requires to assure it of immortality, we shall close it in disappointment.

The Phædon is written in the dialogue form, and in the character of Socrates; and claims to be a conversation held between him and his friends on the day of his execution. During the conversation the question was started, "Whether a philosopher should desire to die?" Socrates maintained the affirmative, and supported his position by reference to the good things he might expect in a future state, which constituted that state vastly superior to this. To support the idea of a future state, and of the conscious existence of the soul after death, against the objections of his friends, he offers the following arguments.

First. That man was made to know the truth, and it is the highest end of his being to arrive at this knowledge: but we are so clogged and hindered in our aspirations after truth, by the body, that we can never arrive at it until we quit the body. And therefore, the true philosopher should not only endeavor to abstract himself from the body as much as possible, that his views of truth may be the clearer, but he should even desire to die, that his knowledge of it may be perfect. He discourses as follows:

For

"Now we have made it out that in order to trace the truth and purity of anything, we should lay aside the body and only employ the soul to examine the objects we perceive; so that we can never arrive at the wisdom we court till after death. Reason is on our side. if it is impossible to know anything purely while in the body, one of these things must follow :-either the truth is not known, or it is known after death; because, the soul will then be left to itself and freed from its burden, and not before. And while we are in this life, we can only approach to the truth in proportion to our removing from the body, and renouncing all correspondence with it that is not of mere necessity, and keeping ourselves clear from the contagion of its natural corruption, and all its filth, till God himself comes to deliver us. Then, indeed, being freed from all bodily folly, we shall converse, in all probability, with men that enjoy the same liberty, and shall know within ourselves the pure essence of things, which, perhaps, is nothing but the truth."— Pp. 63, 64.

This reasoning is not destitute of force, though in the mouth of a heathen its conclusiveness is greatly weakened by the defectiveness of the prevailing notions of God, and of the work and designs of creation. Could he have known what the Christian knows, viz., that there is but one God, and he infinite in all his attributes, -that he created as well as formed the universe-that he created intelligent beings to be happy, only in knowing and communing with their Maker-that in knowing and enjoying God, we know and enjoy

the highest grade and idea of truth :-then, having established the fact that this knowledge cannot be perfectly attained in this life, it would follow as a legitimate corollary, that we must die to know, and live in a future state to enjoy, the highest end of our being. This is the form the argument assumes in the mouth of a Christian, and, for aught we can see, it is conclusive: but connected with the imperfect knowledge of heathenism in regard to the important facts named above, though not destitute of weight, the argument is necessarily weakened, and associated with doubts and misgivings which fully justify the use of the terms "perhaps," and "probably," employed in the preceding quotation. And, as might be expected, the argument proved unsatisfactory to his friends, who, though they agreed with him in much that he said, yet expressed their doubt upon the main point in the following language:

"There is only one thing that men look upon as incredible, viz., what you have advanced of the soul. For almost everybody fancies that when the soul parts from the body, it is no more; it dies along with it; it vanishes like a vapor, or smoke, which flies off and disperses and has no existence :-but that the soul lives after the death of a man, that it is sensible, that it acts and thinks; that, I say, needs both insinuation and solid proofs to make it go down."-Pp. 70, 71.

To supply this lack of evidence, Plato represents Socrates as introducing,

Secondly. An argument founded on the fanciful notion that all things are produced by contraries. This dogma was intimately associated with the idea of transmigration. Which of these ideas claims precedence of the other, or which should sustain the relation of cause, and which that of effect, it seems now difficult to determine : but it is evident they are so related that neither can be dispensed with in making out the argument. Either the notion, that all things spring from their contraries, gave birth to the idea of transmigration, or it was probably invented to keep this last opinion in countenance. But whether the one or the other of these views be true, is not now material, In either case the argument for the immortality of the soul is defective. The position in regard to the material world is first assumed,-" all things are produced by contraries;" then the argument proceeds upon a supposed analogy between the laws which govern matter and spirit; when no such analogy exists and it makes death the cause of a positive effect, as though it had a positive existence. The dialogue proceeds :"Is not death the opposite of life? Yes. And does not one breed the other? Yes. What is it that life breeds? Death.-What is it that death breeds? It must certainly be life.-Then, says Socrates, all living

things, and man, are bred from death. So I think, says Cebes.-And, therefore, continues Socrates, our souls are lodged in the infernal world after death. The consequence seems just.-Shall not we then attribute to death the virtue of producing its contrary, as well as life? Or shall we say that nature is lame and maimed on that score? There is an absolute necessity, says Cebes, of ascribing to death the generation of its contrary.-What is that contrary? Reviving or returning to life. If there is such a thing as returning to life, it is nothing else than the birth of the dead; and returning to life. And thus we agree that the living are as much the product of the dead, as the dead are of the living; which is an incontestable proof that the souls of the dead must remain in some place or other, whence they may return to life.”—Pp. 74, 75.

All this may have appeared very sound and imposing to Plato, or Socrates and his friends, who believed in the eternity of matterhad no just conceptions of the work of creation-and made death a part of nature-an agent as real, active, and efficient as life itself; but to minds enlightened and directed by the authoritative teaching of God's Word, this phantasm disappears,

"As the vapor flies, dispersed by lightest blasts,

-and leaves no trace behind."

The first fallacy in the argument consists in assuming what should have been proved, viz., that "all things are produced by contraries." That all things have their opposites, is true: but that all things produce their opposites, or are produced by them, is not true. To assume this as truth, would be to fill the world with contradictions: it would follow from this, that the weakest is produced by the strongest, the slowest by the swiftest-that heat and cold, light and darkness, vice and virtue, produce each other; and that a conscious existence is generated by annihilation.

The second fallacy consists in arguing from material to immaterial; in making the laws which govern matter the basis of an argument in regard to spirit. If matter and spirit are entirely different substances, possessing not a single element in common, then it is both unphilosophical and absurd to suppose any analogy between them. Hence, to argue that because in some parts of the material world contraries succeed each other in obedience to the general law of increase and diminution,-therefore the soul must be immortal, is without the least shade of consistency. We can conceive how an analogical argument for the resurrection of the body might be reared upon this basis; but we cannot see how the argument can apply to the soul unless the soul be material, and then it would be too fanciful to have much weight with enlightened minds.

The third fallacy is also an absurdity, and consists in giving death a positive existence. Plato was not alone in this mistake; it was common to the ancients. They made death a part of nature, having his appropriate work assigned him. Hence, as life ended in death, they concluded death would end in life ad infinitum. That death will end in life, is an article of Christian faith; but not that it produces life. Death has no power, no existence-is a nonentity. And as that which is nothing can do nothing, hence death cannot produce life. Immortality is the gift of God, not the product of death. Death cannot act as an efficient cause in the production of life, because it has no positive existence. To expect life to arise from death, therefore, is to expect an effect without a cause.

The third argument of Plato for the soul's immortality is drawn from what he terms remembrance. And he uses the word, remembrance, as identical with knowledge. All our knowledge in this life, according to Plato, is made up of the remembrance of what we had known in some anterior state of being. As by the law of association, the sight of an object often suggests to the mind other objects with which we were previously familiar: so, when the idea of goodness, justice, or holiness is suggested to the mind; and, indeed, all our acquirements, purely intellectual, by whatever means gained, are but the remembrance and recovery of what we knew in a pre-existent state. From this he argues, (and conclusively enough, if the premise be valid,) that we had an existence anterior to this life, and therefore concludes it reasonable that we should live after death. The following extract we think justifies the above view of this argument :

"But, continues Socrates, upon seeing the picture of a horse, or a harp, may not one call to mind the man? And, upon seeing the picture of Simmias, may not one think of Cebes? For we have agreed upon this that it is very possible that a man seeing, hearing, or perceiving one thing by any of his senses, should form to himself the imagination of another thing that he had forgotten :--so that one of two things must necessarily follow; either we were born with this knowledge, and preserved it all along, or else retrieved it afterward by remembrance: and of course our souls had a being before that time; that is to say, before they were invested with a human form; while they were without the body they thought, they knew, and they understood."-P. 85.

The strength of this argument depends upon the pre-existence of the soul; and this again upon whether our knowledge in this life is remembrance of what we knew in a former life. If it be, then the soul must have lived in a previous state: if not, the idea

of the prior existence of the soul is an unfounded assumption, and affords no proof that the soul will live after death. As neither the doctrine of remembrance, nor the pre-existence of souls, is a selfevident truth, the whole argument moves in a circle; and, clogged as it is with the notion of metempsychosis, it excludes all just conceptions of immortality.

The fourth and last argument is drawn from the nature of the soul. The soul is not material, and consequently not subject to the laws by which matter is governed. Plato maintains the uncompounded and immaterial substance of the soul: 1. From the fact that it is always the same, and in the same condition. Material beings are constantly throwing off some of their elements, and receiving others into their composition; and sometimes material bodies are entirely dissipated. The human body is a subject of many changes; but inasmuch as the changes that affect the body do not affect the soul, the soul is not a part of the body; is uncompounded, is incapable of change, and is therefore immaterial.

The fact that the soul is intangible, is also presented as a proof of its immateriality. Material substances are objects of sensein various ways tangible to the senses: not so the soul; therefore, the soul is immaterial. The same fact is argued from the superior and controlling power of the soul. "Nature orders the body to obey and be a slave, and the soul to command and hold the empire" and this suits well to the idea of the immaterial and immortal nature of the soul. From the whole he remarks::

"You see, then, my dear Cebes, the necessary result of all is, that our soul bears a strict resemblance to what is divine, immortal, intellectual, simple, indissoluble; and is always the same, and always like it and that our body does perfectly resemble what is human, mortal, sensible, compounded, dissoluble; always changing, and never like itself."-P. 95.

The following will show the most enlightened view of heathenism, in regard to the future condition of a soul leaving this world under favorable circumstances:

"If the soul retains its purity without any mixture of filth from the body, as having entertained no voluntary correspondence with it, but, on the contrary, having always avoided it, and recollected itself within itself, in continual meditations; that is, in studying the true philosophy, and effectually learning to die ;-for philosophy is a preparation for death --I say, if the soul departs in this condition, it repairs to a being like itself, a being that is divine, immortal, and full of wisdom; in which it enjoys an inexpressible felicity, in being freed from its errors, its ignorance, its fears, its amors, that tyrannized over it, and all the other