66

Logic IV. 74
than Simmias? At that wold be a most terrible mistake. For were that so Plat;'s beautiful demonstration of the immortality of the sould wold come tumbling in ruins to the ground. For Simmias being taller than Socrates it would follow that Simmias partook at once of absolute tallness and of absolute shortness whereas the argument requires that since the sould lives and thus partakes of absolute life, death shall fly at the approach of life. No we must say that Simmias partakes of absolute middlesizedness and not in the least of the absolute rather tallness of Phaedo nor of the absolute rather squatness of Socrates. Not quire so obtrusively silly in phrase but quite so in substance is Plato's matter on pp. 101, 102. We are now informed that the cause of a body's being has is not the more grammatical abstraction hest, but is the principle of hest or fire and in like manner it is not mere addness which makes odd numbers odd but the principle of addness which is the monad [foreign text]