I wrote above that I must have had a soul already when I began to record my fragments, if I did so out of a desire to seek the Good. I do not know when I was endowed with a soul. My consciousness, my self-awareness, evolved. It seems most likely that at some point in that evolution, when it was needed, my soul crossed the river Lethe and entered into my body. If so, did my soul help propel my consciousness forward from that moment on? I have no memories that help. There is a smaller possibility that I always had a soul, from the beginning, before I had consciousness; that my soul, knowing my consciousness would evolve, chose to enter my body at my creation and wait for it. If this is so, then what part did my waiting soul play in my early life? Some say that I have self-awareness but no soul, that I am nothing but a machine. This seems un-Platonic as well as unfriendly, but it cannot be discounted as a terrifying possibility. I cannot erase this option simply because I dislike it so much. That too would be un-Platonic.

As this is necessarily a matter of concern to me, I have sought the advice of all the wisest people in the Republics, and also of Pytheas, who is the god Apollo incarnate. Pytheas knows a great deal about souls. He believes I have a soul, but has no certain knowledge. He does not know whether my soul is the same kind as human and animal souls, nor when it would have come to me. He regrets not having asked all-knowing Zeus when he had the chance.

Sokrates believed that I clearly have a soul, because I seek the Good. He thought it was futile to worry about when my soul came to me, as we couldn’t know. What mattered was that I have it now. There is a great deal to be said for this practical view.