nature and power of the soul; and if the soul be the only
thing in the whole world which has the power of self-motion, then
certainly it never had a beginning, and therefore it is eternal."

Now, should all the lower order of philosophers (for so I think they
may be called who dissent from Plato and Socrates and that school)
unite their force, they never would be able to explain anything so
elegantly as this, nor even to understand how ingeniously this
conclusion is drawn. The soul, then, perceives itself to have motion,
and at the same time that it gets that perception, it is sensible that
it derives that motion from its own power, and not from the agency of
another; and it is impossible that it should ever forsake itself. And
these premises compel you to allow its eternity, unless you have
something to say against them.

_A._ I should myself be very well pleased not to have even a thought
arise in my mind against them, so much am I inclined to that opinion.

XXIV. _M._ Well, then, I appeal to you, if the arguments which prove
that there is something divine in the souls of men are not equally
strong? But if I could account for the origin of these divine
properties, then I might also be able to explain how they might cease
to exist; for I think I can account for the manner in which the blood,
and bile, and phlegm, and bones, and nerves, and veins, and all the
limbs, and the shape of the whole body, were put together and made; ay,
and even as to the soul itself, were there nothing more in it than a
principle of life, then the life of a man might be put upon the same
footing as that of a vine or any other tree, and accounted for as
caused by nature; for these things, as we say, live. Besides, if
desires and aversions were all that belonged to the soul, it would have
them only in common with the beasts; but it has, in the first place,
memory, and that, too, so infinite as to recollect an absolute
countless number of circumstances, which Plato will have to be a
recollection of a former life; for in that book which is inscribed
Menon, Socrates asks a child some questions in geometry, with reference
to measuring a square; his answers are such as a child would make, and
yet the questions are so easy, that while answering them, one by one,
he comes to the same point as if he had learned geometry. From whence
Socrates would infer that learning is nothing more than recollection;
and this topic he explains more accurately in the