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mimic representation, a rule which he himself transgressed so far, he now seems on the one hand to wish entirely to renounce this method for the future, and on the other tacitly to justify himself upon the ground, that, though he may indeed have introduced sophists, rhetoricians, and statesmen speaking in characters the reverse of praiseworthy, still, so far from bestowing upon them any commendation calculated to seduce others to imitate them, his only object was to expose their real worth and to exhibit them as warning examples. And as Plato spoke at last of his Republic only as a model to which approximations are to be made, so he comes in the present instance also to a very mitigated conclusion, implying that if this art is not to be entirely banished, yet still men must be always on their guard against its seductions, and hear them as if they heard them not. As then for Virtue's sake, and from interest in her this matter may not be otherwise ordered, the second section is now subjoined to this, embracing a subject which must indeed form a matchless conclusion, as it returns to the rewards of Virtue, and thus refers us rather to the second book. For, it is argued, the desire there expressed, that the whole question should be decided without introducing anything relating to rewards, is now satisfied, and now perfect truth requires a return to that point. Since then at this point, as has already been hinted at the commencement of the work, the discussion is to be about rewards in the present and future life, the immortality of the soul is first of all treated of, a doctrine which, independently of all other considerations, every reader acquainted with Plato's method and art would have been almost

pained to miss out of this work. And nearly as

surprising does it appear that this important subject is quite cursorily dispatched in a space not occupying above a couple of pages. So that one might almost think that Socrates would rather have referred to it as already made out elsewhere, and have made his friends concede it as a thing known. And he has indeed more to do with the subsequent description of the condition in the other world, than with the proof that there is such a condition, and we should only regard this as a supplement as it were to the more copious discussions in the Phædo. Now the proof which is here given is such that if it is granted-an hypothesis which in the two earlier dialogues is always assumed, and in the Phædo is to a certain degree illustrated by the refutation of the position that the soul is nothing but organic disposition-that the soul is to be conceived as a self-existent being, only united to the body but quite distinct from it, it is in fact perfectly sufficient, and therefore we are not here referred at all to the earlier proofs. Moreover, since in the description that follows, the immortality is to appear most strictly in the form of the transmigration of souls; after the proof of immortality is general, it is further proved that the number of souls always remains the same. In the Phædo also this doctrine has been already indirectly laid down, as a circular career is so placed intervening between life and death, that no other way remains in which animation by the introduction of souls can arise; a point which in the Phædrus is not brought forward at all in the same way, and consequently that dialogue, relatively to this subject, is more remote from the work before us than the Phædo. In this last too the argument from which that constancy in the number

of souls is proved, was already sketched. But when in the Phædo the immortality is also demonstrated upon the assumption that only what is compound can be dissolved, and that the soul is not compound, it might be objected that in these very books Plato composes it of three essential parts. On this account, therefore, Socrates now takes up the same point conversely, and proves that what is immortal cannot easily have in it much that is dissimilar and different, and lets it be understood that the soul is far from appearing here as it originally is, but comes partly encumbered with foreign additions, partly also deprived of much that was originally in it. What else then can be here meant, but that that sea-weed and shell-work with which Glaucus is overgrown by his long sojourn in the depths of the sea, in the same way as the soul, as we already know from other sources, is here immersed in a dim abyss, are to represent the various forms under which the principle of desire appears, so that only the reason, either alone or in connection with the spirited principle, constitutes the original essence of the soul, as moreover, that unwieldly encumbrance is but little suited for the peregrination through heavenly spaces. Only it is difficult for us, according to our mode of thinking, to unite with this the hypothesis that the souls of brutes are in kind so perfectly the same with those of men, that the latter can also become brutes, and the former men; and it is moreover, hard to conceive how Plato should have adopted this only in compliance with the Pythagorean tradition without assimilating it to his own theory. The souls of brutes must therefore, according to him, have originally contemplated the ideas, only that they, and that, as we are taught in the Timæus, in consequence

of their first human life, banished as they are to such an organism, can attain to no recollection whatever. They are accordingly those souls which appear deprived for the most part of their original nature. But against this it may be again objected, that as every species of brutes developes but few and simple desires, they are less burdened with those foreign encumbrances than the human souls, in which the whole army of desires displays itself, furnishing indeed one ground for placing the two in comparison with one another. This theory also agrees, therefore, with that, which in the right conduct of the plastic powers of nature contained in the human race, discovers the only true principle upon which all efforts to form mankind to wisdom and justice are to be founded. And in like manner it may be said that the pædagogic regulations of the Platonic state receive a new light from what is here said about the influence of the present life upon the future. For in that passage above which places the choice of a new life between unavoidable destiny and free-will ingeniously combined, every thing depends upon the soul being in a proper condition to choose, and not too strongly possessed by the impressions of what it may have encountered in its former earthly existence, to be able to seize that which is in conformity with its inward essence, and calculated to promote its improvement. Only it does indeed seem as if that art of superintending the connection of the sexes might come into some difficulty, if, notwithstanding, upon this method a soul quite foreign and unsuitable, in no way connected with this state, can insinuate itself into it; and it is not very easy to see, under what particular divine protection this circumstance must be placed, that such a misfortune may not occur

before it is significantly felt in the exercise of the art itself; unless it is to be said that this is a far more worthy and important object, than all those trifling concerns of an individual life, for that beautiful feeling of confidence which suggests that for him who is dear to the Godhead every thing must work for the best. In this description, finally, that interchange between the happy wandering through heavenly space and the return to the region of imperfect existence bears a manifest similarity to the interchange to which the lives of the guardians of the state are to be subject, between the longer period which they are to devote to philosophical contemplation, thus surrendering its right to the wish of the philosopher for death, or rather for being dead, and the return for one day only to the burdensome employment of government in the cave. So that even in this point of view Plato will not be denied the merit of having regarded the eternal arrangement of the universe in the regulation of his Republic. But he has left almost all this for the reader only to discover, and the whole section, indeed, most manifestly bears the impress of having been intended to awaken and stimulate the mind of the hearer in every way to bestow the most diligent pains upon the subject of justice, and never to consider anything as more profitable. Such is the tenor of its commencement, such of its conclusion; hence what does not contribute to that object might be only alluded to, and what is further enlarged upon is only to be regarded as digressive. But we have also here in close connection with that grand object the aversion expressed to the art of imitative poetry, and especially towards Homer, whose heroes quite pointedly furnish most examples of souls that make

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