The dialogues of Plato in five volumes, Vol. 2 (of 5) : $b Translated into English with analyses and introductions
Plato · en
The hour has come at which he must drink the poison, and not 115
much remains to be done. How shall they bury him? That is a
question which he refuses to entertain, for they are burying, not
him, but his dead body. His friends had once been sureties that 116
he would remain, and they shall now be sureties that he has run
away. Yet he would not die without the customary ceremonies of
washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of the poison? In 117
the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he utters in
the very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages. With
a sort of irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is 118
still unfulfilled, just as above (60 E) he desires before he
departs to compose a few verses in order to satisfy a scruple about
a dream—unless, indeed, we suppose him to mean, that he was now
restored to health, and made the customary offering to Asclepius
in token of his recovery.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]
1. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has sunk deep into the
heart of the human race; and men are apt to rebel against any examination
of the nature or grounds of their belief. They do not like to acknowledge
that this, as well as the other ‘eternal ideas’ of man, has a history
in time, which may be traced in Greek poetry or philosophy, and also in
the Hebrew Scriptures. They convert feeling into reasoning, and throw a
network of dialectics over that which is really a deeply-rooted instinct.
In the same temper which Socrates reproves in himself (91 B) they are
disposed to think that even fallacies will do no harm, for they will
die with them, and while they live they will gain by the delusion. And
when they consider the numberless bad arguments which have been pressed
into the service of theology, they say, like the companions of Socrates,
‘What argument can we ever trust again?’ But there is a better and higher
spirit to be gathered from the Phaedo, as well as from the other writings
of Plato, which says that first principles should be most constantly
reviewed (Phaedo 107 B, and Crat. 436), and that the highest subjects
demand of us the greatest accuracy (Rep. vi. 504 E); also that we must
not become misologists because arguments are apt to be deceivers.
[Sidenote: _The immortality of the soul._]