previous next
[611b] for reason will not suffer it nor yet must we think that in its truest nature the soul is the kind of thing that teems with infinite diversity and unlikeness and contradiction in and with itself.1” “How am I to understand that?” he said. “It is not easy,” said I, “for a thing to be immortal that is composed of many elements2 not put together in the best way, as now appeared to us3 to be the case with the soul.” “It is not likely.” “Well, then, that the soul is immortal our recent argument and our other4 proofs would constrain us to admit. But to know its true nature

1 The idea of self-contradiction is frequent in Plato. See What Plato said, p. 505, on Gorg. 482 B-C.

2 σύνθετον: Cf. Phaedo 78 C, Plotinus, Enneades i. 1. 12, Berkeley, Principles, 141: “We have shown that the soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended; and it is consequently incorruptible. . . . cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance.” See also Zeller, Ph. d. Gr. ii. 1, pp. 828-829.

3 603 D. see also Frutiger, Mythes de Platon, pp. 90 f.

4 Such as are given in the Phaedo, Phaedrus, and perhaps elsewhere.

Creative Commons License
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.

load focus Notes (James Adam)
load focus Greek (1903)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: