The body is a parasite to the soul, feeding off of its intellect and distracting it with desire. While in human, mortal form, the body and soul are bound together, and the soul must cope with the needs of the body. In Plato’s Phaedo, Plato uses Socrates to explain the harmful effects of the relationship between the body and the soul by using explicit and derogatory language regarding the body as the soul’s prison. In Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jekyll attempts to disconnect the soul from the body because he wants to satisfy his temptations without destroying his reputation. Both readings suggest that the good and bad that the soul and the body represent have an inseparable, yet binary, relationship that exists on the premise of greed, temptation, and dysmorphia, and can only become rightfully autonomous through the divine approach of the afterlife, rather than the attempts through manufactured scientific tampering.
Both texts signify an incongruent relationship between the soul’s objective to do good and seek the truth and the body’s desire to give in to greed and the surrounding social and environmental factors. Socrates philosophically inquires, “And what about the other services to the body? Do you think such a person regards them as of any value? For instance, the possession of smart clothes and shoes, and the other bodily adornments—do you think he values them as highly, or does he disdain them, except in so far as he’s absolutely compelled to share in them?” (Plato 10). Socrates relies on a materialistic approach to describe how the body is completely separate from the soul, thus it is the body that wants to conform to its environment. Jekyll creates Hyde as an alias to commit the acts that would destroy Jekyll’s exceptional character. Mr. Enfield encounters Hyde after one of his monstrous deeds and states, “I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best. We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this, as should make his name stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friends or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them” (Stevenson 8). This passage suggests that reputation is very important to citizens of 19th Century London because Mr. Enfield compares it to murder, as the second most effective form of punishment for Hyde’s malicious actions. Plato’s text can be used to understand that since Jekyll’s soul is tainted by the needs of the body, he has impure thoughts. Jekyll’s reputation is held in very high esteem throughout London, and any misdemeanor action would ruin his reputation, even one that the most common person would commit. His environment tempts him, and he wants to rebel in ways he was never able to, so he creates Hyde, merely as a second identity, so he can go unnoticed without destroying his good name. When Jekyll becomes Hyde his soul, which provides Jekyll with his conscience, disappears and as does its restraints.
The dual nature of humans is one that is always in dissonance because of the contradictory natures of the body and the soul. Socrates describes the cravings of the separate agencies of the body and soul by asserting, “As long as we possess the body, and our soul is contaminated by such an evil, we’ll surely never adequately gain what we desire—and that, we say, is truth. Because the body affords us countless distractions” (Plato 12). The body prevents the soul from seeking what is most honest and true; this draws a distinction between the goodness of the soul and the wickedness of the body. Stevenson draws a physical and emotional image of the ugliness that is associated with Hyde. Through Hyde, Jekyll is able to acknowledge the duality of human nature by explaining, “I have observed that when I wore the semblance of Edward Hyde, none could come near to me at first without a visible misgiving of flesh. This, as I take it, was because all human beings, as we meet them, are commingled out of good and evil: and Edward Hyde, alone in the ranks of mankind, was pure evil” (Stevenson 65). Hyde is merely a body, a machine for Jekyll’s temptations, which does not embody good intentions. The actions that the body commits in the spirit of goodness are done because of the soul, and thus Hyde cannot consult his conscience. Both passages suggest the coexisting relationships between the soul and the body as the relationship between pure and impure. The opposing natures of these agents create the human. Since the arguments share parallel structures and messages, Socrates’ claim that the body is evil can be applied to help explain why Hyde, a body without a conscience, is described to be wicked.
Complete purification of the soul requires it to be separated from the body, but mortal human nature requires the two agents to be connected. Socrates rhetorically questions, “Then doesn’t purification turn out to be just what’s been mentioned for some while in our discussion—the parting of the soul from the body as far as possible, and the habituating of it to assemble and gather itself together away from every part of the body, alone by itself, and to live so far as it can, both in the present and in the hereafter released from the body, as from fetters” (Plato 13). In this passage, Socrates suggests that nothing is pure unless it is wholly separated from the greed and senses that the body possesses. His use of the word “Fetters” draws a mental image of the soul being chained to the body, with no earthly escape. Jekyll contemplates his scientific experiments in his friend’s presence, and he admits, “Not that I dreamed of resuscitating Hyde; the bare idea of that would startle me to frenzy: no, it was in my own person that I was once more tempted to trifle with my conscience; and it was as an ordinary secret sinner that I at last fell before the assaults of temptation” (Stevenson 73). Hyde’s ability to do wrong without suffering the consequences of a poor reputation, for a majority of his experimentation, makes him more tempted, even as Jekyll. In reminiscence, Hyde confesses that Jekyll is a “secret sinner”, which alludes to the fact that his good nature is obscured by his bodily temptations. Both passages imply that the body is a barricade which the soul cannot naturally escape, except for in death. Jekyll challenges this by applying scientific experimentation. Although they seem congruent, there is a discrepancy in Jekyll’s explanation that contradicts Socrates. The pure nature of the soul cannot be applied to Jekyll’s dilemma because while in Jekyll’s form, he is still connected to the body, consequently inferring that he still is bound to the shackles of impurity. His soul is never freed, only his body, and therefore, he never experiences the truest form of goodness, unobscured by desire.
The method of separation is critical to the outcome’s success or failure. Socrates speaks of God releasing his intellect from his body during death. Throughout his speech, he references that suicide and tampering with his fate is illegal and will not lead to proper separation. He philosophizes, “God himself shall release us; and being thus pure, through separation from the body’s folly, we shall probably be in like company, and shall know through our own selves all that is unsullied—and that, I dare say, is what the truth is; because never will it be permissible for impure to touch pure” (Plato 13). The use of God as a divine power over the human, clarifies that the divide occurs during the death and transcendence of a mortal being. Although Socrates death was not natural, it was determined through law, which makes it a justifiable means of obtaining a purified soul. Jekyll tampers with drugs to manufacture an artificial and temporary separation. He reflects on his experiment by reasoning, “Certain agents I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion. For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn that the doom and burden of our life is bound for ever on man’s shoulders, and when the attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with more unfamiliar and more awful pressure” (Stevenson 63). Scientific experimentation on the body and soul have increased the severity of the body’s desires. The hindrances of the body are described through the terms and phrases “bound for ever on man’s shoulders,” “unfamiliar,” and “awful,” signifying the imprisoning and abominable nature of the body. Analysis regarding the manner of separation between the body and soul is crucial to understanding the parallel views of Socrates and Stevenson. These passages share a concurrent conclusion on the separation of the body and the soul. Divine intervention and scientific detachment have antagonistic results. While in Jekyll’s form, he still is tainted by the body, but when he is Hyde, he disconnects the pure from his body and becomes a distorted, relentless deviant. There never exists a situation for Jekyll where his soul is isolated and allowed to control his motivations; if that were the case, he would not have a body, and using Socrates’ argument it can be concluded that for this to happen he would have to be dead. Complete transcendence of the soul from the body is the salient detail from Socrates’ argument that explains why Jekyll’s experimentation has different outcomes than Socrates philosophizes.
The body has a lust for material and evil that overpowers the soul’s longing for truth and goodness. The body is relentless, and it is the soul which keeps it restrained and provides a conscience. Jekyll consists of both body and soul, so although he is tempted by his environment, he can make moral decisions using his soul. To protect his good standing, which is critical, he creates Hyde, a body that portrays evil. Stevenson draws a physical connection between morality standing and appearance. Ruining Hyde’s reputation was not a problem for Jekyll until he runs out of his drug and becomes a permanent victim to Hyde’s ruthlessness. Despite his incredible expanse of knowledge, Jekyll cannot overcome this because he tampered with science. He is incapable of escaping the machine that he created as an outlet, and now he is forced to wait for death to reverse its effects. Socrates claims that death is the only way for the body and the soul both to separate from each other; hence, Jekyll’s soul is never alleviated from its prison. Socrates’ argument regarding humans and their dual nature can be applied to Jekyll’s understanding and the effects of his experimentation to explain why Jekyll was never completely pure despite Hyde’s absolute impurity.