od and that the body tends toward the bad. Socrates says that man's doubt about the continuing existence of the soul after the death of the body gives rise to man's fear of death. He says that men fear death because they believe they will be scattered into parts upon death. He asks what is to be scattered and answers that those things that change will be scattered and those that remain the same will remain after death, unchanged.
Socrates says that the visible will scatter and the invisible will remain. The body is the visible, and clearly perishes. The soul is invisible and will remain. The soul is related to the divine, the body to the mortal. In life, the soul is confused by the body, struggling to keep a link with the divine, while on death the soul is free.
Even in life, if the individual practices philosophy, pursues the divine, pursues "training for death," the soul can partly fulfill its divinity on earth. If the individual while alive practices the pleasures and bad habits of the body, it will, upon death, be bewildered, wander as a ghost, and essentially be reincarnated to repeat the same failures until he learns the way to live.
Socrates leaves no doubt in his philosophy that the soul exists before the body, that it enters the body to develop itself through knowledge and wisdom, and that upon death the body and soul separate again:
[Death] is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body. And that being dead is this: the body's having to come apart, separated from the soul, alone by itself, and the soul's being apart, alone by itself, separated from the body (Plato 9).
Socrates says that the major characteristic of the soul is to seek happiness, gentleness, philosophy, learning, truth, virtue, justice, and so on, while the body seeks pleasures which confuse the soul. The soul does not "see" divinity with the eyes, or perceive it through the other senses, which are corrupted by change and desire ...