"What, then," he proceeded, "do you say about that argument in which we
asserted that knowledge is reminiscence, and that, this being the case,
our soul must necessarily have existed somewhere before it was inclosed
in the body?"

93. "I, indeed," replied Cebes "was both then wonderfully persuaded by
it, and now persist in it, as in no other argument."

"And I, too," said Simmias, "am of the same mind, and should very much
wonder if I should ever think otherwise on that point."

"Then," Socrates said, "you must needs think otherwise, my Theban
friend, if this opinion holds good, that harmony is something
compounded, and that the soul is a kind of harmony that results from the
parts compacted together in the body. For surely you will not allow
yourself to say that harmony was composed prior to the things from which
it required to be composed Would you allow this?"

"By no means, Socrates" he replied.

"Do you perceive, then," he said, "that this result from what you say,
when you assert that the soul existed before it came into a human form
and body, but that it was composed from things that did not yet exist?
For harmony is not such as that to which you compare it, but first the
lyre, and the chords, and the sounds yet unharmonized, exist, and, last
of all, harmony is produced, and first perishes. How, then, will this
argument accord with that?"

"Not at all," said Simmias.

94. "And yet," he said, "if in any argument, there ought to be an
accordance in one respecting harmony."

"There ought," said Simmias.

"This of yours, however," he said, "is not in accordance. Consider,
then, which of these two statements do you prefer--that knowledge is
reminiscence, or the soul harmony?"

"The former by far, Socrates," he replied; "for the latter occurred to
me without demonstration, through a certain probability and speciousness
whence most men derive their opinions. But I am well aware that
arguments which draw their demonstrations from probabilities are idle;
and, unless one is on one's guard against them, they are very deceptive,
both in geometry and all other subjects. But the argument respecting
reminiscence and knowledge may be said to have been demonstrated by a
satisfactory hypothesis. For in this way it was said that our soul
existed before it came into the body, because the essence that bears the
appellation of 'that which is' belongs to it. But of this, as I persuade
myself, I am fully and rightly conv