Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

Well, do you think that an immortal thing should be seriously concerned [d] with that short period rather than with the whole of time?

  I suppose not, but what exactly do you mean by this?

  Haven’t you realized that our soul is immortal and never destroyed?

  He looked at me with wonder and said: No, by god, I haven’t. Are you really in a position to assert that?

  I’d be wrong not to, I said, and so would you, for it isn’t difficult.

  It is for me, so I’d be glad to hear from you what’s not difficult about it.

  Listen, then.

  Just speak, and I will.

  Do you talk about good and bad?

  I do.

  And do you think about them the same way I do? [e]

  What way is that?

  The bad is what destroys and corrupts, and the good is what preserves and benefits.

  I do.

  And do you say that there is a good and a bad for everything? For example, ophthalmia for the eyes, sickness for the whole body, blight for grain, rot for wood, rust for iron or bronze. In other words, is there, as I [609] say, a natural badness and sickness for pretty well everything?

  There is.

  And when one of these attaches itself to something, doesn’t it make the thing in question bad, and in the end, doesn’t it disintegrate it and destroy it wholly?

  Of course.

  Therefore, the evil that is natural to each thing and the bad that is peculiar to it destroy it. However, if they don’t destroy it, nothing else will, for the good would never destroy anything, nor would anything neither good nor bad. [b]

  How could they?

  Then, if we discover something that has an evil that makes it bad but isn’t able to disintegrate and destroy it, can’t we infer that it is naturally incapable of being destroyed?

  Probably so.

  Well, what about the soul? Isn’t there something that makes it bad?

  Certainly, all the things we were mentioning: Injustice, licentiousness, cowardice, and lack of learning. [c]

  Does any of these disintegrate and destroy the soul? Keep your wits about you, and let’s not be deceived into thinking that, when an unjust and foolish person is caught, he has been destroyed by injustice, which is evil in a soul. Let’s think about it this way instead: Just as the body is worn out, destroyed, and brought to the point where it is a body no longer by disease, which is evil in a body, so all the things we mentioned just now reach the point at which they cease to be what they are through their own peculiar evil, which attaches itself to them and is present in them. Isn’t that so? [d]

  Yes.

  Then look at the soul in the same way. Do injustice and the other vices that exist in a soul—by their very presence in it and by attaching themselves to it—corrupt it and make it waste away until, having brought it to the point of death, they separate it from the body?

  That’s not at all what they do.

  But surely it’s unreasonable to suppose that a thing is destroyed by the badness proper to something else when it is not destroyed by its own?

  That is unreasonable.

  Keep in mind, Glaucon, that we don’t think that a body is destroyed by the badness of food, whether it is staleness, rottenness, or anything [e] else. But if the badness of the food happens to implant in the body an evil proper to a body, we’ll say that the body was destroyed by its own evil, namely, disease. But, since the body is one thing and food another, we’ll [610] never judge that the body is destroyed by the badness of food, unless it implants in it the body’s own natural and peculiar evil.

  That’s absolutely right.

  By the same argument, if the body’s evil doesn’t cause an evil in the soul that is proper to the soul, we’ll never judge that the soul, in the absence of its own peculiar evil, is destroyed by the evil of something else. We’d never accept that anything is destroyed by an evil proper to something else.

  That’s also reasonable.

  Then let’s either refute our argument and show that we were wrong, or, as long as it remains unrefuted, let’s never say that the soul is destroyed by a fever or any other disease or by killing either, for that matter, not [b] even if the body is cut up into tiny pieces. We mustn’t say that the soul is even close to being destroyed by these things until someone shows us that these conditions of the body make the soul more unjust and more impious. When something has the evil proper to something else in it, but its own peculiar evil is absent, we won’t allow anyone to say that it is [c] destroyed, no matter whether it is a soul or anything else whatever.

  And you may be sure that no one will ever prove that the souls of the dying are made more unjust by death.

  But if anyone dares to come to grips with our argument, in order to avoid having to agree that our souls are immortal, and says that a dying man does become more vicious and unjust, we’ll reply that, if what he says is true, then injustice must be as deadly to unjust people as a disease, [d] and those who catch it must die of it because of its own deadly nature, with the worst cases dying quickly and the less serious dying more slowly. As things now stand, however, it isn’t like that at all. Unjust people do indeed die of injustice, but at the hands of others who inflict the death penalty on them.

  By god, if injustice were actually fatal to those who contracted it, it wouldn’t seem so terrible, for it would be an escape from their troubles. But I rather think that it’s clearly the opposite, something that kills other [e] people if it can, while, on top of making the unjust themselves lively, it even brings them out at night. Hence it’s very far from being deadly to its possessors.

  You’re right, for if the soul’s own evil and badness isn’t enough to kill and destroy it, an evil appointed for the destruction of something else will hardly kill it. Indeed, it won’t kill anything at all except the very thing it is appointed to destroy.

  “Hardly” is right, or so it seems.

  Now, if the soul isn’t destroyed by a single evil, whether its own or something else’s, then clearly it must always be. And if it always is, it [611] is immortal.

  Necessarily so.

  So be it. And if it is so, then you realize that there would always be the same souls, for they couldn’t be made fewer if none is destroyed, and they couldn’t be made more numerous either. If anything immortal is increased, you know that the increase would have to come from the mortal, and then everything would end up being immortal.

  That’s true.

  Then we mustn’t think such a thing, for the argument doesn’t allow it, nor must we think that the soul in its truest nature is full of multicolored variety and unlikeness or that it differs with itself. [b]

  What do you mean?

  It isn’t easy for anything composed of many parts to be immortal if it isn’t put together in the finest way, yet this is how the soul now appeared to us.

  It probably isn’t easy.

  Yet our recent argument and others as well compel us to believe that the soul is immortal. But to see the soul as it is in truth, we must not study it as it is while it is maimed by its association with the body and other evils—which is what we were doing earlier—but as it is in its pure state, [c] that’s how we should study the soul, thoroughly and by means of logical reasoning. We’ll then find that it is a much finer thing than we thought and that we can see justice and injustice as well as all the other things we’ve discussed far more clearly. What we’ve said about the soul is true of it as it appears at present. But the condition in which we’ve studied it is like that of the sea god Glaucus, whose primary nature can’t easily be made out by those who catch glimpses of him. Some of the original parts [d] have been broken off, others have been crushed, and his whole body has been maimed by the waves and by the shells, seaweeds, and stones that have attached themselves to him, so that he looks more like a wild animal than his natural self. The soul, too, is in a similar condition when we study it, beset by many evils. That, Glaucon, is why we have to look somewhere else in order to discover
its true nature.

  To where?

  To its philosophy, or love of wisdom. We must realize what it grasps [e] and longs to have intercourse with, because it is akin to the divine and immortal and what always is, and we must realize what it would become if it followed this longing with its whole being, and if the resulting effort lifted it out of the sea in which it now dwells, and if the many stones and [612] shells (those which have grown all over it in a wild, earthy, and stony profusion because it feasts at those so-called happy feastings on earth) were hammered off it. Then we’d see what its true nature is and be able to determine whether it has many parts or just one and whether or in what manner it is put together. But we’ve already given a decent account, I think, of what its condition is and what parts it has when it is immersed in human life.

  We certainly have.

  And haven’t we cleared away the various other objections to our argument without having to invoke the rewards and reputations of justice, as [b] you said Homer and Hesiod did?9 And haven’t we found that justice itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul—whether it has the ring of Gyges or even it together with the cap of Hades10—should do just things?

  We have. That’s absolutely true.

  Then can there now be any objection, Glaucon, if in addition we return to justice and the rest of virtue both the kind and quantity of wages that [c] they obtain for the soul from human beings and gods, whether in this life or the next?

  None whatever.

  Then will you give me back what you borrowed from me during the discussion?

  What are you referring to in particular?

  I granted your request that a just person should seem unjust and an unjust one just, for you said that, even if it would be impossible for these things to remain hidden from both gods and humans, still, this had to be granted for the sake of argument, so that justice itself could be judged in [d] relation to injustice itself. Don’t you remember that?

  It would be wrong of me not to.

  Well, then, since they’ve now been judged, I ask that the reputation justice in fact has among gods and humans be returned to it and that we agree that it does indeed have such a reputation and is entitled to carry off the prizes it gains for someone by making him seem just. It is already clear that it gives good things to anyone who is just and that it doesn’t deceive those who really possess it.

  [e] That’s a fair request.

  Then won’t you first grant that it doesn’t escape the notice of the gods at least as to which of the two is just and which isn’t?

  We will.

  Then if neither of them escapes the gods’ notice, one would be loved by the gods and the other hated, as we agreed at the beginning.

  That’s right.

  And won’t we also agree that everything that comes to someone who is loved by gods, insofar as it comes from the gods themselves, is the best [613] possible, unless it is the inevitable punishment for some mistake he made in a former life?

  Certainly.

  Then we must suppose that the same is true of a just person who falls into poverty or disease or some other apparent evil, namely, that this will end well for him, either during his lifetime or afterwards, for the gods never neglect anyone who eagerly wishes to become just and who makes himself as much like a god as a human can by adopting a virtuous way of life. [b]

  It makes sense that such a person not be neglected by anyone who is like him.

  And mustn’t we suppose that the opposite is true of an unjust person?

  Definitely.

  Then these are some of the prizes that a just person, but not an unjust one, receives from the gods.

  That’s certainly my opinion.

  What about from human beings? What does a just person get from them? Or, if we’re to tell the truth, isn’t this what happens? Aren’t clever but unjust people like runners who run well for the first part of the course but not for the second? They leap away sharply at first, but they become ridiculous by the end and go off uncrowned, with their ears drooping on their shoulders like those of exhausted dogs, while true runners, on the other hand, get to the end, collect the prizes, and are crowned. And isn’t [c] it also generally true of just people that, towards the end of each course of action, association, or life, they enjoy a good reputation and collect the prizes from other human beings?

  Of course.

  Then will you allow me to say all the things about them that you yourself said about unjust people? I’ll say that it is just people who, when they’re old enough, rule in their own cities (if they happen to want ruling office) [d] and that it is they who marry whomever they want and give their children in marriage to whomever they want. Indeed, all the things that you said about unjust people I now say about just ones. As for unjust people, the majority of them, even if they escape detection when they’re young, are caught by the end of the race and are ridiculed. And by the time they get old, they’ve become wretched, for they are insulted by foreigners and citizens, beaten with whips, and made to suffer those punishments, such as racking and burning, which you rightly described as crude. Imagine [e] that I’ve said that they suffer all such things, and see whether you’ll allow me to say it.

  Of course I will. What you say is right.

  Then these are the prizes, wages, and gifts that a just person receives from gods and humans while he is alive and that are added to the good things that justice itself provides. [614]

  Yes, and they’re very fine and secure ones too.

  Yet they’re nothing in either number or size compared to those that await just and unjust people after death. And these things must also be heard, if both are to receive in full what they are owed by the argument.

  Then tell us about them, for there aren’t many things that would be more pleasant to hear. [b]

  It isn’t, however, a tale of Alcinous that I’ll tell you but that of a brave Pamphylian man called Er, the son of Armenias, who once died in a war.11 When the rest of the dead were picked up ten days later, they were already putrefying, but when he was picked up, his corpse was still quite fresh. He was taken home, and preparations were made for his funeral. But on the twelfth day, when he was already laid on the funeral pyre, he revived and, having done so, told what he had seen in the world beyond. He said that, after his soul had left him, it travelled together with many others [c] until they came to a marvellous place, where there were two adjacent openings in the earth, and opposite and above them two others in the heavens, and between them judges sat. These, having rendered their judgment, ordered the just to go upwards into the heavens through the door on the right, with signs of the judgment attached to their chests, and the unjust to travel downward through the opening on the left, with signs of [d] all their deeds on their backs. When Er himself came forward, they told him that he was to be a messenger to human beings about the things that were there, and that he was to listen to and look at everything in the place. He said that he saw souls departing after judgment through one of the openings in the heavens and one in the earth, while through the other two souls were arriving. From the door in the earth souls came up covered with dust and dirt and from the door in the heavens souls came down [e] pure. And the souls who were arriving all the time seemed to have been on long journeys, so that they went gladly to the meadow, like a crowd going to a festival, and camped there. Those who knew each other exchanged greetings, and those who come up from the earth asked those who came down from the heavens about the things there and were in turn questioned by them about the things below. And so they told their stories [615] to one another, the former weeping as they recalled all they had suffered and seen on their journey below the earth, which lasted a thousand years, while the latter, who had come from heaven, told about how well they had fared and about the inconceivably fine and beautiful sights they had seen. There was much to tell, Glaucon, and it took a long time, but the main point was this: For each in turn of the unjust things they had done and for each in turn of the people
they had wronged, they paid the penalty ten times over, once in every century of their journey. Since a century is [b] roughly the length of a human life, this means that they paid a tenfold penalty for each injustice. If, for example, some of them had caused many deaths by betraying cities or armies and reducing them to slavery or by participating in other wrongdoing, they had to suffer ten times the pain they had caused to each individual. But if they had done good deeds and had become just and pious, they were rewarded according to the same scale. He said some other things about the stillborn and those who had [c] lived for only a short time, but they’re not worth recounting. And he also spoke of even greater rewards or penalties for piety or impiety towards gods or parents and for murder with one’s own hands.

  For example, he said he was there when someone asked another where the great Ardiaeus was. (This Ardiaeus was said to have been tyrant in some city in Pamphylia a thousand years before and to have killed his aged father and older brother and committed many other impious deeds as well.) And he said that the one who was asked responded: “He hasn’t [d] arrived here yet and never will, for this too was one of the terrible sights we saw. When we came near the opening on our way out, after all our sufferings were over, we suddenly saw him together with some others, pretty well all of whom were tyrants (although there were also some private individuals among them who had committed great crimes). They thought that they were ready to go up, but the opening wouldn’t let them [e] through, for it roared whenever one of these incurably wicked people or anyone else who hadn’t paid a sufficient penalty tried to go up. And there were savage men, all fiery to look at, who were standing by, and when they heard the roar, they grabbed some of these criminals and led them away, but they bound the feet, hands, and head of Ardiaeus and the others, threw them down, and flayed them. Then they dragged them out of the [616] way, lacerating them on thorn bushes, and telling every passer-by that they were to be thrown into Tartarus, and explaining why they were being treated in this way.” And he said that of their many fears the greatest each one of them had was that the roar would be heard as he came up and that everyone was immensely relieved when silence greeted him. Such, then, were the penalties and punishments and the rewards corresponding to them. [b]