tions of the strings out of which she is
composed; she can only follow, she cannot lead them?

It must be so, he replied.

And yet do we not now discover the soul to be doing the exact
opposite--leading the elements of which she is believed to be composed;
almost always opposing and coercing them in all sorts of ways throughout
life, sometimes more violently with the pains of medicine and gymnastic;
then again more gently; now threatening, now admonishing the desires,
passions, fears, as if talking to a thing which is not herself, as Homer
in the Odyssee represents Odysseus doing in the words--

'He beat his breast, and thus reproached his heart: Endure, my heart;
far worse hast thou endured!'

Do you think that Homer wrote this under the idea that the soul is a
harmony capable of being led by the affections of the body, and not
rather of a nature which should lead and master them--herself a far
diviner thing than any harmony?

Yes, Socrates, I quite think so.

Then, my friend, we can never be right in saying that the soul is a
harmony, for we should contradict the divine Homer, and contradict
ourselves.

True, he said.

Thus much, said Socrates, of Harmonia, your Theban goddess, who has
graciously yielded to us; but what shall I say, Cebes, to her husband
Cadmus, and how shall I make peace with him?

I think that you will discover a way of propitiating him, said Cebes; I
am sure that you have put the argument with Harmonia in a manner that
I could never have expected. For when Simmias was mentioning his
difficulty, I quite imagined that no answer could be given to him, and
therefore I was surprised at finding that his argument could not sustain
the first onset of yours, and not impossibly the other, whom you call
Cadmus, may share a similar fate.

Nay, my good friend, said Socrates, let us not boast, lest some evil eye
should put to flight the word which I am about to speak. That, however,
may be left in the hands of those above, while I draw near in Homeric
fashion, and try the mettle of your words. Here lies the point:--You
want to have it proven to you that the soul is imperishable and
immortal, and the philosopher who is confident in death appears to you
to have but a vain and foolish confidence, if he believes that he will
fare better in the world below than one who has led another sort of
life, unless he can prove this; and you say that the demonstration of
the strength and divinity of the soul, and