ow, 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; aye, 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 discourse which he held the very
day he died; for he there asserts that any one who seeming to be entirely
illiterate, is yet able to answer a question well that is proposed to him,
does i