[Sidenote: _Crito._]
[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]
The Crito seems intended to exhibit the character of Socrates in one
light only, not as the philosopher, fulfilling a divine mission and
trusting in the will of heaven, but simply as the good citizen, who
having been unjustly condemned is willing to give up his life in
obedience to the laws of the state....
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ANALYSIS.]
The days of Socrates are drawing to a close; the fatal =Steph.= 43
ship has been seen off Sunium, as he is informed by his aged
friend and contemporary Crito, who visits him before the dawn has
broken; he himself has been warned in a dream that on the
third day he must depart. Time is precious, and Crito has come 44
early in order to gain his consent to a plan of escape. This
can be easily accomplished by his friends, who will incur no
danger in making the attempt to save him, but will be disgraced 45
for ever if they allow him to perish. He should think of his
duty to his children, and not play into the hands of his enemies.
Money is already provided by Crito as well as by Simmias and
others, and he will have no difficulty in finding friends in 46
Thessaly and other places.
[Sidenote: _Analysis 47-54._]
Socrates is afraid that Crito is but pressing upon him the
opinions of the many: whereas, all his life long he has followed
the dictates of reason only and the opinion of the one wise or
skilled man. There was a time when Crito himself had allowed
the propriety of this. And although some one will say ‘the many
can kill us,’ that makes no difference; but a good life, in other
words, a just and honourable life, is alone to be valued. All
considerations of loss of reputation or injury to his children
should be dismissed: the only question is whether he would be
right in attempting to escape. Crito, who is a disinterested 47
person not having the fear of death before his eyes, shall answer
this for him. Before he was condemned they had often held discussions,
in which they agreed that no man should either do evil, 48
or return evil for evil, or betray the right. Are these principles
to be altered because the circumstances of Socrates are altered?
Crito admits that they remain the same. Then is his escape 49
consistent with the maintenance of them? To this Crito is unable
or unwilling to reply.
Socrates proceeds:—Suppose the Laws of Athens to come 50
and remonstrate with him: they will ask ‘Why does he seek
to overturn them?’ and if he replies, ‘they have injured him,’
will not the Laws answer, ‘Yes, but was that the agreement?
Has he any objection to make to them which would justify him in 51
overturning them? Was he not brought into the world and educated
by their help, and are they not his parents? He might 52
have left Athens and gone where he pleased, but he has lived
there for seventy years more constantly than any other citizen.’
Thus he has clearly shown that he acknowledged the agreement,
which he cannot now break without dishonour to himself and
danger to his friends. Even in the course of the trial he might
have proposed exile as the penalty, but then he declared that he
preferred death to exile. And whither will he direct his footsteps?
In any well-ordered state the Laws will consider him as 53
an enemy. Possibly in a land of misrule like Thessaly he may be
welcomed at first, and the unseemly narrative of his escape will
be regarded by the inhabitants as an amusing tale. But if he
offends them he will have to learn another sort of lesson. Will
he continue to give lectures in virtue? That would hardly be
decent. And how will his children be the gainers if he takes
them into Thessaly, and deprives them of Athenian citizenship? 54
Or if he leaves them behind, does he expect that they will be
better taken care of by his friends because he is in Thessaly?
Will not true friends care for them equally whether he is alive
or dead?
[Sidenote: _Did Socrates do well to die?_]
Finally, they exhort him to think of justice first, and of life
and children afterwards. He may now depart in peace and
innocence, a sufferer and not a doer of evil. But if he breaks
agreements, and returns evil for evil, they will be angry with him
while he lives; and their brethren the Laws of the world below
will receive him as an enemy. Such is the mystic voice which
is always murmuring in his ears.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: INTRODUCTION.]
That Socrates was not a good citizen was a charge made against him during
his lifetime, which has been often repeated in later ages. The crimes of
Alcibiades, Critias, and Charmides, who had been his pupils, were still
recent in the memory of the now restored democracy. The fact that he had
been neutral in the death-struggle of Athens was not likely to conciliate
popular good-will. Plato, writing probably in the next generation,
undertakes the defence of his friend and master in this particular, not
to the Athenians of his day, but to posterity and the world at large.
Whether such an incident ever really occurred as the visit of Crito and
the proposal of escape is uncertain: Plato could easily have invented
far more than that (Phaedr. 275 B); and in the selection of Crito, the
aged friend, as the fittest person to make the proposal to Socrates, we
seem to recognize the hand of the artist. Whether any one who has been
subjected by the laws of his country to an unjust judgment is right in
attempting to escape, is a thesis about which casuists might disagree.
Shelley (Prose Works, p. 78) is of opinion that Socrates ‘did well to
die,’ but not for the ‘sophistical’ reasons which Plato has put into his
mouth. And there would be no difficulty in arguing that Socrates should
have lived and preferred to a glorious death the good which he might
still be able to perform. ‘A rhetorician would have had much to say upon
that point’ (50 B). It may be observed however that Plato never intended
to answer the question of casuistry, but only to exhibit the ideal of
patient virtue which refuses to do the least evil in order to avoid the
greatest, and to show his master maintaining in death the opinions which
he had professed in his life. Not ‘the world,’ but the ‘one wise man,’
is still the paradox of Socrates in his last hours. He must be guided
by reason, although her conclusions may be fatal to him. The remarkable
sentiment that the many can do neither good nor evil is true, if taken in
the sense, which he means, of moral evil; in his own words, they cannot
make a man wise or foolish.’
[Sidenote: _The personification of the Laws._]
This little dialogue is a perfect piece of dialectic, in which granting
the ‘common principle’ (49 D), there is no escaping from the conclusion.
It is anticipated at the beginning by the dream of Socrates and the
parody of Homer. The personification of the Laws, and of their brethren
the Laws in the world below, is one of the noblest and boldest figures of
speech which occur in Plato.