Phaedo | Page 7

in man and nature.
How great had been his hopes and how great his disappointment! For

he found that his new friend was anything but consistent in his use of
mind as a cause, and that he soon introduced winds, waters, and other
eccentric notions. (Compare Arist. Metaph.) It was as if a person had
said that Socrates is sitting here because he is made up of bones and
muscles, instead of telling the true reason--that he is here because the
Athenians have thought good to sentence him to death, and he has
thought good to await his sentence. Had his bones and muscles been
left by him to their own ideas of right, they would long ago have taken
themselves off. But surely there is a great confusion of the cause and
condition in all this. And this confusion also leads people into all sorts
of erroneous theories about the position and motions of the earth. None
of them know how much stronger than any Atlas is the power of the
best. But this 'best' is still undiscovered; and in enquiring after the
cause, we can only hope to attain the second best.
Now there is a danger in the contemplation of the nature of things, as
there is a danger in looking at the sun during an eclipse, unless the
precaution is taken of looking only at the image reflected in the water,
or in a glass. (Compare Laws; Republic.) 'I was afraid,' says Socrates,
'that I might injure the eye of the soul. I thought that I had better return
to the old and safe method of ideas. Though I do not mean to say that
he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas sees only
through a glass darkly, any more than he who contemplates actual
effects.'
If the existence of ideas is granted to him, Socrates is of opinion that he
will then have no difficulty in proving the immortality of the soul. He
will only ask for a further admission:--that beauty is the cause of the
beautiful, greatness the cause of the great, smallness of the small, and
so on of other things. This is a safe and simple answer, which escapes
the contradictions of greater and less (greater by reason of that which is
smaller!), of addition and subtraction, and the other difficulties of
relation. These subtleties he is for leaving to wiser heads than his own;
he prefers to test ideas by the consistency of their consequences, and, if
asked to give an account of them, goes back to some higher idea or
hypothesis which appears to him to be the best, until at last he arrives at
a resting-place. (Republic; Phil.)
The doctrine of ideas, which has long ago received the assent of the
Socratic circle, is now affirmed by the Phliasian auditor to command

the assent of any man of sense. The narrative is continued; Socrates is
desirous of explaining how opposite ideas may appear to co-exist but
do not really co-exist in the same thing or person. For example,
Simmias may be said to have greatness and also smallness, because he
is greater than Socrates and less than Phaedo. And yet Simmias is not
really great and also small, but only when compared to Phaedo and
Socrates. I use the illustration, says Socrates, because I want to show
you not only that ideal opposites exclude one another, but also the
opposites in us. I, for example, having the attribute of smallness remain
small, and cannot become great: the smallness which is in me drives
out greatness.
One of the company here remarked that this was inconsistent with the
old assertion that opposites generated opposites. But that, replies
Socrates, was affirmed, not of opposite ideas either in us or in nature,
but of opposition in the concrete--not of life and death, but of
individuals living and dying. When this objection has been removed,
Socrates proceeds: This doctrine of the mutual exclusion of opposites is
not only true of the opposites themselves, but of things which are
inseparable from them. For example, cold and heat are opposed; and
fire, which is inseparable from heat, cannot co-exist with cold, or snow,
which is inseparable from cold, with heat. Again, the number three
excludes the number four, because three is an odd number and four is
an even number, and the odd is opposed to the even. Thus we are able
to proceed a step beyond 'the safe and simple answer.' We may say, not
only that the odd excludes the even, but that the number three, which
participates in oddness, excludes the even. And in like manner, not only
does life exclude death, but the soul, of which life is the inseparable
attribute, also excludes death. And that of which life is the