nly when compared to Phaedo and Socrates. I use the
illustration, says Socrates, because I want to show you not only that
ideal opposites exclude one another, but also the opposites in us. I,
for example, having the attribute of smallness remain small, and cannot
become great: the smallness which is in me drives out greatness.

One of the company here remarked that this was inconsistent with the
old assertion that opposites generated opposites. But that, replies
Socrates, was affirmed, not of opposite ideas either in us or in
nature, but of opposition in the concrete--not of life and death, but
of individuals living and dying. When this objection has been removed,
Socrates proceeds: This doctrine of the mutual exclusion of opposites
is not only true of the opposites themselves, but of things which are
inseparable from them. For example, cold and heat are opposed; and fire,
which is inseparable from heat, cannot co-exist with cold, or snow,
which is inseparable from cold, with heat. Again, the number three
excludes the number four, because three is an odd number and four is
an even number, and the odd is opposed to the even. Thus we are able to
proceed a step beyond 'the safe and simple answer.' We may say, not
only that the odd excludes the even, but that the number three, which
participates in oddness, excludes the even. And in like manner, not only
does life exclude death, but the soul, of which life is the inseparable
attribute, also excludes death. And that of which life is the
inseparable attribute is by the force of the terms imperishable. If the
odd principle were imperishable, then the number three would not perish
but remove, on the approach of the even principle. But the immortal is
imperishable; and therefore the soul on the approach of death does not
perish but removes.

Thus all objections appear to be finally silenced. And now the
application has to be made: If the soul is immortal, 'what manner of
persons ought we to be?' having regard not only to time but to eternity.
For death is not the end of all, and the wicked is not released from his
evil by death; but every one carries with him into the world below that
which he is or has become, and that only.

For after death the soul is carried away to judgment, and when she has
received her punishment returns to earth in the course of ages. The wise
soul is conscious of her situation, and follows the attendant angel who
guides her through the windings of the