[33] Tim. 43 C. It is only as a result of this violent and contradictory excitement through the physical perception of Becoming that the soul becomes ἄνους (which is originally foreign to it) ὅταν εἰς σῶμα ἐνδεθῇ θνητόν, 44 A. (It will in time become ἔμφρων once more and can become wise, 44 BC. In the case of the animals, which can be inhabited by the same soul, it will remain always ἄφρων—one may suppose.)
[34] . . . σμικρὸν χρόνον, οὐδὲν μὲν οὖν πρὸς τὸν ἅπαντα (χρόνον). Rp. 498 D.
[35] In accordance with popular thought (but obviously also in perfect seriousness and without any special concession) death is regarded as τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος ἀπαλλαγή, Phd. 64 C; Gorg. 524 B. Hence, it usually happens that the soul μηδέποτε εἰς Ἅιδου καθαρῶς ἀφικέσθαι, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ τοῦ σώματος ἀναπλέα ἐξιέναι, Phd. 83 D. (—ἀεὶ, i.e. with the exception of the few complete φιλόσοφοι that do not need further purification in Hades, and this is, in fact, the doctrine of the Phd. itself; cf. 114 C, 80 E, 81 A.)
[36] Purgatory, punishment and rewards in the other world: Gorg. [482] 523 ff.: Rp. x, c. 13 ff., 614 A ff. (vision of Er, son of Armenios in the continuation of the first version of the πολιτεία); Phd. 110 B–114 C. We must not here go into the details of the individual myths in which it is still perhaps possible to distinguish what parts Plato has taken out of ancient poetry and popular legend and what comes from theological and particularly Orphic doctrinal poetry—or even (Rp. x) from Oriental fables—and how much he has added independently on his own account. (A few remarks will be found in G. Ettig, Acherunt., Leipz. Stud. xiii, 305 ff.; cf. also Döring, Arch. Ges. Phil. 1393, p. 475 ff.; Dieterich, Nekyia, 112 ff.) He usually distinguishes three classes among the souls (only apparently two in Phdr. 249 A): those who are affected with curable faults, the hopelessly and incurable guilty (who are condemned to eternal punishment in Tartaros without rebirth: Gorg. 525 C ff.; Rp. 615 D; Phd. 113 E); and, thirdly the ὁσίως βεβιωκότες, δίκαιοι καὶ ὅσιοι. This is the system of Gorg. 525 BC, 526 C; Rp. 615 BC. (With these come also the ἄωροι, 615 C, who neither deserve punishment nor reward—of them Er said ἄλλα, οὐκ ἄξια μνήμης. Perhaps older theologians had already concerned themselves with these, not being satisfied with the fate assigned by popular mythology to the ἄωροι—see [Append. vii]—it would have been a natural subject for the professional attention of these Schoolmen of popular superstition.) In Phd. 113 D ff. the question is even more minutely dealt with. Here we have (1) οἱ μέσως βεβιωκότες (che visser’ senz’ infamia e senza lode), (2) οἱ ἀνιάτως ἔχοντες, (3) οἱ ἰάσιμα ἡμαρτηκότες, (4) οἱ διαφερόντως ὁσίως βεβιωκότες, and (5) the élite of these ὅσιοι, the real philosophers, οἱ φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθεράμενοι—these are not born again. To the other classes are assigned their appropriate purgation, reward or punishment. Here classes 2, 3, and 4 correspond to the three classes of Rp. and Gorg. (which may perhaps be modelled on the divisions popularized by older theological poetry—see above, chap. xii, [n. 62]). Novelties are the μέσως βεβιωκότες and the true philosophers. For these last the abode upon the μακάρων νῆσοι (Gorg. 526 C), or, what comes to the same thing, upon the surface of the earth (Phd. 114 BC), is no longer sufficient. They go ἐς μακάρων τινὰς εὐδαιμονίας (115 D), which means that they are really freed entirely from temporal existence and enter into the unchanging “Now” of eternity. (As far as the complete escape of the φιλόσοφοι is concerned the account in Rp. x, c. 13 [614 A–615 C] does not contradict that of Phd. The only reason why this is not mentioned in Rp. is that these absolutely enfranchized souls could not appear upon the λειμών there mentioned: 614 E.)—Of these various accounts that of Phd. seems to be the latest. In Lg. there is yet another indefinite allusion to the necessity of undergoing a judgment after death: 904 C ff.
[37] Choice of their new state of life by the souls in the other world, Rp. 617 E ff.; Phdr. 249 B. The purpose of this arrangement is made clear by Rp. 617 E; αἰτία ἑλομένου· θεὸς ἀναίτιος (cf. Tim. 42 D). It is, in fact, a theodicy and at the same time secures the complete responsibility of every man for his own character and deeds (cf. 619 C). There is no idea of founding a determinist theory upon it.—The choice is guided by the special character of the soul (which it has developed in its previous life) and its tendencies (cf. Phd. 81 E; Lg. 904 BC). For the same reason there is no choice on the occasion of the soul’s first ἐνσωμάτωσις (Tim. 41 E): after that, in later births, a definite descent in well-marked stages in peius, can be observed, each conditioned by the degree of corruption attaching to the soul (Tim. 42 B ff.). [483] All of which can very well co-exist with a choice of its own fate by the soul conditioned by its own nature.
[38] ξυμμετρία, Tim. 87 D.
[39] At least three (as in Pi., O. ii, 75 ff.), acc. to Phdr. 249 A. Between each two births there is an intervening period of 1,000 years (Rp. 615 A; Phdr. 249 AB). This cuts away the ground from such myths as that of the various “lives” of Pythagoras (see [Append. x]).
[40] Incarnation in animals, Phdr. 249 B; Rp. 618 A, 620 ff.; Phd. 81 E; Tim. 42 BC. That this part was any less seriously meant than any other part of his doctrine of metempsychosis is not in the least suggested by Plato himself. Acc. to Tim. 91 D–92 B, all the animals have souls that had once inhabited the bodies of men (see Procl., in Rp. ii, 332 Kroll; he is trying to harmonize Tim. and Phdr.). In fact, the idea that a man’s soul might inhabit an animal was precisely the great difficulty in Plato’s doctrine of the soul. If, as is said in Phdr. 249 BC, a real animal-soul cannot enter into a human body because it does not possess νόησις or the power of “dialectic” which constitutes the essential part of the human soul’s activity, how can a real human soul enter into an animal’s body when it is obvious that as an animal it can make no use of its νόησις? (For this very reason many Platonists—those who were not satisfied with ingenious or artificial interpretations: cf. Sallust., de Dis 20; Procl., in Tim. 329 DE—denied the entrance of the human soul into animals; cf. Aug. CD. X, 30, and partic. Nemes., p. 116 Matth. Lucr. iii, 760, already seems to have such Platonists in mind.) The λογιστικόν of the soul seems to be absent from animals or to be present but undeveloped as in children: Rp. iv, 441 A B (or does it remain permanently bound in ἀφροσύνη? see above, this chap., [n. 33]. Just such a theory put forward by exponents of μετεμψύχωσις who would make the ψυχή always the same but not always equally active, is attacked by Alex. Aphr., de An., p. 27 Br.). But acc. to the later doctrine of Plato the λογιστικόν comprises the whole contents of the soul before it enters a body; if the animals do not possess it then they do not strictly speaking possess a soul (θυμός and ἐπιθυμία in themselves are not the soul; they are only added to the soul when it first enters into a body). It seems certain that Plato adopted the view that the soul migrates into the bodies of animals from the theologians and Pythagoreans, while he still believed that the soul was not pure power of thought but also (as still in Phdr.) included θυμός and ἐπιθυμία in itself. Later, because it was difficult to do without the migration-theory of the soul on account of its ethical importance, he allowed the idea to remain side by side with his reorganized and sublimated doctrine of the soul. (On the other hand, metempsychosis into plants—which are certainly also ζῷα, though they only have to τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν, Tim. 77 B—was never adopted by him from Empedokles; cf. Procl., in Rp. ii, 333 Kr., and for the same reason: this idea was unimportant and indifferent from an ethical point of view.)
[41] τὴν εἰς τὸν νοητὸν τόπον τῆς ψυχῆς ἄνοδον, Rp. 517 B.
[42] ἐπειδὴ δὲ ἀγένητόν ἐστι, καὶ ἀδιάφθορον αὐτὸ ἀναγκη εἶναι, Phdr. 245 D—the ancient argument from the fact that the individual soul (and of this Plato is speaking) has no beginning to the conclusion that its life can have no end.