ty and self-determination. No
arrangement of matter, no configuration of body, can be conceived as the
originator of free and voluntary movement.

Now that which can not move itself, but derives its motion from
something else, may cease to move, and perish. "But that which is
self-moved, never ceases to be active, and is also the cause of motion
to all other things that are moved." And "whatever is continually active
is immortal." This "self-activity is," says Plato, "the very essence and
true notion of the soul."[614] Being thus essentially _causative_, it
therefore partakes of the nature of a "principle," and it is the nature
of a principle to exclude its _contrary_. That which is essentially
self-active can never cease to be active; that which is the cause of
motion and of change, can not be extinguished by the change called
death.[615]

3. _The soul is immortal, because it possesses universal, necessary, and
absolute ideas_, which transcend all material conditions, and bespeak an
origin immeasurably above the body. No modifications of matter, however
refined, however elaborated, can give the Absolute, the Necessary, the
Eternal. But the soul has the ideas of absolute beauty, goodness,
perfection, identity, and duration, and it possesses these ideas in
virtue of its having a nature which is one, simple, identical, and in
some sense, eternal.[616] If the soul can conceive an immortality, it
can not be less than immortal. If, by its very nature, "it has hopes
that will not be bounded by the grave, and desires and longings that
grasp eternity," its nature and its destiny must correspond.

In the concluding sections of the "Phaedo" he urges the doctrine with
earnestness and feeling as the grand motive to a virtuous life, for "the
reward is noble and the hope is great."[617] And in the "Laws" he
insists upon the doctrine of a future state, in which men are to be
rewarded or punished as the most conclusive evidence that we are under
the moral government of God.[618]

[Footnote 614: "Phaedrus," Secs. 51-53.]

[Footnote 615: "Phaedo," Secs. 112-128.]

[Footnote 616: Ibid., Secs. 48-57, 110-115.]

[Footnote 617: Ibid., Secs. 129-145.]

[Footnote 618: The doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of
souls, can scarcely be regarded as part of the philosophic system of
Plato. He seems to have accepted it as a venerable tradition, coming
within the range of probability, rather than as a philosophic truth, and
it is