Plato, Republic

[611a] either its own or alien, it is evident that it must necessarily exist always, and that if it always exists it is immortal.” “Necessarily,” he said.

“Let this, then,” I said, “be assumed to be so. But if it is so, you will observe that these souls must always be the same. For if none perishes they could not, I suppose, become fewer nor yet more numerous.¹ For if any class of immortal things increased you are aware that its increase would come from the mortal and all things would end by becoming immortal.²” “You say truly.” “But,” said I, “we must not suppose this, [611b] for reason will not suffer it nor yet must we think that in its truest nature the soul is the kind of thing that teems with infinite diversity and unlikeness and contradiction in and with itself.³” “How am I to understand that?” he said. “It is not easy,” said I, “for a thing to be immortal that is composed of many elements⁴ not put together in the best way, as now appeared to us⁵ to be the case with the soul.” “It is not likely.” “Well, then, that the soul is immortal our recent argument and our other⁶ proofs would constrain us to admit. But to know its true nature [611c] we must view it not marred by communion with the body⁷ and other miseries as we now contemplate it, but consider adequately in the light of reason what it is when it is purified, and then you will find it to be a far more beautiful thing and will more clearly distinguish justice and injustice and all the matters that we have now discussed. But though we have stated the truth of its present appearance, its condition as we have now contemplated it [611d] resembles that of the sea-god Glaucus⁸ whose first nature can hardly be made out by those who catch glimpses of him, because the original members of his body are broken off and mutilated and crushed and in every way marred by the waves, and other parts have attached themselves⁹ to him, accretions of shells¹⁰ and sea-weed and rocks, so that he is more like any wild creature than what he was by nature—even such, I say, is our vision of the soul marred by countless evils. But we must look elsewhere, Glaucon.” “Where?” said he. “To its love of wisdom. [611e] And we must note the things of which it has apprehensions, and the associations for which it yearns, as being itself akin to the divine¹¹ and the immortal and to eternal being, and so consider what it might be if it followed the gleam unreservedly and were raised by this impulse out of the depths of this sea in which it is now sunk, and were cleansed and scraped free¹² of the rocks and barnacles which,