Note 20 — Introduction To The Phædo.
Henry Cary translation
These objections produce a powerful effect on the rest of the company; but Socrates, undismayed, exhorts them not to suffer themselves to be deterred from seeking the truth by any difficulties they may meet with; and then proceeds20 to show, in a moment, the fallacy of Simmias's objection. It was before admitted, he says, that the soul existed before the body; but harmony is produced after the lyre is formed, so that the two cases are totally different. And, further, there are various degrees of harmony, but every soul is as much a soul as any other. But, then, what will a person who holds this doctrine, that the soul is harmony, say of virtue and vice in the soul? Will he call them another kind of harmony and discord? If so, he will contradict himself; for it is admitted that one soul is not more or less a soul than another, and therefore one can not he more or less harmonized than another, and one could not admit of a greater degree of virtue or vice than another; and indeed a soul, being harmony, could not partake of vice at all, which is discord.