Plato

“ Nature weakening her powers, doth loose, lame, and bow down all parts of his body, but they whose bodies in old age long flourisheth in mind, as the saying is, become twice children. And therefore the gods, knowing what is most expedient for men, those whom they most dearly love, do soonest take out of this vale of wretchedness. ”

“ Socrates
⁠Thou art far wide Axiochus, and reasonest unskilfully, joining the feeling of evil, with the want of good things, forgetting thy self that then thou shalt be in the number of the census dead. For him indeed which is bereft of all good things, doth the contrary force of evil things greatly vex. But he which hath no being, can take nor feel nothing, in place of those things whereof he is despoiled. Then by what reason can any grief bee conceived of that thing, which breedeth no sense nor perseverance of any thing which hurteth. ”

“ For if in the beginning O Axiochus, thou didst not, thought indeed in vain, join sense and feeling to death, most unwisely, thou shouldest never had cause to fear death. But now thou doest confound thy self, and speakest contrane to thy self, oft fearing that thou shalt bee deprived of soul and sense together, and oft thinking that with thy sense thou shalt feel that thing, whereof there is no sense nor feeling. And to this purpose do all those excellent and notable reasons of the souls immortality tend. ”

“ Then they which in their life time were inspired and led with a good Angell, are received into the household of the blessed, where all seasons flower with abundance of all fruits, where from the silver springs do calmly run the Crystal streams, where the flourishing meadows are clothed with changeable Mantles of glorious colours, where are famous Schools of renowned Philosophers, goodly companies of divine Poets, trim forts of Dauncers, heavenly Music, great banquets furnished with costly cares. ”

“ Wherewithal nature hath clothed us, and charged us with many miseries, so that even those things which seem pleasant to us and joyful, are indeed but vain and shadowed, being mingled and wrapped in many thousand sorrows, and those also which use to breed us sorrow and heaviness, are both sudden, and therefore more hardely avoided, and also perdurable, and therefore the more painful and wearisome. ”

“ Nature ever waiting as a greedy usurer, taketh pains aforehand, snatching and pulling from this man his sight, from that his hearing, from some both two senses. And if any fortune longer then commonly is seen in this life to linger. ”

“ Socrates
⁠O Clinias I will not deny thy so reasonable a request, specially concerning such a matter, as to deny it were great unkindness and discourtesy: to grant in pertaineth both to godliness and charity. Let us therefore speed us to him: for if thy father be in so sore taking, there needeth speediness and great haste.
Clinias
⁠O Socrates, I am sure that my father as soon as he but beholdeth you, will be much better at ease: for his fit and pangs of his sickness use oftentimes to surcease and be assuaged. ”

“ For hereupon doth a troope of cui's accrew, as be the exploits of warfare, the bitterness of wounds, the continual labour, skirmishes: and then closely creepeth on old Age, in which are heaped all the harms that pertain to mankind, whether of weakness as natural, or of pain as being external. ”

“ For thou speakest these things, as having out of some high lost only overlooked the troubles and tempests of the common-wealth, but we know the lame more assuredly, having made proof therefore in ourselves, for the common people indeed our friends Socrates is unthankful, disdainful, cruel, envious, and unlearned, as that is gathered together of the scum and dregs of the rascal route, and a sort of idle losels: whom he that flattereth and feedeth is much worse himself than they. ”

“ But they which being wrapped in wickedness have led an ungodly life, are snatched up by the Furies, and by them carried through the lowest hell into deep darkness and utter confusion, where the place and abode of the wicked is, and where the three score daughters of Danaus dwell, whose punishment is continually to fill a fort of bottomless vessels, where also is to bee seen the unquencheable thirst of Tantalus, the gnawen Entrails of Titius, and the endless stone of Sisiphus, whose end beginneth a new labour. ”

“ Let us overrun the companies of Artificers & craftsmen, which continually labour from night to night, and yet hardly able to find them necessaries to live, by bewailing their bare estate, & filling their nightwatchings with sorrow and tears. ”

“ But the life of husbandmen will some say is pleasant, and so in deed it is: but have they not a continual rankling gall, ever breeding new cause of grief and disquiet, sometime by reason of drought, sometime because of rain, otherwhile for scorching, oft through blasting, which parcheth the untimely ear oftentimes, because of importunate heat or unmeasurable cold, miserably weeping and complaining. ”

“ Such be inward griefs and sicknesses, through which it cannot choose but that soul must been also diseased, since that being scattered and spread through the powers and passages of the body, it coveteth the use of that open and kind heaven out of which it was denued, and thirsteth for the wonted company & surpassing delights of that eternal fellowship; whereby it is evident that the passage from life, is a change from much evil to great good. ”

“ But the entry of the way which leadeth to Plutoes kingdom is fenced with iron gates, and fastened with brazen bolts: which when a man hath opened, he is entertained of the River Acheron; next which is Cocytus: which Floods being overpassed, he must come before Minos and Rhadamanthus, the merciless Judges: which place is called the plain of Truth where the Judges sit examining every one that cometh thither how he hath lived, and with what trade or manner of life he hath inhabited his mortal body, with whom there is no place of lies ”

“ Hast thou no more regard of thy divine and excellent nature, that sometime wast a man of so good life and talling so obedient to reasons rule? and if there were nothing else, yet shou'd it be sufficient to move thee, that thou art an Athenian borne and lastly should move thee that common saying which is worn in all mens mouths; That this our life is a Pilgrimage, which when we have ended with perfect measure and steadfast travell ”

“ That the soul after time it is dissolved from the body passeth into a certain darksome place, a Coast that lieth under the earth wherein is Plutoes Pallace no less than Jupiters kingdom: For the earth being equally balanced in the middest of the world, and the compass thereof being round as a ball, that the one half Sphere thereof is allotted to the higher God, and the other half to the infernal powers ”

“ For the Inhabitants thereof are neither touched with force of cold, nor pained with excess of heat, but the moderate Air breatheth on them mildly and calmly, being, lightened with the gentle Sunbeams. ”