Phaedo (93-94)

Phaedo.Do you think a harmony or any other composite thing can be in any other state than that in which the elements are of which it is composed? Certainly not. And it can neither do nor suffer anything other than they do or suffer? He agreed. Then a harmony cannot be expected to lead the elements of which it is composed, but to follow them. He assented. A harmony, then, is quite unable to move or make a sound or do anything else that is opposed to its component parts. Quite unable, said he. Well then, is not every harmony by nature a harmony according as it is harmonized? I do not understand, said Simmias. Would it not, said Socrates, be more completely a harmony and a greater harmony if it were harmonized more fully and to a greater extent, assuming that to be possible, and less completely a harmony and a lesser harmony if less completely harmonized and to a less extent? Certainly. Is this true of the soul? Is one soul even in the slightest degree more completely and to a greater extent a soul than another, or less completely and to a less extent? Not in the least, said he. Well now, said he, one soul is said to possess sense and virtue and to be good, and another to possess folly and wickedness and to be bad; and is this true? Yes, it is true. Now what will those who assume that the soul is a harmony say that these things—the virtue and the wickedness—in the soul are? Will they say that this is another kind of harmony and a discord, and that the soul, which is itself a harmony, has within it another harmony and that the other soul is discordant and has no other harmony within it? I cannot tell, replied Simmias, but evidently those who make that assumption would say some thing of that sort. But we agreed, said Socrates, that one soul is no more or less a soul than another; and that is equivalent to an agreement that one is no more and to no greater extent, and no less and to no less extent, a harmony than another, is it not? Certainly. And that which is no more or less a harmony, is no more or less harmonized. Is that so? Yes. But has that which is no more and no less harmonized any greater or any less amount of harmony, or an equal amount? An equal amount. Then a soul, since it is neither more nor less a soul than another, is neither more nor less harmonized. That is so. And therefore can have no greater amount of discord or of harmony? No. And therefore again one soul can have no greater amount of wickedness or virtue than another, if wickedness is discord and virtue harmony?

Phaedo.It cannot. Or rather, to speak exactly, Simmias, no soul will have any wickedness at all, if the soul is a harmony; for if a harmony is entirely harmony, it could have no part in discord. Certainly not. Then the soul, being entirely soul, could have no part in wickedness. How could it, if what we have said is right? According to this argument, then, if all souls are by nature equally souls, all souls of all living creatures will be equally good. So it seems, Socrates, said he. And, said Socrates, do you think that this is true and that our reasoning would have come to this end, if the theory that the soul is a harmony were correct? Not in the least, he replied. Well, said Socrates, of all the parts that make up a man, do you think any is ruler except the soul, especially if it be a wise one? No, I do not. Does it yield to the feelings of the body or oppose them? I mean, when the body is hot and thirsty, does not the soul oppose it and draw it away from drinking, and from eating when it is hungry, and do we not see the soul opposing the body in countless other ways? Certainly. Did we not agree in our previous discussion that it could never, if it be a harmony, give forth a sound at variance with the tensions and relaxations and vibrations and other conditions of the elements which compose it, but that it would follow them and never lead them? Yes, he replied, we did, of course. Well then, do we not now find that the soul acts in exactly the opposite way, leading those elements of which it is said to consist and opposing them in almost everything through all our life, and tyrannizing over them in every way, sometimes inflicting harsh and painful punishments (those of gymnastics and medicine), and sometimes milder ones, sometimes threatening and sometimes admonishing, in short, speaking to the desires and passions and fears as if it were distinct from them and they from it, as Homer has shown in the Odyssey when he says of Odysseus:

He smote his breast, and thus he chid his heart:

Endure it, heart, you have born worse than this.

Hom. Od 20.17-18 Do you suppose that, when he wrote those words, he thought of the soul as a harmony which would be led by the conditions of the body, and not rather as something fitted to lead and rule them, and itself a far more divine thing than a harmony? By Zeus, Socrates, the latter, I think.