hat is
given the demonstration will be complete.

But that proof, Simmias and Cebes, has been already given, said
Socrates, if you put the two arguments together--I mean this and the
former one, in which we admitted that everything living is born of the
dead. For if the soul exists before birth, and in coming to life and
being born can be born only from death and dying, must she not after
death continue to exist, since she has to be born again?--Surely the
proof which you desire has been already furnished. Still I suspect
that you and Simmias would be glad to probe the argument further. Like
children, you are haunted with a fear that when the soul leaves the
body, the wind may really blow her away and scatter her; especially if a
man should happen to die in a great storm and not when the sky is calm.

Cebes answered with a smile: Then, Socrates, you must argue us out of
our fears--and yet, strictly speaking, they are not our fears, but there
is a child within us to whom death is a sort of hobgoblin; him too we
must persuade not to be afraid when he is alone in the dark.

Socrates said: Let the voice of the charmer be applied daily until you
have charmed away the fear.

And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears, Socrates, when you
are gone?

Hellas, he replied, is a large place, Cebes, and has many good men, and
there are barbarous races not a few: seek for him among them all, far
and wide, sparing neither pains nor money; for there is no better way
of spending your money. And you must seek among yourselves too; for you
will not find others better able to make the search.

The search, replied Cebes, shall certainly be made. And now, if
you please, let us return to the point of the argument at which we
digressed.

By all means, replied Socrates; what else should I please?

Very good.

Must we not, said Socrates, ask ourselves what that is which, as we
imagine, is liable to be scattered, and about which we fear? and what
again is that about which we have no fear? And then we may proceed
further to enquire whether that which suffers dispersion is or is not
of the nature of soul--our hopes and fears as to our own souls will turn
upon the answers to these questions.

Very true, he said.

Now the compound or composite may be supposed to be naturally capable,
as of being compounded, so also of being dissolved; but that which is
uncompounded, and that only, must be, if anything is, indissoluble.

Yes; I