wait his sentence. Had his bones and muscles been left by him
to their own ideas of right, they would long ago have taken themselves
off. But surely there is a great confusion of the cause and condition
in all this. And this confusion also leads people into all sorts of
erroneous theories about the position and motions of the earth. None of
them know how much stronger than any Atlas is the power of the best. But
this 'best' is still undiscovered; and in enquiring after the cause, we
can only hope to attain the second best.

Now there is a danger in the contemplation of the nature of things, as
there is a danger in looking at the sun during an eclipse, unless the
precaution is taken of looking only at the image reflected in the water,
or in a glass. (Compare Laws; Republic.) 'I was afraid,' says Socrates,
'that I might injure the eye of the soul. I thought that I had better
return to the old and safe method of ideas. Though I do not mean to say
that he who contemplates existence through the medium of ideas sees
only through a glass darkly, any more than he who contemplates actual
effects.'

If the existence of ideas is granted to him, Socrates is of opinion that
he will then have no difficulty in proving the immortality of the soul.
He will only ask for a further admission:--that beauty is the cause of
the beautiful, greatness the cause of the great, smallness of the small,
and so on of other things. This is a safe and simple answer, which
escapes the contradictions of greater and less (greater by reason of
that which is smaller!), of addition and subtraction, and the other
difficulties of relation. These subtleties he is for leaving to wiser
heads than his own; he prefers to test ideas by the consistency of their
consequences, and, if asked to give an account of them, goes back to
some higher idea or hypothesis which appears to him to be the best,
until at last he arrives at a resting-place. (Republic; Phil.)

The doctrine of ideas, which has long ago received the assent of the
Socratic circle, is now affirmed by the Phliasian auditor to command
the assent of any man of sense. The narrative is continued; Socrates is
desirous of explaining how opposite ideas may appear to co-exist but do
not really co-exist in the same thing or person. For example, Simmias
may be said to have greatness and also smallness, because he is greater
than Socrates and less than Phaedo. And yet Simmias is not really great
and also small, but o