they will have to pass an existence like to themselves--bad associating with bad; all this they will hear as the language of fools addressed to men of cunning and genius.' The oft-expressed fear of the loss, destruction, or dissipation of the soul after death, lest, as Cebes says (_Phæd._, p. 70, A.), 'the moment it leaves the body it should be dispersed and fly away like a puff of wind or smoke, and be nowhere,' arose from the philosophical value attached to the soul as the organ and instrument, or perhaps the seat, of true φρόνησις, intellectuality, and comprehension of things abstract and divine. This faculty the thinkers of this school regarded as impeded and retarded by the union with the body. Of nervous force and brain-power as the real source of intelligence, they had no idea. In this respect, modern science is even more materialistic than ancient philosophy. 'If,' says Socrates (p. 107, B.), 'the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting her, from this point of view, does indeed appear to be awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil, together with their souls. But now, as the soul plainly appears to be immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom (ὡς βελτίστην καὶ φρονιμωτάτην γενέσθαι).' Life, then, according to Plato, should be a constant process of assimilation to God (ὁμοίωσις θεῷ, _Theæt._, p. 176, B.), a discipline and a learning how to die (_Phæd._, p. 67, D.), because God is the type and fount as it were of all justice, wisdom, and truth. 'The release from evil,' ἀποφυγὴ κακῶν, was a favourite topic with Plato, whose mind had received a strongly cynical impression from the prevalent selfishness and injustice of the Athenians, and especially from the crowning act of fanatical injustice, as he considered it, in putting Socrates to death. That, in his view, was simply to extinguish truth, to banish justice, to ignore intellectuality, reason, and philosophy as the guides of life. His speculations on the _origin_ of evil, and the permission of its existence on earth, are very interesting. In the grand passage (_Theætet._, p. 176, A.), he thinks that its existence, as a correlative of good, is a necessary law, _i.e._, there would be no such thing as _good_ if it were not in contrast with what is bad; just as we can conceive of cold only by the opposite quality of heat, or death by the contrasted state of life. But Plato had no idea of an evil spirit--the Semitic doctrine of a Satan--as the personal author of evil. In _Republ._, ii. p. 379, C., he says that God is the author only of good; but as there is more of evil in the world than of good, God is not the cause of all things