Plato. Willingly.
Diogenes. Hermes and Pallas! I wanted but a cubit of it, or at most a fathom, and thou art pulling it out by the plethron.
Plato. This is the place in question.
Diogenes. Read it.
Plato. [Reads.] ‘Sayest thou not that death is the opposite of life, and that they spring the one from the other?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What springs then from the living?’ ‘The dead.’ ‘And what from the dead?’ ‘The living.’ ‘Then all things alive spring from the dead.’
Diogenes. Why the repetition? but go on.
Plato. [Reads.] ‘Souls therefore exist after death in the infernal regions.’
Diogenes. Where is the therefore? where is it even as to existence? As to the infernal regions, there is nothing that points toward a proof, or promises an indication. Death neither springs from life, nor life from death. Although death is the inevitable consequence of life, if the observation and experience of ages go for anything, yet nothing shows us, or ever hath signified, that life comes from death. Thou mightest as well say that a barley-corn dies before the germ of another barley-corn grows up from it, than which nothing is more untrue; for it is only the protecting part of the germ that perishes, when its protection is no longer necessary. The consequence, that souls exist after death, cannot be drawn from the corruption of the body, even if it were demonstrable that out of this corruption a live one could rise up. Thou hast not said that the soul is among those dead things which living things must spring from; thou hast not said that a living soul produces a dead soul, or that a dead soul produces a living one.
Plato. No, indeed.
Diogenes. On my faith, thou hast said, however, things no less inconsiderate, no less inconsequent, no less unwise; and this very thing must be said and proved, to make thy argument of any value. Do dead men beget children?