92. “But let us proceed,” he said; “first of all, remind me of what you said, if I should appear to have forgotten it. For Simmias, as I think, is in doubt and fears lest the soul, though more divine and beautiful than the body, should perish before it, as being a species of harmony. But Cebes appeared to me to grant me this, that the soul is more durable than the body, but he argued that it is uncertain to every one, whether when the soul has worn out many bodies, and that repeatedly, it does not, on leaving the last body, itself also perish, so that this very thing is death, the destruction of the soul, since the body never ceases decaying. Are not these the things, Simmias and Cebes, which we have to enquire into?” They both agreed that they were. “Whether, then,” he continued, “do you reject all our former arguments, or some of them only, and not others?” “Some we do,” they replied, “and others not.” “What then,” he proceeded, “do you say about that argument, in which we asserted that knowledge is reminiscence, and that, this being the case, our soul must necessarily have existed somewhere before it was enclosed in the body?” 93. “I, indeed,” replied Cebes, “was both then wonderfully persuaded by it, and now persist in it, as in no other argument.” “And I too,” said Simmias, “am of the same mind, and should very much wonder if I should ever think otherwise on that point.” “Then,” Socrates said, “you must needs think otherwise, my Theban friend, if this opinion holds good, that harmony is something compounded, and that the soul is a kind of harmony that results from the parts compacted together in the body. For surely you will not allow yourself to say that harmony was composed prior to the things from which it required to be composed. Would you allow this?” “By no means Socrates,” he replied. “Do you perceive then,” he said, “that this results from what you say, when you assert that the soul existed before it came into a human form and body, but that it was composed from things that did not yet exist? For harmony is not such as that to which you compare it; but first the lyre, and the chords, and the sounds yet unharmonized, exist, and last of all harmony is produced, and first perishes. How then will this argument accord with that?” “Not at all,” said Simmias. 94. “And yet,” he said, “if in any argument, there ought to be an accordance in one respecting harmony.” “There ought,” said Simmias. “This of yours however,” he said, “is not in accordance. Consider then, which of these two statements do you prefer, that knowledge is reminiscence, or the soul harmony?”