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 inquiring 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. And 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. Thus he avoids 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 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.

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 men of sense. The narrative is continued; Socrates is desirous of explaining how opposite ideas may appear to coexist but not really coexist 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 Phædo. And yet Simmias is not really great and also small, but only when compared to Phædo and Socrates. I use the illustration, says Socrates, because I want to show you not only that ideal opposites exclude one an

other, but also the opposites in us. I, for example, having the attribute of smallness remain small, and cannot become great: the smallness 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 opposite things-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 coexist 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 inseparable attribute is by the force of the terms imperishable. If the odd principle were imperishable, then the number three would not perish, but remove on the approach of the even principle. But the immortal is imperishable; and therefore the soul on the approach of death does not perish but removes.

Thus all objections appear to be finally silenced. And now the application has to be made: If the soul is immortal, "What manner of persons ought we to be?" having regard not only to time but to eternity. For death is not the end of all, and the wicked is not released from his evil by death; but everyone carries with him into the world below that which he is and that which he becomes, and that only.

For after death the soul is carried away to judgment, and when she has received her punishment returns to earth in the course of ages. The wise soul is conscious of her situation, and follows the attendant angel who guides her through the windings of the world below; but the impure soul wanders hither and thither without a guide, and is carried at last to her

own place, as the pure soul is also carried away to hers. "In order that you may understand this, I must first describe to you the nature and conformation of the earth."

Now the whole earth is a globe placed in the centre of the heavens, and is maintained there by the perfection of balance. That which we call the earth is only a small hollow, of which there are many; but the true earth is above, and is a finer and subtler element, and is full of precious stones and bright colors, of which the stones and colors in our earth are but fragments and reflections, and the earth itself is corroded and crusted over just as the shore is by the sea. And if, like birds, we could fly to the surface of the air, in the same manner that fishes come to the top of the sea, then we should behold the true earth and the true heaven and the true stars. This heavenly earth is of divers colors, sparkling with jewels brighter than gold and whiter than any snow, having flowers and fruits innumerable. And the inhabitants dwell, some on the shore of the sea of air, others in "islets of the blest," and they hold converse with the gods, and behold the sun, moon, and stars as they truly are, and their other blessedness is of a piece with this.

But the interior of the earth has other and deeper hollows, and one huge chasm or opening called Tartarus, into which vast streams of water and fire are ever flowing to and fro, of which small portions find their way to the surface and form seas and rivers and volcanoes. There is a perpetual inhalation and exhalation of the air rising and falling as the waters pass into the depths of the earth and return again, in their course, forming lakes and rivers, but never descending below the centre of the earth, the opposite side of which is a precipice to the rivers on both sides. These rivers are many and mighty, and there are four principal ones, Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon, and Cocytus. Oceanus is the river which encircles the earth; Acheron takes an opposite direction, and after flowing under the earth and in desert places at last reaches the Acherusian Lake, and this is the river at which the dead await their return to earth. Pyriphlegethon is a stream of fire, which coils around the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus. The fourth river (Cocytus) is that which is called by the poets the Stygian River, and falls into, and forms the Lake Styx, receiving strange powers in the waters. This river, too, falls into Tartarus.

The dead are first of all judged according to their deeds, and those who are incurable are thrust into Tartarus, from which they never come out. Those who have only committed venial sins are first purified of them, and then rewarded for the good which they have done. Those who have committed crimes, great indeed, but not unpardonable, are thrust into Tartarus, but are cast forth at the end of the year on the shores of the rivers, where they stand crying to their victims to let them come out, and if they prevail, then they are let out and their sufferings cease; if not, they are borne in a ceaseless whirl along the rivers of Tartarus. The pure souls also receive their reward, and have their abode in the upper earth, and a select few in still fairer "mansions."

Socrates is not prepared to insist on the literal accuracy of this description, but he is confident that something of the kind is true. He who has sought after the pleasures of knowledge and rejected the pleasures of the body has reason to be of good hope at the approach of death, whose voice is already heard calling to him, and will be heard calling by all men.

The hour has come at which he must drink the poison, and not much remains to be done. How shall they bury him? That is a question which he refuses to entertain, for they are not burying him, but his dead body. His friends had once been sureties that he would remain, and they shall now be sureties that he has run away. Yet he would not die without the customary ceremonies of washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of the poison? In the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he utters in the very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after-ages. The puzzle has been occasioned by the simplicity of his words, for there is no reason to suppose that they have any hidden meaning. With a sort of irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is still unfulfilled, just as above (60 E) he is represented as desirous before he departs to make a few verses in order to satisfy a scruple about the meaning of a dream.

1. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has such a great interest for all mankind that they are apt to rebel against any examination of the nature of their belief. They do not like to acknowledge that this, as well as the other "eternal ideas" of man, has a history in time, which may be traced in Greek poetry or philosophy, and also in the Hebrew scriptures,

They convert feeling into reasoning, and throw a network of dialectics over that which is really a deeply rooted instinct. In the same temper which Socrates reproves in himself (91 B) they are disposed to think that even bad arguments will do no harm, for they will die with them, and while they live they will gain by the delusion. But there is a better and higher spirit to be gathered from the "Phædo," as well as from the other writings of Plato, which says that first principles should be most constantly reviewed (" Phæd." 107 B), and that the highest subjects demand of us the greatest accuracy.

2. Modern philosophy is perplexed at this whole question, which is sometimes fairly given up and handed over to the realm of faith. The perplexity should not be forgotten by us when we attempt to submit the " Phædo" of Plato to the requirements of logic. For what idea can we form of the soul when separated from the body? Or how can the soul be united with the body and still be independent? Is the soul related to the body as the ideal to the real, or as the whole to the parts, or as the subject to the object, or as the cause to the effect, or as the end to the means? Shall we say with Aristotle, that the soul is the entelechy or form of an organized living body? or with Plato, that she has a life of her own? Is the Pythagorean image of the harmony, or of the monad, the truer expression? Is the soul related to the body as sight to the eye, or as the boatman to his boat? And in another state of being is the soul to be conceived of as vanishing into infinity, hardly possessing an existence which she can call her own, as in the pantheistic system of Spinoza and others? or as an individual spirit informed with another body and retaining the impress of her former character? (Cp. "Gorgias," 524 B.C.) Or is the opposition of soul and body a mere illusion, and the true self neither soul nor body, but the union of the two in the "I" which is above them? And is death the assertion of this individuality in the higher nature, and the falling away into nothingness of the lower? Or are we vainly attempting to pass the boundaries of human thought? The body and the soul seem to be inseparable, not only in fact, but in our conceptions of them; and any philosophy which too closely unites them, or too widely separates them, either in this life or in another, disturbs the balance of human nature. Neither Plato nor any other philosopher has perfectly adjusted them, or been