Note 618 — Chapter XI
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Footnote 618:
(return)
The doctrine of Metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, can scarcely be regarded as part of the philosophic system of Plato. He seems to have accepted it as a venerable tradition, coming within the range of probability, rather than as a philosophic truth, and it is always presented by him in a highly mythical dress. Now of these mythical representations he remarks in the "Phædo" (§ 145) that "no man in his senses would dream of insisting
that they correspond to the reality
, but that, the soul having been shown to be immortal, this, or something like this, is true of individual souls or their habitations." If, as in the opinions of the ablest critics, "the Laws" is to be placed amongst the last and maturest of Plato's writings, the evidence is conclusive that whatever may have been his earlier opinions, he did not entertain the doctrine of "Metempsychosis" in his riper years. But when, on the one hand, the soul shall remain having an intercourse with divine virtue, it becomes divine pre-eminently; and pre-eminently, after having been conveyed to a
place
entirely holy, it is changed for the better; but when it acts in a contrary manner, it has, under contrary circumstances, placed its existence in some
unholy spot
.
This is the judgment of the gods, who hold Olympus.
"O thou young man," [know] "that the person who has become more wicked, departs to the more wicked souls; but he who has become better, to the better both in life and in all deaths, to do and suffer what is fitting for the like."--"Laws," bk. x. ch. xii. and xiii.