SOCRATES

I do not think it possible for a better man to be injured by a

worse.... To a good man nothing is evil, neither while living nor

when dead, nor are his concerns neglected by the gods.

--_The Republic_

[Illustration: SOCRATES]

It was four hundred seventy years before Christ that Socrates was born.

He never wrote a book, never made a formal address, held no public

office, wrote no letters, yet his words have come down to us sharp,

vivid and crystalline. His face, form and features are to us

familiar--his goggle eyes, bald head, snub nose and bow-legs! The habit

of his life--his goings and comings, his arguments and wrangles, his

infinite leisure, his sublime patience, his perfect faith--all these

things are plain, lifting the man out of the commonplace and setting him

apart.

The "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of Plato give us

Boswellian pictures of the man.

Knowing the man, we know what he would do; and knowing what he did, we

know the man.

Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a stonecutter, and his wife

Phaenarete. In boyhood he used to carry dinner to his father, and sitting

by, he heard the men, in their free and easy way, discuss the plans of

Pericles. These workmen didn't know the plans--they were only privates

in the ranks, but they exercised their prerogatives to criticize, and

while working to assist, did right royally disparage and condemn. Like

sailors who love their ship, and grumble at grub and grog, yet on shore

will allow no word of disparagement to be said, so did these Athenians

love their city, and still condemn its rulers--they exercised the

laborer's right to damn the man who gives him work.

Little did the workmen guess--little did his father guess--that this

pug-nosed boy, making pictures in the sand with his big toe, would also

leave his footprints on the sands of time, and a name that would rival

that of Phidias and Pericles!

Socrates was a product of the Greek renaissance. Great men come in

groups, like comets sent from afar. Athens was seething with thought and

feeling: Pericles was giving his annual oration--worth thousands of

weekly sermons--and planning his dream in marble; Phidias was cutting

away the needless portions of the white stone of Pentelicus and

liberating wondrous forms of beauty; Sophocles was revealing the

possibilities of the stage; AEschylus was pointing out the way as a

playwright; and the passion for physical beauty was everywhere an

adjunct of religion.

Prenatal influences, it seems, played their part in shaping the destiny

of Socrates. His mother followed the profession of Sairy Gamp, and made

her home with a score of families, as she was needed. The trained nurse

is often untrained, and is a regular encyclopedia of esoteric family

facts. She wipes her mouth on her apron and is at home in every room of

the domicile from parlor to pantry. Then as now she knew the trials and

troubles of her clients, and all domestic underground happenings

requiring adjustment she looked after as she was "disposed."

Evidently Phaenarete was possessed of considerable personality, for we

hear of her being called to Mythaeia on a professional errand shortly

before the birth of Socrates; and in a month after his birth, a similar

call came from another direction, and the bald little philosopher was

again taken along--from which we assume, following in the footsteps of

Conan Doyle, that Socrates was no bottle-baby. The world should be

grateful to Phaenarete that she did not honor the Sairy Gamp precedents

and observe the Platonic maxim, "Sandal-makers usually go barefoot": she

gave her customers an object-lesson in well-doing as well as teaching

them by precept. None of her clients did so well as she--even though her

professional duties were so exacting that domesticity to her was merely

incidental.

It was only another case of the amateur distancing the professional.

* * * * *

From babyhood we lose sight of Socrates until we find him working at his

father's trade as a sculptor. Certainly he had a goodly degree of skill,

for the "Graces" which he carved were fair and beautiful and admired by

many. This was enough: he just wanted to reveal what he could do; and

then to show that to have no ambition was his highest ambition, he threw

down his tools and took off his apron for good. He was then thirty-five

years old. Art is a jealous mistress, and demands that "thou shalt have

no other gods before me." Socrates did not concentrate on art. His mind

went roaming the world of philosophy, and for his imagination the

universe was hardly large enough.

I said that he deliberately threw down his tools; but possibly this was

by request, for he had acquired a habit of engaging in much wordy

argument and letting the work slide. He went out upon the streets to

talk, and in the guise of a learner he got in close touch with all the

wise men of Athens by stopping them and asking questions. In physique he

was immensely strong--hard work had developed his muscles, plain fare

had made him oblivious of the fact that he had a stomach, and as for

nerves, he had none to speak of.

Socrates did not marry until he was about forty. His wife was scarcely

twenty. Of his courtship we know nothing, but sure it is Socrates did

not go and sue for the lady's hand in the conventional way, nor seek to

gain the consent of her parents by proving his worldly prospects. His

apparel was costly as his purse could buy, not gaudy nor expressed in

fancy. It consisted of the one suit that he wore, for we hear of his

repairing beyond the walls to bathe in the stream, and of his washing

his clothing, hanging it on the bushes and waiting for it to dry before

going back to the city. As for shoes, he had one pair, and since he

never once wore them, going barefoot Summer and Winter, it is presumed

that they lasted well. One can not imagine Socrates in an opera-hat--in

fact, he wore no hat, and he was bald. I record the fact so as to

confound those zealous ones who badger the bald as a business, who have

recipes concealed on their persons, and who assure us that baldness has

its rise in headgear.

Socrates belonged to the leisure class. His motto was, "Know Thyself."

He considered himself of much more importance than any statue he could

make, and to get acquainted with himself as being much more desirable

than to know physical phenomena. His plan of knowing himself was to ask

everybody questions, and in their answers he would get a true reflection

of his own mind. His intellect would reply to theirs, and if his

questions dissolved their answers into nothingness, the supremacy of his

own being would be apparent; and if they proved his folly he was equally

grateful--if he was a fool, his desire was to know it. So sincere was

Socrates in this wish to know himself that never did he show the

slightest impatience nor resentment when the argument was turned upon

him.

He looked upon his mind as a second party, and sat off and watched it

work. Should it become confused or angered, it would be proof of its

insufficiency and littleness. If Socrates ever came to know himself, he

knew this fact: as an economic unit he was an absolute failure; but as a

gadfly, stinging men into thinking for themselves, he was a success. A

specialist is a deformity contrived by Nature to get the work done.

Socrates was a thought-specialist, and the laziest man who ever lived in

a strenuous age. The desire of his life was to live without

desire--which is essentially the thought of Nirvana. He had the power

never to exercise his power except in knowing himself.

He accepted every fact, circumstance and experience of life, and counted

it gain. Life to him was a precious privilege, and what were regarded as

unpleasant experiences were as much a part of life as the pleasant ones.

He who succeeds in evading unpleasant experiences cheats himself out of

so much life. You know yourself by watching yourself to see what you do

when you are thwarted, crossed, contradicted, or deprived of certain

things supposed to be desirable. If you always get the desirable things,

how do you know what you would do if you didn't have them? You exchange

so much life for the thing, that's all, and thus do we see Socrates

anticipating Emerson's Essay on Compensation.

Everything is bought with a price--all things are of equal value--no one

can cheat you, for to be cheated is a not undesirable experience, and in

the act, if you are really filled with the thought, "Know Thyself," you

get the compensation by increase in mental growth.

However, to deliberately go in search of experience, Socrates said,

would be a mistake, because then you would so multiply impressions that

none would be of any avail and your life would be burned out. To clutch

life by the throat and demand that it shall stand and deliver is to

place yourself so out of harmony with your environment that you will get

nothing.

Above all things, we must be calm, self-centered, never anxious, and be

always ready to accept whatever the gods may send. The world will come

to us if we only wait. It will be seen that Socrates is at once the

oldest and most modern of thinkers. He was the first to express the New

Thought. A thought, to Socrates, was more of a reality than a block of

marble--a moral principle was just as persistent as a chemical agent.

* * * * *

The silken-robed and perfumed Sophist was sport and game for Socrates.

For him Socrates recognized no closed season. If Socrates ever came near

losing his temper, it was in dealing with this Edmund Russell of Athens.

Grant Allen used to say, "The spores of everything are everywhere, and a

certain condition breeds a certain microbe." A period of prosperity

always warms into life this social paragon, who lives in a darkened room

hung with maroon drapery where incense is burned and a turbaned Hindu

carries your card to the master, who faces the sun and exploits a

prie-dieu when the wind blows east. Athens had these men of refined

elegance, Rome evolved them, London has had her day, New York knows

them, and Chicago--I trust I will not be contradicted when I say that

Chicago understands her business! And so we find these folks who

cultivate a pellucid passivity, a phthisicky whisper, a supercilious

smirk, and who win our smothered admiration and give us gooseflesh by

imparting a taupe tinge of mystery to all their acts and words, thus

proving to the assembled guests that they are the Quality and Wisdom

will die with them.

This lingo of meaningless words and high-born phrases always set

Socrates by the ears, and when he could corner a Sophist, he would very

shortly prick his pretty toy balloon, until at last the tribe fled him

as a pestilence. Socrates stood for sanity. The Sophist represented

moonshine gone to seed, and these things, proportioned ill, drive men

transverse.

Extremes equalize themselves: the pendulum swings as far this way as it

does that. The saponaceous Sophist who renounced the world and yet lived

wholly in a world of sense, making vacuity pass legal tender for

spirituality, and the priest who, mystified with a mumble of words,

evolved a Diogenes who lived in a tub, wore regally a robe of rags, and

once went into the temple, and cracking a louse on the altar-rail, said

solemnly, "Thus does Diogenes sacrifice to all the gods at once!" are

but two sides of the same shield.

In Socrates was a little jollity and much wisdom pickled in the scorn of

Fortune; but the Sophists inwardly bowed down and worshiped the fickle

dame on idolatrous knees. Socrates won immortality because he did not

want it, and the Sophists secured oblivion because they deserved it.

* * * * *

We hear of Socrates going to Aspasia, and holding long conversations

with her "to sharpen his mind." Aspasia did not go out in society much:

she and Pericles lived very simply. It is worth while to remember that

the most intellectual woman of her age was democratic enough to be on

friendly terms with the barefoot philosopher who went about regally

wrapped in a table-spread. Socrates did not realize the flight of time

when making calls--he went early and stayed late. Possibly prenatal

influences caused him often to call before breakfast and remain until

after supper.

Just imagine Pericles, Aspasia and Socrates sitting at table--with

Walter Savage Landor behind the arras making notes! Doubtless Socrates

and Mrs. Pericles did most of the talking, while the First Citizen of

Athens listened and smiled indulgently now and then as his mind wandered

to construction contracts and walking delegates. Pericles, the builder

of a city--Pericles, first among practical men since time began, and

Socrates, who jostles history for first place among those who have done

nothing but talk--imagine these two eating melons together, while

Aspasia, gentle and kind, talks of spirit being more than matter and

love being greater than the Parthenon!

Socrates is usually spoken of as regarding women with slight favor, but

I have noticed that your genus woman-hater holds the balance true by

really being a woman-lover. If a man is enough interested in women to

hate them, note this: he is only searching for the right woman, the

woman who compares favorably with the ideal woman in his own mind. He

measures every woman by this standard, just as Ruskin compared all

modern painters with Turner and discarded them with fitting adjectives

as they receded from what he regarded as the perfect type. If Ruskin had

not been much interested in painters, would he have written scathing

criticisms about them?

In several instances we hear of Socrates reminding his followers that

they are "weak as women," and he was the first to say "woman is an

undeveloped man." But Socrates was a great admirer of human beauty,

whether physical or spiritual, and his abrupt way of stopping beautiful

women on the streets and bluntly telling them they were beautiful,

doubtless often confirmed their suspicions. And thus far he was

pleasing, but when he went on to ask questions so as to ascertain

whether their mental estate compared with their physical, why, that was

slightly different. It is good to hear him say, "There is no sex in

intellect," and also, "I have long held the opinion that the female sex

is nothing inferior to ours, save only in strength of body and possibly

in steadiness of judgment." And Xenophon quotes him thus: "It is more

delightful to hear the virtue of a good woman described than if the

painter Zeuxis were to show me the portrait of the fairest woman in the

world."

Perhaps Thackeray is right when he says, "The men who appreciate woman

most are those who have felt the sharpness of her claws." That is to

say, things show up best on the darkest background. If so, let us give

Xantippe due credit. She tested the temper of the sage by railing on him

and deluging him with Socratic propositions, not waiting for the

answers; she often broke in with a broom upon his introspective efforts

to know himself; if this were not enough, she dashed buckets of

scrubbing-water over him; presents that were sent him by admiring

friends she used as targets for her mop and wit; if he invited friends

with faith plus to dine, she upset the table, dishes and all, before

them--not much to their loss; she occasionally elbowed her way through a

crowd where her husband was entertaining the listeners upon the divine

harmonies, and would tear off his robe and lead him home by the ear. But

these things never ruffled Socrates--he might roll his eyes in comic

protest at the audiences as he was being led away captive, but no

resentment was shown. He had the strength of a Hercules, but he was a

far better non-resistant than Tolstoy, because he took his medicine with

a wink, while Fate is obliged to hold the nose of the author of "Anna

Karenina," who never sees the comedy of an inward struggle and an

outward compliance, any more than does the benedict, safely entrenched

under the bed, who shouts out, "I defy thee, I defy thee!" as did

Mephisto when Goethe thrust him into Tophet.

* * * * *

The popular belief is that Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, was a shrew,

and had she lived in New England in Cotton Mather's time would have been

a candidate for the ducking-stool. Socrates said he married her for

discipline. A man in East Aurora, however, has recently made it plain to

himself that Xantippe was possessed of a great and acute intellect. She

knew herself, and she knew her liege as he never did--he was too close

to his subject to get the perspective. She knew that under right

conditions his name would live as one of the world's great teachers, and

so she set herself to supply the conditions. She deliberately sacrificed

herself and put her character in a wrong light before the world in order

that she might benefit the world. Most women have a goodly grain of

ambition for themselves, and if their husbands have genius, their

business is not to prove it, but to show that they themselves are not

wholly commonplace.

Not so Xantippe--she was quite willing to be misunderstood that her

husband might live.

What the world calls a happy marriage is not wholly good--ease is bought

with a price. Suppose Xantippe and Socrates had settled down and lived

in a cottage with a vine growing over the portico, and two rows of

hollyhocks leading from the front gate to the door; a pathway of

coal-ashes lined off with broken crockery, and inside the house all

sweet, clean and tidy; Socrates earning six drachmas a day carving

marble, with double pay for overtime, and he handing the pay-envelope

over to her each Saturday night, keeping out just enough for tobacco,

and she putting a tidy sum in the AEgean Savings-Bank every month--why,

what then?

Well, that would have been an end of Socrates. Xantippe was big enough

to know this and so she supplied the domestic cantharides and drove him

out upon the streets--he grew to care very little for her, not much for

the children, nothing for his home. She drove him out into the world of

thought, instead of allowing him to settle down and be content with her

society.

I once knew a sculptor--another sculptor--an elemental bit of nature,

original and, better still, aboriginal. He used to sleep out under the

stars so as to wake up in the night and see the march of the Milky Way,

and watch the Pleiades disappear over the brink of the western horizon.

He wore a flannel shirt, thick-soled shoes, and overalls, no hat, and

his hair was thick and coarse as a horse's mane. This man had talent,

and he had sublime conceptions, great dreams, and splendid aspirations.

His soul was struggling to find expression. "Leave him alone," I said.

"He needs time to ripen. He is a Michelangelo in embryo!"

Did he ripen? Not he. He married a Wellesley girl of good family. She,

too, had ideas about art--she painted china-buttons for shirtwaists,

embroidered chasubles and sang "The Rosary" in a raucous Quinsigamond

voice. The big barbarian became respectable, and the last time I saw

him he wore a Tuxedo and was passing out platitudes and raspberry-shrub

at a lawn-party. The Wellesley girl had tamed her bear--they were very

happy, he assured me, and she was preparing a course of lectures for him

which he was to give at Mrs. Jack Gardner's. A Xantippe might have saved

him.

* * * * *

A captious friend once suggested to Socrates this: "If you prize the

female nature so highly, how does it happen that you do not instruct

Xantippe?"--a rather indelicate proposition to put to a married man. And

Socrates, quite unruffled, replied: "My friend, if one wants to learn

horsemanship, does he choose a tame horse or one with mettle and a hard

mouth? I wish to converse with all sorts of people, and I believe that

nothing can disturb me after I grow accustomed to the tongue of

Xantippe."

Again we hear of his suggesting that his wife's scolding tongue may have

been only the buzzing of his own waspish thoughts, and if he did not

call forth these qualities in her they would not otherwise have

appeared. And so, beholding her impatience and unseemliness, he would

realize the folly of an ill temper and thus learn by antithesis to curb

his own. Old Doctor Johnson used to have a regular menagerie of

wrangling, jangling, quibbling, dissatisfied pensioners in his

household; and so far as we know he never learned the truth that all

pensioners are dissatisfied. "If I can stand things at home, I can stand

things anywhere," he once said to Boswell, as much as to say, "If I can

stand things at home, I can stand even you." Goldsmith referred to

Boswell as a cur; Garrick said he thought he was a bur. Socrates had a

similar satellite by the name of Cheropho, a dark, dirty, weazened, and

awfully serious little man of the tribe of Buttinsky, who sat

breathlessly trying to catch the pearls that fell from the ample mouth

of the philosopher. Aristophanes referred to Cheropho as "Socrates'

bat," a play-off on Minerva and her bird of night, the owl. There were

quite a number of these "bats," and they seemed to labor under the same

hallucination that catches the lady students of the Pundit Vivakenanda

H. Darmapala: they think that wisdom is to be imparted by word of mouth,

and that by listening hard and making notes one can become very wise.

Socrates said again and again, "Character is a matter of growth and all

I hope to do is to make you think for yourselves."

That chilly exclusiveness which regards a man's house as his castle, his

home, the one sacred spot, and all outside as the cold and cruel world,

was not the ideal of Socrates. His family was his circle of friends, and

these were of all classes and conditions, from the First Citizen to

beggars on the street.

He made no charge for his teaching, took up no collections, and never

inaugurated a Correspondence School. America has produced one man who

has been called a reincarnation of Socrates; that man was Bronson

Alcott, who peddled clocks and forgot the flight of time whenever any

one would listen to him expound the unities. Alcott once ran his

wheelbarrow into a neighbor's garden and was proceeding to load his

motor-car with cabbages, beets and potatoes. Glancing up, the

philosopher saw the owner of the garden looking at him steadfastly over

the wall. "Don't look at me that way," called Alcott with a touch of

un-Socratic acerbity, "don't look at me that way--I need these things

more than you!" and went on with the annexation.

The idea that all good things are for use and belong to all who need

them was a favorite maxim of Socrates. The furniture in his house never

exceeded the exemption clause. Once we find him saying that Xantippe

complained because he did not buy her a stewpan, but since there was

nothing to put in it, he thought her protests ill-founded.

The climate of Athens is about like that of Southern California--one

does not need to bank food and fuel against the coming of Winter. Life

can be adjusted to its simplest forms. From his fortieth to his fiftieth

year, Socrates worked every other Thursday; then he retired from active

life, and Xantippe took in plain sewing.

Socrates was surely not a good provider, but if he had provided more for

his family, he would have provided less for the world. The wealthy Crito

would have turned his pockets inside out for Socrates, but Socrates had

all he wished, and explained that as it was he had to dance at home in

order to keep down the adipose. Aristides, who was objectionable because

he so shaped his conduct that he was called "The Just" and got himself

ostracized, was one of his dear friends. Antisthenes, the original

Cynic, used to walk six miles and back every day to hear Socrates talk.

The Cynic was a rich man, but so captivated was he with the preaching

of Socrates that he adopted the life of simplicity and dressed in rags

and boycotted both the barber and the bath. On one occasion Socrates

looked sharply at a rent in the cloak of his friend and said, "Ah,

Antisthenes, through that hole in your cloak I see your vanity!"

Xenophon sat at the feet of Socrates for a score of years, and then

wrote his recollections of him as a vindication of his character. Euclid

of Megara was nearly eighty when he came to Socrates as a pupil, trying

to get rid of his ill-temper and habit of ironical reply. Cebes and

Simmias left their native country and became Greek citizens for his

sake. Charmides, the pampered son of wealthy parents, learned pedagogics

by being shown that, in households where there were many servants, the

children got cheated out of their rightful education because others did

all the work, and to deprive a child of the privilege of being useful

was to rob him of so much life. AEschines, the ambitious son of a

sausage-maker, was advised by Socrates to borrow money of himself on

long time without interest, by reducing his wants. So pleased was the

recipient with this advice, that he went to publishing Socratic

dialogues as a business and had the felicity to fail with tidy

liabilities.

But the two men who loom largest in the life of Socrates are Alcibiades

and Plato--characters very much unlike.

Alcibiades was twenty-one years old when we find him first. He was

considered the handsomest young man in Athens. He was aristocratic,

proud, insolent, and needlessly rich. He had a passion for gambling,

horse-racing, dog-fighting, and indulged in the churchly habit of doing

that which he ought not and leaving undone that which he should have

done. He was worse than that degenerate scion of a proud ancestry, who

a-kneiping went with his lady friends in the Cincinnati fountain, after

the opera, on a wager. He whipped a man who admitted he did not have a

copy of the "Iliad" in his house; publicly destroyed the record of a

charge against one of his friends; and when his wife applied for a

divorce, he burst into the courtroom and vacated proceedings by carrying

the lady off by force. At banquets he would raise a disturbance, and

while he was being forcibly ejected from one door, his servants would

sneak in at another and steal the silverware, which he would give away

as charity. He also indulged in the Mark Antony trick of rushing into

houses at night and pulling good folks out of bed by the heels, and then

running away before they were barely awake.

His introduction to Socrates came in an attempt to break up a Socratic

prayer-meeting. Socrates succeeded in getting the roysterer to listen

long enough to turn the laugh on him and show all concerned that the

life of a rowdy was the life of a fool. Alcibiades had expected Socrates

to lose his temper, but it was Alcibiades who gave way, and blurted out

that he could not hope to beat his antagonist talking, but he would like

to wrestle with him.

Legend has it that Socrates gave the insolent young man a shock by

instantly accepting his challenge. In the bout that followed, the

philosopher, built like a gorilla, got a half-Nelson on his man, who was

a little the worse for wine, and threw him so hard, jumping on his

prostrate form with his knees, that the aristocratic hoodlum was laid up

for a moon. Ever after Alcibiades had a thorough respect for Socrates.

They became fast friends, and whenever the old man talked in the Agora,

Alcibiades was on hand to keep order.

When war came with Sparta and her allies in the Peloponnesus they

enlisted, Socrates going as corporal and Alcibiades as captain. They

occupied the same tent during the entire campaign. Socrates proved a

fearless soldier, and walked the winter ice in bare feet, often pulling

his belt one hole tighter in lieu of breakfast, to show the complaining

soldiers that endurance was the thing that won battles. At the battle of

Delium, when there was a rout, Xenophon says Socrates walked off the

field leisurely, arm in arm with the general, explaining the nature of

harmony.

Through the influence of Socrates, the lawless Alcibiades was tamed and

became almost a model citizen, although his head was hardly large enough

for a philosopher.

"Say what you will, you'll find it all in Plato," said Emerson. If

Socrates had done nothing else but give bent to the mind of Plato, he

would deserve the gratitude of the centuries. Plato is the mine to

which all thinkers turn for treasure. When they first met, Plato was

twenty and Socrates sixty, and for ten years, to the day of Socrates'

death, they were together almost constantly. Plato died aged eighty-one,

and for fifty years he had lived but to record the dialogues of

Socrates. It was curiosity that first attracted this fine youth to the

old man--Socrates was so uncouth that he was amusing. Plato was

interested in politics, and like most Athenian youths, was intent on

having a good time. However, he was no rowdy, like Alcibiades: he was

suave, gracious, and elegant in all of his acts. He had been taught by

the Sophists and the desire of his life was to seem, rather than to be.

By very gentle stages, Plato began to perceive that to make an

impression on society was not worth working for--the thing to do was to

be yourself, and yourself at your best. And we can give no better answer

to the problem of life than Plato gives in the words of Socrates: "It is

better to be than to seem. To live honestly and deal justly is the meat

of the whole matter."

Plato was not a disciple--he was big enough not to ape the manners and

eccentricities of his Master--he saw beneath the rough husk and beyond

the grotesque outside the great controlling purpose in the life of

Socrates. He would be himself--and himself at his best--and he would

seek to satisfy the Voice within, rather than to try to please the

populace. Plato still wore his purple cloak, and the elegance and grace

of his manner were not thrown aside.

Wouldn't it have been worth our while to travel miles to see these

friends: the one old, bald, short, fat, squint-eyed, barefoot; and the

other with all the poise of aristocratic youth--tall, courtly and

handsome, wearing his robe with easy, regal grace! And so they have

walked and talked adown the centuries, side by side, the most perfect

example that can be named of that fine affection which often exists

between teacher and scholar.

Plato's "Republic," especially, gives us an insight into a very great

and lofty character. From his tower of speculation, Plato scanned the

future, and saw that the ideal of education was to have it continue

through life, for none but the life of growth and development ever

satisfies. And love itself turns to ashes of roses if not used to help

the soul in her upward flight. It was Plato who first said, "There is no

profit where no pleasure's ta'en." He further perceived that in the life

of education, the sexes must move hand in hand; and he also saw that,

while religions are many and seemingly diverse, goodness and kindness

are forever one.

His faith in the immortality of the soul was firm, but whether we are to

live in another world or not, he said there is no higher wisdom than to

live here and now--live our highest and best--cultivate the receptive

mind and the hospitable heart, "partaking of all good things in

moderation."

It takes these two to make the whole. There is no virtue in poverty--no

merit in rags--the uncouth qualities in Socrates were not a

recommendation. Yet he was himself. But Plato made good, in his own

character, all that Socrates lacked. Some one has said that Fitzgerald's

Omar is two-thirds Fitzgerald and one-third Omar. In his books, Plato

modestly puts his wisest maxims into the mouth of his master, and just

how much Plato and how much Socrates there is in the "Dialogues," we

will never know until we get beyond the River Styx.

* * * * *

Socrates was deeply attached to Athens, and he finally became the best

known figure in the city. He criticized in his own frank, fearless way

all the doings of the times--nothing escaped him. He was a

self-appointed investigating committee in all affairs of state, society

and religion. Hypocrisy, pretense, affectation and ignorance trembled at

his approach. He was feared, despised and loved. But those who loved him

were as one in a hundred. He became a public nuisance. The charge

against him was just plain heresy--he had spoken disrespectfully of the

gods and through his teaching he had defiled the youth of Athens. Ample

warning had been given to him, and opportunity to run away was provided,

but he stuck like a leech, asking the cost of banquets and making

suggestions about all public affairs.

He was arrested, bailed by Plato and Crito, and tried before a jury of

five hundred citizens. Socrates insisted on managing his own case. A

rhetorician prepared an address of explanation, and the culprit was

given to understand that if he read this speech to his judges and said

nothing else, it would be considered as an apology and he would be

freed--the intent of the trial being more to teach the old man a lesson

in minding his own business than to injure him.

But Socrates replied to his well-meaning friend, "Think you I have not

spent my whole life in preparing for this one thing?" And he handed back

the smoothly polished manuscript with a smile. Montaigne says, "Should

a suppliant voice have been heard out of the mouth of Socrates now;

should that lofty virtue strike sail in the very height of its glory,

and his rich and powerful nature be committed to flowing rhetoric as a

defense? Never!"

Socrates cross-questioned his accusers in the true Socratic style and

showed that he had never spoken disrespectfully of the gods: he had only

spoken disrespectfully of their absurd conception of the gods. And here

is a thought which is well to consider even yet: The so-called "infidel"

is often a man of great gentleness of spirit, and his disbelief is not

in God, but in some little man's definition of God--a distinction the

little man, being without humor, can never see.

When Socrates had confounded his accusers, this time not giving them the

satisfaction of the last word, he launched out on a general criticism of

the city, and told where its rulers were gravely at fault. Being

cautioned to bridle his tongue, he replied, "When your generals at

Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium assigned my place in the battle I

remained there, did my work, and faced the peril, and think you that

when Deity has assigned me my duty at this pass in life I should,

through fear of death, evade it, and shirk my post?"

This man appeared at other times, to some, as an idle loafer, but now he

arose to a sublime height. He repeated with emphasis all he had ever

said against their foolish superstitions, and arraigned the waste and

futility of the idle rich. The power of the man was revealed as never

before, and those who had intended to let him go with a fine, now

thought it best to dispose of him. The safety of the state was

endangered by such an agitator--the question of religion is really not

what has sent the martyrs to the stake--it is the politician, not the

priest, who fears the heretic.

By a small majority, Socrates was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Let Plato tell of that last hour--he has done it once for all:

When he had done speaking, Crito said, "And have you any commands

for us, Socrates--anything to say about your children, or any other

matter in which we can serve you?"

"Nothing particular," he said; "only, as I have always told you, I

would have you to look to your own conduct; that is a service which

you may always be doing to me and mine as well as to yourselves."

...

"We will do our best," said Crito. "But in what way would you have

us bury you?"

"In any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take

care that I do not walk away from you." Then he turned to us, and

added with a smile: "I can not make Crito believe that I am the

same Socrates who has been talking and conducting the argument; he

fancies that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see, a dead

body--and he asks, 'How shall he bury me?' And though I have spoken

many words in the endeavor to show that when I have drunk the

poison I shall leave you and go to the joys of the blessed--these

words of mine, with which I comforted you and myself, have had, as

I perceive, no effect upon Crito. And therefore I want you to be

surety for me now, as he was surety for me at the trial: but let

the promise be of another sort; for he was my surety to the judges

that I would remain, but you must be my surety to him that I shall

not remain, but go away and depart; and then he will suffer less at

my death, and not be grieved when he sees my body being burned. I

would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the

burial,'Thus we lay out Socrates,' or, 'Thus we follow him to the

grave or bury him'; for false words are not only evil in

themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be of good cheer

then, my dear Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and

do with that as is usual, and as you think best."

When he had spoken these words, he arose and went into the

bath-chamber with Crito, who bid us wait; and we waited, talking

and thinking of the subject of discourse, and also of the greatness

of our sorrow; he was like a father of whom we were being bereaved,

and we were about to pass the rest of our lives as orphans. When he

had taken his bath, his children were brought to him--and the women

of his family also came, and he talked to them and gave them a few

directions in the presence of Crito; and he then dismissed them and

returned to us.

Now the hour of sunset was near. When he came out, he sat down with

us again after his bath, but not much was said. Soon the jailer,

who was the servant, entered and stood by him, saying: "To you,

Socrates, whom I know to be the noblest and gentlest and best of

all who ever came to this place, I will not impute the angry

feelings of other men, who rage and swear at me when, in obedience

to the authorities, I bid them drink the poison--indeed I am sure

that you will not be angry with me; for others, as you are aware,

and not I, are the guilty cause. And so fare you well, and try to

bear lightly what must needs be; you know my errand." Then bursting

into tears, he turned away, and went out.

Socrates looked at him and said, "I return your good wishes, and

will do as you bid." Then turning to us, he said: "How charming the

man is! Since I have been in prison, he has always been coming to

see me, and at times, he would talk to me, and was as good as could

be to me, and now see how generously he sorrows for me. But we must

do as he says, Crito; let the cup be brought."

"Not yet," said Crito; "the sun is still upon the hill-tops, and

many a one has taken the draft late, and after the announcement has

been made to him, he has eaten and drunk and indulged in sensual

delights; do not hasten then--there is still time."

Socrates said: "Yes, Crito, and they of whom you speak are right in

doing thus, but I do not think that I should gain anything by

drinking the poison a little later; I should be sparing and saving

a life which is already gone: I could only laugh at myself for

this. Please then to do as I say, and not to refuse me."

Crito, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant; and the

servant went in, and remained for some time, and then returned with

the jailer carrying the cup of poison. Socrates said, "You, my good

friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me

directions how I am to proceed." The man answered, "You have only

to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and

the poison will act." At the same time, he handed the cup to

Socrates, who, in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the

least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with

his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said:

"What do you say about making the libation out of this cup to any

god? May I, or not?" The man answered, "We only prepare, Socrates,

just so much as we deem enough." "I understand," he said. "Yet I

may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to

that other world--may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to

me!" Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and

cheerfully, he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had

been able to control our sorrow; but now we saw him drinking, and

saw, too, that he had finished the draft, we could no longer

forbear, and in spite of myself, my own tears were flowing fast; so

that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was

not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in

having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when

he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved

away, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been

weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry, which made cowards

of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness. "What is this

strange outcry?" he said, "I sent away the women mainly in order

that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man

should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience." When we

heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he

walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he

lay on his back, according to directions, and the man who gave him

the poison, now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a

while, he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and

he said, "No"; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and

showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and

said, "When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end." He

was beginning to grow cold, when he uncovered his face, for he had

covered himself up, and said (they were his last words), "Crito, I

owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?"

"The debt shall be paid," said Crito. "Is there anything else?"

There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two, a

movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were

set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth.

Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call

the wisest, the justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever

known.