"Some we do," they replied, "and others not."
"What, then," he proceeded, "do you say about that argument in which we asserted that knowledge is reminiscence, and that, this being the case, our soul must necessarily have existed somewhere before it was inclosed in the body?"
[93]. "I, indeed," replied Cebes "was both then wonderfully persuaded by it, and now persist in it, as in no other argument."
"And I, too," said Simmias, "am of the same mind, and should very much wonder if I should ever think otherwise on that point."
"Then," Socrates said, "you must needs think otherwise, my Theban friend, if this opinion holds good, that harmony is something compounded, and that the soul is a kind of harmony that results from the parts compacted together in the body. For surely you will not allow yourself to say that harmony was composed prior to the things from which it required to be composed Would you allow this?"
"By no means, Socrates" he replied.
"Do you perceive, then," he said, "that this result from what you say, when you assert that the soul existed before it came into a human form and body, but that it was composed from things that did not yet exist? For harmony is not such as that to which you compare it, but first the lyre, and the chords, and the sounds yet unharmonized, exist, and, last of all, harmony is produced, and first perishes. How, then, will this argument accord with that?"
"Not at all," said Simmias.
[94]. "And yet," he said, "if in any argument, there ought to be an accordance in one respecting harmony."
"There ought," said Simmias.