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unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul
from this world to another. (Plato, Apology 40c-d; tr. Jowett; see also
this summary of Apology40c-41c.)
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come ... (Hamlet iii, 1)
The fear of death is only an instance of thinking oneself wise when one is not;
for it is to think one knows what one does not know. (Apology 29a, tr.
Guthrie)
In sum, either there is an afterlife or there is not. And to claim more than that -
- i.e. that an afterlife or materialism is the reality -- is to think you know what
you don't know, to think yourself wise when you are not, which is the cardinal
vice in philosophy: "conceited ignorance" (Apology 21d).
Although Plato presents reasoned arguments for his picture of death as "giving
up the ghost" (Phaedo64c), that is of death as the soul leaving the body, he
does not confuse belief which is the outcome of Socratic dialectic with
knowledge of "everlasting to eternity".
According to Leo Tolstoy, what tells man how he should live his life is the
thought that he must die one day. But as to the afterlife: "... whether he found
there what he had hoped for, or whether he was disappointed, is something we
shall all soon know" (Master and Man).