Note 109 — Chapter XXV · PHÆDON.

Wyttenbach has annexed to his edition of the Phædon an instructive review of the argumentation contained in it respecting the Immortality of the soul. He observes justly — “Videamus jam de Phædone, qui ab omni antiquitate is habitus est liber, in quo rationes immortalitatis animarum gravissimé luculentissiméque exposita essent. Quæ quidem libro laus et auctoritas conciliata est, non tam firmitate argumentorum, quam eloquentiâ Platonis,” &c. (Disputat. De Placit. Immort. Anim. p. 10). The same feeling, substantially, is expressed by one of the disputants in Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, who states that he assented to the reasoning while he was reading the dialogue, but that as soon as he had laid down the book, his assent all slipped away from him. I have already mentioned that Panætius, an extreme admirer of Plato on most points, dissented from him about the immortality of the soul (Cicero, Tusc. Disp. i. 11, 24 — i. 32, 79), and declared the Phædon to be spurious. Galen also mentions (De Format. Fœtûs, vol. iv. pp. 700-702. Kühn) that he had written a special treatise (now lost) to prove that the reasonings in the Phædon were self-contradictory, and that he could not satisfy himself, either about the essence of the soul, or whether it was mortal or immortal. Compare his treatise Περὶ Οὐσίας τῶν φυσικῶν δυνάμεων — iv. pp. 762-763 — and Περὶ τῶν τῆς ψυχῆς ἠθῶν, iv. 773. In this last passage, he represents the opinion of Plato to be — That the two inferior souls, the courageous and the appetitive, are mortal, in which he (Galen) agrees, and that the rational soul alone is immortal, of which he (Galen) is not persuaded. Now this view of Plato’s opinion is derived from the Republic and Timæus, not from the Phædon, in which last the triple soul is not acknowledged. We may thus partly understand the inconsistencies, which Galen pointed out in his lost Treatise, in the argumentation of the Phædon: wherein one of the proofs presented to establish the immortality of the soul is — That the soul is inseparably and essentially identified with life, and cannot admit death (p. 105 D). This argument, if good at all, is just as good to prove the immortality of the two inferior souls, as of the superior and rational soul. Galen might therefore remark that it did not consist with the conclusion which he drew from the Timæus and the Republic.