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Start listening today at P-O-D-C-A-S-T-L-I-B-R-A-R-Y. Dot-O-R-G. Book 10, Part 3. Are you aware, I said, that the soul of a man is immortal and imperishable?
He looked at me in astonishment and said, No, by heaven, and are you really prepared to maintain this? Yes, I said, I ought to be, and you too. There is no difficulty in proving it. I see great difficulty, but I should like to hear you state this argument of which you make so light.
Listen then, I'm attending. There is a thing which you call good and another which you call evil? Yes, he replied. Would you agree with me in thinking that the corrupting and destroying element is the evil and the saving and improving element is the good?
Yes. And you admit that everything has a good and also an evil. As Ophthalmia is an evil of the eyes and disease of the whole body, as Mildru is of corn and rot of timber or rust of copper and iron. In everything or in almost everything, there is an inherent evil and disease.
Yes he said. And anything which is infected by any of these evils is made evil and at last wholly dissolves and dies. True. Then vice and evil which is inherent in each is the destruction of each.
And if this does not destroy them, there is nothing that will. Or good certainly will not destroy them, nor again, that which is neither good nor evil. Certainly not. If then we find any nature which having this inherent corruption cannot be dissolved or destroyed, we may be certain that of such a nature there is no destruction.
That may be assumed. Well, I said. And is there no evil which corrupts the soul? Yes, he said.
There are all the evils which we were just now passing in review. Unrighteousness, Intemperance, cowardice, ignorance. But does any of these dissolve destroy her? And here do not let us fall into the air of supposing that the unjust and foolish man, when he is detected, perishes through his own injustice, which is an evil of the soul.
Take the analogy of the body. The evil of the body is a disease which wastes and reduces and annihilates the body. And all the things of which we were just now speaking come to annihilation through their own corruption, attaching to them and inhering in them and so destroying them. Is not this true?
Yes. Consider the soul in a like manner. Does the injustice or other evil which exists in the soul, waste and consume her? Do they be attaching to the soul and inhering in her at the last bring her to death and so separate her from the body?
Do not. And yet I said it is unreasonable to suppose that anything can perish from without through affection of external evil which could not be destroyed from within by a corruption of its own. It is he replied. Consider, I said, Glauken, that even the badness of food, whether staleness, decomposition, or any other bad quality, when confined to the actual food is not supposed to destroy the body.
Although if the badness of food communicates corruption to the body, then we should say that the body has been destroyed by a corruption of itself, which is the disease brought on by this. But that the body being one thing can be destroyed by the badness of food which is another and which does not engender any natural infection. This we shall absolutely deny. Very true.
And on the same principle, unless some bodily evil can produce an evil of the soul, which we must not suppose that the soul, which is one thing, can be dissolved by any merely external evil which belongs to another. Yes, he said. There is reason in that. Either then, let us refute this conclusion or, while it remains unrefuted, let us never say that fever or any other disease or the knife put to the throat or even the cutting up of the whole body into the minutest pieces can destroy the soul, until she herself is proved to become more unholy or unrighteous in consequence of these things being done to the body, but that the soul, or anything else if not destroyed by an internal evil, can be destroyed by an external one is not to be affirmed by any man.
And surely he replied no one will ever prove that the souls of men become more unjust in consequence of death. But if someone who would rather not admit the immortality of the soul boldly denies this and says that the dying do really become more evil and unrighteous, then if the speaker is right. I suppose that injustice like disease must be assumed to be failed to the unjust, and that those who take this disorder die by the natural inherent power of destruction which evil has, and which kills them sooner or later, but in quite another way from that in which at present the wicked receive death at the hands of others as a penalty for their deeds. Nay he said, in that case injustice if fatal to the unjust would not be so very terrible to him, for he would be delivered from evil, but I rather suspect the opposite to be the truth, and that injustice which, if it had the power, will murder others, keep the murder alive, I, and well awake too.
So far removed is her dwelling place from being a house of death. True, I said, and if the inherent natural vice or evil of the soul is unable to destroy or kill her, hardly will that which is appointed to be the destruction of some other body, destroy a soul or anything else except that of which it was appointed to be the destruction. Yes, that can hardly be. But the soul which cannot be destroyed by an evil whether inherent or external must exist forever, and if existing forever must be immortal.
Certainly. That is the conclusion, I said, and if a true conclusion, then the souls must always be the same, for if none be destroyed, they will not diminish a number, neither will they increase, for the increase of their mortal natures must come from something mortal, and all things would thus end in immortality. Very true. But this we cannot believe, reason will not allow us any more than we can believe the soul in her truest nature to be full of variety and difference and dissimilarity.
What do you mean? He said, the soul, I said, being, as is not proven immortal, must be the fairest of compositions and cannot be compounded of a many elements. Certainly not. Any mortality is demonstrated by the previous argument, and there are many other proofs, but to see her as she really is, not as we now behold her, marred by communion with the body and other miseries, you must contemplate her with the eye of reason, in her original purity, and then her beauty will be revealed, and justice and injustice, and all the things which we have described will be manifested more clearly.
Thus far, we have spoken the truth concerning her as she appears at present, but we must remember also that we have seen her only in a condition which may be compared to that of the sea god Gluckus, whose original image can hardly be discerned because his natural members are broken off and crushed and damaged by their waves in all sorts of ways, in encrustations have grown over them of seaweed and shells and stones, so that he is more like some monster than he is to his own natural form, and the soul which we behold is in a similar condition, disfigured by ten thousand hills, but not there, Glucken, not there must we look. Where the? At her love of wisdom, let us see whom she affects, and what society and converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal, and eternal, and divine. So how different she would become if wholly following the superior principle, and born by a divine impulse out of the ocean in which she now is, and disengaged from the stones and shells and things of earth and rock which in wild varieties spring up around her because she feeds upon earth, and is overgrown by good things of this life as they are turned, then would we see her as she is, and know whether she have one shape or many, or what her nature is, of her affections and of the forms which she takes, in this present life I think that we have now said enough.
True, he replied, and thus I said we have fulfilled the conditions of the argument. We have not introduced the rewards and glories of justice, which as you were saying, are to be found in Homer and Hazad, but justice in her own nature has been shown to be best for the soul in her own nature. Let a man do what is just, whether he have the ring of Gaius or not, and even if in addition to the ring of Gaius he puts on a helmet of Hades. Very true, and now Glucken there will be no harm in further enumerating how many and how great are the rewards which justice and the other virtues, procure to the soul from gods and men both in life and after death.
Certainly not, he said. Will you repay me then? What you borrowed in the argument? What did I borrow?
The assumption that the just man should appear unjust and the unjust just. For you were aware of the opinion that even if the true state of the case could not possibly escape the eyes of God and men, still this admission ought to be made for the sake of the argument. In order that pure justice might be weighed against pure injustice, do you remember? I should be much to blame if I had forgotten.
Then, as the causes decided, I demand on behalf of justice that the estimation of which she is held by gods and men, and which we acknowledge to be her due, should now be restored to her by us, since she has been shown to confer reality and not to deceive those who truly possess her, let what has been taken from her be given back, that so she may win that palm of appearance which is hers also, and which she gives to her own. The demand, he said, is just. In the first place, I said, and this is the first thing which you will have to give back, the nature both of the just and unjust is truly known to the gods, granted. And if they are both known to them, one must be the friend and the other the enemy of the gods, as we admit it from the beginning.
True. And the friend of the gods must be supposed to receive from them all things at their best, accepting only such evil as is the necessary consequence of former sins. Certainly. Then this must be our notion of the just man, that even when he is in poverty or sickness, or any other seeming misfortune, all things will in the end work together for good to him, in life and death, for the gods have a care of anyone whose desire is to become just, and to be like God, as far as man can attain the divine likeness by the pursuit of virtue.
Yes, he said, if he is like God, he will surely not be neglected by him. And of the unjust, may not the opposite be supposed. Certainly. Such then are the poems of victory which the gods give the just, that is my conviction.
And what do they receive of men? Look at things as they really are, and you will see that the clever unjust are in the case of runners who run well from the starting place to the goal, but not back again from the goal. They go off at a great pace, but in the end only look foolish, slinking away with their ears straggling on their shoulders, and without a crown. But the true runner comes to the finish and receives the prize in his crown.
And this is the way with the just. He who endures to the end of every action and occasion of his entire life as a good report, and carries off the prize, which men have to bestow. True. End of book 10, part 3.