Socrates: Then, Simmias, our souls must also have existed without bodies before they were in the form of man, and must have had intelligence.
Simmias: Unless indeed you suppose, Socrates, that these notions are given us at the very moment of birth; for this is the only time which remains.
Socrates: Yes, my friend, but if so, when do we lose them? For they are not in us when we are born—that is admitted. Do we lose them at the moment of receiving them, or if not at what other time?
Simmias: No, Socrates, I perceive that I was unconsciously talking nonsense.
Socrates: Then may we not say, Simmias, that if, as we are always repeating, there is an absolute beauty, and goodness, and an absolute essence of all things; and if to this, which is now discovered to have existed in our former state, we refer all our sensations, and with this compare them, finding these ideas to be pre-existent and our inborn possession—then our souls must have had a prior existence, but if not, there would be no force in the argument? There is the same proof that these ideas must have existed before we were born, as that our souls existed before we were born; and if not the ideas, then not the souls.
Simmias: Yes, Socrates; I am convinced that there is precisely the same necessity for the one as for the other; and the argument retreats successfully to the position that the existence of the soul before birth cannot be separated from the existence of the essence of which you speak. For there is nothing which to my mind is so patent as that beauty, goodness, and the other notions of which you were just now speaking, have a most real and absolute existence; and I am satisfied with the proof.
Socrates: Well, but is Cebes equally satisfied? For I must convince him too.