Note 32 — Phædo; Or, The Immortality Of The Soul.

68. "Can the soul, then, which is invisible, and which goes to another place like itself, excellent, pure and invisible, and therefore truly called the invisible world,32 to the presence of a good and wise God (whither, if God will, my soul also must shortly go)—can this soul of ours, I ask, being such and of such a nature, when separated from the body, be immediately dispersed and destroyed, as most men assert? Far from it, my dear Cebes and Simmias. But the case is much rather thus: if it is separated in a pure state, taking nothing of the body with it, as not having willingly communicated with it in the present life, but having shunned it, and gathered itself within itself, as constantly studying this (but this is nothing else than to pursue philosophy aright, and in reality to study how to die easily), would not this be to study how to die?"