Note 18 — Introduction To The Phædo.

However, to remove the apprehension that the soul may be dispersed by a wind, as it were, Socrates proceeds, in his third argument,18 to examine that doubt more thoroughly. What, then, is meant by being dispersed but being dissolved into its parts? In order, therefore, to a thing being capable of dispersion it must be compounded of parts. Now, there are two kinds of things—one compounded, the other simple The former kind is subject to change, the latter not, and can be comprehended by the mind alone. The one is visible, the other invisible; and the soul, which is invisible, when it employs the bodily senses, wanders and is confused, but when it abstracts itself from the body it attains to the knowledge of that which is eternal, immortal, and unchangeable. The soul, therefore, being uncompounded and invisible, must be indissoluble; that is to say, immortal.