s
from pleasures and desires and pains and fears, as far as she is
able; reflecting that when a man has great joys or sorrows or fears or
desires, he suffers from them, not merely the sort of evil which might
be anticipated--as for example, the loss of his health or property which
he has sacrificed to his lusts--but an evil greater far, which is the
greatest and worst of all evils, and one of which he never thinks.

What is it, Socrates? said Cebes.

The evil is that when the feeling of pleasure or pain is most intense,
every soul of man imagines the objects of this intense feeling to be
then plainest and truest: but this is not so, they are really the things
of sight.

Very true.

And is not this the state in which the soul is most enthralled by the
body?

How so?

Why, because each pleasure and pain is a sort of nail which nails
and rivets the soul to the body, until she becomes like the body, and
believes that to be true which the body affirms to be true; and from
agreeing with the body and having the same delights she is obliged to
have the same habits and haunts, and is not likely ever to be pure at
her departure to the world below, but is always infected by the body;
and so she sinks into another body and there germinates and grows,
and has therefore no part in the communion of the divine and pure and
simple.

Most true, Socrates, answered Cebes.

And this, Cebes, is the reason why the true lovers of knowledge are
temperate and brave; and not for the reason which the world gives.

Certainly not.

Certainly not! The soul of a philosopher will reason in quite another
way; she will not ask philosophy to release her in order that when
released she may deliver herself up again to the thraldom of pleasures
and pains, doing a work only to be undone again, weaving instead of
unweaving her Penelope's web. But she will calm passion, and follow
reason, and dwell in the contemplation of her, beholding the true
and divine (which is not matter of opinion), and thence deriving
nourishment. Thus she seeks to live while she lives, and after death she
hopes to go to her own kindred and to that which is like her, and to be
freed from human ills. Never fear, Simmias and Cebes, that a soul which
has been thus nurtured and has had these pursuits, will at her departure
from the body be scattered and blown away by the winds and be nowhere
and nothing.

When Socrates had done speaking, for a considerable time there was
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