“No indeed,” he replied, “and therefore they who have any care of their own souls, and do not merely live moulding and fashioning the body, say farewell to all this; they will not walk in the ways of the blind: and when philosophy offers them purification and release from evil, they feel that they ought not to resist her influence, and whither she leads they turn and follow.” “What do you mean, Socrates?” “I will tell you,” he said. “The lovers of knowledge are conscious that the soul was simply fastened and glued to the body—until philosophy freed her, she could only view real existence through the bars of a prison, not in and through herself; she was wallowing in the mire of every sort of ignorance, and by reason of lust had become the principal accomplice in her own captivity.” And a little later Socrates says: “The soul of the true philosopher thinks that she ought not to resist this deliverance (which philosophy offers), and therefore abstains from pleasures and desires and pains and fears, so far as she is able.” Somewhat earlier in the dialogue Socrates had stated in still more emphatic terms the necessity of putting the body aside if man’s soul would attain real knowledge:[203] “For if while in company with the body the soul cannot have pure knowledge, one of two things follows—either knowledge is not to be attained at all, or if at all, after death. For then, and not till then, the soul will be parted from the body and exist in herself alone. In this present life, I reckon that we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we have the least possible intercourse or communion with the body, and are not surfeited with the bodily nature, but keep ourselves pure until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us. And thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body we shall be pure and shall hold converse with the pure, and know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, which is no other than the light of truth.” As the phrase, “until the hour when God himself is pleased to release us,” shows, man might not hasten the time of his release by his own act. And in other places, in familiar ways, Plato teaches that man may not desert the station where god has set him on guard until the command is given.