Socrates either its own or alien, it is evident that it must necessarily exist always, and that if it always exists it is immortal.” “Necessarily,” he said.

“Let this, then,” I said, “be assumed to be so. But if it is so, you will observe that these souls must always be the same. For if none perishes they could not, I suppose, become fewer nor yet more numerous. For if any class of immortal things increased you are aware that its increase would come from the mortal and all things would end by becoming immortal.” “You say truly.” “But,” said I, “we must not suppose this,

for reason will not suffer it nor yet must we think that in its truest nature the soul is the kind of thing that teems with infinite diversity and unlikeness and contradiction in and with itself.” “How am I to understand that?” he said. “It is not easy,” said I, “for a thing to be immortal that is composed of many elements not put together in the best way, as now appeared to us to be the case with the soul.” “It is not likely.” “Well, then, that the soul is immortal our recent argument and our other proofs would constrain us to admit. But to know its true nature

we must view it not marred by communion with the body and other miseries as we now contemplate it, but consider adequately in the light of reason what it is when it is purified, and then you will find it to be a far more beautiful thing and will more clearly distinguish justice and injustice and all the matters that we have now discussed. But though we have stated the truth of its present appearance, its condition as we have now contemplated it

resembles that of the sea-god Glaucus whose first nature can hardly be made out by those who catch glimpses of him, because the original members of his body are broken off and mutilated and crushed and in every way marred by the waves, and other parts have attached themselves to him, accretions of shells and sea-weed and rocks, so that he is more like any wild creature than what he was by nature—even such, I say, is our vision of the soul marred by countless evils. But we must look elsewhere, Glaucon.” “Where?” said he. “To its love of wisdom.

And we must note the things of which it has apprehensions, and the associations for which it yearns, as being itself akin to the divine and the immortal and to eternal being, and so consider what it might be if it followed the gleam unreservedly and were raised by this impulse out of the depths of this sea in which it is now sunk, and were cleansed and scraped free of the rocks and barnacles which,

because it now feasts on earth, cling to it in wild profusion of earthy and stony accretion by reason of these feastings that are accounted happy.”

Socrates “And then one might see whether in its real nature it is manifold or single in its simplicity, or what is the truth about it and how. But for the present we have, I think, fairly well described its sufferings and the forms it assumes in this human life of ours.” “We certainly have,” he said.

“Then,” said I, “we have met all the other demands

of the argument, and we have not invoked the rewards and reputes of justice as you said Homer and Hesiod do, but we have proved that justice in itself is the best thing for the soul itself, and that the soul ought to do justice whether it possess the ring of Gyges or not, or the helmet of Hades to boot.” “Most true,” he said. “Then,” said I, “Glaucon, there can no longer be any objection, can there, to our assigning to justice and

virtue generally, in addition, all the various rewards and wages that they bring to the soul from men and gods, both while the man still lives and, after his death?” “There certainly can be none,” he said. “Will you, then, return to me what you borrowed in the argument?” “What, pray?” “I granted to you that the just man should seem and be thought to be unjust and the unjust just; for you thought that, even if the concealment of these things from gods and men was an impossibility in fact, nevertheless, it ought to be conceded for the sake of the argument, in order that the decision might be made

between absolute justice and absolute injustice. Or do you not remember?” “It would be unjust of me,” he said, “if I did not.” “Well, then, now that they have been compared and judged, I demand back from you in behalf of justice the repute that she in fact enjoys from gods and men, and I ask that we admit that she is thus esteemed in order that she may gather in the prizes which she wins from the seeming and bestows on her possessors, since she has been proved to bestow the blessings that come from the reality and not to deceive those who truly seek and win her.” “That is a just demand,” he said.

“Then,” said I, “will not the first of these restorations be that the gods certainly are not unaware of the true character of each of the two, the just and the unjust?” “We will restore that,” he said. “And if they are not concealed, the one will be dear to the gods and the other hateful to them, as we agreed in the beginning.” “That is so.”

Socrates “And shall we not agree that all things that come from the gods

Socrates work together for the best for him that is dear to the gods, apart from the inevitable evil caused by sin in a former life?” “By all means.” “This, then, must be our conviction about the just man, that whether he fall into poverty or disease or any other supposed evil, for him all these things will finally prove good, both in life and in death. For by the gods assuredly that man will never be neglected who is willing and eager to be righteous, and by the practice of virtue to be likened unto god

Socrates so far as that is possible for man.” “It is reasonable,” he said, “that such a one should not be neglected by his like.” “And must we not think the opposite of the unjust man?” “Most emphatically.” “Such then are the prizes of victory which the gods bestow upon the just.” “So I think, at any rate,” he said. “But what,” said I, “does he receive from men? Is not this the case, if we are now to present the reality? Do not your smart but wicked men fare as those racers do who run well from the scratch but not back from the turn? They bound nimbly away at the start, but in the end

Socrates are laughed to scorn and run off the field uncrowned and with their ears on their shoulders. But the true runners when they have come to the goal receive the prizes and bear away the crown. Is not this the usual outcome for the just also, that towards the end of every action and association and of life as a whole they have honor and bear away the prizes from men?” “So it is indeed.” “Will you, then, bear with me if I say of them

Socrates all that you said of the unjust? For I am going to say that the just, when they become older, hold the offices in their own city if they choose, marry from what families they will, and give their children in marriage to what families they please, and everything that you said of the one I now repeat of the other; and in turn I will say of the unjust that the most of them, even if they escape detection in youth, at the end of their course are caught and derided, and their old age is made miserable by the contumelies of strangers and townsfolk.

Socrates They are lashed and suffer all things which you truly said are unfit for ears polite. Suppose yourself to have heard from me a repetition of all that they suffer. But, as I say, consider whether you will bear with me.” “Assuredly,” he said, “for what you say is just.”

“Such then while he lives are the prizes, the wages, and the gifts

that the just man receives from gods and men in addition to those blessings which justice herself bestowed.” “And right fair and abiding rewards,” he said. “Well, these,” I said, “are nothing in number and magnitude compared with those that await both after death. And we must listen to the tale of them,” said I, “in order that each may have received in full what is due to be said of him by our argument.” “Tell me,” he said,

“since there are not many things to which I would more gladly listen.” “It is not, let me tell you,” said I, “the tale to Alcinous told that I shall unfold, but the tale of a warrior bold, Er, the son of Armenius, by race a Pamphylian. He once upon a time was slain in battle, and when the corpses were taken up on the tenth day already decayed, was found intact, and having been brought home, at the moment of his funeral, on the twelfth day as he lay upon the pyre, revived, and after coming to life related what, he said, he had seen in the world beyond. He said that when his soul went forth from his body he journeyed with a great company

and that they came to a mysterious region where there were two openings side by side in the earth, and above and over against them in the heaven two others, and that judges were sitting between these, and that after every judgement they bade the righteous journey to the right and upwards through the heaven with tokens attached to them in front of the judgement passed upon them, and the unjust to take the road to the left and downward, they too wearing behind signs

of all that had befallen them, and that when he himself drew near they told him that he must be the messenger to mankind to tell them of that other world, and they charged him to give ear and to observe everything in the place. And so he said that here he saw, by each opening of heaven and earth, the souls departing after judgement had been passed upon them, while, by the other pair of openings, there came up from the one in the earth souls full of squalor and dust, and from the second there came down from heaven a second procession of souls clean and pure,

and that those which arrived from time to time appeared to have come as it were from a long journey and gladly departed to the meadow and encamped there as at a festival, and acquaintances greeted one another, and those which came from the earth questioned the others about conditions up yonder, and those from heaven asked how it fared with those others.”