one in you. Should you ask what its
nature is? It has one peculiarly its own; but admitting it to consist
of fire, or air, it does not affect the present question. Only observe
this, that as you are convinced there is a God, though you are ignorant
where he resides, and what shape he is of; in like manner you ought to
feel assured that you have a soul, though you cannot satisfy yourself
of the place of its residence, nor its form. In our knowledge of the
soul, unless we are grossly ignorant of natural philosophy, we cannot
but be satisfied that it has nothing but what is simple, unmixed,
uncompounded, and single; and if this is admitted, then it cannot be
separated, nor divided, nor dispersed, nor parted, and therefore it
cannot perish; for to perish implies a parting-asunder, a division, a
disunion, of those parts which, while it subsisted, were held together
by some band. And it was because he was influenced by these and similar
reasons that Socrates neither looked out for anybody to plead for him
when he was accused, nor begged any favor from his judges, but
maintained a manly freedom, which was the effect not of pride, but of
the true greatness of his soul; and on the last day of his life he held
a long discourse on this subject; and a few days before, when he might
have been easily freed from his confinement, he refused to be so; and
when he had almost actually hold of that deadly cup, he spoke with the
air of a man not forced to die, but ascending into heaven.

XXX. For so indeed he thought himself, and thus he spoke: "That there
were two ways, and that the souls of men, at their departure from the
body, took different roads; for those which were polluted with vices
that are common to men, and which had given themselves up entirely to
unclean desires, and had become so blinded by them as to have
habituated themselves to all manner of debauchery and profligacy, or to
have laid detestable schemes for the ruin of their country, took a road
wide of that which led to the assembly of the Gods; but they who had
preserved themselves upright and chaste, and free from the slightest
contagion of the body, and had always kept themselves as far as
possible at a distance from it, and while on earth had proposed to
themselves as a model the life of the Gods, found the return to those
beings from whom they had come an easy one." Therefore, he argues, that
all good and wise men should take example from the swans, who are
consider