Besides, the philosopher has notions of good and evil unlike those of other men. For they are courageous because they are afraid of greater dangers, and temperate because they desire 69 greater pleasures. But he disdains this balancing of pleasures and pains, which is the exchange of commerce and not of virtue. All the virtues, including wisdom, are regarded by him only as purifications of the soul. And this was the meaning of the founders of the mysteries when they said, ‘Many are the wand-bearers but few are the mystics.’ (Cp. Matt. xxii. 14: ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’) And in the hope that he is one of these mystics, Socrates is now departing. This is his answer to any one who charges him with indifference at the prospect of leaving the gods and his friends. Still, a fear is expressed that the soul upon leaving the body 70 may vanish away like smoke or air. Socrates in answer appeals first of all to the old Orphic tradition that the souls of the dead are in the world below, and that the living come from them. This he attempts to found on a philosophical assumption that all opposites—e. g. less, greater; weaker, stronger; sleeping, 71 waking; life, death—are generated out of each other. Nor can the process of generation be only a passage from living to dying, for then all would end in death. The perpetual sleeper (Endymion) 72 would be no longer distinguished from the rest of mankind. The circle of nature is not complete unless the living come from the dead as well as pass to them. [Sidenote: _Analysis 73-80._]