phaedo   

especially if a man should happen to die in stormy weather and not

when the sky is calm.

Cebes answered with a smile: Then, Socrates, you must argue us out

of our fears-and yet, strictly speaking, they are not our fears, but

there is a child within us to whom death is a sort of hobgoblin; him

too we must persuade not to be afraid when he is alone with him in the

dark.

Socrates said: Let the voice of the charmer be applied daily until

you have charmed him away.

And where shall we find a good charmer of our fears, Socrates,

when you are gone?

Hellas, he replied, is a large place, Cebes, and has many good

men, and there are barbarous races not a few: seek for him among

them all, far and wide, sparing neither pains nor money; for there

is no better way of using your money. And you must not forget to

seek for him among yourselves too; for he is nowhere more likely to be

found.

The search, replied Cebes, shall certainly be made. And now, if

you please, let us return to the point of the argument at which we

digressed.

By all means, replied Socrates; what else should I please?

Very good, he said.

Must we not, said Socrates, ask ourselves some question of this

sort?-What is that which, as we imagine, is liable to be scattered

away, and about which we fear? and what again is that about which we

have no fear? And then we may proceed to inquire whether that which

suffers dispersion is or is not of the nature of soul-our hopes and

fears as to our own souls will turn upon that.

That is true, he said.

Now the compound or composite may be supposed to be naturally

capable of being dissolved in like manner as of being compounded;

but that which is uncompounded, and that only, must be, if anything