have such Platonists in mind.) The λογιστικόν of the soul seems to be absent from animals or to be present but undeveloped as in children: Rp. iv, 441 A B (or does it remain permanently bound in ἀφροσύνη? see above, this chap., n. 33. Just such a theory put forward by exponents of μετεμψύχωσις who would make the ψυχή always the same but not always equally active, is attacked by Alex. Aphr., de An., p. 27 Br.). But acc. to the later doctrine of Plato the λογιστικόν comprises the whole contents of the soul before it enters a body; if the animals do not possess it then they do not strictly speaking possess a soul (θυμός and ἐπιθυμία in themselves are not the soul; they are only added to the soul when it first enters into a body). It seems certain that Plato adopted the view that the soul migrates into the bodies of animals from the theologians and Pythagoreans, while he still believed that the soul was not pure power of thought but also (as still in Phdr.) included θυμός and ἐπιθυμία in itself. Later, because it was difficult to do without the migration-theory of the soul on account of its ethical importance, he allowed the idea to remain side by side with his reorganized and sublimated doctrine of the soul. (On the other hand, metempsychosis into plants—which are certainly also ζῷα, though they only have to τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, Tim. 77 B—was never adopted by him from Empedokles; cf. Procl., in Rp. ii, 333 Kr., and for the same reason: this idea was unimportant and indifferent from an ethical point of view.)

41 τὴν εἰς τὸν νοητὸν τόπον τῆς ψυχῆς ἄνοδον, Rp. 517 B.

42 ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἀγένητόν ἐστι, καὶ ἀδιάφθορον αὐτὸ ἀναγκη εἶναι, Phdr. 245 D—the ancient argument from the fact that the individual soul (and of this Plato is speaking) has no beginning to the conclusion that its life can have no end.

43 This much may be conceded to Teichmüller’s observations. “The individual, and the individual soul, is not an independent principle but only a resultant of the compounding of the Idea and the principle of Becoming”—though this is not how Plato regards the 484 matter; hence in Plato—“the individual is not eternal (i.e. not necessarily), and the eternal Principles are not individual”, Stud. z. Ges. d. Begr., p. 115, 142 (1874). But all that Teichmüller has to say under this head is in reality only a criticism of the Platonic doctrine of the soul and does not help us to determine what exactly that doctrine was. Plato speaks always of the immortality, i.e. the eternity, of the individual soul; nowhere does he confine indestructibility to the “common nature” of the soul; and this fact is not even remotely explained by appealing as Teichmüller does to an alleged “orthodoxy” to which Plato is supposed to be accommodating his words. If from no other passage we should be obliged to conclude definitely from Rp. 611 A that Plato believed in the existence of a plurality of souls and in their indestructibility: ἀεὶ ἂν εἶεν αἱ αὐταί (ψυχαί). οὔτε γὰρ ἄν που ἐλάττους γένοιντο μηδεμιᾶς ἀπολλυμένης, οὔτε αὗ πλείους. Here the predicate of the first sentence is indubitably εἶεν only; it is affirmed that always the same souls will exist, not that αἱ αὐταὶ εἶεν (“the souls are always the same ones”) as Teichmüller supposes, Platon. Frage, 7 ff., and it is asserted with all possible plainness that the plurality of individual souls, of which a definite number exist, is indestructible.