Cle. Do not hesitate, Stranger; I see that you are afraid of sucha discussion carrying you beyond the limits of legislation. But ifthere be no other way of showing our agreement in the belief thatthere are Gods, of whom the law is said now to approve, let us takethis way, my good sir.
Ath. Then I suppose that I must repeat the singular argument ofthose who manufacture the soul according to their own impious notions;they affirm that which is the first cause of the generation anddestruction of all things, to be not first, but last, and that whichis last to be first, and hence they have fallen into error about thetrue nature of the Gods.
Cle. Still I do not understand you.
Ath. Nearly all of them, my friends, seem to be ignorant of thenature and power of the soul, especially in what relates to herorigin: they do not know that she is among the first of things, andbefore all bodies, and is the chief author of their changes andtranspositions. And if this is true, and if the soul is older than thebody, must not the things which are of the soul"s kindred be ofnecessity prior to those which appertain to the body?
Cle. Certainly.
Ath. Then thought and attention and mind and art and law will beprior to that which is hard and soft and heavy and light; and thegreat and primitive works and actions will be works of art; theywill be the first, and after them will come nature and works ofnature, which however is a wrong term for men to apply to them;these will follow, and will be under the government of art and mind.
Cle. But why is the word "nature" wrong?
Ath. Because those who use the term mean to say that nature is thefirst creative power; but if the soul turn out to be the primevalelement, and not fire or air, then in the truest sense and beyondother things the soul may be said to exist by nature; and this wouldbe true if you proved that the soul is older than the body, but nototherwise.
Cle. You are quite right.
Ath. Shall we, then, take this as the next point to which ourattention should be directed?
Cle. By all means.
Ath. Let us be on our guard lest this most deceptive argument withits youthful looks, beguiling us old men, give us the slip and makea laughing-stock of us. Who knows but we may be aiming at the greater,and fail of attaining the lesser? Suppose that we three have to pass arapid river, and I, being the youngest of the three and experienced inrivers, take upon me the duty of making the attempt first by myself;leaving you in safety on the bank, I am to examine whether the riveris passable by older men like yourselves, and if such appears to bethe case then I shall invite you to follow, and my experience willhelp to convey you across; but if the river is impassable by you, thenthere will have been no danger to anybody but myself-would not thatseem to be a very fair proposal? I mean to say that the argument inprospect is likely to be too much for you, out of your depth andbeyond your strength, and I should be afraid that the stream of myquestions might create in you who are not in the habit of answering,giddiness and confusion of mind, and hence a feeling of unpleasantnessand unsuitableness might arise. I think therefore that I had betterfirst ask the questions and then answer them myself while you listenin safety; in that way I can carry on the argument until I havecompleted the proof that the soul is prior to the body.
Cle. Excellent, Stranger, and I hope that you will do as youpropose.
Ath. Come, then, and if ever we are to call upon the Gods, let uscall upon them now in all seriousness to come to the demonstrationof their own existence. And so holding fast to the rope we willventure upon the depths of the argument. When questions of this sortare asked of me, my safest answer would appear to be asfollows:-Some one says to me, "O Stranger, are all things at restand nothing in motion, or is the exact opposite of this true, or aresome things in motion and others at rest?-To this I shall reply thatsome things are in motion and others at rest. "And do not things whichmove a place, and are not the things which are at rest at rest in aplace?" Certainly. "And some move or rest in one place and some inmore places than one?" You mean to say, we shall rejoin, that thosethings which rest at the centre move in one place, just as thecircumference goes round of globes which are said to be at rest?
"Yes." And we observe that, in the revolution, the motion whichcarries round the larger and the lesser circle at the same time isproportionally distributed to greater and smaller, and is greaterand smaller in a certain proportion. Here is a wonder which might bethought an impossibility, that the same motion should impart swiftnessand slowness in due proportion to larger and lesser circles. "Verytrue." And when you speak of bodies moving in many places, you seem tome to mean those which move from one place to another, and sometimeshave one centre of motion and sometimes more than one because theyturn upon their axis; and whenever they meet anything, if it bestationary, they are divided by it; but if they get in the midstbetween bodies which are approaching and moving towards the samespot from opposite directions, they unite with them. "I admit thetruth of what you are saying." Also when they unite they grow, andwhen they are divided they waste away-that is, supposing theconstitution of each to remain, or if that fails, then there is asecond reason of their dissolution. "And when are all things createdand how?" Clearly, they are created when the first principlereceives increase and attains to the second dimension, and from thisarrives at the one which is neighbour to this, and after reachingthe third becomes perceptible to sense. Everything which is thuschanging and moving is in process of generation; only when at rest hasit real existence, but when passing into another state it is destroyedutterly. Have we not mentioned all motions that there are, andcomprehended them under their kinds and numbered them with theexception, my friends, of two?
Cle. Which are they?
Ath. Just the two, with which our present enquiry is concerned.
Cle. Speak plainer.
Ath. I suppose that our enquiry has reference to the soul?
Cle. Very true.