is the only time which remains.

Yes, my friend, but if so, when do we lose them? for they are not in
us when we are born--that is admitted. Do we lose them at the moment of
receiving them, or if not at what other time?

No, Socrates, I perceive that I was unconsciously talking nonsense.

Then may we not say, Simmias, that if, as we are always repeating, there
is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and an absolute essence of all
things; and if to this, which is now discovered to have existed in our
former state, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them,
finding these ideas to be pre-existent and our inborn possession--then
our souls must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be
no force in the argument? There is the same proof that these ideas must
have existed before we were born, as that our souls existed before we
were born; and if not the ideas, then not the souls.

Yes, Socrates; I am convinced that there is precisely the same necessity
for the one as for the other; and the argument retreats successfully
to the position that the existence of the soul before birth cannot be
separated from the existence of the essence of which you speak. For
there is nothing which to my mind is so patent as that beauty, goodness,
and the other notions of which you were just now speaking, have a most
real and absolute existence; and I am satisfied with the proof.

Well, but is Cebes equally satisfied? for I must convince him too.

I think, said Simmias, that Cebes is satisfied: although he is the most
incredulous of mortals, yet I believe that he is sufficiently convinced
of the existence of the soul before birth. But that after death the soul
will continue to exist is not yet proven even to my own satisfaction.
I cannot get rid of the feeling of the many to which Cebes was
referring--the feeling that when the man dies the soul will be
dispersed, and that this may be the extinction of her. For admitting
that she may have been born elsewhere, and framed out of other elements,
and was in existence before entering the human body, why after having
entered in and gone out again may she not herself be destroyed and come
to an end?

Very true, Simmias, said Cebes; about half of what was required has been
proven; to wit, that our souls existed before we were born:--that the
soul will exist after death as well as before birth is the other half of
which the proof is still wanting, and has to be supplied; when t