inced. It is therefore necessary, as
it seems, that I should neither allow myself nor any one else to
maintain that the soul is harmony."

95. "But what, Simmias," said he, "if you consider it thus? Does it
appear to you to appertain to harmony, or to any other composition, to
subsist in any other way than the very things do of which it is
composed?"

"By no means."

"And indeed, as I think, neither to do any thing, nor suffer any thing
else, besides what they do or suffer."

He agreed.

"It does not, therefore, appertain to harmony to take the lead of the
things of which it is composed, but to follow them."

He assented.

"It is, then, far from being the case that harmony is moved or sends
forth sounds contrariwise, or is in any other respect opposed to its
parts?"

"Far, indeed," he said.

"What, then? Is not every harmony naturally harmony, so far as it has
been made to accord?"

"I do not understand you," he replied.

"Whether," he said, "if it should be in a greater degree and more fully
made to accord, supposing that were possible, would the harmony be
greater and more full; but if in a less degree and less fully, then
would it be inferior and less full?"

"Certainly."

"Is this, then, the case with the soul that, even in the smallest
extent, one soul is more fully and in a greater degree, or less fully
and in a less degree, this very thing, a soul, than another?"

"In no respect whatever," he replied.

96. "Well, then," he said, "by Jupiter! is one soul said to possess
intelligence and virtue, and to be good, and another folly and vice, and
to be bad? and is this said with truth?"

"With truth, certainly."

"Of those, then, who maintain that the soul is harmony, what will any
one say that these things are in the soul, virtue and vice? Will he call
them another kind of harmony and discord, and say that the one, the good
soul, is harmonized, and, being harmony, contains within itself another
harmony, but that the other is discordant, and does not contain within
itself another harmony?"

"I am unable to say," replied Simmias; "but it is clear that he who
maintains that opinion would say something of the kind."

"But it has been already granted," said he, "that one soul is not more
or less a soul than another; and this is an admission that one harmony
is not to a greater degree or more fully, or to a less degree or less
fully, a harmony, than another; is it not so?"

"Certainly."

"And