PLATO AND THE IMMOBTALITY OF THE SOUL. 8 



be found in a state of separation from these, and that 

 when Life, Mind, and Feeling are withdrawn from man 

 the whole Material elements of the human body remain ; 

 and it is hence reciprocally inferrible that Life, Mind, and 

 Feeling may all exist in a state of separation from Matter, 

 and that the soul of man, or his whole metaphysical being, 

 may exist apart from his body. It is not intended by this 

 deduction to say anything in favour of Plato's theory of 

 the Immortality of the Soul. Those who conclude that 

 he proved the immortality of the soul rush hastily to an 

 unwarrantable assumption. The immortality of the soul 

 is a conditional and subjective fact of the Divine 

 Will, ascertainable only by revelation of that will ; it is 

 not an inherent power or quality of the soul itself.* 

 Plato's argument was, that because the soul does exist it 

 must have always existed, and must always continue to 

 exist. But this argument is fallacious by analogy, and 

 utterly inconsistent with human experience ; for on the 

 same principle, and by parity of reasoning, Conscious- 

 ness exists, and it must therefore have existed from all 

 eternity, and must always continue to exist. But notori- 

 ously, in the experience of every man, our consciousness 

 did not exist from all eternity, and within the limits of 



* Plato in one passage appears fully to admit this, but the 

 admission is not easily reconcileable with his other reasoning, which, 

 however, was early found to be unsatisfactory and unconvincing on 

 the subject. Cicero felt it to be beautiful, but not impressive. The 

 passage in which he makes the admission referred to also goes, 

 unfortunately, too far, and asserts that the Divine intelligence has 

 given the human soul the right of immortality. But Plato docs 

 not base this assertion on its only possible foundation a known 

 revelation of the Divine Will, and nowhere shows that he knew of 

 any such revelation, though it has been suggested, but not estab- 

 lished, that he may have got some of his knowledge from the 

 Hebrews. The intrinsic evidence is certainly against this supposi- 

 tion, as his doctrines on the subject of immortality are too Pytha- 

 gorean for any conceivable Hebrew source. 



