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← ExitStobaeus, Volume I

Reading language

Book I Chapter 49

15.2 · What holds the earth in place?

That is why one person surrounds the earth with a vortex and so makes it remain beneath the heaven, while another props air beneath it as a support, as though beneath a broad kneading trough. But the power by which things have been placed as well as possible and now lie as they do: this they neither seek nor suppose to possess any divine strength. Instead, they think they may one day discover an Atlas stronger and more immortal than this, holding everything together more fully; they do not believe that what is good and necessary truly comprehends and binds anything.¹³³²

15.3 · A second voyage in search of causes

“I would most gladly become anyone’s pupil in the matter of a cause of that kind, whatever its true character may be. But since I was deprived of it and could neither discover it myself nor learn it from someone else, would you like me to show you, Cebes,” he said, “how I have pursued a second voyage in the search for the cause?”

“Very much indeed,” he said.¹³³³

15.4 · The image of an eclipse

“After this,” he said, “since I had grown weary of examining things that are, I thought I must take care not to suffer what people suffer when they watch and examine the sun in eclipse. For some damage their eyes unless they examine its image in water or something of the kind. I had a similar thought and feared that I might become altogether blind in soul by looking at things with my eyes and trying to grasp them through each of the senses. So I thought I should take refuge in accounts and examine in them the truth of things that are.”¹³³⁴

15.5 · Testing agreement with a premise

“Perhaps, then, the comparison I am making is in a way not quite apt. For I certainly do not concede that someone who examines things that are through accounts examines them in images any more than someone who does so through actual things. At any rate, this is the direction in which I set out. On each occasion I take as a premise the account I judge strongest, and whatever seems to me to agree with it I set down as true, both about the cause and about everything else; whatever does not, as untrue. But I want to tell you more clearly what I mean, for I think you do not understand me yet.”

“No, by Zeus,” said Cebes, “not very well.”¹³³⁵

16.1 · Plato: soul brings life

In the same work.

“Answer me, then,” he said. “What must enter a body for it to be alive?”

“Soul,” he said.

“And is this always so?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Then whatever the soul itself takes possession of, it will always come to it bringing life?”

“It does indeed,” he said.

“Is there something contrary to life, or nothing?”

“There is,” he said.

“What?”

“Death.”

“Then soul will never admit the contrary of what it always brings with it, as has been agreed from what went before?”

“Most certainly,” said Cebes.¹³³⁶

16.2 · What does not admit death

“What, then, do we now call what does not admit the form of the even?”

“Uneven,” he said.

“And what does not admit the just, and what does not admit the musical?”

“Unmusical,” he said, “and the other unjust.”

“Very well. And what do we call what does not admit death?”

“Immortal,” he said.

“Then soul does not admit death?”

“No.”

“Then soul is immortal?”

“Immortal.”

“Very well,” he said. “Shall we say that this, at least, has been demonstrated? Or how does it seem to you?”

“Quite adequately indeed, Socrates.”¹³³⁷

16.3 · The examples of snow and fire

“What, then, Cebes?” he said. “If what is uneven had necessarily to be indestructible, surely three would be indestructible?”

“Of course.”

“Then, if the hot too had necessarily to be indestructible, whenever someone brings heat upon snow, the snow would withdraw, remaining unmelted. For it would not perish, nor would it remain and admit heat.”

“What you say is true,” he said.

“Likewise, I think, if the cold were indestructible, whenever something cold approached fire, the fire would never be extinguished or perish, but would go away intact.”

“Necessarily,” he said.¹³³⁸

16.4 · The additional condition

“Then,” he said, “must we not also ⟨say⟩ this about what is immortal? If what is immortal is also indestructible, soul cannot perish when death approaches it. For, from what has already been said, it will not admit death or be dead, just as three, we said, will not be even, nor indeed will the odd; nor will fire be cold, nor the heat in fire.”¹³³⁹

16.5 · Could one thing perish and another replace it?

“But someone might say: ‘What prevents the odd from not becoming even when the even approaches, as has been agreed, yet perishing, with something even coming to be in its place?’ We could not insist against someone who said this that it does not perish. For what is uneven is not indestructible. If that had been agreed between us, we could readily insist that, when the even approaches, the odd and three go away in withdrawal. We could argue in the same way about fire and heat and the other things. Could we not?”

“Certainly.”¹³⁴⁰

16.6 · Is another argument needed?

“Then in the present case too, concerning what is immortal, if we agree that it is also indestructible, soul would be indestructible as well as immortal. Otherwise, another argument would be needed.”

“But none is needed on that account,” he said. “For hardly anything else could refuse destruction if what is immortal, being everlasting, is to admit destruction.”¹³⁴¹

16.7 · God and the form of life

“God, I suppose,” said Socrates, “and the form of life itself, and anything else that is immortal, would be acknowledged by everyone never to perish.”

“By everyone indeed, by Zeus,” he said, “by human beings, certainly, and still more, I suppose, by gods.”

“Since, then, what is immortal is also imperishable, surely soul too, if it is immortal, would also be indestructible?”

“Entirely necessarily.”¹³⁴²

16.8 · The soul’s departure

“Then when death approaches a human being, it seems that what is mortal in that person dies, while what is immortal goes away intact and imperishable, having withdrawn before death.”

“So it appears.”

“Then most certainly, Cebes,” he said, “our souls will be in Hades.”¹³⁴³

1332.The compressed clause about the best arrangement is interpreted as the power responsible for the present disposition of things. Atlas supplies an image for what supports the whole. The final printed synidein means discerning or comprehending together, and syndeein binding together. The apparatus records Plato’s different pair, “bind together and hold together”; that smoother wording is not substituted.

1333.The “second voyage” names a further route after the desired explanation could not be found. Socrates does not claim here to have achieved the first inquiry’s aim. The next passages describe the change in procedure: examining accounts and using a proposed account to test agreement.

1334.The eclipse supplies an analogy between direct looking and the investigation of reality. Logoi is rendered “accounts,” encompassing reasoned statements rather than words considered only as sounds. The next passage explicitly limits the analogy: Socrates does not concede that investigation through accounts deals more with images than investigation through actual things.

1335.The proposed account is a starting point for testing agreement, not a claim that any attractive statement establishes truth. Symphōnein, “agree,” again has the sense of sounding together. Cebes’ request for clarification is preserved, and the excerpt ends before Socrates supplies the fuller explanation. The next excerpt selected by Stobaeus begins later in the Phaedo.

1336.Phaedo 105c-107a. This selection begins later than excerpt 15. Soul is introduced as what brings life to a body; the refusal to admit life’s contrary relies on an earlier agreement, which this excerpt recalls rather than proving again. “What must enter” renders the compressed opening question without changing its answer.

1337.The negative terms supply the pattern: anartion, not-even; amouson, unmusical; adikon, unjust; athanaton, not subject to death. The reply answers the musical example first and then the just, reversing their order in the question. Athanaton is rendered “immortal,” but indestructibility has yet to be established. The printed neuter with psychē is retained in the Greek.

1338.The scan prints to thermon, “the hot,” in the snow example and to psychron, “the cold,” in the fire example. These readings disrupt the parallel argument. The apparatus records Plato’s athermon, “what does not admit heat,” and apsykton, “what does not admit cooling”; these restore the expected subjects but are not silently substituted. Both examples remain conditional: what excludes a contrary must also be indestructible if its withdrawal rather than destruction is to follow.

1339.Wachsmuth supplies eipein, “say,” from Plato; the addition remains marked on both sides. The sentence distinguishes refusing death from surviving its approach. The further condition “also indestructible” is explicit and should not disappear in translation. The odd, fire, and heat retain their separate places in the comparison.

1340.The objection distinguishes change into a contrary from replacement after destruction. Socrates grants that excluding the contrary does not, by itself, rule out the second possibility. The printed “is not indestructible” is retained; the following conditional makes clear why an additional agreement would change what can be argued.

1341.The conditional is followed by the interlocutor’s assent, supported by treating the immortal as aidion, everlasting. The text thus states the further premise on which the conclusion depends. Scholēi here means “hardly,” not leisure or slowness.

1342.The form of life itself, auto to tēs zōēs eidos, is named separately from god and from any other immortal thing. The reply’s appeal to gods remains part of the dialogue. Adiaphthoron, “imperishable,” and anōlethros, “indestructible,” express the further property being joined to immortality; the unusual printed word order of the final question is retained in Greek.

1343.The concluding sentence is shorter here than in Plato as recorded in the apparatus: further words explicitly calling soul immortal and indestructible are absent from this excerpt and are not inserted. “In Hades” translates en Haidou, the conventional expression for the realm of the dead. The conclusion belongs to Socrates’ argument, with its preceding agreements.