ct himself; for it is
admitted that one soul is not more or less a soul than another, and
therefore one can not he more or less harmonized than another, and one
could not admit of a greater degree of virtue or vice than another; and
indeed a soul, being harmony, could not partake of vice at all, which is
discord.

Socrates, having thus satisfactorily answered the argument adduced by
Simmias, goes on to rebut that of Cebes,[21] who objected that the soul
might in time wear out. In order to do this, he relates that, when a
young man, he attempted to investigate the causes of all things, why
they exist and why they perish; and in the course of his researches,
finding the futility of attributing the existence of things to what are
called natural causes, he resolved on endeavoring to find out the
reasons of things. He therefore assumed that there are a certain
abstract beauty and goodness and magnitude, and so of all other things;
the truth of which being granted, he thinks he shall be able to prove
that the soul is immortal.

This, then, being conceded by Cebes, Socrates[22] argues that every
thing that is beautiful is so from partaking of abstract beauty, and
great from partaking of magnitude, and little from partaking of
littleness. Now, it is impossible, he argues, that contraries can exist
in the same thing at the same time; for instance, the same thing can not
possess both magnitude and littleness, but one will withdraw at the
approach of the other; and not only so, but things which, though not
contrary to each other, yet always contain contraries within themselves,
can not co-exist; for instance, the number three has no contrary, yet
it contains within itself the idea of odd, which is the contrary of
even, and so three never can become even; in like manner, heat while it
is heat can never admit the idea of its contrary, cold. Now, if this
method of reasoning is applied to the soul, it will be found to be
immortal; for life and death are contraries, and never can co-exist; but
wherever the soul is, there is life: so that it contains within itself
that which is contrary to death, and consequently can never admit of
death; therefore it is immortal.

With this he closes his arguments in support of the soul's immortality.
Cebes owns himself convinced, but Simmias, though he is unable to make
any objection to the soundness of Socrates's reasoning, can not help
still entertaining doubts on the subject. If, however, the so