who, as he said, was descended from Deucalion, asserting that there is in fact no such thing at all as a soul, but that it is a name without a meaning, and that it is idle to use the expression “animals,” or “animated beings;” that neither men nor beasts have minds or souls, but that all that power by which we act or perceive is equally infused into every living creature, and is inseparable from the body, for if it were not, it would be nothing; nor is there anything whatever really existing except body, which is a single and simple thing, so fashioned as to live and have its sensations in consequence of the regulations of nature. Aristotle, a man superior to all others both in genius and industry (I always except Plato), after having embraced these four known sorts of principles from which all things deduce their origin, imagines that there is a certain fifth nature from whence comes the soul: for to think, to foresee, to learn, to teach, to invent anything, and many other attributes of the same kind, such as to remember, to love, to hate, to desire, to fear, to be pleased or displeased—these, and others like them, exist, he thinks, in none of those first four kinds; on such account he adds a fifth kind, which has no name, and so by a new name he calls the soul
ἐνδελέχεια, as if it were a certain continued and perpetual motion.
If I have not forgotten anything unintentionally, these are the principal opinions concerning the soul. I have omitted Democritus, a very great man indeed, but one who deduces the soul from the fortuitous concourse of small, light, and round substances; for, if you believe men of his school, there is nothing which a crowd of atoms cannot effect. Which of these opinions is true, some God must determine. It is an important question for us: Which has the most appearance of truth? Shall we, then, prefer determining between them, or shall we return to our subject?
| A. |
I could wish both, if possible, but it is difficult to mix them. Therefore, if without a discussion of them we can get rid of the fears of death, let us proceed to do so. But if this is not to be done without explaining the question about souls, let us have that now, and the other at another time. |
| M. |
I take that plan to be the best, which I perceive you are inclined to, for reason will demonstrate that, whichever of the opinions which I have stated is true, it must follow, then, that death cannot be an evil, or that it must rather be something desirable. For if either the heart, or the blood, or the brain, is the soul, then certainly the soul, being corporeal, must perish with the rest of the body. If it is air, it will perhaps be dissolved; if it is fire, it will be extinguished; if it is Aristoxenus’s harmony, it will be put out of tune. What shall I say of Dicaearchus, who denies that there is any soul? In all these opinions, there is nothing to affect anyone after death; for all feeling is lost with life, and where there is no sensation, nothing can interfere to affect us. The opinions of others do indeed bring us hope, if it is any pleasure to you to think that souls, after they leave the body, may go to heaven as to a permanent home. |
| A. |
I have great pleasure in that thought, and it is what I most desire. And even if it should not be so, I should still be very willing to believe it. |
| M. |
What occasion have you, then, for my assistance? Am I superior to Plato in eloquence? Turn over carefully his book that treats of the soul; you will have there all that you can want. |
| A. |
I have, indeed, done that, and often. But, I know not how it comes to pass, I agree with it while I am reading it, but when I have laid down the book and begin to reflect with myself on the immortality of the soul, all that agreement vanishes. |
| M. |
How comes that? Do you admit this: that souls either exist after death, or else that they also perish at the moment of death? |
| A. |
I agree to that. And if they do exist, I admit that they are happy; but if they perish, I cannot suppose them to be unhappy, because, in fact, they have no existence at all. You drove me to that concession but just now. |
| M. |
How, then, can you, or why do you, assert that you think that death is an evil, when it either makes us happy, in the case of the soul continuing to exist, or, at all events, not unhappy, in the case of our becoming destitute of all sensation? |
| A. |
Explain, therefore, if it is not troublesome to you, first, if you can, that souls do exist after death; secondly, should you fail in that (and it is a very difficult thing to establish), that death is free from all evil. For I am not without my fears that this itself is an evil: I do not mean the immediate deprivation of sense, but the fact that we shall hereafter suffer deprivation. |
| M. |
I have the best authority in support of the opinion you desire to have established, which ought, and generally has, great weight in all cases. And, first, I have all antiquity on that side, which the more near it is to its origin and divine descent, the more clearly, perhaps on that account, did it discern the truth in these matters. This very doctrine, then, was adopted by all those ancients whom Ennius calls in the Sabine tongue Casci, namely, that in death there was a sensation, and that, when men departed this life, they were not so entirely destroyed as to perish absolutely. And this may appear from many other
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