living come from the dead, just as the dead come from the living;
and if this is true, then the souls of the dead must be in some
place out of which they come again. And this, as I think, has been
satisfactorily proved.

  Yes, Socrates, he said; all this seems to flow necessarily out of
our previous admissions.

  And that these admissions are not unfair, Cebes, he said, may be
shown, as I think, in this way: If generation were in a straight
line only, and there were no compensation or circle in nature, no turn
or return into one another, then you know that all things would at
last have the same form and pass into the same state, and there
would be no more generation of them.

  What do you mean? he said.

  A simple thing enough, which I will illustrate by the case of sleep,
he replied. You know that if there were no compensation of sleeping
and waking, the story of the sleeping Endymion would in the end have
no meaning, because all other things would be asleep, too, and he
would not be thought of. Or if there were composition only, and no
division of substances, then the chaos of Anaxagoras would come again.
And in like manner, my dear Cebes, if all things which partook of life
were to die, and after they were dead remained in the form of death,
and did not come to life again, all would at last die, and nothing
would be alive-how could this be otherwise? For if the living spring
from any others who are not the dead, and they die, must not all
things at last be swallowed up in death?

  There is no escape from that, Socrates, said Cebes; and I think that
what you say is entirely true.

  Yes, he said, Cebes, I entirely think so, too; and we are not
walking in a vain imagination; but I am confident in the belief that
there truly is such a thing as living again, and that the living
spring from the dead, and that the souls of the dead are in existence,
and that the good souls have a better portion than the evil.

  Cebes added: Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is
simply recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time
in which we learned that which we now recollect. But this would be
impossible unless our soul was in some place before existing in the
human form; here, then, is another argument of the soul's immortality.

  But tell me, Cebes, said Simmias, interposing, what proofs are given
of this doctrine of recollection? I am not very sure at this moment
that I remember them.

  One excellent proof, said Cebes, is afforded by questions. If you
put a question to a person in a right way, he will give a true
answer of himself; but how could he do this unless there were
knowledge and right reason already in him? And this is most clearly
shown when he is taken to a diagram or to anything of that sort.

  But if, said Socrates, you are still incredulous, Simmias, I would
ask you whether you may not agree with me when you look at the
matter in another way; I mean, if you are still incredulous as to
whether knowledge is recollection.

  Incredulous, I am not, said Simmias; but I want to have this
doctrine of recollection brought to my own recollection, and, from
what Cebes has said, I am beginning to recollect and be convinced; but
I should still like to hear what more you have to say.

  This is what I would say, he replied: We should agree, if I am not
mistaken, that what a man recollects he must have known at some
previous time.

  Very true.

  And what is the nature of this recollection? And, in asking this,
I mean to ask whether, when a person has already seen or heard or in
any way perceived anything, and he knows not only that, but
something else of which he has not the same, but another knowledge, we
may not fairly say that he recollects that which comes into his
mind. Are we agreed about that?

  What do you mean?

  I mean what I may illustrate by the following instance: The
knowledge of a lyre is not the same as the knowledge of a man?

  True.

  And yet what is the feeling of lovers when they recognize a lyre, or
a garment, or anything else which the beloved has been in the habit of
using? Do not they, from knowing the lyre, form in the mind's eye an
image of the youth to whom the lyre belongs? And this is recollection:
and in the same way anyone who sees Simmias may remember Cebes; and
there are endless other things of the same nature.

  Yes, indeed, there are-endless, replied Simmias.

  And this sort of thing, he said, is recollection, and is most
commonly a process of recovering that which has been forgotten through
time and inattention.

  Very true, he said.