sity of punishing the greater sort of criminals, whom no avenging power of this world could reach. The voice of conscience, too, was heard reminding the good man that he was not altogether innocent. To these indistinct longings and fears an expression was given in the mysteries and Orphic poets: a 'heap of books," passing under the names of Musæus and Orpheus in Plato's time, were filled with notions of an underworld.

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7. Yet probably the belief in the individuality of the soul after death had but a feeble hold on the Greek mind. Like the personality of God, the personality of man in a future statę was not inseparably bound up with the reality of his existence. For the distinction between the personal and impersonal, and also between the divine and human, was far less marked to the Greek than to ourselves. And as Plato readily passes from the notion of the good to that of God, he also passes, almost imperceptibly to himself and his reader, from the future life of the individual soul to the eternal being of the absolute soul. There has been a clearer statement and a clearer denial of the belief in modern times than is found in early Greek philosophy, and hence the comparative silence on the whole subject which is often remarked in ancient writers, and particularly in Aristotle. For Plato and Aristotle are not further removed in their teaching about the immortality of the soul than they are in their theory of knowledge.

8. That in an age when logic was beginning to mould human thought Plato should have cast his belief in immortality into a logical form, is not surprising. And when we consider how much the doctrine of ideas was also one of words, we cannot wonder that he should have fallen into verbal fallacies: early logic is always mistaking the truth of the form for the truth of the matter. It is easy to see that the alternation of opposites is not the same as the generation of them out of each other; and that the generation out of each other, which is the first argument in the "Phædo," is at variance with their mutual exclusion of each other, whether in themselves or in us, which is the last. For even if we admit the distinction which he draws (103) between the opposites and the things which have the opposites, still individuals fall under the latter class; and we have to pass out of the region of human hopes and fears to a conception of an abstract soul which is the impersonation of the

ideas. Such a conception, which in Plato himself is but half expressed, is unmeaning to us, and relative only to a particular stage in the history of thought. The doctrine of reminiscence is also a fragment of a former world, which has no place in the philosophy of modern times. But Plato had the wonders of psychology just opening to him, and he had not the explanation of them which is supplied by the analysis of language and the history of the human mind. The question, "Whence come our abstract ideas?" he could only answer by an imaginary hypothesis. Nor is it difficult to see that his crowning argument is purely verbal, and is but the expression of an instinctive confidence put into a logical form: "The soul is immortal because it contains a principle of imperishableness." Nor does he himself seem at all to be aware that nothing is added to human knowledge by his "safe and simple answer," that beauty is the cause of the beautiful; and that he is merely reasserting the Eleatic being "divided by the Pythagorean numbers," against the Heracleitean doctrine of perpetual generation. The answer to the "very serious questions" of generation and destruction is really the denial of them. For this he would substitute a system of ideas, tested not by experience, but by their consequences, and not explained by actual causes, but by a higher, that is, more general, notion: consistency with themselves is all that is required of them.

9. To deal fairly with such arguments they should not only not be separated from the age to which they belong, but they should be translated as far as possible into their modern equivalents. "If the ideas of men are eternal, their souls are eternal, and if not the ideas, then not the souls." Such an argument stands nearly in the same relation to Plato and his age as the argument from the existence of God to immortality among ourselves. "If God exists, then the soul exists after death; and if there is no God, there is no existence of the soul after death." For the ideas are to his mind the reality, the truth, the principle of permanence, as well as of mind and order in the world. When Simmias and Cebes say that they are more strongly persuaded of the existence of ideas than they are of the immortality of the soul, they represent fairly enough the order of thought in Greek philosophy. And we might say in the same way that we are more certain of the existence of God than we are of the immortality of the soul, and are led

by the belief in the one to a belief in the other. The parallel, as Socrates would say, is not perfect, but agrees in as far as the mind in either case is regarded as dependent on something above and beyond herself. Nor need we shrink from pressing the analogy one step further: "We are more certain of our ideas of truth and right than we are of the existence of God, and are led on in the order of thought from one to the other."

10. The main argument of the " Phædo " is derived from the existence of eternal ideas of which the soul is a partaker; the other argument of the alternation of opposites is replaced by this. And there have not been wanting philosophers of the idealist school who have imagined that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a theory of knowledge only, and that in all that precedes Plato is preparing for this. Such a view is far from lying on the surface of the "Phædo," and seems to be inconsistent with the "Gorgias" and the "Republic." Those who maintain it are immediately compelled to renounce the shadow which they have grasped, as a play of words only. But the truth is that Plato in his argument for the immortality of the soul has collected many elements of proof or persuasion, ethical and mythological as well as dialectical, which are not easily to be reconciled with one another; and he is as much in earnest about his doctrine of retribution, which is repeated in all his more ethical writings, as about his thory of knowledge. And while we may fairly translate the dialectical into the language of Hegel, and the religious and mythological into the language of Dante or Bunyan, the ethical speaks to us still in the same voice, reaching across the ages.

II. Two arguments of this sort occur in the "Phædo." The first may be described as the aspiration of the soul after another sort of being. Like the Oriental or Christian ascetic, the philosopher is seeking to withdraw from impurities of sense, to leave the world and the things of the world, and to find his higher self. Plato recognizes in these aspirations the foretaste of immortality, as Butler and Addison in modern times have argued, the one from the moral tendencies of mankind, the other from the progress of the soul towards perfection. In using this argument Plato has certainly confused the soul which has left the body, with the soul of the good and wise. Such a confusion was natural, and arose partly out of the antithesis of soul and body. The soul in her own essence, and

the soul "clothed upon " with virtues and graces, were easily interchanged with one another, because on a subject which passes expression the distinctions of language can hardly be maintained.

12. The other ethical proof of the immortality of the soul is derived from the necessity of retribution. The wicked would be too well off if their evil deeds came to an end. It is not to be supposed that an Ardiæus, an Archelaus, an Ismenias, could ever have suffered the penalty of their crimes in this world. The manner in which this retribution is accomplished Plato represents under the figure of mythology. Doubtless he felt that it was easier to improve than to invent, and that in religion especially the traditional form was required in order to give verisimilitude to the myth. The myth, too, is far more probable to that age than to ours, and may fairly be regarded as "one guess among many" about the nature of the earth, which he cleverly supports by the indications of geology. Not that he insists on the absolute truth of his own particular notions: "no man of sense will be confident of that; but he will be confident that something of the kind is true" (114 D). As in other passages he wins belief for his fictions by the moderation of his statements; he does not, like Dante or Swedenborg, allow himself to be deceived by his own creations.

The dialogue must be read in the light of the situation. And first of all we are struck by the calmness of the scene. Like the spectators at the time, we cannot pity Socrates, his mien and his language are so noble and fearless. He is the same as he ever was, but milder and gentler, and he has in no degree lost his interest in dialectics; the argument is the greatest gain to him, and he will not forego the delight of it in compliance with the jailer's intimation that he should not heat himself with talking. Some other traits of his character may be noted; for example, the courteous manner in which he inclines his head to the last objector, or the ironical touch, "Me already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls "; or the depreciation of the arguments with which "he comforted himself and them"; or the allusion to the possibility of finding another teacher among barbarous races; or the mysterious reference to another science (mathematics?) of generation and destruction for which he is vainly feeling. There is no change in him; only now he is invested with a sort of sacred character,

as the prophet or priest of Apollo the god of the festival, in whose honor he first of all composes a hymn, and then like the swan pours forth his dying lay. Perhaps the extreme elevation of Socrates above his own situation, and the ordinary interests of life (compare his jeu d'esprit about his burial) create in the mind of the reader an impression stronger than could be derived from arguments that such a one, in his own language, has in him "a principle which does not admit of death."

The other persons of the dialogue may be considered under two heads: (1) private friends; (2) the respondents in the argument.

First there is Crito, who has been already introduced to us in the "Euthydemus" and the "Crito"; he is the equal in years of Socrates, and stands in quite a different relation to him from his younger disciples. He is a man of the world who is rich and prosperous (cp. the jest in the "Euthydemus 304 c), the best friend of Socrates, who wants to know his last commands, in whose presence he talks to his family, and who performs the last duty of closing his eyes. It is observable, too, that, as in the " Euthydemus," Crito shows no aptitude for philosophical discussions. Nor among the friends of Socrates must the jailer be forgotten, who seems to have been introduced by Plato in order to show the impression made by the extraordinary man on the common. The gentle nature of the man is indicated by his weeping at the announcement of his errand and then turning away, and also by the words of Socrates to his disciples: "How charming the man is! since I have been in prison he was always coming to me, and has been as good as could be to me." We are reminded, too, that he has retained this gentle nature amid scenes of death and violence by the contrasts which he draws between the behavior of Socrates and of others when about to die.

Another person who takes no part in the philosophical discussion is the excitable Apollodorus, who testifies his grief by the most violent emotions. Phædo is also present, the "beloved disciple" as he may be termed, who is described, if not "leaning on his bosom," as seated next to Socrates, who is playing with his hair. At a particular point the argument is described as falling before the attack of Simmias. A sort of despair is introduced in the minds of the company. The effect