[43] This much may be conceded to Teichmüller’s observations. “The individual, and the individual soul, is not an independent principle but only a resultant of the compounding of the Idea and the principle of Becoming”—though this is not how Plato regards the [484] matter; hence in Plato—“the individual is not eternal (i.e. not necessarily), and the eternal Principles are not individual”, Stud. z. Ges. d. Begr., p. 115, 142 (1874). But all that Teichmüller has to say under this head is in reality only a criticism of the Platonic doctrine of the soul and does not help us to determine what exactly that doctrine was. Plato speaks always of the immortality, i.e. the eternity, of the individual soul; nowhere does he confine indestructibility to the “common nature” of the soul; and this fact is not even remotely explained by appealing as Teichmüller does to an alleged “orthodoxy” to which Plato is supposed to be accommodating his words. If from no other passage we should be obliged to conclude definitely from Rp. 611 A that Plato believed in the existence of a plurality of souls and in their indestructibility: ἀεὶ ἂν εἶεν αἱ αὐταί (ψυχαί). οὔτε γὰρ ἄν που ἐλάττους γένοιντο μηδεμιᾶς ἀπολλυμένης, οὔτε αὗ πλείους. Here the predicate of the first sentence is indubitably εἶεν only; it is affirmed that always the same souls will exist, not that αἱ αὐταὶ εἶεν (“the souls are always the same ones”) as Teichmüller supposes, Platon. Frage, 7 ff., and it is asserted with all possible plainness that the plurality of individual souls, of which a definite number exist, is indestructible.
[44] E.g. appeal made to τελεταί, παλαιοὶ λόγοι ἐν ἀπορρήτοις λεγόμενοι, and particularly to Orphic doctrine, in those places where he is speaking of the inward difference between the soul and all that is corporeal, of the soul’s “death” in earthly life, of its enclosure in the σῶμα as its σῆμα in punishment of its misdeeds—of punishment and purification after death in Ἅιδης, of the migration of the soul, its imperishability, dwelling of the pure in the neighbourhood of the gods (Phd. 61 BC, 63 C, 70 C, 81 A, 107 D ff.; Gorg. 493 A; Crat. 400 BC; Men. 81 A; Lg. 870 DE, 872 E). This also is the origin of the tendency to compare the highest philosophical activity, or the beholding of the Ideas before all time, with the ἐποπτεῖαι of the mysteries: Phdr. 250 B; cf. Lob., Agl. 128.
[45] Nine (an ancient sacred number) stages from the φιλόσοφος downwards to the τύραννος, Phdr. 248 DE.
[46] This is frequently stated in individual myths; cf. also Phd. 85 CD.
[47] Phdr. 250 C (ὄστρεον): Rp. 611 CD (Glaukos).
[48] τὴν τοῦ ὄντος θήραν, Phd. 66 C (ὅταν αὐτὴ καθ’ αὑτὴν πραγματεύηται ἡ ψυχὴ περὶ τὰ ὄντα, Tht. 187 A. αὐτῇ τῇ ψυχῇ θεατέον αὐτὰ τὰ πράγματα, Phd. 66 D).
[49] ξυναίτια, Tim. 46 C ff. νοῦς καὶ ἀνάγκη, 47 E ff. (ὁ θεός is πολλῶν ἀναίτιος, namely τῶν κακῶν, Rp. 379 AC).
[50] The σῶμα with which the soul is bound up is a κακόν, Phd. 66 B (δεσμοί of the soul, 67 D). The κακά in the world are regularly said to come from matter until in Lg., side by side with the εὐεργέτις ψυχή of the world, there appears an evil World-Soul that works evil.
[51] Particularly in Phd., καθαρεύειν—κάθαρσις—οἱ φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθηράμενοι in contrast with the ἀκάθαρτοι ψυχαί, 67 A ff., 69 BC, 80 E, 82 D, 108 B, 114 C. Katharsis of the soul through dialectic Soph. 230 C ff. Express allusion to the analogous requirement of κάθαρσις by οἱ τὰς τελετὰς ἡμῖν καταστήσαντες, Phd. 69 C.
[52] κάθαρσις εἶναι τοῦτο ξυμβαίνει, τὸ χωρίζειν ὅ τι μάλιστα ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος τὴν ψυχὴν καὶ ἐθίσαι αὐτὴν καθ’ αὑτὴν πανταχόθεν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος συναγείρεσθαί τε καὶ ἁθροίζεσθαι, καὶ οἰκεῖν κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν καὶ ἐν τῷ νῦν παρόντι καὶ ἐν τῷ ἔπειτα μόνην καθ’ αὑτῆν, ἐκλυομένην ὥσπερ ἐκ δεσμῶν ἐκ τοῦ σώματος, Phd. 67 C. Thus δικαιοσύνη and [485] ἀνδρεία, and more particularly φρόνησις, are καθαρμός τις, 69 BC. λύσις τε καὶ καθαρμός of φιλοσοφία, 82 D.