Dialogue

 1 Phaedo|         now departing. This is his answer to any one who charges him
 2 Phaedo|          smoke or air. Socrates in answer appeals first of all to
 3 Phaedo|            disposed of; and now an answer has to be given to the Theban
 4 Phaedo| difficulties which Socrates cannot answer. Of generation and destruction
 5 Phaedo|          This is a safe and simple answer, which escapes the contradictions
 6 Phaedo|        beyond ‘the safe and simple answer.’ We may say, not only that
 7 Phaedo|          title to belong? Whatever answer is given by us to these
 8 Phaedo|           to us because we have no answer to them. What is to become
 9 Phaedo|   believing any superstition. What answer can be made to the old commonplace, ‘
10 Phaedo|     abstract ideas?’ he could only answer by an imaginary hypothesis.
11 Phaedo|            by his ‘safe and simple answer,’ that beauty is the cause
12 Phaedo|          perpetual generation. The answer to the ‘very serious question’
13 Phaedo|          we forbear to ask; for no answer can be given to this question.
14 Phaedo|           would like me to have an answer ready for him, you may as
15 Phaedo|          you think that I ought to answer your indictment as if I
16 Phaedo|     convincing us, that will be an answer to the charge against yourself.~
17 Phaedo|            dead?~I can only say in answer—the living.~Then the living,
18 Phaedo|           way, he will give a true answer of himself, but how could
19 Phaedo|            when we ask and when we answer questions. Of all this we
20 Phaedo|         called death, how shall we answer him?~Socrates looked fixedly
21 Phaedo|            better able than myself answer him? for there is force
22 Phaedo|             But perhaps, before we answer him, we had better also
23 Phaedo|        meet the attack? And did he answer forcibly or feebly? Narrate
24 Phaedo|          That he should be able to answer was nothing, but what astonished
25 Phaedo|           I quite imagined that no answer could be given to him, and
26 Phaedo|     appears to me to be the safest answer which I can give, either
27 Phaedo|          wiser heads than mine may answer them; inexperienced as I
28 Phaedo|         you would not mind him, or answer him, until you had seen
29 Phaedo|        begin again; and do not you answer my question in the words
30 Phaedo|           me have not the old safe answer of which I spoke at first,
31 Phaedo|           call the safe and stupid answer), but fire, a far superior
32 Phaedo|           but fire, a far superior answer, which we are now in a condition
33 Phaedo|          this objection, we cannot answer that the odd principle is
34 Phaedo|        anything else? There was no answer to this question; but in