British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871Various
History
British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV: July and October, 1871
Various
English periodicals
that happen to man; 'but of evil we must look for _some other causes'_
(ἄλλ' ἄττα δεῖ ζητεῖν τὰ αἴτια, ἀλλ' οὐ τὸν θεόν). The Aryan mind did
not realize the personality of an Evil Being. 'The Aryan nations had
no devil' ('Chips from a German Workshop,' ii., p. 235). Of penal
abodes in the other world, however, Socrates had an idea; in truth,
the doctrine of a purgatory (δικαιωτήριον, _Phædr._, p. 249, A.; τὸ
τῆς τίσεως τε καὶ δίκης δεσμωτήριον, _Gorg._, p. 523, B.), as well as
of a hell, is distinctly Platonic. Into the one the ἰάσιμοι, into the
other the ἀνίατοι, the curable and the incurable sinners respectively
go. (_Gorg._, p. 526, B.) So _Phædo_, p. 113, D.:--
'When the dead arrive at the place to which the genius of
each severally conveys them, first of all, they have
sentence passed upon them, as they have lived well and
piously or not. And those who appear to have lived neither
well nor ill go to the river Acheron, and mount such
conveyances as they can get, and are carried in them to the
lake, and there they dwell and are purified of their evil
deeds, and suffer the penalty of the wrongs which they have
done to others, and are absolved, and receive the rewards
of their good deeds according to their deserts. But those
who appear to be incurable by reason of the greatness of
their crimes--who have committed many and terrible deeds of
sacrilege, murders foul and violent, or the like--such are
hurled into Tartarus, which is their suitable destiny, and
_they never come out_.' (Jowett, p. 464.)
The whole of this theory is developed in detail in the tenth book of
the _Republic_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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