“I will tell you,” he replied. “The lovers of wisdom know, that philosophy receiving their soul plainly bound and glued to the body, and compelled to view things through this, as through a prison, and not directly by herself, and sunk in utter ignorance, and perceiving too the strength of the prison, that it arises from desire, so that he that is bound as much as possible assists in binding himself. 73. I say, then, the lovers of wisdom know that philosophy, receiving their soul in this state, gently exhorts it, and endeavours to free it, by shewing that the view of things by means of the eyes is full of deception, as also is that through the ears and the other senses, persuading an abandonment of these so far as it is not absolutely necessary to use them, and advising the soul to be collected and concentrated within itself, and to believe nothing else but herself, with respect to what she herself understands of things that have a real subsistence, and to consider nothing true which she views through the medium of others, and which differ under different aspects[33]; for that a thing of this kind is sensible and visible, but that what she herself perceives is intelligible and invisible. The soul of the true philosopher, therefore, thinking that she ought not to oppose this deliverance, accordingly abstains as much as possible from pleasures and desires, griefs and fears, considering that when any one is exceedingly delighted or alarmed, grieved or influenced by desire, he does not merely suffer such evil from these things as one might suppose, such as either being sick or wasting his property, through indulging his desires; but that which is the greatest evil, and the worst of all, this he suffers and is not conscious of it.” ----- Footnote 33: By this I understand him to mean that the soul alone can perceive the truth, but the senses, as they are different, receive and convey different impressions of the same thing; thus the eye receives one impression of an object, the ear a totally different one. ----- “But what is this evil, Socrates?” said Cebes. 74. “That the soul of every man is compelled to be either vehemently delighted or grieved about some particular thing, and at the same time to consider that the thing about which it is thus strongly affected is most real and most true, though it is not so. But these are chiefly visible objects; are they not?” “Certainly.” “In this state of affection, then, is not the soul especially shackled by the body?” “How so?”