Phaedo.
Socrates, Cebes.
taint, having never voluntarily during life had connection with the body, which she is ever avoiding, herself gathered into herself;— and making such abstraction her perpetual study—which means that she has been a true disciple of philosophy;81 and therefore has in fact been always engaged in the practice of dying ? For is not philosophy the study of death?—
Certainly—
Rather when free from bodily impurity she departs to the seats of the blessed. That soul, I say, herself invisible, departs to the invisible world—to the divine and immortal and rational: thither arriving, she is secure of bliss and is released from the error and folly of men, their fears and wild passions and all other human ills, and for ever dwells, as they say of the initiated, in company with the gods.[1] Is not this true, Cebes?
Yes, said Cebes, beyond a doubt.
But the soul which has been polluted, and is impure at the time of her departure, and is the companion and servant of the body always, and is in love with and fascinated by the body and by the desires and pleasures of the body, until she is led to believe that the truth only exists in a bodily form, which a man may touch and see and taste, and use for the purposes of his lusts,—the soul, I mean, accustomed to hate and fear and avoid the intellectual principle, which to the bodily eye is dark and invisible, and can be attained only by philosophy;—do you suppose that such a soul will depart pure and unalloyed?
Impossible, he replied.
She is held fast by the corporeal, which the continual association and constant care of the body have wrought into her nature.
Very true.
But the souls of the wicked are dragged down by the corporeal element.
And this corporeal element, my friend, is heavy and weighty and earthy, and is that element of sight by which a soul is depressed and dragged down again into the visible world, because she is afraid of the invisible and of the world below—prowling about tombs and sepulchres, near which, as they tell us, are seen certain ghostly apparitions of souls- ↑ Cp. Apol. 40 E.
