e she-dog, yelping at her mistress,' and 'the philosophers
who are ready to circumvent Zeus,' and 'the philosophers who are
paupers.' Nevertheless we bear her no ill-will, and will gladly allow
her to return upon condition that she makes a defence of herself in
verse; and her supporters who are not poets may speak in prose. We
confess her charms; but if she cannot show that she is useful as well
as delightful, like rational lovers, we must renounce our love,
though endeared to us by early associations. Having come to years of
discretion, we know that poetry is not truth, and that a man should be
careful how he introduces her to that state or constitution which he
himself is; for there is a mighty issue at stake--no less than the good
or evil of a human soul. And it is not worth while to forsake justice
and virtue for the attractions of poetry, any more than for the sake of
honour or wealth. 'I agree with you.'

And yet the rewards of virtue are greater far than I have described.
'And can we conceive things greater still?' Not, perhaps, in this brief
span of life: but should an immortal being care about anything short of
eternity? 'I do not understand what you mean?' Do you not know that the
soul is immortal? 'Surely you are not prepared to prove that?' Indeed I
am. 'Then let me hear this argument, of which you make so light.'

You would admit that everything has an element of good and of evil. In
all things there is an inherent corruption; and if this cannot destroy
them, nothing else will. The soul too has her own corrupting principles,
which are injustice, intemperance, cowardice, and the like. But none of
these destroy the soul in the same sense that disease destroys the body.
The soul may be full of all iniquities, but is not, by reason of them,
brought any nearer to death. Nothing which was not destroyed from within
ever perished by external affection of evil. The body, which is one
thing, cannot be destroyed by food, which is another, unless the badness
of the food is communicated to the body. Neither can the soul, which
is one thing, be corrupted by the body, which is another, unless she
herself is infected. And as no bodily evil can infect the soul, neither
can any bodily evil, whether disease or violence, or any other destroy
the soul, unless it can be shown to render her unholy and unjust. But no
one will ever prove that the souls of men become more unjust when
they die. If a person has the audacity to say the