Socrates, who is about to die, is sensible of his own weakness; he desires
to be impartial, but he cannot help feeling that he has too great an
interest in the truth of the argument. And therefore he would have his
friends examine and refute him, if they think that he is in error.

At his request Simmias and Cebes repeat their objections. They do not go
to the length of denying the pre-existence of ideas. Simmias is of opinion
that the soul is a harmony of the body. But the admission of the pre-
existence of ideas, and therefore of the soul, is at variance with this.
(Compare a parallel difficulty in Theaet.) For a harmony is an effect,
whereas the soul is not an effect, but a cause; a harmony follows, but the
soul leads; a harmony admits of degrees, and the soul has no degrees.
Again, upon the supposition that the soul is a harmony, why is one soul
better than another? Are they more or less harmonized, or is there one
harmony within another? But the soul does not admit of degrees, and cannot
therefore be more or less harmonized. Further, the soul is often engaged
in resisting the affections of the body, as Homer describes Odysseus
'rebuking his heart.' Could he have written this under the idea that the
soul is a harmony of the body? Nay rather, are we not contradicting Homer
and ourselves in affirming anything of the sort?

The goddess Harmonia, as Socrates playfully terms the argument of Simmias,
has been happily disposed of; and now an answer has to be given to the
Theban Cadmus. Socrates recapitulates the argument of Cebes, which, as he
remarks, involves the whole question of natural growth or causation; about
this he proposes to narrate his own mental experience. When he was young
he had puzzled himself with physics: he had enquired into the growth and
decay of animals, and the origin of thought, until at last he began to
doubt the self-evident fact that growth is the result of eating and
drinking; and so he arrived at the conclusion that he was not meant for