[611a]
either its own or alien, it is evident that it must
necessarily exist always, and that if it always exists it is
immortal.” “Necessarily,” he said.“Let this, then,” I said,
“be assumed to be so. But if it is so, you will observe that these
souls must always be the same. For if none perishes they could not, I
suppose, become fewer nor yet more numerous.1 For if any class of
immortal things increased you are aware that its increase would come from
the mortal and all things would end by becoming immortal.2” “You say truly.”
“But,” said I, “we must not suppose this,
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.