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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: mythological into the language of Dante or Bunyan, the ethical speaks to us
still in the same voice, and appeals to a common feeling.
20. Two arguments of this ethical character occur in the Phaedo. The
first may be described as the aspiration of the soul after another state of
being. Like the Oriental or Christian mystic, the philosopher is seeking
to withdraw from impurities of sense, to leave the world and the things of
the world, and to find his higher self. Plato recognizes in these
aspirations the foretaste of immortality; as Butler and Addison in modern
times have argued, the one from the moral tendencies of mankind, the other
from the progress of the soul towards perfection. In using this argument
Plato has certainly confused the soul which has left the body, with the
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