[3] Ap. 29 A B, 37 B.
[4] Xen. Cyrop. 8, 7, 17, makes the dying Kyros justify his faith that the soul survives the body rather on the lines of popular belief and the cult of souls than from would-be-philosophical considerations (§ 20; see above, chap. v, [n. 178]). In spite of this he allows the question to remain undecided—as though of little importance—whether, in fact, the soul then leaves the body and lives on or whether μένουσα ἡ ψυχὴ ἐν τῷ σώματι συναποθνήσκει, § 21. In either eventuality he will after death μηδὲν ἔτι κακὸν παθεῖν, § 27.—Arist., SE. xvii, p. 176b, 16, πότερον φθαρτὴ ἢ ἀθάνατος ἡ ψυχὴ τῶν ζῴων, οὐ διώρισται τοῖς πολλοῖς—in this question they ἀμφιδοξοῦσι.
[5] Pl., Phd. 70 A, 77 B, 80 D. This belief of the πολλοί and παῖδες looks indeed much more like a piece of superstition than a denial of the continued life of the ψυχή (in which light Pl. represents it). We have already met with the soul as a wind-spirit more than once: when it leaves the body the other wind-spirits carry it off and away with themselves (cf. above, chap. i, [n. 10]), esp. when a high wind is blowing (cf. the German popular belief that when a man hangs himself a storm arises: Grimm, p. 635: cf. Mannhardt, Germ. Myth. 270 n. In other words, the “furious host”, the personified storm-spirits—Grimm, p. 632; cf. [Append. vii]—come and carry away with them the poor unquiet soul).
[6] Cf. Pl. Rp. 330 D E. There is more about these matters in the speech against Aristogeiton, [D.] 25, 52–3. In spite of the popular form in which it is put such an opinion is not to be claimed at once as a popular and generally held belief: the author of this speech is a follower of Orpheus, a fact which he himself betrays in § 11.
[7] Pl. Rp. 608 D.
[8] It is probable that in the Πολιτεία two essentially distinct stages of Platonic doctrine are found side by side with only an external bond of union, and that in particular what is said in Bk. v, 471 C ff., to the end of Bk. vii about the φιλόσοφοι, their education and position in the state (and outside politics), is an extraneous addition to the completed picture of the καλλίπολις which is given in Bks. ii—v, 471 C: an afterthought not originally included in the plan of the whole book and not anticipated in the beginning of it. This seems to me to emerge unmistakably from a careful and unprejudiced study of the whole work and to have been completely demonstrated by Krohn and Pfleiderer. That Plato himself regarded the first sketch of an ideal state as a separate work (which may even have been actually published separately: Gellius, 14, 3, 3), is shown by the beginning of the Timaeus. Here—with the implication of quite a different staging of the dialogue and a different introduction from what we now read in Rp., Bk. i, c. 1—ii, c. 9—we have an exact recapitulation of the subject of the inquiry in the Πολιτεία from ii, 10, 367 E, to v, 460 C, with the definite statement (19 AB) that thus far and no farther had the discussion gone “yesterday”. The stages in which the whole work was composed seem then to be divisible as follows: (1) Sketch of the state of the [478] φύλακες (in brief) embodied in a dialogue between Sokrates, Kriton, Timaios, Hermokrates, and another companion: in subject matter agreeing (apart from the introduction) substantially with Rp. ii, 10, 367 E, to v, 460 C. (2) Continuation of this sketch in the story of ancient Athens and the people of Atlantis. Its completion is transferred elsewhere because in the meantime the Πολιτεία itself has been extended and into the empty framework of the Τίμ. thus left available the account of the creation of the world given by Timaios is very loosely inserted: the frame-narratives of the Τίμαιος and Κριτίας never being completed. (3) Continuation of the first sketch (still virtually along the lines originally laid down) in Rp. v, 460 D–471 C (in which 466 E ff. is a brief account of the behaviour of the state in time of war—a substitute for the longer and more detailed statement on the same subject in Tim. 20 B f.), and in viii, ix (the greater part), and x, second half (608 C ff.). (4) Finally the whole work receives its crown and completion in a section that was, however, not foreseen in the older parts of the design, for it disturbs part of that original design’s independence and validity and does more than merely supplement it—the introduction of the φιλόσοφοι and their special type of “virtue”, v, 471 C–vii fin.; ix, 580 D–588 A; x, part 1 (to 608 B).—Then came the final editing of the whole: insertion of the new introduction, i, 1–ii, 9 (not necessarily left until the completion of the whole); necessary bringing into harmony of the divergent elements by a few excisions, qualifications, etc.; and probably a literary revision and polishing of the whole book.—The whole thus finally produced reveals its origin clearly enough in the outgrowing of a first plan and its replacement by a second that has naturally suggested itself in the course of the author’s own continued development. At the same time Plato could claim that the whole edifice, in spite of much extension and rebuilding in a different style of architecture, should be considered as a unity in the form in which he finally left it (as a noteworthy monument, too, of his own alteration of view). He himself in the sublimest moments of his mystic flight in Bks. vi and vii in no sense rejects the groundwork of the καλλίπολις of ii–v (though not, indeed, designed originally as such), but merely reduces it to the position of a substructure which remains a necessary and sole foundation even for the mystic pinnacle and preserves its absolute validity for the great majority of the citizens who inhabit the καλλίπολις (for the φιλόσοφοι are still regarded as very few in number) for whom it is a school for the exhibition of political virtue.—In the first sketch, then, there is no trace of a doctrine of immortality that can be properly so called, and the popular belief in a continued life of the soul after death has for Plato, at this stage at least, no serious weight or importance. The φύλακες are not to trouble about what may follow death (iii, 1 ff.); the main purpose in view is to show that δικαιοσύνη is its own reward, and the rewards which are anticipated for it after death are only ironically alluded to (ii, 363 CD; cf. 366 AB); Sokrates means to do without such hopes (366 E ff.). The ἀθανασία ψυχῆς is only introduced as a paradox in x, 608 D (in the continuation of the first sketch) for which proof is sought; whereupon the importance of the question as to what may await the soul after death emerges (614 A ff.) as well as the necessity of taking thought not for this short life but ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἅπαντος χρόνον (608 C), of which nothing had been said or could have been said in iii–v. Finally in vi–vii the indestructibility of the soul is implied in its sublimest form. It is evident that Plato’s own views on these matters had undergone changes in the course of time, and that these [479] changes are reflected in the various strata of the Πολιτεία even after its final editing. (Cf. Krohn, Platon. Staat, p. 265; Pfleiderer, Platon. Frage, p. 23 f., 35 ff., 1888.)
[9] The Appearance βούλεται, ὀρέγεται, προθυμεῖται εἶναι what its Idea is: Phd. 74 D, 75 AB. The Ideas are thus teleological causes like the divine νοῦς of Aristotle which, unmoved itself, κινεῖ ὡς ἐρώμενον (just as matter has a desire for form, potentiality for actuality). Plato it is true did not keep to this method of illustrating rather than explaining the relation between the Appearance and the unmoved Idea.
[10] νοήσει μετὰ λόγου περιληπτόν, Tim. 27 D. οὗ οὔποτ’ ἂν ἄλλῳ ἐπιλάβοιο ἢ τῷ τῆς διανοίας λογισμῷ, Phd. 79 A. αὐτὴ δι’ αὑτῆς ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ κοινὰ φαίνεται περὶ πάντων ἐπισκοπεῖν, Tht. 185 D.
[11] The prius in the case of man is really the perception of his own mental activity in νόησις μετὰ λόγου as being a process essentially different from δόξα μετ’ αἰσθήσεως ἀλόγου. It is inference from the former alone that leads to the conclusion that the νοούμενα exist: Tim. 51 B–52 A. It is the Ideas that we grasp in abstract thought: αὐτὴ ἡ οὐσία ἧς λόγον δίδομεν καὶ ἐρωτῶντες καὶ ἀποκρινόμενοι, Phd. 78 D.
[12] The ἐπιστήμη which διαλεκτική alone can give (Rp. 533 DE) is ἀναμάρτητος (Rp. 477 E).