[83] Plato, Phædon, p. 105 C-E. Ἀποκρίνου δή, ᾧ ἂν τί ἐγγένηται σώματι, ζῶν ἔσται; Ὧι ἂν ψυχή, ἔφη. Οὐκοῦν ἀεὶ τοῦτο οὕτως ἔχει; Πῶς γὰρ οὐχί; ἦ δ’ ὅς. Ἡ ψυχὴ ἄρα ὅ, τι ἂν αὐτὴ κατάσχῃ, ἀεὶ ἥκει ἐπ’ ἐκεῖνο φέρουσα ζωήν; Ἥκει μέντοι, ἔφη. Πότερον δ’ ἔστι τι ζωῇ ἐναντίον, ἢ οὐδέν; Ἔστιν, ἔφη. Τί; Θάνατος. οὐκοῦν ἡ ψυχὴ τὸ ἐναντίον ᾧ αὐτὴ ἐπιφέρει ἀεὶ οὐ μή ποτε δέξηται, ὡς ἐκ τῶν πρόσθεν ὡμολόγηται; Καὶ μάλα σφόδρα, ἔφη ὁ Κέβης.… Ὃ δ’ ἂν θάνατον μὴ δέχηται, τί καλοῦμεν; Ἀθάνατον, ἔφη. Ἀθάνατον ἄρα ἡ ψυχή; Ἀθάνατον.
Nemesius, the Christian bishop of Emesa, declares that the proofs given by Plato of the immortality of the soul are knotty and difficult to understand, such as even adepts in philosophical study can hardly follow. His own belief in it he rests upon the inspiration of the Christian Scriptures (Nemesius de Nat. Homin. c. 2. p. 55, ed. 1565).
The proof of immortality includes pre-existence as well as post-existence — animals as well as man — also the metempsychosis or translation of the soul from one body to another.
Such is the ground upon which Sokrates rests his belief in the immortality of the soul. The doctrine reposes, in Plato’s view, upon the assumption of eternal, self-existent, unchangeable, Ideas or Forms:[84] upon the congeniality of nature, and inherent correlation, between these Ideas and the Soul: upon the fact, that the soul knows these Ideas, which knowledge must have been acquired in a prior state of existence: and upon the essential participation of the soul in the Idea of life, so that it cannot be conceived as without life, or as dead.[85] The immortality of the soul is conceived as necessary and entire, including not merely post-existence, but also pre-existence. In fact the reference to an anterior time is more essential to Plato’s theory than that to a posterior time; because it is employed to explain the cognitions of the mind, and the identity of learning with reminiscence: while Simmias, who even at the close is not without reserve on the subject of the post-existence, proclaims an emphatic adhesion on that of the pre-existence.[86] The proof, moreover, being founded in great part on the Idea of Life, embraces every thing living, and is common to animals[87] (if not to plants) as well as to men: and the metempsychosis — or transition of souls not merely from one human body to another, but also from the human to the animal body, and vice versâ — is a portion of the Platonic creed.
[84] Plato, Phædon, pp. 76 D-E, 100 B-C. It is remarkable that in the Republic also, Sokrates undertakes to demonstrate the immortality of the soul: and that in doing so he does not make any reference or allusion to the arguments used in the Phædon, but produces another argument totally distinct and novel: an argument which Meiners remarks truly to be quite peculiar to Plato, Republic, x. pp. 609 E, 611 C; Meiners, Geschichte der Wissenschaften, vol. ii. p. 780.
[85] Zeller, Philosophie der Griech. Part ii. p. 267.
“Die Seele ist ihrem Begriffe nach dasjenige, zu dessen Wesen es gehört zu leben — sie kann also in keinem Augenblicke als nicht lebend gedacht werden: In diesem ontologischen Beweis für die Unsterblichkeit, laufen nicht bloss alle die einzelnen Beweise des Phædon zusammen, sondern derselbe wird auch schon im Phaedrus vorgetragen,” &c. Compare Phædrus, p. 245.
Hegel, in his Geschichte der Philosophie (Part ii. pp. 186-187-189, ed. 2), maintains that Plato did not conceive the soul as a separate thing or reality — that he did not mean to affirm, in the literal sense of the words, its separate existence either before or after the present life — that he did not descend to so crude a conception (zu dieser Rohheit herabzusinken) as to represent to himself the soul as a thing, or to enquire into its duration or continuance after the manner of a thing — that Plato understood the soul to exist essentially as the Universal Notion or Idea, the comprehensive aggregate of all other Ideas, in which sense he affirmed it to be immortal — that the descriptions which Plato gives of its condition, either before life or after death, are to be treated only as poetical metaphors. There is ingenuity in this view of Hegel, and many separate expressions of Plato receive light from it: but it appears to me to refine away too much. Plato had in his own mind and belief both the soul as a particular thing — and the soul as an universal. His language implies sometimes the one sometimes the other.
[86] Plato, Phædon, pp. 92, 107 B.
[87] See what Sokrates says about the swans, Phædon, p. 85 A-B.