The trial and death of Socrates : being the Euthyphron, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo of Plato

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THE TRIAL & DEATH OF SOCRATES

*O 5' dve^Tcurroj /3toj ov /Siwrds cu>0p(j!nrip
' An unexamined life is not worth living.'

(PLATO, Apol. 38 A. )

THE TRIAL AND DEATH
OF SOCRATES

BEING

THE EUTHYPHRON, APOLOGY, CRITO,
AND PH^EDO OF PLATO

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

BY

F. J. CHURCH, M.A.

LONDON
MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK
1895

[ All rights reserved.]

First Edition printed 1880

Second Edition, Golden Treasury Series, 1886

Reprinted 1887, 1888, 1890, 1891, 1892, March and September 1895

PREFACE.

THIS book, which is intended principally for
the large and increasing class of readers who
wish to learn something of the masterpieces
of Greek literature, and who cannot easily
read them in Greek, was originally published
by Messrs. Macmillan in a different form.
Since its first appearance it has been revised
and corrected throughout, and largely re-
written. The chief part of the Introduction
is new. It is not intended to be a general
essay on Socrates, but only an attempt to
explain and illustrate such points in his life
and teaching as are referred to in these
dialogues, which, taken by themselves, con-
tain Plato's description of his great master's
life, and work, and death.

The books which were most useful to me
in writing it are Professor Zeller's Socrates and
the Socratic Schools, and the edition of the

VI PREFACE.

Apology by the late Rev. James Riddell,
published after his death by the delegates
of the Clarendon Press. His account of
Socrates is singularly striking. I found the
very exact and literal translation of the Phcedo
into colloquial English by the late Mr. E. M.
Cope often very useful in revising that dia-
logue. I have also to thank various friends
for the patience with which they have looked
over parts of my work in manuscript, and
for the many valuable hints and suggestions
which they have given me.

As a rule I have used the text of the
Zurich editors. Twice or thrice, in the Phczdo,
I have taken a reading from the text of
Schanz : but it seems to me that what makes
his edition valuable is its apparatus criticus
rather than its text.

F. J. C.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION

ix

EUTHYPHRON .....

i

APOLOGY

• 33

CRITO

• 79

PH/EDO

. 103

INTRODUCTION.

THESE dialogues contain a unique picture of
Socrates in the closing scenes of his life, his
trial, his imprisonment, and his death. And
they contain a description also of that unflagging
search after truth, that persistent and merciless
examination and sifting of men who were wise
only in their own conceit, to which his latter
years were devoted. Within these limits he
is the most familiar figure of ancient Greek
history. No one else stands out before us with
so individual and distinct a personality of his
own. Of the rest of Socrates' life, however, we
are almost completely ignorant. All that we
know of it consists of a few scattered and
isolated facts, most of which are referred to in
these dialogues. A considerable number of
stories are told about him by late writers : but
to scarcely any of them can credit be given.
Plato and Xenophon are almost the only trust-
worthy authorities about him who remain ; and
they describe him almost altogether as an old
man. The earlier part of his life is to us
scarcely more than a blank.

Socrates was born very shortly before the

X INTRODUCTION.

year 469 B.C.1 His father, Sophroniscus, was
a sculptor : his mother, Phaenarete, a midwife.
Nothing definite is known of his moral and
intellectual development. There is no specific
record of him at all until he served at the siege
of Potidaea (432 8.0429 B.c.) when he was
nearly forty years old. All that we can say is
that his youth and manhood were passed in the
most splendid period of Athenian or Greek his-
tory.2 It was the time of that wonderful outburst
of genius in art, and literature, and thought,
and statesmanship, which was so sudden and
yet so unique. Athens was full of the keenest
intellectual and political activity. Among her
citizens between the years 460 B.C. and 420
B.C. were men who in poetry, in history, in
sculpture, in architecture, are our masters still.
^Eschylus' great Trilogy was brought out in the
year 458 B.C., and the poet died two years later,
when Socrates was about fifteen years old.
Sophocles was born in 495 B.C., Euripides in
481 B.C. They both died about 406 B.C., some
seven years before Socrates. Pheidias, the
great sculptor, the artist of the Elgin marbles,
which are now in the British Museum, died in
432 B.C. Pericles, the supreme statesman and
orator,3 whose name marks an epoch in the
history of civilisation, died in 429 B.C. Thucy-
dides, the historian, whose history is ' a posses-

1 Apol. 17 D. Crito, 52 E.

3 See the account of this period given by Professor
Curtius in his History of Greece, Bk. iii. ch. 3.
3 6 ir&vv. Xen. Mem. iii. 5. i.

INTRODUCTION. xi

sion for all ages,'1 was born in 471 B.C., about
the same time as Socrates, and died probably
between 401 B.C. and 395 B.C. Ictinus, the
architect, completed the Parthenon in 438 B.C.
There have never been finer instruments of
culture than the art and poetry and thought of
such men as these. Socrates, who in 420 B.C.
was about fifty years old, was contemporary
with them all. He must have known and con-
versed with some of them : for Athens was not
very large,2 and the Athenians spent almost
the whole of their day in public. To live in
such a city was in itself no mean training for
a man, though he might not be conscious of it.
The great object of Pericles' policy had been
to make Athens the acknowledged intellectual
capital and centre of Greece, ' the Prytaneum
of all Greek wisdom.'3 Socrates himself speaks
with pride in the Apology of her renown for ' wis-
dom and power of mind. ' 4 And Athens gave her
citizens another kind of training also, through
her political institutions. From having been
the head of the confederacy of Delos, she had
grown to be an Imperial, or, as her enemies

1 Krfjfj.0. es dei. Thucyd. i. 22, 5.

2 In 441 B.C. there was a scrutiny of citizenship, and
some 5000 men who were unable to prove their descent
from Athenian parents on both sides were disfranchised.
The qualified citizens were found to number a little
over 14,000.

3 Protagoras, 337 D. Pericles' funeral oration (Thucyd.
ii. 35-46) deserves careful study in this connection. It
is a statement of the Athenian ideal in the best days of
Athens. 4 Apol. 29 D.

b

xii INTRODUCTION.

called her, a tyrant city. She was the mistress
of a great empire, ruled and administered by
law. The Sovereign Power in the State was
the Assembly, of which every citizen, not under
disability, was a member, and at which attend-
ance was by law compulsory. There was
no representative government, no intervening
responsibility of ministers. The Sovereign
people in their Assembly directly administered
the Athenian empire. Each individual citizen
was thus brought every day into immediate
contact with matters of Imperial importance.
His political powers and responsibilities were
very great. He was accustomed to hear ques-
tions of domestic administration, of legislation,
of peace and war, of alliances, of foreign and
colonial policy, keenly and ably argued on
either side. He was accustomed to hear argu-
ments on one side of a question attacked and
dissected and answered by opponents with the
greatest acuteness and pertinacity. He himself
had to examine, weigh, and decide between
rival arguments. The Athenian judicial system
gave the same kind of training in another
direction by its juries, on which every citizen
was liable to be selected by lot to serve. The
result was to create at Athens an extremely
high level of general intelligence, such as cannot
be looked for in a modern state. And it may
well be that in the debates of the Assembly
and the discussions of the courts of law Socrates
first became aware of the necessity of sifting
and examining plausible arguments.

INTRODUCTION. xin

Such, shortly, were the influences under
which Socrates passed the first fifty years of
his life. It is evident that they were most
powerful and efficient as instruments of educa-
tion, in the wider sense of that word. Very
little evidence remains of the formal training
which he received, or of the nature and extent.
of his positive knowledge : and the history of
his intellectual development is practically a
matter of pure conjecture. As a boy he received
the usual Athenian liberal education in music
and gymnastic,1 an education, that is to say,
mental and physical. He was fond of quoting
from the existing Greek literature, and he seems
to have been familiar with it, especially with
Homer. He is represented by Xenophon as
repeating Prodicus' fable of the choice of
Heracles at length.2 He says that he was in
the habit of studying with his friends ' the
treasures which the wise men of old have left
us in their books :'3 collections, that is, of the
short and pithy sayings of the seven sages, such
as 'know thyself; a saying, it maybe noticed,
which lay at the root of his whole teaching.
And • he had some knowledge of mathematics,
and of science, as it existed in those days. He
understood something of astronomy and of

1 Crito, 50 D. , and for an account of such an educa-
tion see Protagoras, 325 E. seq. , and Rep. ii. 376 E. to
412 A., an account of Plato's ideal reformed system of
education.

- Xen. Mem. ii. i. 21.

3 Xen. Mem. i. 6. 14 ; cf. Protag. 343 A.

XIV INTRODUCTION.

advanced geometry :l and he was acquainted
with certain, at any rate, of the theories of his
predecessors in philosophy, the Physical or
Cosmical philosophers, such as Heraclitus and
Parmenides, and, especially, with those of
Anaxagoras.2 But there is no trustworthy
evidence which enables us to go beyond the
bare fact that he had such knowledge. We
cannot tell whether he ever studied Physical
Philosophy seriously, or from whom, or how,
or even, certainly, when, he learnt what he
knew about it. It is perhaps most likely that
his mathematical and scientific studies are to be
assigned to the earlier period of his life. There
is a passage in the Phcedo in which he says
(or rather is made to say) that in his youth he
had had a passion for the study of Nature.3
The historical value of this passage, however,
which Occurs in the philosophical or Platonic
part of the dialogue, is very doubtful. Socrates
is represented as passing on from the study of
Nature to the doctrine of Ideas, a doctrine
which was put forward for the first time by
Plato after his death, and which he never
heard of. The statement must be taken for
what it is worth. The fact that Aristophanes
in the Clouds (423 B.C.) represents Socrates as
a natural philosopher, who teaches his pupils,
among other things, astronomy and geometry,
proves nothing. Aristophanes' misrepresenta-

1 Xen. Mem. iv. 7. 3. 5. Meno, 82, seq.

2 Xen. Mem. i. i. 14. Apol. 26 D. Phcedo, 96 A.

3 Phcedo, 96 A.

INTRODUCTION. xv

tions about Socrates are so gross that his unsup-
ported testimony deserves no credit : and there
is absolutely no evidence to confirm the state-
ment that Socrates ever taught Natural Science.
It is quite certain that latterly he refused to
have anything to do with such speculations.1
He admitted Natural Science only in so far as
it is practically useful, in the way in which
astronomy is useful to a sailor, or geometry to
a land-surveyor.2 Natural philosophers, he
says, are like madmen : their conclusions are
hopelessly contradictory, and their science un-
productive, impossible, and impious ; for the
gods are not pleased with those who seek to
discover what they do not wish to reveal. The
time which is wasted on such subjects might
be much more profitably employed in the pur-
suit of useful knowledge.3

All then that we can say of the first forty
years of Socrates' life, consists of general
statements like these. During these years
there is no specific record of him. Between
432 B.C. and 429 B.C. he served as a common
soldier at the siege of Potidasa, an Athenian
dependency which had revolted, and surpassed
every one in his powers of enduring hunger,
thirst, and cold, and all the hardships of a
severe Thracian winter. At this siege we hear
of him for the first time in connection with
Alcibiades, whose life he saved in a skirmish,

1 Apol. 19 C. D. Xen. Mem. i. i. n.

2 Xen. Mem. iv. 7. 2. 4.

3 Xen. Mem. \. i. 13. 15 ; iv, 7. 3. 5. 6.

XVI INTRODUCTION.

and to whom he eagerly relinquished the prize
of valour. In 431 B.C. the Peloponnesian War
broke out, and in 424 B.C. the Athenians were
disastrously defeated and routed by the Thebans
at the battle of Delium. Socrates and Laches
were among the few who did not yield to panic.
They retreated together steadily, and the
resolute bearing of Socrates was conspicuous to
friend and foe alike. Had all the Athenians
behaved as he did, says Laches, in the dialogue
of that name, the defeat would have been a
victory.1 Socrates fought bravely a third time
at the battle of Amphipolis [422 B.C.] against
the Peloponnesian forces, in which the com-
manders on both sides, Cleon and Brasidas,
were killed : but there is no record of his
specific services on that occasion.

About the same time that Socrates was
displaying conspicuous courage in the cause of
Athens at Delium and Amphipolis, Aristo-
phanes was holding him up to hatred, contempt,
and ridicule in the comedy of the Clouds. The
Clouds was first acted in 423 B.C., the year
between the battles of Delium and Amphipolis,
and was afterwards recast in the form in which
we have it. It was a fierce and bitter attack
on what Aristophanes, a staunch " laudato?
temporis acti Se puero" considered the corrup-
tion and degeneracy of the age. Since the
middle of the Fifth Century B.C. a new intel-
lectual movement, in which the Sophists were
the most prominent figures, had set in. Men
1 Laches, 181 B. Sympos. 219 E.

INTRODUCTION. xvil

had begun to examine and to call in question
the old-fashioned commonplaces of morality and
religion. Independent thought and individual
judgment were coming to be substituted for im-
memorial tradition and authority. Aristophanes
hated the spirit of the age with his whole soul.
It appeared to him to be impious and immoral.
He looked back with unmixed regret to the
simplicity of ancient manners, to the glories of
Athens in the Persian wars, to the men of
Marathon who obeyed orders without discuss-
ing them, and ' only knew how to call for their
barley-cake, and sing yo-ho ! ' l The Clouds
is his protest against the immorality of free
thought and the Sophists. He chose Socrates
for his central figure, chiefly, no doubt on
account of Socrates' well-known and strange
personal appearance. The grotesque ugliness,
and flat nose, and prominent eyes, and Silenus-
like face, and shabby dress, might be seen every
day in the streets, and were familiar to every
Athenian. Aristophanes cared little — prob-
ably he did not take the trouble to find out —
that Socrates' whole life was spent in fighting
against the Sophists. It was enough for him
that Socrates did not accept the traditional
beliefs,2 and was a good centre-piece for a
comedy. The account of the Clouds given in
the Apology 3 is substantially correct. There is
a caricature of a natural philosopher, and then
a caricature of a Sophist. Roll the two together,

1 Aristoph. Frogs, 1071. - Cf. Euth. 6. A.

^ Apol. z8 B. C., 19 C.

XVlll INTRODUCTION.

and we have Aristophanes' picture of Socrates.
Socrates is described as a miserable recluse,
and is made to talk a great deal of very absurd
and very amusing nonsense about ' Physics.'
He announces that Zeus has been dethroned,
and that Rotation reigns in his stead.

Aivos /3(wiX(vei TOV At" e^cA^Aa/cws.1

The new divinities are Air, which holds the
earth suspended, and Ether, and the Clouds,
and the Tongue — people always think 'that
natural philosophers do not believe in the
gods.'2 He professes to have Belial's power to
'make the worse Appear the better reason;'3
and with it he helps a debtor to swindle his
creditors by means of the most paltry quibbles.
Under his tuition the son learns to beat his
father, and threatens to beat his mother ; and
justifies himself on the ground that it is
merely a matter of convention that the father
has the right of beating his son. In the con-
cluding lines of the play the chorus say that
Socrates' chief crime is that he has sinned
against the gods with his eyes open. The
Natural Philosopher was unpopular at Athens
on religious grounds : he was associated with
atheism. The Sophist was unpopular on
moral grounds : he was supposed to corrupt
young men, to make falsehood plausible, to be
' a clever fellow who could make other people
clever too.' 4 The natural philosopher was not

1 Clouds, 828. 380. 2 Apol. 18 C.

3 Milton, Par. Lost, ii. 113. 4 Euth. 3 D.

INTRODUCTION. XIX

a Sophist, and the Sophist was not a natural
philosopher. Aristophanes mixes them up to-
gether, and ascribes the sins of both of them
to Socrates. The Clouds, it is needless to say,
is a gross and absurd libel from beginning to
end i1 but Aristophanes hit the popular con-
ception. The charges which he made in 423
B.C. stuck to Socrates to the end of his life.
They are exactly the charges made by popular
prejudice, against which Socrates defends him-
self in the first ten chapters of the Apology, and
which he says have been so long ' in the air.'
He formulates them as follows : " Socrates is an
evil-doer who busies himself with investigating
things beneath the earth and in the sky, and
who makes the worse appear the better
reason, and who teaches others these same
things." 2 If we allow for the exaggerations of
a burlesque, the Clouds is not a bad com-

1 Crete's argument {Hist, of Greece, vol. vi. p. 260)
that if we reject Aristophanes' evidence as against
Socrates, we must reject it as against Cleon, ignores an
essential distinction between the two cases. Aristo-
phanes, like the majority of his countrymen, was totally
incapable of understanding or fathoming Socrates'
character. It was utterly strange and unintelligible to
him. But he could understand the character of an
ordinary man of the world and politician, like Cleon,
perfectly well. His portraits of both Socrates and Cleon
are broad caricatures ; and no absolute rule can be laid
down for determining the historical value of a caricature.
In each case the value depends on circumstances.

2 Apol. 19 B. He was also accused at his trial of
making children undutiful to their parents. Xen. Mem.
\. 2. 49. Cf. Clouds, 1322 seq.

xx INTRODUCTION.

mentary on the beginning of the Apology.
And it establishes a definite and important
historical fact — namely, that as early as 423
B.C. Socrates' system of cross-examination had
made him a marked man.

For sixteen years after the battle of Amphi-
polis we hear nothing of Socrates. The next
events in his life, of which there is a specific
record, are those narrated by himself in the
twentieth chapter of the Apology. They
illustrate, as he meant them to illustrate, his
invincible moral courage. They show, as he
intended that they should, that there was no
power on earth, whether it were an angry
popular assembly, or a murdering oligarchy,
which could force him to do wrong. In 406
B.c. the Athenian fleet defeated the Lacedae-
monians at the battle of Arginusae, so called
from some small islands off the south-east
point of Lesbos. After the battle the Athenian
commanders omitted to recover the bodies of
their dead, and to save the living from off their
disabled triremes. The Athenians at home,
on hearing of this, were furious. The due
performance of funeral rites was a very sacred
duty with the Greeks ; 1 and many citizens
mourned for friends and relatives who had
been left to drown. The commanders were
immediately recalled, and an assembly was
held in which they were accused of neglect of
duty. They defended themselves by saying
that they had ordered certain inferior officers
1 Cf. the Antigone of Sophocles.

INTRODUCTION. XXI

(amongst others, their accuser Theramenes) to
perform the duty, but that a storm had come
on which had rendered the performance impos-
sible. The debate was adjourned, and it was
resolved that the Senate should decide in what
way the commanders should be tried. The
Senate resolved that the Athenian people,
having heard the accusation and the defence,
should proceed to vote forthwith for the
acquittal or condemnation of the eight com-
manders collectively. The resolution was
grossly unjust, and it was illegal. It sub-
stituted a popular vote for a fair and formal
trial. And it contravened one of the laws of
Athens, which provided that at every trial a
separate verdict should be found in the case of
each person accused.

Socrates was at that time a member of the
Senate, the only office that he ever filled. The
Senate was composed of five hundred citizens,
elected by lot, fifty from each of the ten tribes,
and holding office for one year. The members
of each tribe held the Prytany, that is, were
responsible for the conduct of business, for
thirty-five days at a time, and ten out of the
fifty were proedri or presidents every seven
days in succession. Every bill or motion was
examined by the proedri before it was sub-
mitted to the Assembly, to see if it were in
accordance with law : if it was not, it was
quashed : one of the proedri presided over
the Senate and the Assembly each day, and
for one day only : he was called the Epistates :

XX11 INTRODUCTION.

it was his duty to put the question to the vote.
In short, he was the Speaker.

These details are necessary for the under-
standing of the passage in the Apology. On
the day on which it was proposed to take a
collective vote on the acquittal or condemna-
tion of the eight commanders, Socrates was
Epistates. The proposal was, as we have seen,
illegal : but the people were furious against the
accused, and it was a very popular one. Some
of the proedri opposed it before it was sub-
mitted to the Assembly, on the ground of its
illegality ; but they were silenced by threats
and subsided. Socrates alone refused to give
way. He would not put a question, which he
knew to be illegal, to the vote. Threats of
suspension and arrest, the clamour of an angry
people, the fear of imprisonment or death, could
not move him. ' I thought it my duty to face
the danger out in the cause of law and justice,
and not to be an accomplice in your unjust
proposal.'1 But his authority lasted only for
a day ; the proceedings were adjourned, a
more pliant Epistates succeeded him, and the
generals were condemned and executed.

Two years later Socrates again showed by
his conduct that he would endure anything
rather than do wrong. In 404 B.C. Athens
was captured by the Lacedaemonian forces, and
the long walls were thrown down.2 The great

1 Apol. 32 B. C. Cf. Mr. Riddell's note, ad loc.
Xen. Mem. i. i. 18.

2 See the description at the beginning of Mr. Brown-
ing's Aristophanes' Apology.

INTRODUCTION. xxiil

Athenian democracy was destroyed, and an
oligarchy of thirty set up in its place by Critias
(who in former days had been much in Socrates'
company) with the help of the Spartan general
Lysander. The rule of the Thirty lasted for
rather less than a year : in the spring of 403
B.C. the democracy was restored. The reign of
Critias and his friends was a Reign of Terror.
Political opponents and private enemies were
murdered as a matter of course. So were
respectable citizens, and wealthy citizens for
the sake of their wealth. All kinds of men
were used as assassins, for the oligarchs wished
to implicate as many as possible in their crimes.
With this object they sent for Socrates and
four others to the Council Chamber, a building
where formerly the Prytanies, and now they
themselves, took their meals and sacrificed, and
ordered them to bring one Leon over from
Salamis to Athens, to be murdered. The other
four feared to disobey an order, disobedience
to which probably meant death. They went
over to Salamis, and brought Leon back with
them. Socrates disregarded the order and the
danger, and went home. ' I showed,' he says,
' not by mere words, but by my actions, that I
did not care a straw for death : but that I did
care very much indeed about doing wrong.' l
He had previously incurred the anger of Critias
and the other oligarchs by publicly condemning
their political murders in language which caused
them to send for him, and forbid him to
1 Apol. 32 D.

xxiv INTRODUCTION.

converse with young men as he was accustomed
to do, and to threaten him with death.1

There are two events in the life of Socrates
to which no date can be assigned. The first
of them is his marriage with Xanthippe. By
her he had three sons, Lamprocles, Sophron-
iscus, and Menexenus. The two latter are
called ' children ' in the Apology, which was
delivered in 399 B.C., and the former /*et-
pa.Kiov -t]8->) ;2 a phrase which implies that he
was some fifteen years old. The name
Xanthippe has come to mean a shrew. Her
son Lamprocles found her bitter tongue and
her violent temper intolerable, and his father
told him that she meant all her harsh-
ness for his good, and read him a lecture on
filial duty.3 The parting between Socrates
and Xanthippe, as described in the Phado, is
not marked by any great tenderness. His last
day was spent, not with his wife, but with his
friends, and she was not present at his death.
No trustworthy details of his married life have
been preserved ; but there is a consensus of
testimony by late authors that it was not happy.
Indeed the strong probability is that he had no
home life at all.

Again, no date can be assigned to the answer
of the Delphic oracle, spoken of in the fifth
chapter of the Apology. There it is said that
Chaerephon went to Delphi and asked if fthere
was any man who was wiser than Socrates, and

1 Xen. Mem, i. z. 32, seq. " Apol. 34 D.

3 Xen. Mem. ii. 2.

INTRODUCTION. XXV

the priestess answered that there was no man.
Socrates offers to prove the truth of his state-
ment by the evidence of Chaerephon's brother,
Chserephon himself being dead. In the next
chapter he represents the duty of testing the
oracle as the motive of that unceasing examina-
tion of men which is described in the Apology,
and which gained him so much hatred. He
says that he thought himself bound to sift
every one whom he met, in order that the truth
of the oracle might be thoroughly tested and
proved. There is no reason to doubt that the
answer of the oracle was actually given ; but,
as Zeller observes, Socrates must have been a
well-known and marked man before Chaerephon
could have asked his question, or the oracle
have given such an answer. ' It may have
done a similar service to Socrates as (sic) his
doctor's degree did to Luther, assuring him of
his inward call ; but it had just as little to do
with making him a philosophical reformer as
the doctor's degree had with making Luther a
religious reformer.'1 The use which he makes
of the oracle, therefore, must be regarded as
' a device of a semi-rhetorical character under
cover of which he was enabled to avoid an
avowal of the real purpose which had animated
him in his tour of examination.'- His real
purpose was not to test the truth of the Delphic
oracle. It was to expose the hollowness of

1 Zeller's Socrates and the Socratic Schools, translated
by the Rev. O. J. Reichel, sd edition, p. 60, note 3.

2 Riddell, p. xxiv.

xxvi INTRODUCTION.

what passed for knowledge, and to substitute,
or rather, to lay the foundations of true and
scientific knowledge. Such an explanation of
his mission would scarcely have been under-
stood, and it would certainly have offended the
judges deeply. But he never hesitates or
scruples to avow the original cause of his
examination of men. He regarded it as a
duty undertaken in obedience to the command
of God. ' God has commanded me to examine
men,' he says, ' in oracles, and in dreams, and
in every way in which His will was ever declared
to man. ' l ( I cannot hold my peace, for that
would be to disobey God.' 2 The Apology is full
of such passages. With this belief he did not
shrink from the unpopularity and hatred which a
man, who exposes the ignorance of persons who
imagine themselves to be wise, when they are
not wise, is sure to incur. At what time he
became convinced of the hollowness of what
then commonly passed for knowledge, and be-
gan to examine men, and to make them give an
account of their words, cannot be exactly deter-
mined, any more than the date of the oracle.
We cannot tell to how many years of his life
the account of it given in the Apology applies.
All that is certain is that, as early as 423 B.C.,
twenty-four years before his death, he was a
sufficiently conspicuous man for Aristophanes
to select him as the type and representative of
the new school, and to parody his famous
Elenchos. There is, therefore, no reason to
1 Apol. 33 C. 2 Apol. 37 E. See 29 D. ; 30 B.

INTRODUCTION, xxvii

doubt that he must have begun to cross-exa-
mine men before 423 B.C. He had begun to
examine himself as early as the siege of Potidaea
(432 B.C.-429 B.C.). l But when he once set about
this work he devoted himself to it entirely. He
was a strange contrast to professional teachers
like the Sophists. He took no pay : he had
no classes : he taught no positive knowledge.
But his whole life was spent in examining
himself and others. He was ' the great cross-
examiner.' He was ready to question and talk
to any one who would listen. His life and con-
versation were absolutely public. He conversed
now with men like Alcibiades, or Gorgias, or
Protagoras, and then with a common mechanic.
In the morning he was to be seen in the
promenades and the gymnasia : when the
Agora was filling, he was there : he was to
be found wherever he thought that he should
meet most people.2 He scarcely ever went
away from the city.3 ' I am a lover of know-
ledge,' he says in the PJuzdrusf ' and in the
city I can learn from men, but the fields and
the trees can teach me nothing.' He gave his
life wholly and entirely to the service of God,
neglecting his private affairs, until he came to
be in very great poverty.5 A mina of silver6
is all that he can offer for his life at the trial.
He formed no school, but there grew up round

1 Symp. 220 C. See post, p. xxxii.

2 Xen. Mem. i. i. 10. 3 Crito, 52 B.
4 Phcedrus, 230 D. 5 Apol. 23 C.
6 Equivalent then to about ,£4 : i : 3.

C

xxvin INTRODUCTION,

him a circle of admiring friends, united, not by
any community of doctrines, but by love for
their great master, with whom he seems not
unfrequently to have had common meals.1

Plato has left a most striking description of
Socrates in the Symposium? put into the mouth
of Alcibiades. I quote it almost at length from
Shelley's translation, which, though not always
correct, is graceful : — ' I will begin the praise
of Socrates by comparing him to a certain
statue. Perhaps he will think that this statue
is introduced for the sake of ridicule, but I
assure you it is necessary for the illustration of
truth. I assert, then, that Socrates is exactly
like those Silenuses that sit in the sculptor's
shops, and which are holding carved flutes or
pipes, but which when divided in two are found
to contain the images of the gods. I assert
that Socrates is like the satyr Marsyas. That
your form and appearance are like these
satyrs, I think that even you will not venture
to deny ; and how like you are to them in all
other things, now hear. Are you not scornful
and petulant ? If you deny this, I will bring
witnesses. Are you not a piper, and far more
wonderful a one than he ? For Marsyas, and
whoever now pipes the music that he taught,
(for it was Marsyas who taught Olympus his
music), enchants men through the power of the
mouth.3 For if any musician, be he skilful or

1 Xen. Mem. iii. 14. i. seq. 2 Symp. 215 A.

3 The sentence as it stands in Shelley is quite unin-
telligible. I have corrected it.

INTRODUCTION. xxix

not, awakens this music, it alone enables him
to retain the minds of men, and from the
divinity of its nature makes evident those who
are in want of the gods and initiation : you
differ only from Marsyas in this circumstance,
that you effect without instruments, by mere
words, all that he can do. For when we hear
Pericles,1 or any other accomplished orator,
deliver a discourse, no one, as it were, cares
anything about it. But when any one hears
you, or even your words related by another,
though ever so rude and unskilful a speaker,
be that person a woman, man, or child, we are
struck and retained, as it were, by the discourse
clinging to our mind.

' If I was not afraid that I am a great deal
too drunk, I would confirm to you by an oath
the strange effects which I assure you I have
suffered from his words, and suffer still ; for
when I hear him speak my heart leaps up far
more than the hearts of those who celebrate
the Corybantic mysteries ; my tears are poured
out as he talks, a thing I have often seen happen
to many others besides myself. I have heard
Pericles and other excellent orators, and have
been pleased with their discourses, but I suf-
fered nothing of this kind ; nor was my soul
ever on those occasions disturbed and filled
with self-reproach, as if it were slavishly laid
prostrate. But this Marsyas here has often
affected me in the way I describe, until the life

1 Pericles is not named in the original ; he had been
dead some years.

xxx INTRODUCTION.

which I lived seemed hardly worth living. Do
not deny it, Socrates ; for I know well that if
even now I chose to listen to you, I could not
resist, but should again suffer the same effects.
For, my friends, he forces me to confess that
while I myself am still in need of many things,
I neglect my own necessities and attend to
those of the Athenians. I stop my ears,
therefore, as from the Syrens, and flee away
as fast as possible, that I may not sit down
beside him, and grow old in listening to his
talk. For this man has reduced me to feel
the sentiment of shame, which I imagine no
one would readily believe was in me. For I
feel in his presence my incapacity of refuting
what he says or of refusing to do that which
he directs : but when I depart from him the
glory which the multitude confers overwhelms
me. I escape therefore and hide myself from
him, and when I see him I am overwhelmed
with humiliation, because I have neglected to
do what I have confessed to him ought to be
done : and often and often have I wished that
he were no longer to be seen among men.
But if that were to happen I well know that I
should suffer far greater pain ; so that where
I can turn, or what I can do with this man I
know not. All this have I and many others
suffered from the pipings of this satyr.

' And observe how like he is to what I said,
and what a wonderful power he possesses.
Know that there is not one of you who is
aware of the real nature of Socrates ; but since

INTRODUCTION. xxxi

I have begun, I will make him plain to you.
You observe how passionately Socrates affects
the intimacy of those who are beautiful, and
how ignorant he professes himself to be ;
appearances in themselves excessively Silenic.
This, my friends, is the external form with
which, like one of the sculptured Sileni, he has
clothed himself; for if you open him you will
find within admirable temperance and wisdom.
For he cares not for mere beauty, but despises
more than any one can imagine all external
possessions, whether it be beauty, or wealth,
or glory, or any other thing for which the mul-
titude felicitates the possessor. He esteems
these things, and us who honour them, as
nothing, and lives among men, making all the
objects of their admiration the playthings of
his irony. But I know not if any one of you
have ever seen the divine images which are
within, when he has been opened, and is
serious. I have seen them, and they are so
supremely beautiful, so golden, so divine, and
wonderful, that everything that Socrates com-
mands surely ought to be obeyed, even like
the voice of a god.

'At one time we were fellow -soldiers, and
had our mess together in the camp before
Potidaea. Socrates there overcame not only
me, but every one beside, in endurance of evils :
when, as often happens in a campaign, we were
reduced to few provisions, there were none who
could sustain hunger like Socrates ; and when

xxxn INTRODUCTION,

we had plenty, he alone seemed to enjoy our
military fare. He never drank much willingly,
but when he was compelled, he conquered all
even in that to which he was least accustomed :
and, what is most astonishing, no person ever
saw Socrates drunk either then or at any other
time. In the depth of winter (and the winters
there are excessively rigid) he sustained calmly
incredible hardships: and amongst other things,
whilst the frost was intolerably severe, and no
one went out of their tents, or if they went out,
wrapped themselves up carefully, and put fleeces
under their feet, and bound their legs with hairy
skins, Socrates went out only with the same
cloak on that he usually wore, and walked
barefoot upon the ice : more easily, indeed,
than those who had sandalled themselves so
delicately : so that the soldiers thought that he
did it to mock their want of fortitude. It
would indeed be worth while to commemorate
all that this brave man did and endured in that
expedition. In one instance he was seen early
in the morning, standing in one place, wrapt in
meditation ; and as he seemed unable to un-
ravel the subject of his thoughts, he still con-
tinued to stand as inquiring and discussing
within himself, and when noon came, the
soldiers observed him, and said to one another
— " Socrates has been standing there thinking,
ever since the morning." At last some lonians
came to the spot, and having supped, as it was
summer, they lay down to sleep in the cool :
they observed that Socrates continued to stand

INTRODUCTION. xxxiu

there the whole night until morning, and that,
when the sun rose, he saluted it with a prayer
and departed.

' I ought not to omit what Socrates is in battle.
For in that battle l after which the generals
decreed to me the prize of courage, Socrates
alone of all men was the saviour of my life,
standing by me when I had fallen and was
wounded, and preserving both myself and my
arms from the hands of the enemy. On that
occasion I entreated the generals to decree the
prize, as it was most due, to him. And this,

0 Socrates, you cannot deny, that when the
generals, wishing to conciliate a person of my
rank, desired to give me the prize, you were
far more earnestly desirous than the generals
that this glory should be attributed not to your-
self, but me.

' But to see Socrates when our army was
defeated and scattered in flight at Delium 2 was
a spectacle worthy to behold. On that occasion

1 was among the cavalry, and he on foot,
heavily armed. After the total rout of our
troops, he and Laches retreated together ; I
came up by chance, and seeing them, bade
them be of good cheer, for that I would not
leave them. As I was on horseback, and
therefore less occupied by a regard of my own
situation, I could better observe than at Potidaea
the beautiful spectacle exhibited by Socrates on
this emergency. How superior was he to

1 Sc. at Potidaea.

2 Shelley writes ' Delius,' wrongly.

xxxiv INTRODUCTION.

Laches in presence of mind and courage ! Your
representation of him on the stage, O Aristo-
phanes, was not wholly unlike his real self on
this occasion, for he walked and darted his
regards around with a majestic composure,
looking tranquilly both on his friends and
enemies : so that it was evident to every one,
even from afar, that whoever should venture to
attack him would encounter a desperate resist-
ance. He and his companions thus departed
in safety: for those who are scattered in flight
are pursued and killed, whilst men hesitate to
touch those who exhibit such a countenance as
that of Socrates even in defeat.

' Many other and most wonderful qualities
might well be praised in Socrates, but such as
these might singly be attributed to others.
But that which is unparalleled in Socrates is
that he is unlike and above comparison with
all other men, whether those who have lived in
ancient times, or those who exist now. For it
may be conjectured that Brasidas and many
others are such as was Achilles. Pericles
deserves comparison with Nestor and Antenor ;
and other excellent persons of various times
may, with probability, be drawn into comparison
with each other. But to such a singular man
as this, both himself and his discourses are so
uncommon, no one, should he seek, would find
a parallel among the present or past generations
of mankind ; unless they should say that he
resembled those with whom I lately compared
him, for assuredly he and his discourses are

INTRODUCTION. xxxv

like nothing but the Sileni and the Satyrs. At
first I forgot to make you observe how like his
discourses are to those Satyrs when they are
opened, for if any one will listen to the talk of
Socrates, it will appear to him at first extremely
ridiculous : the phrases and expressions which
he employs, fold round his exterior the skin, as
it were, of a rude and wanton Satyr. He is
always talking about great market-asses, and
brass-founders, and leather-cutters, and skin-
dressers ; and this is his perpetual custom, so
that any dull and unobservant person might
easily laugh at his discourse. But if any one
should see it opened, as it were, and get within
the sense of his words, he would then find that
they alone of all that enters into the mind of
men to utter, had a profound and persuasive
meaning, and that they were most divine ; and
that they presented to the mind innumerable
images of every excellence, and that they tended
towards objects of the highest moment, or rather
towards all that he, who seeks the possession of
what is supremely excellent and good, need
regard as essential to the accomplishment of
his ambition.

' These are the things, my friends, for which
I praise Socrates.'

After that, Socrates, Aristophanes and Agathon
sat the night out in conversation, till Socrates
made the other two, who were very tired and
sleepy, admit that a man who could write
tragedy could write comedy, and that the
foundations of the tragic and comic arts were

xxxvi INTRODUCTION.

the same. Then Aristophanes and Agathon fell
asleep in the early morning, and Socrates went
away and washed himself at the Lyceum, ' and
having spent the day there in his accustomed
manner, went home in the evening.'

We have now reached the events recorded
in our dialogues. In 399 B.C. Socrates was put
on his trial for corrupting young men and for not
believing in the gods of Athens ; and on these
charges he was found guilty and condemned
to death. His death was delayed by a State
religious ceremonial, and he lay in prison for
thirty days.1 His friends implored him to escape,
which he might easily have done, but he refused
to listen to them ; and when the time came he
cheerfully drank the poison and died. It is
convenient to pause here for a little, before we
go on to speak of these events in detail, in order
to get some idea of Socrates as a thinker. With
a very large number of questions concerning his
philosophy we have nothing to do. But it is
essential, if we are to understand these dialogues
at all, that we should know something about
certain points of it.

The pre-Socratic philosophers had been occu-
pied almost exclusively with Physics and Meta-
physics. They had tried to solve the problem
of the Universe regarded as an undistinguish-
able whole. They had inquired into the nature
of the Cosmos, and had sought to find some
universal first principle, such as Air, Fire, or
Water, to explain it. They had asked such
1 Xen. Mem. iv. 8. 2.

INTRODUCTION. xxxvil

questions as How do things come into being ?
How do they exist ? Why do they decay ? 1
But in the middle of the fifth century B.C. they
had failed to satisfy men, and were falling into
discredit. In a city like Athens, which had
suddenly shot up into an imperial democracy,
and which was full of such keen and varied
intellectual activity, it was simply inevitable
that ethical and political inquiries should take
the place of those vague physical speculations.
The questions which interested the Athenians
of the time were questions relating to the indi-
vidual and society, not to the Cosmos. Men
had begun to dispute in an unscientific way
about justice and injustice, right and wrong,
the good and the expedient.2 They had begun
to ask, What is justice and right, and the good ?
Why is a thing said to be just, or right, or
good? The pre-Socratic philosophers could
give no answer to such questions. They had
been conversant not with conduct, but with
Physics and Metaphysics. The demand for
ethical and political discussion (or disputation)
was to some extent met by their successors, the
Sophists, who were paid teachers (generally
foreigners), and who professed to educate men
for public and private life at Athens.3 There

1 See Phcedo, 96 A. Of course it must be understood
that the above is a broad statement, to which exceptions
may be found.

2 The pre-Socratic treatment of these questions may
be illustrated by the speeches of Thucydides.

3 See Apol. 19 E. seq.

xxxviil INTRODUCTION.

is a good deal of controversy about their exact
character and teaching, with which we are not
concerned. We need not ask whether they
were a sect or a profession ; whether or no
their teaching was immoral ; how far they were
the cause, and how far the effect of the new
intellectual movement at Athens.1 The point
on which I wish to lay stress is that the morality
which they were content to accept and teach was
merely the mass of confused and inconsistent
ideas about ethics and politics which were cur-
rent at Athens. The whole of their ethical and
political education was based on those often re-
peated and unexamined commonplaces, against
which Socrates waged unceasing war. They
were not scientific. They had no sense at all
of the inherent vice of the popular thought and
morality, and they did not aim at any reform.
VTheir object was not to teach their pupils the
truth, but to qualify them for social and political
success. All that they did was to formulate
popular ideas. There is an extremely remark-
able passage in the Republic, in which Plato
describes their teaching.2 These mercenary
adventurers, he says, who are called Sophists,
teach in fact merely popular opinions, and call
them wisdom : and he goes on to compare them
with a man who has learnt by experience to
understand the temper and wants of some huge

1 See Mr. Sedgwick in the Journal of Philology, Nos.
8 and 9.

2 Rep. vi. 493 A. seq. The whole passage is well
worth reading.

INTRODUCTION. xxxix

and dangerous wild beast, and has found out
when it is safe to approach it, and what sounds
irritate it and soothe it, and what its various
cries mean, and who, having acquired this know-
ledge, calls it wisdom, and systematises it into
an art, and proceeds to teach it. What pleases
the beast he calls right, and what displeases it
he calls wrong ; though he is utterly ignorant
which of its desires and wants are, in fact, right
and good, and which are the reverse. In exactly
the same way, says Plato, the Sophist makes
wisdom consist in understanding the fancies and
temper of that ' many-headed beast,' the multi-
tude, though he has not an argument that is
not supremely ridiculous to show that what the
multitude approves of is, in fact, right and good.
In short the Sophists dealt, it is true, with
ethical and political questions, but they dealt
with them in the most superficial way. Often
enough they were contemptible charlatans.

At this point, some time after the Sophists
had begun to educate men, and when the new
intellectual and critical movement was in full
swing, came Socrates. Like the Sophists he
dealt with ethical and political questions : to
such questions (rot avdptairfia) he strictly and
exclusively confined himself. ' He conversed,'
says Xenophon, 1 ' only about matters relating
to men. He was always inquiring What is
piety ? What is impiety ? What is honour-
able ? What is base ? What is justice ? What
is injustice ? What is temperance ? What
1 Xen. Mem. i. i. 16 ; cf. Rep. ii. 367 D. E.

xl , INTRODUCTION.

is madness ? What is courage ? What is
cowardice ? What is a state ? What is a
statesman ? What is government ? What
makes a man fit to govern ? and so on ; and
he used to say that those who could answer
such questions were good men, and that those
who could not, were no better than slaves.' So,
in the Laches of Plato, he asks, What is courage ?
In the Charmides, What is temperance ? In the
first of our dialogues, the Euthyphron^ What
are holiness and piety ? In the Lysis, What
is friendship ? The difference between Socrates
and preceding philosophers, in regard to the
subject matter of their respective philosophies,
is complete. They were occupied with Nature :
he was occupied with man. And the difference
between him and the Sophists, in regard to
method, and to the point of view from which they
respectively dealt with ethical and political ques-
tions, is not less complete. His object was to re-
form what they were content simply to formulate.
He was thoroughly convinced of the inherent
vice and hollowness of what passed for know-
ledge at that time. In .the Apology we shall
constantly hear of men who thought themselves
wise, though they were not wise ; who fancied
that they knew what they did not know. They
used general terms which implied classification.
They said that this or that act was just or unjust,
right or wrong. They were ready on every
occasion to state propositions about man and
society with unhesitating confidence. The mean-
ing of such common words as justice, piety,

INTR OD UCTION. xli

democracy, government, seemed so familiar,
that it never for a moment occurred to them
to doubt whether they knew what 'justice,'
or ' piety,' or < democracy,' or ' government '
exactly meant. But in fact they had never
taken the trouble to analyse and make clear to
themselves the meaning of their words. They
had been content ' to feel and affirm.' General
words had come to comprehend in their mean-
ing a very complex multitude of vague and ill-
assorted attributes, and to represent in the minds
of those who used them nothing more than a
floating collection of confused and indefinite
ideas.1 It is a fact, which it is not quite easy
for us to realise, that Socrates was practically
the first man to frame a definition. ' Two
things,' says Aristotle,2 ' may fairly be ascribed
to Socrates, namely Induction, and the Defini-
tion of general Terms.' Until his time the
meaning of words, which were used every day
in connection with the commonest, and the
greatest and the gravest duties of life, had never
once been tested, revised, examined. It had
grown up gradually and unconsciously, never
distinct and clearly defined. It was the creation
of years of sentiment, poetry, authority, and
tradition : it had never been corrected or
analysed by reason. There is a sentence in
Bacon which describes very felicitously the
intellectual condition of the Athenians of that
time : — ' Itaque ratio ilia humana quam habe-

1 See J. S. Mill's Logic, Bk. iv.,ch. 4.

2 Arist. Metaph. xiii. 4, 6.

xlii INTRODUCTION.

mus, ex multa fide, et multo etiam casu, necnon
ex puerilibus quas primo hausimus notionibus,
farrago quaedam est et congeries.' l ' This
human reason of ours is a confused multitude
and mixture of ideas, made up, very largely by
accident, of much credulity and of the opinions
which we inherited long ago in our childhood."
Such inaccurate use of language led, as it was
bound to lead, to inaccurate and loose reasoning.
' Every (process of reasoning) consists of pro-
positions, and propositions consist of words
which are the symbols of notions ; and there-
fore if our notions are confused and badly
abstracted from things, there is no stability in
the structure which is built upon them.' 2 As
Socrates puts it in the Phado? ( to use words
wrongly and indefinitely is not merely an error
in itself: it also creates an evil in the soul.'
That is to say, it not only makes exact thought,
and therefore knowledge, impossible : it also
creates careless and slovenly habits of mind.
And this inaccurate use of language, and the con-
sequent intellectual confusion, were not confined
to any one class at Athens. They were almost
universal. It was not merely among the noted
men with a great reputation that Socrates found
the ' conceit of knowledge ' without the reality.
The poets could not explain their own poems,
and further, because they were famous as poets,
they claimed to understand other matters of

1 Bacon, Nov. Org. i. 97.

2 Bacon, Nov. Org. i. 14. I have substituted ' pro-
cess of reasoning' for 'syllogism.' 3 Phado, 115 E.

INTRODUCTION. xliii

which they were, in fact, profoundly ignorant.
The skilled artizans were able, it is true, to give
an account, each of the rules of his own art ;
but they too, like the poets, claimed to possess
knowledge in matters of the greatest importance
(i.e. questions affecting man and society), which
they did not possess, on account of their techni-
cal skill : and ' this fault of theirs,' says
Socrates, l ' threw their real wisdom into the
shade.' And men of all classes were profoundly
ignorant that they were ignorant. They did not
understand defining words. It appeared to
them to be contemptible hair-splitting. ' What
is piety ?' asks Socrates of Euthyphron, a man
who had thought a great deal about religious
questions. ' Piety,' replies Euthyphron, ' means
acting as I am acting.' - He had never analysed
or defined his words. He did not in the least
understand what definition meant, or the neces-
sity for it. Such and such an act was pious ;
but he could not justify his proposition by
bringing it under the universal proposition, the
definition of piety, or tell why his act was pious.
Cross-examination makes him contradict him-
self over and over again. The simplest way of
comprehending the confusion of thought and
language which Socrates found on every side,
is to read the Euthyphron. And if we examine
ourselves I think that we shall find that even
we, like Euthyphron, not uncommonly use
general terms of the greatest importance with-
out affixing a very definite meaning to them.
1 Apol. 22 D. 2 Euth. 5 A. D.

d

xliv INTRODUCTION.

In our times the Press has become the public
instructor. We have only to take up a news-
paper, and read a religious, or political, or ethical
debate or argument, to have a very fair chance
of seeing repeated examples of general and ab-
stract terms used in the loosest and vaguest way
possible. Such words as ' patriotism,' ' super-
stition,' 'justice,' 'right,' 'wrong,' ' honour,' are
not uncommonly used by us, in public, and in
private, with no more distinct or definite a mean-
ing given to them, than that which Euthyphron
gave to ' piety.'

On this basis rested Athenian opinion. We
are now in a position to understand so much
of Socrates' philosophical reforms as concerns
us. He was filled with the most intense con-
viction of the supreme and overwhelming
importance of truth : of the paramount duty of
doing right, because it is right, on every
occasion, be the consequences what they may.
' My friend,' he says, in his defence, to a
supposed objector, ' if you think that a man of
any worth at all ought, when he acts, to take
into account the risk of death, or that he ought
to think of anything but whether he is doing
right or wrong, you make a mistake.' l ' I
spend my whole time in going about, persuad-
ing you all, both old and young, to give your
first and chiefest care to the perfection of your
souls, and, not till you have done that to care
for your bodies or your wealth : and telling
you that virtue does not come from wealth, but
1 Apol. 28 B.

INTRODUCTION. xlv

that wealth, and every good thing which men
have, comes from virtue.'1 'We are guided
by reason,' is his answer when Crito was
imploring him to escape from prison, after he
had been condemned to death, ' and reason
shows us that the only question which we
have to consider is, Shall I be doing right, or
shall I be doing wrong, if I escape ? And if
we find that I should be doing wrong, then we
must not take any account of death, or of any
other evil which may be the consequence of
staying here, but only of doing wrong.' 2 That

1 Apol. 30 A. a

2 Crito, 48 C. I am speaking only of the Platonic
Socrates, and primarily of the Socrates of these dialogues.
The Socrates of Xenophon takes generally a very dif-
ferent view of morality. To him the measure of the
goodness or badness of an act is almost always its
expediency or inexpediency. He is made to say that the
good and the useful are the same thing {Mem. iv. 6. 8.
9). Virtue is therefore the knowledge of consequences.
A similar doctrine is put into Socrates' mouth by Plato
(Protag. 333 D. , 358 B.), and Socrates uses it in his
examination of Meletus in the Apology (25 C. D.) ;
though I do not think that any stress can be laid on
that passage, for the whole argument there (as is Ikrgely
the case also in the Protagoras) is simply dialectical.
It is of course inconsistent to say that a man should do
right because right is right, and that he should do right
because it is expedient to do right. Zeller thinks that
Socrates was in fact inconsistent (p. 154, seq. ) Grote
accepts the account of Xenophon, ' the best witness about
his master' {History of Greece, vol. viii., p. 262, note i).
He thinks also that the Apology ' may reasonably be
taken as a reproduction by Plato of what Socrates
actually said to the Dikasts on his trial' (p. 214, note
2). These two statements are inconsistent.

xlvi INTRODUCTION.

such a man should feel the deepest dissatisfac-
tion with what passed for thought and morality
at Athens, was simply inevitable. ' The
current opinions drawn from men's practical
exigencies, imperfect observation, and debased
morality, were no sounder than their sources.'
And with this dissatisfaction was joined a con-
viction that God had given him a duty to
reform ' this mass of error and conventionality,
which meanwhile the Sophists were accepting
as the material of their system : ' l a duty from
which he never shrank, although he knew that
it might, as in fact it did, cost him his life.
In order to comprehend the Euthyphron,
Apology, and Crito, we must ask and answer
two questions. First, What was Socrates' con-
ception of reform ? Secondly, What was his
method ?

i. The principle of Socrates' reform may
be stated in a single sentence. It was ' to
reconstruct human opinion on a basis of
" reasoned truth."' Conduct which proceeded
from emotion, enthusiasm, impulse, habit, and „
not from reason, he would not allow to be
virtuous. His whole teaching rested on the
paradox that 'virtue is knowledge.'2 This

1 These sentences are quoted from Mr. Riddell's most
striking note on the words 6 5£ di/e^Too-ros ^Si'oj 01)
ftiwrbs ivOpdnrq ( ' an unexamined life is not worth
living'), Apol. 38 A.

2 Xen. Mem. iii. 9. 5 ; Arist. Ethics, vi. 13 ; see
Zeller, p. 106, seq. 'Virtue' is a very inadequate
representative of dperrj, but I know of no other. By the

INTRODUCTION. xlvii

is the leading idea of his attempt to reform
morality, and it must always be borne in
mind. It is perpetually alluded to in our
dialogues. He describes his ceaseless cross-
examination of men as undertaken with
the object of testing their knowledge, and of
preaching the supreme importance of virtue,
indifferently.1 And conversely, if Virtue is
Knowledge, Vice is Ignorance, and conse-
quently involuntary. He always assumes
that the crime of corrupting young men
of which he was accused was caused, if he
had committed it, not by moral depravity,
in the ordinary sense of the word, but by
ignorance.2 ' You are a liar, Meletus, and
you know it,' he retorts, on being told that
he was in the habit of corrupting the youth
intentionally ; ' either I do not corrupt young
men at all, or I corrupt them unintentionally,
and by reason of my ignorance. As soon as I
know that I am committing a crime, of course
I shall cease from committing it.' 3 A man
who knows what is right, must always do right :
a man who does not know what is right, cannot
do right. ' We needs must love the highest
when we see it.' Knowledge is not a part,
it is not even an indispensable condition of
virtue. It is virtue. The two things are the

apery of a man, Socrates meant the excellence and per-
fection of a man as such. Protag. 325 A. Cf. Arnold's
note to Thucydides, ii. 40. 6.

1 Apol. 2 1 D. , 22 E. , 29 E. seq. , 3 1 B.

-' Euth. 5 A., 1 6 A. 3 Apol. 25 E.

xlviii INTRODUCTION.

same. We draw a distinction between Know-
ledge and Wisdom. The former

' is earthly, of the mind,
But Wisdom, heavenly, of the soul.' l

But Socrates drew no distinction between them.
To him they were identical. It is needless to
point out that this doctrine, which takes no
account of that most essential side of virtue
which is non-intellectual, is defective, in that
it puts a part for the whole. But from this
doctrine Socrates started. He wished to re-
form morality from the intellectual side. Above
all things a preacher of ' Virtue,' he devoted
his life to a search after knowledge. Knowledge
to him was the same as morality.

2. In order to understand the method of
Socrates' reform, it is necessary to recall the
fact that he found himself confronted with a
general absence, not of knowledge only, but of
the very idea of knowledge. The result of his
constant examination and sifting of men was
to prove that his contemporaries of every class,
and above all those of them who were most
satisfied with themselves, and whose reputation
for wisdom was highest, were generally in a
state of that ' shameful ignorance which consists
in thinking that we know what we do not know.'2
And the gravest symptom of this state of things
was that the Athenians were perfectly well
satisfied with it. It never crossed their minds
for a moment to doubt the complete adequacy of

1 Tennyson, In Memoriam, cxiv. - Apol. 29 B

INTRODUCTION. xlix

what they considered to be knowledge, though
in fact it was merely a hollow sham. Socrates'
first object then was to clear the ground, to
get rid of men's ignorance of their ignorance,
to reveal to them their actual short -coming.
Like Bacon, he set himself the task of ' throw-
ing entirely aside received theories and concep-
tions, and of applying his mind, so cleansed,
afresh to facts.' l The first step in his method
was destructive. It was to convict and
convince men of their ignorance by means of
his wonderful cross-examination. He was for
ever bringing to the test the current common-
places, the unexpressed popular judgments
about life, which were never examined or
revised, and the truth of which was taken for
granted by every one. He spent his days in
talking to any one who would talk to him. A
man in the course of conversation used a
general or abstract term, such as ' courage,'
'justice,' 'the state.' Socrates asked for a
definition of it. The other, never doubting
that he knew all about it, gave an answer at
once. The word seemed familiar enough to
him : he constantly used it, though he had
never taken the trouble to ask himself what it
exactly meant. Then Socrates proceeded to
test the definition offered him, by applying it
to particular cases, by putting questions about
it, by analysing it.2 He probably found with-
out much difficulty that it was defective : either

1 Bacon, Nov. Or/, i. 97.

2 See Bacon, Nov. Org. i. 105.

1 INTRODUCTION.

too narrow, or too broad, or contradictory of
some other general proposition which had been
laid down. Then the respondent amended his
definition : but a fresh series of similar questions
soon led him into hopeless difficulties ; and he
was forced at last to confess, or at least to feel,
that he was ignorant where he had thought
that he was wise, that he had nothing like clear
knowledge of what the word in question really
and exactly meant. The Euthyphron is a
perfect specimen of the Socratic examination
or elenchos. Let me give another very good
example from Xenophon. Euthydemus, who is
taking great pains to qualify himself for political
life, has no doubt that justice is an essential
attribute of a good citizen. He scorns the
idea that he does not know what justice and
injustice are, when he can see so many examples
of them every day. It is unjust to lie, to deceive,
to rob, to do harm, to enslave. But, objects
Socrates, it is not unjust to deceive, or to
enslave, or to injure your enemies. Euthy-
demus then says that it is unjust to treat your
friends so. It is just to deal thus with your
enemies. Well, rejoins Socrates, is a general
who inspirits his army with a lie, or a father
who gets his son to take necessary medicine
by means of a lie, or a man who takes away
a sword from his friend who is attempting to
commit suicide in a fit of insanity, unjust ?
Euthydemus admits that such acts are just, and
wishes to alter the definition. Then does
injustice mean deceiving one's friends for their

INTRODUCTION. li

harm ? ' Indeed, Socrates,' replies Euthy-
demus, ' I no longer believe in my answers :
everything seems to me different from what it
used to seem ' (cf. Euth. 1 1 B.) A further
question, namely, Are you unjust if you injure
your friends unintentionally ? is discussed
with a similar result, which Socrates attributes
to the fact that Euthydemus perhaps has never
considered these points, because they seemed
so familiar to him (810. TO fr<f>68pa TritrTtveiv
d&fvai). Then Socrates asks him what a
democracy is (of course Euthydemus knows
that, for he is going to lead a political life
in a democracy). Euthydemus replies that
democracy means government by the people,
i.e. by the poor. He defines the poor as
those who have not enough, and the rich as
those who have more than enough. ' Enough,'
it is pointed out, is a relative term. His defini-
tion would include tyrants among the poor, and
many men with quite small means among the
rich. At this point Euthydemus who had began
the discussion with complete self-complacency,
goes away greatly dejected. ' Socrates makes
me acknowledge my own worthlessness. I had
best be silent, for it seems that I know nothing
at all.' 1 To produce this painful and un-
expected consciousness of ignorance in the
minds of men who thought that they were
wise, when they were not wise, and who were

1 Xen. Mem. iv. 2. n.-39. Cf. Meno, 80 A., where
Socrates is compared to the torpedo fish which gives a
shock to whoever touches it.

lii INTRODUCTION.

perfectly well satisfied with their intellectual
condition, was the first object of the Socratic
cross - examination. Such consciousness of
ignorance was the first and a long step towards
knowledge. A man who had reached that
state had become at any rate ready to begin to
learn. And Socrates was able to bring every
one with whom he conversed into that state.1
Very many who were treated so took deep
offence : among others, his accuser Anytus.2
Such persons he called lazy and stupid. Others,
like Euthydemus, spent all their time afterwards
in his company, and were then no longer per-
plexed by puzzling questions, but encouraged.3
It is this object of clearing the ground, of
producing consciousness of ignorance, that Plato
dwells on in his portrait of Socrates. He lays
great stress on the negative and destructive side
of the Socratic philosophy : but he says scarcely
anything of its constructive side. It may well be
doubted whether there was very much to say ;
whether Socrates did in fact attempt to create
any system of real knowledge to take the place
of the sham knowledge which he found existing.
Xenophon, it is true, represents him as fram-
ing a certain number of definitions, on the
basis of generally admitted facts (rot /*aAio-ra
6/*oAoyoiy/,ej/a).4 ' Piety,' for instance, is defined
as 'knowledge of what is due to the gods;'

3 Xen. Mem. \. z. 14.

2 Meno, 94 E. ; cf. Apol. 21 U.

3 Xen. Mem. iv. 2. 40.
- Xen. Mem. iv. 6. 15.

INTRODUCTION. liii

'justice ' as ' knowledge of what is due to men.' l
But I think that Socrates would have said that
these definitions were tentative and provisional
only, and designed rather as illustrations of a
method, than as instalments of knowledge. By
knowledge he meant a system of ' reasoned
truth ' based on a thorough fresh observation
and examination of particulars. He would not
have been content to take these ' generally
admitted facts ' as the basis of it. He would
have insisted on putting them to the test. And
certainly, whatever may be the meaning and
value of Xenophon's testimony, nothing can be
more emphatic than the way in which the
Socrates of the Apology repeatedly says that
he knows nothing at all.2 ' I was never any
man's teacher. ... I have never taught, and
I have never professed to teach any man any
knowledge,' 3 is his answer to the charge that
men like Critias and Alcibiades, political
criminals of the deepest dye in the eyes of the
democracy, had been his pupils. His object
was to impart, not any positive system, but a
frame of mind : to make men conscious of their
ignorance, and of their need of enlightenment.
His wisdom was merely 'that wisdom which
he believed was (in the then state of things)
possible to man.'4 In other words, he was
conscious of his own ignorance : and, secondly,
he possessed a standard or ideal of knowledge,

1 Xen. Mem. iv. 6. 4. 6. Cf. Euth. 12 E.

2 Apol. 21 B. D. ; 23 B. 3 Apol. 33 A.
4 Apol. 20 D.

liv INTRODUCTION.

and a conception of the method of attaining it
But he possessed no connected system of know-
ledge : he was only conscious, and he was the
first man to be conscious of the necessity of it.
We may speak of him as a philosopher, for he
does so himself. But we must remember that
philosophy in his mouth does not mean the
possession of wisdom, but only, and strictly, the
love of, the search for, wisdom.1 The idea of
knowledge was to him still a deep and unfathom-
able problem, of the most supreme importance,
but which he could not solve. And this will
enable us to understand better the meaning of
his famous ' irony.' ' Here is a piece of Socrates'
well-known irony,' cries Thrasymachus, in the
Republic? ' I knew all the time that you would
refuse to answer, and feign ignorance, and do
anything sooner than answer a plain question.'
It seems to me that Socrates' 'well-known irony'
was of- more than one kind. His professions of
his own ignorance are wholly sincere. They
are not meant to make the conversation amus-
ing, and the discomfiture of his adversary more
complete. He never wavered in his belief that
knowledge was ultimately attainable ; but he
knew that he knew nothing himself, and in that
his knowledge consisted. What Thrasymachus
calls his irony, is not irony proper. The igno-
rance is not feigned but real. It is in his
treatment of vain and ignorant and self-satis-
fied sciolists, like Euthyphron, that true irony,
which is accompanied with the consciousness
1 Cf. Rep. ii. 376 B. 2 Rep. i. 337 A.

INTRODUCTION. lv

of superiority, seems to me to come into play.
It is possible, though it is in the last degree
unlikely, that Socrates really hoped at the
beginning of the dialogue to find out from
Euthyphron what piety was ; that the respect
which he showed to Euthyphron was real. But
it is plain that the respect which he shows to
Euthyphron in the last sentences of the dialogue,
is wholly feigned and ironical. Euthyphron had
been proved to be utterly ignorant of what he
had been confident that he thoroughly under-
stood. He was much too deeply offended to
acknowledge, or even to be conscious of his
ignorance ; and he had not the slightest idea
of what knowledge really was. Socrates was
ignorant too : but he knew that he was ignorant,
and he had the idea of knowledge. If he was
respectful towards Euthyphron then, the respect
was feigned and ironical, for it was accompanied
with a consciousness of superiority.

We have now got, I hope, a sufficient view
of Socrates' philosophy, so far as it concerns
us. Its defects lie on the surface, and are too
obvious to need explanation. He was, in fact,
the discoverer of the idea of scientific knowledge,
and he not unnaturally exaggerated the value
of his discovery. It is evidently a mistake and
an exaggeration to call a man ignorant unless
he not only knows, but can also give an account
of what he knows.1 There is such a thing as
'implicit' knowledge:2 before Socrates' time

1 Phatdo, 76 B.

51 Johnson said that ' the greatest part of our know-

Ivi INTRODUCTION.

there was no other kind. Not less evidently
is it a mistake to say that Virtue is Knowledge.
Knowledge, though an essential part, is certainly
very far indeed from being the whole of Virtue.
And a theory which leads to such sarcastic
comments on poets as Socrates indulges in,1
which would try poetry by a purely intellectual
standard, must, on the face of it, be defective.
But, even when allowance has been made for
these defects and mistakes, it would be hard
to exaggerate the value and originality of his
teaching. We have some difficulty in grasping
its vast importance. We have entered into the
fruit of his labours. What was a paradox to
the Athenians is a commonplace to us. To
them the simple principles which he laid down
seemed generally either absurd or immoral : to
us they are (in theory) scarcely more than
household words. He was, in fact, the first
man who conceived the possibility of moral
and political science, and of logic. In that,
and not in the creation of any positive system
of philosophy, his philosophical greatness con-
sists. If Aristotle is ' the Master of those who
know,' assuredly Socrates is their father, and
'the author of their being.' His theory of
definitions was the necessary first step towards
the existence of any scientific thought. Our
temptation is to undervalue his cross-examina-
tion. In reading such a dialogue as the Euthy-
phron, we get bored and irritated by his method

ledge is implicit faith. ' — Boswell's Life, vol. 3, p. 304
{Napier's Edition, 1884). J Apol. 22 B. C.

INTRODUCTION. Ivii

of argument, and it sometimes almost drives
us to sympathise with the wretched sciolist.
Coleridge talks of ' a man who would pull you
up at every turn for a definition, which is like
setting up perpetual turnpikes along the road
to truth.' l But it must be always remembered,
first, that the Socratic cross-examination was
originally addressed to men who did not know
what definition meant : that it was a necessary
stage in the development of human thought ; and
secondly, that, even to us, it is of the greatest
importance to make sometimes ' a return upon
ourselves,' and to ask ourselves the exact mean-
ing of our stock thoughts and phrases.

We may now turn to our dialogues, the
Euthyphron, Apology, Crito, and Phado, which
describe the trial, the imprisonment, and the
death of Socrates. The first of them, however,
the Euthyphron, has only an indirect bearing
on these events. Socrates is going to be tried
for impiety, and before the trial begins, he wishes
to show that the current commonplaces about
piety and impiety will not bear testing. The
scene is laid in the porch of the King Archon,
an official before whom indictments for im-
piety and the plea of the accused were laid
and sworn to, matters of religion being his
especial care. Here Socrates and Euthyphron
meet, Socrates having just been indicted, and
Euthyphron being engaged in indicting his
father for the murder of a labouring man.
Euthyphron is supremely contemptuous of his

1 See Carew Hazlitt's Life of Hazlitt, vol. i. p. 48.

Iviii INTRODUCTION.

friends and relatives, who say that he is acting
impiously. On the contrary, he says, his act
is a holy and pious one. To do otherwise
would be impious. He himself, he is con-
fident, knows all about religion, and piety, and
impiety : he has made them his special study.
Socrates is anxious to be told what piety is, that
he may have something to say to his accusers.
Euthyphron answers at once without hesitation
' Piety is acting as I am acting now. It means
punishing the evil-doer, even though he be your
own father, just as Zeus is said to have punished
his father Cronos for a crime.' Socrates re-
marks that he cannot bring himself to believe
those horrible stories about Zeus and the other
gods, and he points out that Euthyphron has not
answered his question. He does not want a
particular example of piety. He wishes to know
what piety itself is, what that is which makes all
pious actions pious. Euthyphron has a little
difficulty at first in understanding Socrates'
meaning. Then he gives as his definition,
' Piety is that which is pleasing to the gods.'
But he has also said that the mythological tales
about the quarrels of the gods are true : and
Socrates makes him admit that if the gods
quarrel, it is about questions of right and wrong
and the like, and that some of them will think
a thing right which others of them will think
wrong. The same thing therefore is pleasing
to the gods and displeasing to the gods, and
Euthyphron's definition will not stand. Euthy-
phron then changes his ground and says, ' Piety

INTRODUCTION. lix

is that which is pleasing to all the gods.'
Socrates demolishes this definition by pointing
out that what is pleasing to the gods 'is of a
sort to be loved by them, because they love it ;'
whereas piety ' is loved by them, because it is
of a sort to be loved.' By this time the cross-
examination has thoroughly confused Euthy-
phron, and he scarcely understands the sugges-
tion that piety is a part of justice. After a good
deal of prompting he defines piety as ' that part
of justice which has to do with the care or
attention which we owe to the gods (cf. Xen.
Mem. iv. 6. 4, ' Piety is the knowledge of what
is due to the gods '). Socrates elicits from him
with some trouble that by ' attention ' he means
' service,' and then drives him to admit that
piety is ' a science of prayer and sacrifice,' or,
as Socrates puts it, ' an art of traffic between
gods and men.' We give the gods honour and
homage, in short what is acceptable to them.
Nothing, thinks Euthyphron, is dearer to them
than piety. Indeed piety means ' what is dear
to them : ' which is in fact, as Socrates points
out, the very definition which was rejected earlier
in the dialogue. At this point Euthyphron,
who has passed from a state of patronising self-
complacency to one of, first, puzzled confusion,
and, then, of deeply offended pride, finds it con-
venient to remember that he is late for an
engagement and must be off. The dialogue
ends with an ironical appeal by Socrates for
information about the real nature of piety. ' If
any man knows what it is, it is you."
e

lx INTRODUCTION.

The Euthyphron is a perfect example of
Socrates' method of cross-examination, and it
is not necessary to add anything to what has
already been said on that subject. We cannot
tell whether the conversation recorded in this
dialogue ever actually took place. Socrates'
dislike of the mythological tales about the crimes
of the gods should be noticed. It is, he says,
one of the causes of his unpopularity. Another
cause is that he has the reputation of being ' a
man who makes other people clever,' i.e. a
Sophist. It must also be noticed that the
real question which he discusses is not whether
Euthyphron's action is justifiable or no, but
whether Euthyphron can justify it.

We come now to the trial and the defence of
Socrates. He was indicted in 399 B.C. before
an ordinary Athenian criminal tribunal for not
believing in the gods of Athens and for cor-
rupting young men. We must clear our
minds of all ideas of an English criminal trial,
if we are to realise at all the kind of court
before which he was tried. It consisted prob-
ably of 501 dicasts or jurymen, who were a
very animated audience, and were wont to ex-
press openly their approbation or disapprobation
of the arguments addressed to them. Aris-
tophanes represents them in one of his plays l
as shouting at an unpopular speaker the Greek
equivalent of ' sit down ! sit down ! ' /cara/Ja,
KardfBa. Socrates' appeals for a quiet hearing
are addressed to them, not to the general audi-
1 Vesp. 979.

INTRODUCTION. Ixi

ence. There was no presiding judge. The in-
dictment was preferred by an obscure young poet
named Meletus, backed up by Lycon,arhetorician
of whom nothing more is known, and by Anytus,
the real mover in the matter. He was a leather
seller by trade and an ardent politician, whose
zeal and sufferings in the cause of the democracy,
at the time of the oligarchy of the Thirty, had
gained him much reputation and influence with
the people. After the restoration of 403 B.C.
he was a man of great political weight in Athens.
All three accusers therefore belonged to classes
which Socrates had offended by his unceasing
censure of men, who could give no account of
the principles of their profession. We meet
with Anytus again in the Meno, in which
dialogue he displays an intense hatred and scorn
for the Sophists. ' I trust that no connection
or relative or friend of mine, whether citizen
or foreigner, will ever be so mad as to allow
them to ruin him.' And he finally loses his
temper at some implied criticisms of Socrates
on the unsatisfactory nature of the ordinary
Athenian education, which did not, or could not,
teach virtue, and goes away with an ominous
threat. ' Socrates, I think that you speak evil
of men too lightly. I advise you to be careful.
In any city it is probably easier to do people
harm than to do them good, and it is certainly so
in Athens, as I suppose you know yourself.'1
The next time that we hear of Anytus is as one of
Socrates' accusers. The form of the indictment
1 Meno, 91 B. , 94 E.

Ixii INTRODUCTION.

was as follows : ' Meletus the son of Meletus, of
the deme Pitthis, on his oath brings the following
accusation against Socrates, the son of Sophron-
iscus, of the deme Alopece. Socrates commits
a crime by not believing in the gods of the
city, and by introducing other new divinities.
He also commits a crime by corrupting the
youth. Penalty, Death.'1 Meletus, in fact,
merely formulates the attack made on Socrates
by Aristophanes in the Clouds. The charge of
atheism and of worshipping strange gods was
a stock accusation against the Physical Philo-
sophers.2 The charge of immorality, of corrupt-
ing the youth, was a stock accusation against
the Sophists. Meletus' indictment contains no
specific charge against Socrates as an individual.
A few words are necessary to explain the
procedure at the trial. The time assigned to
it was divided into three equal lengths. In
the first the three accusers made their speeches :
with this we are not concerned. The second
was occupied by the speeches of the accused
(and sometimes of his friends), that is, by the
first twenty-four chapters of the Apology. Then
the judges voted and found their verdict. The
third length opened with the speech of the
prosecutor advocating the penalty which he
proposed — in this case, death. The accused

1 See Apol. 24 B.

2 Apol. 1 8 C., 23 D. A few years earlier a decree,
aimed at Anaxagoras, was passed, at the instance of one
Diopeithes, making it criminal to deny religion or to
teach meteorology. — Plut. Pericles, xxxii.

INTRODUCTION. Ixiii

was at liberty to propose a lighter alternative
penalty, and he could then make a second
speech in support of his proposal. He might
at the same time bring forward his wife and
children, and so appeal to the pity of the Court.
To this stage of the proceedings belong chapters
xxv.-xxviii. inclusive, of the Apology. Then the
judges had to decide between the two penalties
submitted to them, of which they had to choose
one. If they voted for death, the condemned
man was led away to prison by the officers of
the Eleven : With chapter xxviii. the trial ends :
we cannot be certain that Socrates was ever actu-
ally allowed to make such an address as is con-
tained in the closing chapters of the Apology. It
is at least doubtful whether the Athenians, who
had just condemned a man to death that they
might no longer be made to give an account of
their lives, would endure to hear him denounc-
ing judgment against them for their sins, and
prophesying the punishment which awaited
them. Finally, we must remember that at
certain points of his defence, strictly so called,
Socrates must be supposed to call witnesses.1

The first part of the Apology begins with a
short introduction. Then Socrates proceeds
to divide his accusers into two sets. First
there are those who have been accusing him
untruly now for many years, among them his
old enemy Aristophanes ; then there are Meletus
and his companions. He will answer his ' first
accusers ' first. They have accused him of being
1 E.g. Apol. 21 A. ; 32 E.

Ixiv INTRODUCTION.

at once a wicked sophist and a natural philo-
sopher. He distinguishes these characters, and
points out that it is untrue to say that he is either
one or the other. He is unpopular because he
has taken on himself the duty of examining men,
in consequence of a certain answer given by
the Delphic oracle, ' that he was the wisest of
men.' He describes the examination of men
which he undertook to test the truth of the
oracle, which has gained him much hatred :
men do not like to be proved ignorant when
they think themselves wise. They call him
a sophist and every kind of bad name besides,
because he exposes their pretence of knowledge.
Then he turns to his present accusers, Meletus,
Anytus, and Lycon. Meletus is cross-examined
and easily made to contradict himself: he is
an infant in Socrates' hands, who treats him
very contemptuously, answering a fool according
to his folly. But some one may ask, is it worth
while to risk death for the sake of such a life
as you are leading ? Socrates replies that he
did not desert the post which human generals
assigned him ; shall he desert the post at which
God has set him ? He will not do that ; and
therefore he will not accept an acquittal condi-
tional on abstaining from an examination of
men. The Athenians should not be angry with
him ; rather they should thank God for sending
him to them to rouse them, as a gadfly — to use
a quaint simile — rouses a noble but sluggish
steed. If they put him to death, they will not
easily find a successor to him. His whole life

INTRODUCTION. Ixv

is devoted to their service, though he is not a
public man. He would have been put to death
years ago if he had engaged in politics, for
there is much injustice in every city, which he
would oppose by every means in his power.
His actions, when the ten generals were con-
demned, and under the oligarchy, prove that.
But as a private man he has striven for justice
all his life, and his conversation has been open
before all. If young men have been corrupted
by him, why do they not come forward to
accuse him when they are grown up ? Or if
they do not like to come forward, why do not
their relatives, who are uncorrupted ? It is
because they know very well that he be speak-
ing the truth, and that Anytus is a liar.

That is pretty much what he has to say.
He will not appeal to the compassion of the
judges. Such conduct brings disgrace on
Athens ; and besides, the judges have sworn
to decide according to law, and to appeal to
their feelings would be to try to make them
forswear themselves : he is accused of impiety,
he will not accuse himself of impiety by such
conduct. With these words he commits his
cause to the judges and to God.

At this point the judges vote. He is con-
demned by 281 to 220. Meletus' speech in
support of sentence of death follows, and then
Socrates' speech in favour of his alternative
penalty. He has expected to be condemned,
and by a much larger majority. What shall
he propose as his penalty ? What does he

Ixvi INTRODUCTION.

deserve for his life ? He is a public benefactor;
and he thinks that he ought to have a public
maintenance in the Prytaneum, like an Olympic
victor. Seriously, why should he propose a
penalty ? He is sure that he has done no
wrong. He does not know whether death is
a good or an evil. Why should he propose
something that he knows to be an evil ? Pay-
ment of a fine would be no evil, but then he has
no money to pay a fine with ; perhaps he can
make up one mina : that is his proposal. Or,
as his friends wish it, he offers thirty minas, and
his friends will be sureties for payment.

The Athenians, as they were logically bound
to do, condemn him to death. They have
voted against him, wishing to be relieved from
the necessity of having to give an account of
their lives, and after their verdict he affirms
more strongly than ever that he will not cease
from examining them. With the sentence of
death the trial ends ; but in the Apology Socrates
addresses some last words to those who have
condemned him, and to those who have ac-
quitted him. The former he sternly rebukes
for their crime, and foretells the evil that awaits
them as the consequence of it : to the latter he
wishes to talk about what has befallen him, and
death. They must be of good cheer. No
harm can come to a good man in life or in
death. Death is either an eternal and dream-
less sleep, wherein there is no sensation at all ;
or it is a journey to another and a better world,
where are the famous men of old. Whichever

INTRODUCTION. Ixvii

alternative be true, death is not an evil but a
good. His own death is willed by the gods,
and he is content. He has only one request
to make, that his judges will trouble his sons, as
he has troubled his judges, if his sons set riches
above virtue, and think themselves great men
when they are worthless. ' But now the time
has come for us to depart, for me to die and
for you to live. Whether life or death be
better is known only to God.' So ends this
wonderful dialogue.

The first question which presents itself to a
reader of the Apology is, How far does it coin-
cide with, or represent what Socrates actually
said in his defence ? We know from Xenophon
that he might easily have obtained a verdict, if
he would have consented to conciliate his judges
with prayers and flattery j1 and also that the
divine sign forbade him to prepare any defence.2
But that is all that we know of his defence,
apart from the Apology, and if the Apology
contains any of the actual utterances of Socrates,
we have no means of determining which they
are. I think that Mr. Riddell has shown beyond
any reasonable doubt (although Zeller speaks of
the opposite view as ' well established ') that
the structure of the defence is the work of Plato.
He points out (Introduction, p. xx.) that whereas
Xenophon declares that Socrates prepared no
speech, the Apology is ' artistic to the core,'
and full of ' subtle rhetoric.' Take, for example,

1 Xen. Mem. iv. 4. 4. Cf. Apol. 34 C.

2 Xen. Mem. iv. 8. 5. Cf. Apol. 17 B.

Ixviii INTRODUCTION.

the argument against the charges of the first
accusers (ch. ii.-x.) Their slanders and preju-
dices are, as a matter of fact, merely those of
the mass of Athenians, including the judges.
To have attacked those prejudices openly would
have been merely to give offence to the judges.
The attack on them is therefore masked. It
is not made on ' your slanders and prejudices '
(except only in 19 A. and 24 A.) but on the
slanders and prejudices of certain individuals,
whose very names Socrates does not know
(' except in the case of the comic poets ') who
have been accusing him falsely for many years,
very persistently. Further, as Mr. Riddell
points out, the Apology is full of rhetorical
commonplaces. ' The exordium may be paral-
leled, piece by piece, from the orators.' And
the whole defence is most artistically arranged,
with the answer to the formal indictment in the
middle, where it is least prominent, being the
least important part of the speech. Apart from
the structure of the Apology, the style and
language is clearly Plato's, whatever may be
said about the substance of it.

' Notwithstanding, we can seek in the Apology
a portrait of Socrates before his judges, and
not be disappointed. Plato has not laid before
us a literal narrative of the proceedings, and
bidden us thence form the conception for our-
selves ; rather he has intended us to form it
through the medium of his art. The structure
is his, the language is his, much of the substance
may be his : notwithstanding, quite independ-

INTRODUCTION. Ixix

ently of the literal truth of the means, he
guarantees to us a true conception of the scene
and of the man. We see that ' liberam contu-
maciam a magnitudine animi ductam non a
superbia ' (Cic. Tusc. \. 29), and feel that it
must be true to Socrates, although with Cicero
himself we have derived the conception from
Plato's ideal and not from history. We hear
Meletus subjected to a questioning which, though
it may not have been the literal e/3WT?;cris of
the trial, exhibits to us the great questioner
in his own element. We discover repeated
instances of the irony, which, uniting self-appre-
ciation with a true and unflattering estimate of
others, declines to urge considerations which
lie beyond the intellectual or moral ken of the
judges. Here we have that singularity of ways
and thoughts which was half his offence obtrud-
ing itself to the very last in contempt of conse-
quences. Here we have that characteristic
assertion of private judgment against authority
which declares itself in the words eyw lytag,

Treuro/zat Se //.dAAov TO» 9(.(a r} vp.lv (29 D.)
Here we have also his disapproval of the exist-
ing democracy of Athens which he rather
parades than disguises. And lastly, the deep
religiousness which overshadowed all his char-
acter breathes forth in the account he renders
of his past life, in his anticipations of the future,
and in his whole present demeanour.

' Thus while the problem of the relation of
the Apology to what Socrates actually said

Ixx INTRODUCTION.

must remain unsolved, there is no doubt that
it bodies forth a lifelike representation ; a repre-
sentation of Socrates as Plato wished us to con-
ceive of him, and yet at the same time as true
to nature as the art of Plato could render it.'1
Plato, we know was present at the trial :2 he
knew well how Socrates had defended himself:
he doubtless often discussed that memorable
day with Socrates in the prison : and he had
an intense reverence for his great master. Of
course he could not give a verbatim report of
a speech made without even a note : there were
no shorthand writers at Athens. But he knew
the substance of the defence. His Apology
may perhaps be compared to the speeches in
Thucydides, who observes that it was difficult to
remember the exact things said by the speakers
on each occasion, but that he has adhered as
closely as possible to the general sense and
substance of their arguments.3

We know very little about the specific charges
contained in the speeches for the prosecution.
The only direct reference to them in the
Apology is in Socrates' passing disclaimer of
any responsibility for the political crimes of
men like Alcibiades and Critias.4 Xenophon
tells us that ' the accuser ' charged Socrates
with bringing the constitution into contempt by
criticising the system of election to political
office by lot : with teaching children to treat
their fathers with contumely : with arguing that

1 Riddell, Introduction, p. xxvii. 2 Apol. 38 B.
3 Thucyd. i. 22. i. * Apol. 33 A.

INTRODUCTION. Ixxi

people should love and respect only those who
could be useful to them : with being respon-
sible for the crimes of Alcibiades and Critias :
with wresting bad passages from Homer and
Hesiod to immoral uses.1 There is no reason
to doubt that he did in fact criticise election to
office by lot adversely. That institution, and
indeed all popular government, was obviously
incompatible with his whole intellectual position.
He believed that government is an art, and the
most important of all arts, and that as such it
requires more training, knowledge, and skill
than any other.2 He would not have left the
decision of political questions to chance, or to
the vote of the uneducated majority. The
other charges are mere stupid and malignant
lies, which Socrates passes by in silence. He
deals with the formal indictment lightly, and
to some extent, sophistically. The broad
ground taken up by the prosecution was that
Socrates' whole way of life and teaching is
vicious, immoral, and criminal. That was the
real charge which he had to meet. The avowed
purpose of his unceasing examination was to
expose the hollowness of received opinion about
human affairs : and to understand the animosity
which such an avowal aroused in Athens, it is
necessary to remember that to the Greek this
received opinion represented the traditional

1 Xen. Mem. i. z. 9. 12. 49. seq.

2 Xen. Mem. iv. 2. 2 ; cf. Rep. 488, 489, 551 C. D.,
and the amusing description of a democracy, ibid. 557
E. seq.

Ixxii INTRODUCTION.

unwritten law of the State. And the State
meant a great deal more to a Greek than it
means to us. It was not a mere association of
men for the protection of life and property. It
was a sacred thing, tp be loved and revered.
It had the authority of a church. If we bear
that in mind we shall comprehend better the
bitterness called forth by Socrates' attack on
received opinions, and the strength of the
position taken up by his accusers in their pro-
secution. He concentrates the entire force
and emphasis of his argument to meet them on
that ground. His defence is a review and
justification of his life and ' philosophy.' It
is not an apology. Socrates utters no single
syllable of regret for the unceasing cross-
examination of men, which was alleged against
him as a crime. Neither is it accurate to say
that he ' defies ' the Athenians. He speaks
of them individually and as a people in terms
of strong affection. He loved his fellow-
countrymen intensely. He has no quarrel with
them at all. He is unfeignedly sorry for their
mistakes and their faults, and he does what he
can to correct them by pointing out why they
are wrong. He does not defy them. What
he does is firmly and absolutely to decline to
obey them, be the consequences what they may.
The Apology brings out one point about
Socrates very strongly which must be noticed,
namely ' the deep religiousness which over-
shadowed all his character.' To him religion
meant something very different from the poly-

INTRODUCTION. Ixxiii

theistic and mythological system which was
current among his countrymen. We have seen
in the Euthyphron how strongly he condemned
the horrible and immoral tales about the gods
which were contained in Greek mythology,1 and
how he fears that his condemnation of them
makes him unpopular. He was far too earnestly
and really religious a man not to be indignant
at such stories, or to accept as satisfactory the
popular State religion. He deals rather care-
lessly with the count in the indictment charging
him with disbelief in the gods of Athens. He
nowhere commits himself to a recognition of
them, though he emphatically denies that he is
an atheist. 'Athenians,' he says in the last
words of his defence,2 ' I do believe in the
gods as no one of my accusers believes in
them : and to you and to God I commit my
cause to be decided as is best for you and for
me.' His God was the God of Plato, who is
good, and the cause of all good and never
the cause of evil : He ' is one and true in
word and deed : He neither changes Himself,
nor deceives others : ' 3 the unknown God, at
whose altar the Athenians some four centuries
later ignorantly worshipped : ' the power in
darkness whom we guess.' ' God alone,' says
Socrates, ' is wise and knows all things.'4 He
protects good men from evil.5 He declares

1 See also Rep. 377 E. seq. 2 Apol. 35 D.

3 Rep. 379 B. seq. , 382 E. See Professor Max Muller's
Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. lect. ix.

4 Apol. 23 A. , 42 A. * Apol. 30 D.

Ixxiv INTRODUCTION.

His will to men by dreams and oracles, and the
priestess at Delphi is His mouthpiece.1 His
law and His commands are supreme and must
be obeyed at all costs.2 We have already
seen how Socrates looked on his search for
wisdom as a duty laid upon him by God.3 He
continually speaks of it as ' the service of
God," 4 which must be performed at all hazards,
and from which no danger, and no threats
could be allowed to turn him back. He will
not hold his peace, even to save his life.
' Athenians, I hold you in the highest regard
and love, but I will obey God rather than you'5
— words strikingly parellel to St. Peter's words
' we ought to obey God rather than men ' (Acts
v. 29). And in the service of God he died.6

There is one very obscure question relating
to Socrates' religious opinions. He believed
that he had certain special and peculiar com-
munications from God through his ' divine
sign.' In the Apology he explains it to be a
voice from God which had been with him
continually from childhood upwards, which
frequently warned him even in quite small
matters, and which was always negative, re-
straining him from some action.7 It is diffi-

1 Apol. 21 A., 33 C. 2 Apol. 21 E., 28 E.

3 Cf. ante, p. xxvi. * Apol. 22 A. , 23 B.

6 Apol. 29 D.

6 For Xenophon's account of Socrates' religious
opinions, see Zeller, p. 175, and the passages referred to
there, especially the remarkable words in Mem. \. i. 19 ;
i. 3. 2. 3. Xenophon, however, as Zeller points out, is
inconsistent. 7 Apol. 31 C., 40 A.

INTRODUCTION. Ixxv

cult to say what this ' divine sign ' was. It
is clear enough that it was not conscience, for
it dealt not with the morality, but with the
expediency of actions. In this dialogue it does
not forbid him to desert his post and neglect
the duty of examining men which God had
laid upon him. He will not do that because
he will not disobey God. The divine sign
forbids him to enter on public life, because it
would be inexpedient to do so.1 Besides,
conscience is positive as well as negative,
and Socrates could hardly claim a monopoly
of it. M. Lelut, in a book called Du Demon
de Socrate (1836), argues ' que Socrate
etait un fou,' and classes him with Luther,
Pascal, Rousseau, and others.2 He thinks
that Socrates in his hallucinations really be-
lieved that he heard a voice. Zeller says that
the divine sign is ' the general form which a
vivid, but in its origin unexplained, sense of
the propriety of a particular action assumed
for the personal consciousness of Socrates,'
' the inner voice of individual tact,' cultivated
to a pitch of extraordinary accuracy.3 Mr.
Riddell, in an appendix of great interest, collects
all the passages from Xenophon and Plato, and
points out that the two accounts are contra-
dictory. Taking Xenophon's account he be-
lieves ' that it was a quick exercise of a judg-

1 Apol. 31 D.

2 See Mr. Henry Jackson, Journal of Philology, No.
10, p. 232.

3 Socrates and the Socratic Schools, p. 94.

Ixxvi INTRODUCTION.

ment, informed by knowledge of the subject,
trained by experience, and inferring from cause
to effect without consciousness of the process'
(p. 114). If we take Plato's account he
thinks explanation impossible : we cannot go
beyond what Socrates says. Dr. Thompson
(Master of Trinity College, Cambridge), after
pointing out that it is a sign or voice from the
gods, and not, as has been sometimes said, a
genius or attendant spirit, seems to accept
Schleiermacher's opinion as most probable,
that it ' denotes the province of such rapid
moral judgments as cannot be referred to dis-
tinct grounds, which accordingly Socrates did
not attribute to his proper self : for instance,
presentiment of the issue of an undertaking :
attraction or repulsion in reference to particular
individuals.' 1 Fortunately the question is
curious rather than important, for it can hardly
be said that there is evidence enough to settle
it.

At the close of the Apology Socrates is
about to be led away to prison. His death
was delayed by a certain mission which the
Athenians annually sent to Apollo at Delos :
for while the mission was away no one could
be put to death in Athens.2 Socrates therefore
had to spend a long time ironed in the prison,
in which the scene of the Crito is laid. It is
early morning, and Socrates is still asleep.

1 Butler's Lectures on the History of Ancient Philo-
sophy. Edited by Dr. Thompson, ad ed. , p. 238,
note 19. 2 See Phcedo, 58 A.

INTRODUCTION. txxvii

Crito has come before the usual time, the
bearer of news which is more bitter to him
than to Socrates, that the ship of the mission
is at Sunium and will soon reach the Peiraeus ;
on the following day Socrates will have to die.
For the last time Crito implores him to escape
and save himself. It will be quite easy and
will not cost his friends much ; and there are
many places for him to go to. If he stays, he
will be doing the work of his foes ; he will be
deserting his children, and covering himself
with ridicule and his friends with disgrace.
' Think what men will say of us.'

Socrates replies that he has been guided by
reason, and has disregarded the opinion of men
all his life. It matters not what the world will say,
but what the one man who knows what Right
is will say, and what Truth herself will think of
us. The question is, Shall I be doing right in
escaping, and will you be doing right in aiding
my escape ? Crito agrees to that, and to the
first principle which Socrates lays down as a
starting-point : — if any one wrong us, we may
not wrong him in return. We have no right
to repay evil with evil, though few men think
so or ever will think so. Such a sentiment
must indeed have sounded strange to Socrates'
contemporaries ; Greek morality was, do good
to your friends, and harm to your enemies, a pro-
position which Xenophon puts into the mouth
of Socrates himself.1

Socrates then starts from the principle, that
1 Mem. ii. 6. 35.

Ixxviii INTRODUCTION.

it is wrong to return evil for evil. Apply that
to his case : he will be wronging the state if he
escapes from prison and from death against
the will of the Athenians ; by so doing, he will
be doing all he can to destroy the state of which
he is a citizen. A city in which private indivi-
duals set aside at their will the judicial decisions
and laws of the state, cannot continue to exist :
it must be destroyed. It may be that an in-
dividual is condemned unjustly : then the
laws are either bad, or, as he says at the
end of the dialogue, badly administered.
Still, the individual may not take the matter
into his own hands. The members of all
bodies of men, and therefore of the state,
must sacrifice their individual wills, more or
less, to the whole to which they belong. They
must obey the rules or laws of the whole, or
it will perish. Even in bodies of bad men
there must be, and is, a certain harmony and
unanimity.1 The Crito represents Socrates as
the good citizen, who has been condemned
unjustly ' not by the laws but by men,' but
who will not retaliate on the state and destroy
it : he will submit to death. Were he to escape,
the laws would come and ask him why he was
trying to destroy them, and if he replied that
they had wronged him, they would retort that
he had agreed to be bound by all the judicial
decisions of the state. He owes everything
to them — his birth, his bringing up, his educa-
tion ; he is their offspring and slave, and bound
1 Cf. Rep. 352 C. D.

INTRODUCTION. Ixxix

to do whatever they bid him without an answer.
He has agreed to that ; and his consent to the
agreement was not got from him by force or
fraud : he has had seventy years to consider
it ; for they permit any man who chooses, to
leave the city and go elsewhere. Socrates has
not only not done that, he has remained within
the walls more than any Athenian, so contented
was he. He might have proposed exile as the
penalty at his trial, and it would have been
accepted, but he expressly refused to do so.
And if he runs away, where will he go to ?
Orderly men and cities will look askance at
him as a lawless person : life will not be worth
living in disorderly states like Thessaly ; what
could he do there ? He would scarcely have
the face to converse about virtue. Will he go
away to Thessaly for dinner ? And will he
take his children with him, and make them
strangers to their own country ? Or will he
leave them in Athens ? What good will he
do them then ? His friends, if they are real
friends, will take as much care of them if he
goes to the other world as if he goes to
Thessaly. Let him stay and die, and he will
go away an injured man, and the laws of
Hades will receive him kindly. Such are the
arguments he hears murmured in his ears.
Crito admits that he cannot answer them.

We have no means of saying whether the
incident of this dialogue ever occurred. Plato
was quite capable of inventing it. Doubtless
however Socrates' friends would have liked to

Ixxx INTRODUCTION.

save his life, and nothing is more likely than
that they proposed escape to him. Crito is met
with again in the Phcedo. He is an old and
intimate friend, who asks for Socrates' last com-
mands, and is with him at his last parting from
his family, and closes his eyes after death. He
is not good at argument ; and it is worth notic-
ing that, in the latter half of the Crito, the
dialogue almost becomes a monologue : the
reasoning in the Phcedo makes but little impres-
sion on him.1

In the Phcedo the story of Socrates' death
is related at Phlius to Echecrates and other
Phliasians by Phsedo, who had been with his
master to the end. It is a dialogue within a
dialogue, the scene of the first being Phlius, and
of the second the prison, a day or two after
the incident narrated in the Crito!1 Phaedo
first explains how the mission to Apollo delayed
Socrates' death for so long : 3 he tells who were
present, how they heard the night before of
the arrival of the ship from Delos, and how
they arranged to go to Socrates the next morn-
ing very early. Then we are taken into the
prison, where Socrates has just been released
from his fetters, and Xanthippe, who is soon
sent away wailing, is sitting by him. Socrates
remarks on the close connection of pleasure
and pain, and then the conversation turns upon
suicide, which Socrates says is wrong, though

1 See Phcedo, 115 D. E.

2 Crito, 44 A.

* Thirty days. — Xen. Mem. iv. 8. z.

INTRODUCTION. Ixxxi

the philosopher will always long to die. Such
a man, when he is dead, will be cared for by
good gods, he will be with better companions
than on earth, and he will be released from the
body, which is a perpetual hindrance to the
soul in her pursuit of truth. Philosophy is a
study of death ; the philosopher longs to be
emancipated from the bondage of the body,
for he desires knowledge, which is attainable
only after death. Those who fear death do not
love wisdom, but their bodies, or wealth, or
honour. And their virtue is a strange thing.
They are brave from a fear of greater evils,
and temperate because intemperance prevents
them from enjoying certain pleasures. Such
virtue is utterly false, and unsound, and slavish.
True virtue is a purification of the soul, and
those who have purified their souls will be with
the gods after death. Therefore Socrates is
ready to die.

Cebes fears that when a man dies his soul
vanishes away like smoke. Socrates proceeds
to discuss the immortality of the soul. In the
first place, by a confusion of sequence and
effect, he argues that opposites are generated
from opposites : and therefore life from death.
If it were not so, if death were generated from
life, and not life from death, everything would
at length be dead. He next makes use of the
Platonic doctrine of Reminiscence. All our
knowledge is a remembrance of what we have
known at some previous time, and that can
only have been before we were born. Our

Ixxxii INTRODUCTION.

souls therefore must have existed before they
entered our bodies. Simmias admits that, but
wants a further proof that they will continue
to exist when we are dead. Socrates has no
objection to go on with the discussion, though
the further proof is needless. Which, he asks,
is most liable to dissolution, the simple and
unchanging, or the compound and changing ?
that which is akin to the divine, or that which
is akin to the mortal ? Clearly the former in
both instances ; in other words the soul is less
subject to dissolution than the body. But the
body, if it be properly embalmed, may be pre-
served for ages, and parts of it, as the bones,
are to all intents and purposes immortal. Can
it be said then that the soul vanishes away at
death ? Far from it : the pure soul goes hence
to a place that is glorious, and pure, and invis-
ible, and lives with the gods, while the soul that
is impure flutters about tombs, weighed down
by her earthly element, until she is again im-
prisoned in the body of some animal with habits
congenial to the habits of her previous life. The
sensual soul for instance goes into the body of
an ass ; the unjust or tyrannical soul into the
body of a wolf or a kite : such souls as have
been just and temperate, though without philo-
sophy or intelligence, go into the bodies of
some gentle creature, the bee, or the wasp, or,
it may be, of moderate men. Only the souls
of philosophers go and live with the gods.
That is why philosophers abstain from bodily
pleasures.

INTRODUCTION. Ixxxiii

Simmias and Cebes are still unconvinced,
and with a little pressure are induced to state
their difficulties. Simmias believes the soul
to be a harmony of the elements of the body,
and that she is to the body, as a musical har-
mony is to a lyre. But a musical harmony,
though diviner than the lyre, does not survive
it. Cebes grants the soul to be much more
enduring than the body, but he cannot see that
the soul has been proved to be immortal.

At this point there is a break in the argu-
ment. The listeners nearly despair on hearing
these objections. Then Socrates proceeds,
first warning them against coming to hate
reasoning, because it has sometimes deceived
them. The fault is not in reasoning, but in
themselves. And he begs them to be careful
that he does not mislead them in his eager-
ness to prove the soul immortal. He is an
interested party.

He answers Simmias first. Does Simmias
still believe in the doctrine of Reminiscence ?
He does. Then the soul is not a harmony of
the elements of the body : if she were, she
would have existed before the elements which
compose her. And the soul leads, and is never
more or less a soul. In those things she differs
from a harmony, and so Simmias' objection
fails. Cebes' point is more important. To
answer him involves an investigation of the
whole question of generation and decay ; but
Socrates is willing to narrate his own experi-
ences on the subject. In his youth he had a pas-

Ixxxiv INTRODUCTION.

sion for Natural Philosophy : he thought about it
till he was completely puzzled. He could not
understand the mechanical and physical causes
of the philosophers. He hoped great things from
Anaxagoras, who, he was told, said that Mind
was the Universal Cause, and who, he expected,
would show that everything was ordered in
the best way. He was grievously disappointed.
Anaxagoras made no use of mind at all, but
introduced air, and ether, and a number of
strange things as causes. In his disappoint-
ment he turned to investigate the question of
causation for himself. All his hearers will
admit the existence of absolute Ideas. He
made up his mind that Ideas are the causes
of phenomena, beauty of beautiful things,
greatness of great things, and so on. Eche-
crates interposes the remark that any man of
sense will agree to that. Socrates goes on to
show that opposite Ideas cannot coexist in the
same person : if it is said that Simmias is
both tall and short, because he is taller than
Socrates and shorter than Phasdo, that is true ;
but he is only tall and short relatively. An
Idea must always perish or retreat before its
opposite. Further than that, an Idea will
not only not admit its opposite ; it will not
admit that which is inseparable from its op-
posite. The opposite of cold is heat ; and
just as cold will not admit heat, so it will not
admit fire, which is inseparable from heat.
Cold and fire cannot coexist in the same
object. So life is the opposite of death, and

INTRODUCTION. Ixxxv

•

life is inseparable from the soul. Therefore the
soul will not admit death. She is immortal,
and therefore indestructible : and when a man
dies his soul goes away safe and unharmed.
Simmias admits that he has nothing to urge
against Socrates' reasoning though he cannot
say that he is quite satisfied. Human reason
is weak and the subject vast.

But if the soul lives on after death, how
terrible must be the danger of neglecting her !
For she takes to Hades nothing but her nurture
and education, and these make a great differ-
ence to her at the very beginning of her journey
thither. Socrates then describes the soul's
journey to the other world, and her life there :
a remark that the earth is a wonderful place,
not at all like what it is commonly thought to
be, leads to the description of the earth in the
famous Myth of the Phcedo, which Plato, with
consummate art, interposes between the hard
metaphysical argument of the dialogue, and the
account of Socrates' death. Socrates describes
the earth, its shape, and character, and inhabi-
tants, and beauty. We men, who think we live
on its surface, really live down in a hollow.
Other men live on the surface, which is much
fairer than our world. Then he goes on to
describe Tartarus and its rivers, of which the
chief are Oceanus, Acheron, Pyriphlegethon,
and Cocytus. He proceeds to speak of the
judgment and rewards and punishments of the
souls after death : a man who has devoted him-
self to his soul and not to his body need not

Ixxxvi INTRODUCTION.

be afraid of death, which is a complete release
from the body, for for him there is a place
prepared of wonderful beauty. Socrates has
not time to speak of it now. It is getting late,
and he must bathe and prepare for death.

Crito asks for Socrates' last commands. The
argument has made no impression on him ; he
does not understand that Socrates is going
away, and wishes to know how to bury him.
Socrates leaves that to his friends, ' only you
must catch me first.' Then he goes away with
Crito to bathe, and takes leave of his family :
there is but little conversation after that. The
poison is brought, and Socrates drinks it calmly,
without changing colour, rebuking his friends
for their noisy grief. A few moments before
he dies he remembers that he owes a cock to
Asclepius. Crito must pay it for him. Then
there was a convulsive movement, and he was
dead.

The Phado is not a dialogue of which much
need be said. The perfect beauty of Plato's
description of his great master's death at the
hands of the law, which is singular for the
complete absence of anything violent or repul-
sive from it, is best left to speak for itself; and
the greater part of the dialogue is occupied with
Platonic metaphysics, with which we are not
concerned. For the Phado may be divided
into two parts, the historical, and the philo-
sophical. Plato was not present at Socrates'
death j1 but there is no reason for doubting
1 Phccdo, 59 B.

INTRODUCTION. Ixxxvii

that his account of it is substantially correct.
He must have often heard the story of that
last day from eye-witnesses. The philosophy
of the Phcedo is another matter. There is no
doubt that that is not Socratic, but Platonic.1
It is likely enough that the last day of Socrates'
life, even to the setting of the sun, when he
was to die, was spent with his friends in the
accustomed examination of himself and them,
and in the search after hard intellectual truth to
which his whole life had been devoted ; and it
may well be that his demeanourwas, in fact, more
serious and earnest than usual on that day, as
if, in spite of all his confident belief in a future
life, death had cast the solemnity of its shadow
upon him. But it is quite certain that the
metaphysical arguments of the Phado were not
those used by Socrates, in his prison, or at any
other time. That can be very shortly proved.
In the Ph<zdo, Socrates is represented as a
keen and practised metaphysician, who has
definite theories about the origin of knowledge,
and the causes of Being. He ' is fond of stat-
ing ' 2 the doctrine that knowledge is an imper-
fect recollection of what we have known in a
previous state of existence : and he is quite
familiar with the doctrine of ideas. But the
real Socrates, the Socrates of the Apology
and the admittedly Socratic dialogues, and
of Xenophon, confined himself strictly to
questions affecting men and society.3 All

1 See Zeller's Plato, ch. iii. p. 133, and ch. ix.

2 Phcedo, 72 E. 3 E.g. Apol. 30 B. . 33 B.

Ixxxviii INTRODUCTION.

that he knew was that he was ignorant. His
greatness as a thinker does not consist in the
fact that he was the author or the teacher of
any system of positive philosophy, metaphysical
or other ; but in the fact that he was the first
man who conceived the very idea of scientific
knowledge, and of the method of arriving at it.
And it must be remembered that the Apology,
which contains Plato's account of Socrates, as
he actually conceived him to be, represents a
speech delivered only thirty days before the con-
versation reported in the Phcedo. Once more ;
in the Phcedo the immortality of the soul is ulti-
mately proved by the doctrine of Ideas. Now
Aristotle, whose evidence is the best that we
can have on such a point, expressly tells us l
that the doctrine of Ideas was never known
to Socrates at all ; but that it was a distinct
advance on his theory of definitions made by
Plato. Plato, in fact, has done in the Phado
what he so often did ; he has employed Socrates
as the chief character in a dialogue, and then
put into Socrates' mouth opinions and arguments
which the Socrates of history never dreamt of.
By far the greater part of the conversation there-
fore recorded in the Ph&do never took place.
There is no record whatsoever of the actual
conversation of that last day.

Such a man was Socrates, in his life and in

his death. He was just and feared not. He

might easily have saved himself from death, if

only he would have consented to cease from

1 Metaph. xii. 4. 5.

INTRODUCTION. Ixxxix

forcing his countrymen to give an account of
their lives. But he believed that God had sent
him to be a preacher of righteousness to the
Athenians ; and he refused to be silent on any
terms. ' I cannot hold my peace,' he says,
' for that would be to disobey God.' Tennyson's
famous lines have been often and well applied
to him : —

' Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Yet not for power (power of herself
Would come uncall'd for) but to live by law,
Acting the law we live by without fear ;
And, because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. ' l

They illustrate his faith, 'his burning faith
in God and Right.' Knowing nothing certainly
of what comes after death, and having no sure
hope of a reward in the next world, he resolutely
chose to die sooner than desert the post at
which God had placed him, or do what he
believed to be wrong.

] CEnone.

EUTHYPHRON

e

CHARACTERS OF THE DIALOGUE.

SOCRATES.
EUTHYPHRON.

SCENE. — The porch of the King Archon.

EUTHYPHRON.

Euth. What in the world are you doing here CHAP. 1.
at the archon's porch, Socrates? Why have you Steph.p. 2.
left your haunts in the Lyceum ? You surely
cannot have an action before him, as I have.

Socr. Nay, the Athenians, Euthyphron, call
it a prosecution, not an action.

Euth, What ? Do you mean that some one
is prosecuting you ? I cannot believe that you
are prosecuting any one yourself

Socr. Certainly I am not.

Euth. Then is some one prosecuting you ?

Socr. Yes.

Euth. Who is he ?

Socr. I scarcely know him myself, Euthy-
phron ; I think he must be some unknown
young man. His name, however, is Meletus,
and his deme Pitthis, if you can call to mind
any Meletus of that deme, — a hook-nosed man
with long hair, and rather a scanty beard.

Euth. I don't know him, Socrates. But,
tell me, what is he prosecuting you for ?

Socr. What for ? Not on trivial grounds, I
think. It is no small thing for so young a man
to have formed an opinion on such an important

4 EUTHYPHRON.

matter. For he, he says, knows how the young
are corrupted, and who are their corruptors.
He must be a wise man, who, observing my
ignorance, is going to accuse me to the city,
as his mother, of corrupting his friends. I
think that he is the only man who begins at
the right point in his political reforms : I mean
whose first care is to make the young men as
perfect as possible, just as a good farmer will
take care of his young plants first, and, after
he has done that, of the others. And so
3. Meletus, I suppose, is first clearing us off,
who, as he says, corrupt the young men as
they grow up ; and then, when he has done
that, of course he will turn his attention to the
older men, and so become a very great public
benefactor. Indeed, that is only what you
would expect, when he goes to work in this
way.

II. Euth. I hope it may be so, Socrates, but I
have very grave doubts about it. It seems
to me that in trying to injure you, he is really
setting to work by striking a blow at the heart
of the state. But how, tell me, does he say
that you corrupt the youth ?

Socr. In a way which sounds strange at first,
my friend. He says that I am a maker of
gods ; and so he is prosecuting me, he says,
for inventing new gods, and for not believing
in the old ones.

Euth. I understand, Socrates. It is because
you say that you always have a divine sign. So
he is prosecuting you for introducing novelties

EUTHYPHRON, 5

into religion ; and he is going into court know-
ing that such matters are easily misrepresented
to the multitude, and consequently meaning to
slander you there. Why, they laugh even me
to scorn, as if I were out of my mind, when I
talk about divine things in the assembly, and
tell them what is going to happen : and yet I
have never foretold anything which has not
come true. But they are jealous of all people
like us. We must not think about them : we
must meet them boldly.

Socr. My dear Euthyphron, their ridicule is
not a very serious matter. The Athenians, it
seems to me, may think a man to be clever
without paying him much attention, so long as
they do not think that he teaches his wisdom to
others. But as soon as they think that he
makes other people clever, they get angry
whether it be from jealousy, as you say, or for
some other reason.

Euth. I am not very anxious to try their
disposition towards me in this matter.

Socr. No, perhaps they think that you
seldom show yourself, and that you are not
anxious to teach your wisdom to others ; but
I fear that they may think that I am ; for my
love of men makes me talk to every one whom I
meet quite freely and unreservedly, and without
payment : indeed, if I could, I would gladly
pay people myself to listen to me. If then, as
I said just now, they were only going to laugh
at me, as you say they do at you, it would not
be at all an unpleasant way of spending the

6 EUTHYPHRON.

day, to spend it in court, jesting and laughing.
But if they are going to be in earnest, then
only prophets like you can tell where the matter
will end.

Euth. Well, Socrates, I dare say that nothing
will come of it. Very likely you will be success-
ful in your trial, and I think that I shall be in
mine.

IV. Socr. And what is this suit of yours, Euthy-
phron ? Are you suing, or being sued ?

Euth. I am suing.

Socr. Whom ?

4- Euth. A man whom I am thought a maniac
to be suing.

Socr. What ? Has he wings to fly away
with ?

Eitth. He is far enough from flying ; he is a
very old man.

Socr. Who is he ?

Euth. He is my father.

Socr. Your father, my good sir ?

Euth. He is indeed.

Socr. What are you prosecuting him for ?
What is the charge ?

Euth. It is a charge of murder, Socrates.

Socr. Good heavens, Euthyphron ! Surely
the multitude are ignorant of what makes right.
I take it that it is not every one who could
rightly do what you are doing ; only a man
who was already well advanced in wisdom.

Euth. That is quite true, Socrates.

Socr. Was the man whom your father killed
a relative of yours ? Nay, of course he was :

EUTHYPHRON. 7

you would never have prosecuted your father
for the murder of a stranger ?

Euth. You amuse me, Socrates. What
difference does it make whether the murdered
man was a relative or a stranger ? The only
question that you have to ask is, did the slayer
slay justly or not ? If justly, you must let him
alone ; if unjustly, you must indict him for
murder, even though he share your hearth and
sit at your table. The pollution is the same,
if you associate with such a man, knowing what
he has done, without purifying yourself, and him
too, by bringing him to justice. In the present
case the murdered man was a poor depend-
ant of mine, who worked for us on our farm
in Naxos. In a fit of drunkenness he got in a
rage with one of our slaves, and killed him.
My father therefore bound the man hand and
foot and threw him into a ditch, while he sent
to Athens to ask the seer what he should do.
While the messenger was gone, he entirely
neglected the man, thinking that he was a
murderer, and that it would be no great matter,
even if he were to die. And that was exactly
what happened ; hunger and cold and his
bonds killed him before the messenger returned.
And now my father and the rest of my family
are indignant with me because I am prosecut-
ing my father for the murder of this murderer.
They assert that he did not kill the man at all ;
and they say that, even if he had killed him
over and over again, the man himself was a
murderer, and that I ought not to concern

8 EUTHYPHRON.

myself about such a person, because it is un-
holy for a son to prosecute his father for
murder. So little, Socrates, do they know the
divine law of holiness and unholiness.

Socr. And do you mean to say, Euthyphron,
that you think that you understand divine
things, and holiness and unholiness, so accur-
ately that, in such a case as you have stated,
you can bring your father to justice without fear
that you yourself may be doing an unholy deed ?

Eiith. If I did not understand all these

matters accurately, Socrates, I should be of no

5. use, and Euthyphron would not be any better

than other men.

V. Socr. Then, my excellent Euthyphron, I can-
not do better than become your pupil, and chal-
lenge Meletus on this very point before the
trial begins. I should say that I had always
thought it very important to have knowledge
about divine things ; and that now, when he
says that I offend by speaking lightly about
them, and by introducing novelties in them, I
have become your pupil ; and I should say,
Meletus, if you acknowledge Euthyphron to be
wise in these matters, and to hold the true
belief, then think the same of me, and do not
put me on my trial ; but if you do not, then
bring a suit, not against me, but against my
master for corrupting his elders ; namely, me
whom he corrupts by his doctrine, and his own
father whom he corrupts by admonishing and
chastising him. And if I did not succeed in
persuading him to release me from the suit, or

EUTHYPHRON. 9

to indict you in my place, then I could repeat
my challenge in court.

Euth. Yes, by Zeus, Socrates, I think I
should find out his weak points, if he were to
try to indict me. I should have a good deal
to say about him in court long before I spoke
about myself.

Socr. Yes, my dear friend, and knowing this,
I am anxious to become your pupil. I see that
Meletus here, and others too, seem not to
notice you at all ; but he sees through me with-
out difficulty and at once, and prosecutes me for
impiety forthwith. Now, therefore, please ex-
plain to me what you were so confident just
now that you knew. Tell me what are piety
and impiety with reference to murder and
everything else. I suppose that holiness is the
same in all actions ; and that unholiness is
always the opposite of holiness, and like itself,
and that, as unholiness,1 it always has the same
essential nature, which will be found in what-
ever is unholy.

Euth. Certainly, Socrates, I suppose so.

Socr. Tell me, then ; what is holiness, and VI.
what is unholiness ?

Euth. Well, then, I say that holiness means
prosecuting the wrong doer who has committed
murder or sacrilege, or any other such crime,
as I am doing now, whether he be your father
or your mother or whoever he be ; and I say
that unholiness means not prosecuting him.
And observe, Socrates, I will give you a clear
1 Reading

io EUTHYPHRON,

proof, which I have already given to others,
that it is so, and that doing right means not
suffering the sacrilegious man, whosoever he
may be. Men hold Zeus to be the best and
the justest of the gods ; and they admit that
6. Zeus bound his own father, Cronos, for devour-
ing his children wickedly ; and that Cronos in
his turn castrated his father for similar reasons.
And yet these same men are angry with me
because I proceed against my father for doing
wrong. So, you see, they say one thing in the
case of the gods and quite another in mine.

Socr. Is not that why I am being prose-
cuted, Euthyphron ? I mean, because I am dis-
pleased when I hear people say such things
about the gods ? I expect that I shall be called
a sinner, because I doubt those stories.1 Now
if you, who understand all these matters so
well, agree in holding all those tales true, then
I suppose that I must needs give way. What
could I say when I admit myself that I know
nothing about them ? But tell me, in the
name of friendship, do you really believe that
these things have actually happened.

Euth. Yes, and stranger ones too, Socrates,
which the multitude do not know of.

Socr. Then you really believe that there
is war among the gods, and bitter hatreds,
and battles, such as the poets tell of, and
which the great painters have depicted in our
temples, especially in the pictures which cover
the robe that is carried up to the Acropolis at
1 Cf. Rep, ii. 377, seq.

EUTHYPHRON. n

the great Panathenaic festival. Are we to say
that these things are true, Euthyphron ?

Euth. Yes, Socrates, and more besides.
As I was saying, I will relate to you many
other stories about divine matters, if you like,
which I am sure will astonish you when you
hear them.

Socr. I dare say. You shall relate them VH
to me at your leisure another time. At present
please try to give a more definite answer to
the question which I asked you just now.
What I asked you, my friend, was, What is
holiness ? and you have not explained it to
me, to my satisfaction. You only tell me
that what you are doing now, namely prose-
cuting your father for murder, is a holy act.

Euth. Well, that is true, Socrates.

Socr. Very likely. But many other actions
are holy, are they not, Euthyphron ?

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. Remember, then, I did not ask you
to tell me one or two of all the many holy
actions that there are ; I want to know what
is the essential form1 of holiness which makes
all holy actions holy. You said, I think, that
there is one form which makes all holy actions
holy, and another form which makes all unholy
actions unholy. Do you not remember ?

Euth. I do.

Socr. Well, then, explain to me what is this
form, that I may have it to turn to, and to use as
a standard whereby to judge your actions, and

12 EUTHYPHRON,

those of other men, and be able to say that
whatever action resembles it is holy, and what-
ever does not, is not holy.

Euth. Yes, I will tell you that, if you wish
it, Socrates.

Socr. Certainly I wish it.

Euth. Well then, what is pleasing to the
7. gods is holy ; and what is not pleasing to
them is unholy.

Socr. Beautiful, Euthyphron. Now you
have given me the answer that I wanted.
Whether what you say is true, I do not know
yet. But of course you will go on to prove
the truth of it.

Euth. Certainly.

VIII. Socr. Come then, let us examine our words.
The things and the men that are pleasing to
the gods are holy ; and the things and the
men that are displeasing to the gods are un-
holy. But holiness and unholiness are not
the same : they are as opposite as possible ;
was not that said?

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. And I think that that was very well
said.

Euth. Yes, Socrates, that was certainly said.

Socr. Have we not also said, Euthyphron,
that there are factions, and disagreements, and
hatreds among the gods ?

Euth. We have.

Socr. But what kind of disagreement, my
friend, causes hatred and wrath ? Let us look
at the matter thus. If you and I were to dis-

EUTHYPHRON. 13

agree as to whether one number were more
than another, would that provoke us to anger,
and make us enemies ? Should we not settle
such dispute at once by counting ?

Euth. Of course.

Socr. And if we were to disagree as to the
relative size of two things, we should measure
them, and put an end to the disagreement at
once, should we not ?

Euth. Yes.

Socr. And should we not settle a question
about the relative weight of two things, by
weighing them ?

Euth. Of course.

Socr. Then what is the question which
would provoke us to anger, and make us
enemies, if we disagreed about it, and could
not come to a settlement ? Perhaps you have
not an answer ready : but listen to me. Is it
not the question of right and wrong, of the
honourable and the base, of the good and the
bad ? Is it not questions about these matters
which make you and me, and every one else
quarrel, when we do quarrel, if we differ about
them, and can reach no satisfactory settlement ?

Euth. Yes, Socrates ; it is disagreements
about these matters.

Socr. Well, Euthyphron, the gods will quarrel
over these things, if they quarrel at all, will
they not ?

Euth. Necessarily.

Socr. Then, my excellent Euthyphron, you
say that some of the gods think one thing right,

H EUTHYPHRON.

and others another : and that what some of them
hold to be honourable or good, others hold
to be base or evil. For there would not have
been factions among them if they had not dis-
agreed on these points, would there ?

Euth. You are right.

Socr, And each of them loves what he thinks
honourable, and good, and right, and hates the
opposite, does he not ?

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. But you say that the same action is

held by some of them to be right, and by others

to be wrong ; and that then they dispute about

8. it, and so quarrel and fight among themselves.

Is it not so ?

Euth. Yes.

Socr. Then the same thing is hated by the
gods and loved by them ; and the same thing
will be displeasing and pleasing to them.

Euth. Apparently.

Socr. Then, according to your account, the
same thing will be holy and unholy.

Euth. So it seems. ,

IX. Socr. Then, my good friend, you have not
answered my question. I did not ask you to
tell me what action is both holy and unholy ;
but it seems that whatever is pleasing to the
gods is also displeasing to them. And so,
Euthyphron, I should not wonder if what you
are doing now in chastising your father is a
deed well-pleasing to Zeus, but hateful to Cronos
and Ouranos, and acceptable to Hephaestus,
but hateful to Here ; and if any of the other

EUTHYPHRON. 15

gods disagree about it, pleasing to some of
them and displeasing to others.

Euth. But on this point, Socrates, I think
that there is no difference of opinion among
the gods : they all hold that if one man kills
another wrongfully, he must be punished.

Socr. What, Euthyphron ? Among mankind,
have you never heard disputes whether a man
ought to be punished for killing another man
wrongfully, or for doing some other wrong
deed?

Euth. Indeed, they never cease from these
disputes, especially in courts of justice. They
do all manner of wrong things ; and then there
is nothing which they will not do and say to
avoid punishment.

Socr. Do they admit that they have done
wrong, and at the same time deny that they
ought to be punished, Euthyphron ?

Euth. No, indeed ; that they do not.

Socr. Then it is not everything that they
will do and say. I take it, they do not venture
to assert or argue that if they do do wrong they
must not be punished. What they say is that
they have not done wrong, is it not ?

Euth. That is true.

Socr. Then they do not dispute the proposi-
tion, that the wrong doer must be punished.
They dispute about the question, who is a wrong
doer, and when, and what is a wrong deed, do
they not ?

Euth. That is true.

Socr. Well, is not exactly the same thing

16 EUTHYPHRON.

true of the gods, if they quarrel about right
and wrong, as you say they do ? Do not some
of them assert that the others are doing wrong,
while the others deny it ? No one, I suppose,
my dear friend, whether god or man, ventures
to say that a person who has done wrong must
not be punished.

Euth. No, Socrates, that is true, in the main.

Socr. I take it, Euthyphron, that the disput-
ants, whether men or gods, if the gods do dispute,
dispute about each separate act. When they
quarrel about any act, some of them say that
it was done rightly, and others that it was done
wrongly. Is it not so ?

Euth. Yes.

X. Socr. Come then, my dear Euthyphron,
9. please enlighten me on this point. What proof
have you that all the gods think that a labourer
who has been imprisoned for murder by the
master of the man whom he has murdered, and
who dies from his imprisonment before the
master has had time to learn from the seers
what he should do, dies by injustice ? How do
you know that it is right for a son to indict his
father, and to prosecute him for the murder
of such a man ? Come, see if you can make
it clear to me that the gods necessarily agree
in thinking that this action of yours is right ;
and if you satisfy me, I will never cease singing
your praises for wisdom.

Euth. I could make that clear enough to
you, Socrates ; but I am afraid that it would
be a long business.

EUTHYPHRON. 17

Socr. I see you think that I am duller than
the judges. To them of course you will make
it clear that your father has done wrong, and
that all the gods agree in hating such deeds.

Euth, I will indeed, Socrates, if they will
only listen to me.

Socr. They will listen, if only they think that XI.
you speak well. But while you were speaking,
it occurred to me to ask myself this question :
suppose that Euthyphron were to prove to me
as clearly as possible that all the gods think
such a death unjust ; how has he brought me
any nearer to understanding what holiness and
unholiness are ? This particular act, perhaps,
may be displeasing to the gods, but then we have
just seen that holiness and unholiness cannot
be defined in that way : for we have seen that
what is displeasing to the gods is also pleasing
to them. So I will let you off on this point,
Euthyphron ; and all the gods shall agree in
thinking your father's deed wrong, and in hating
it, if you like. But shall we correct our defini-
tion and say that whatever all the gods hate
is unholy, and whatever they all love is holy :
while whatever some of them love, and others
hate, is either both or neither? Do you wish
us now to define holiness and unholiness in this
manner ?

Euth. Why not, Socrates ?

Socr. There is no reason why I should not,
Euthyphron. It is for you to consider whether
that definition will help you to instruct me as
you promised.

C

1 8 EUTHYPHRON.

Eulh. Well, I should say that holiness is
what all the gods love, and that unholiness is
what they all hate.

Socr. Are we to examine this definition, Euthy-
phron, and see if it is a good one ? or are we
to be content to accept the bare assertions of
other men, or of ourselves, without asking any
questions ? Or must we examine the asser-
tions ?

Euth. We must examine them. But for my
part I think that the definition is right this
time.

XIL Socr. We shall know that better in a little
10- while, my good friend. Now consider this
question. Do the gods love holiness because
it is holy, or is it holy because they love it ?

Euth. I do not understand you, Socrates.

Socr. I will try to explain myself: we speak
of a thing being carried and carrying, and being
led and leading, and being seen and seeing ;
and you understand that all such expressions
mean different things, and what the difference is.

Euth. Yes, I think I understand.

Socr. And we talk of a thing being loved,
and, which is different, of a thing loving ?

Euth. Of course.

Socr. Now tell me : is a thing which is being
carried in a state of being carried, because it is
carried, or for some other reason ?

Euth. No, because it is carried.

Socr. And a thing is in a state of being led,
because it is led, and of being seen, because it
is seen ?

EUTHYPHRON. 19

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. Then a thing is not seen because it is
in a state of being seen ; it is in a state of
being seen because it is seen : and a thing is
not led because it is in a state of being led ; it
is in a state of being led because it is led : and
a thing is not carried because it is in a state of
being carried ; it is in a state of being carried
because it is carried. Is my meaning clear
now, Euthyphron ? I mean this : if anything
becomes, or is affected, it does not become
because it is in a state of becoming ; it is in a
state of becoming because it becomes ; and it
is not affected because it is in a state of being
affected : it is in a state of being affected
because it is affected. Do you not agree ?

Eirth. I do.

Socr. Is not that which is being loved in a
state, either of becoming, or of being affected
in some way by something ?

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. Then the same is true here as in the
former cases. A thing is not loved by those
who love it because it is in a state of being
loved. It is in a state of being loved because
they love it.

Euth. Necessarily.

Socr. Well, then, Euthyphron, what do we
say about holiness ? Is it not loved by all the
gods, according to your definition ?

Euth. Yes.

Socr. Because it is holy, or for some other
reason ?

20 EUTHYPHRON.

Euth. No, because it is holy.

Socr, Then it is loved by the gods because
it is holy : it is not holy because it is loved by
them ?

Euth. It seems so.

Socr. But then what is pleasing to the gods
is pleasing to them, and is in a state of being
loved by them, because they love it ?

Euth. Of course.

Socr. Then holiness is not what is pleasing
to the gods, and what is pleasing to the gods
is not holy, as you say, Euthyphron. They
are different things.

Euth. And why, Socrates ?

Socr. Because we are agreed that the gods
love holiness because it is holy : and that it is
not holy because they love it. Is not this so ?

Euth. Yes.

XIII. Socr. And that what is pleasing to the gods
because they love it, is pleasing to them by
reason of this same love : and that they do
not love it because it is pleasing to them.

Euth. True.

Socr. Then, my dear Euthyphron, holiness,
and what is pleasing to the gods, are different
things. If the gods had loved holiness because
11. it is holy, they would also have loved what is
pleasing to them because it is pleasing to them ;
but if what is pleasing to them had been pleasing
to them because they loved it, then holiness too
would have been holiness, because they loved it.
But now you see that they are opposite things,
and wholly different from each other. For the

EUTHYPHRON. 21

one1 is of a sort to be loved because it is loved :
while the other2 is loved, because it is of a sort
to be loved. My question, Euthyphron, was,
What is holiness ? But it turns out that you
have not explained to me the essence of holi-
ness ; you have been content to mention an
attribute which belongs to it, namely, that all
the gods love it. You have not yet told me
what is its essence. Do not, if you please,
keep from me what holiness is ; begin again and
tell me that. Never mind whether the gods love
it, or whether it has other attributes : we shall
not differ on that point. Do your best to
make clear to me what is holiness and what is
unholiness.

Euth. But, Socrates, I really don't know how
to explain to you what is in my mind. What-
ever we put forward always somehow moves
round in a circle, and will not stay where we
place it.

Socr. I think that your definitions, Euthy-
phron, are worthy of my ancestor Daedalus. If
they had been mine and I had laid them down,
I dare say you would have made fun of me,
and said that it was the consequence of my
descent from Daedalus that the definitions which
I construct run away, as his statues used to,
and will not stay where they are placed. But,
as it is, the definitions are yours, and the jest
would have no point. You yourself see that
they will not stay still.

Eulh. Nay, Socrates, I think that the jest is
1 What is pleasing to the gods. 2 What is holy.

22 EUTHYPHRON.

very much in point. It is not my fault that
the definition moves round in a circle and will
not stay still. But you are the Daedalus, I
think : as far as I am concerned, my definitions
would have stayed quiet enough.

Socr. Then, my friend, I must be a more
skilful artist than Daedalus : he only used to
make his own works move ; whereas I, you
see, can make other people's works move too.
And the beauty of it is that I am wise against
my will. I would rather that our definitions
had remained firm and immovable than have
all the wisdom of Daedalus and all the riches of
Tantalus to boot. But enough of this. I will
do my best to help you to explain to me what
holiness is : for I think that you are indolent.
Don't give in yet. Tell me ; do you not think
that all holiness must be just ?

Euth. I do.

Socr. Well, then, is all justice holy too ?
12- Or, while all holiness is just, is a part only of
justice holy, and the rest of it something else ?

Euth. I do not follow you, Socrates.

Socr. Yet you have the advantage over me
in your youth no less in your wisdom. But, as
I say, the wealth of your wisdom makes you
indolent. Exert yourself, my good friend : I
am not asking you a difficult question. I mean
the opposite of what the poet1 said, when he
wrote : —

' Thou wilt not name Zeus the creator, who made all
things : for where there is fear there also is reverence. '

1 Stasinus.

EUTHYPHRON. 23

Now I disagree with the poet. Shall I tell
you why ?

Euth. Yes.

Socr. I do not think it true to say that where
there is fear, there also is reverence. Many
people who fear sickness and poverty and other
such evils, seem to me to have fear, but no rever-
ence for what they fear. Do you not think so ?

Euth. I do.

Socr. But I think that where there is rever-
ence, there also is fear. Does any man feel
reverence and a sense of shame about anything,
without at the same time dreading and fearing
the character of baseness ?

Euth. No, certainly not.

Socr. Then, though there is fear wherever
there is reverence, it is not correct to say
that where there is fear there also is reverence.
Reverence does not always accompany fear ;
for fear, I take it, is wider than reverence. It
is a part of fear, just as the odd is a part of
number, so that where you have the odd, you
must also have number, though where you have
number, you do not necessarily have the odd.
Now I think you follow me?

Euth. I do.

Socr. Well, then, this is what I meant by
the question which I asked you : is there always
holiness where there is justice ? or, though there
is always justice where there is holiness, yet
there is not always holiness where there is
justice, because holiness is only a part of justice ?
Shall we say this, or do you differ ?

24 EUTHYPHRON.

Euth. No : I agree. I think that you are
right.

XIV. Socr. Now observe the next point. If holi-
ness is a part of justice, we must find out, I
suppose, what part of justice it is ? Now, if you
had asked me just now, for instance, what part
of number is the odd, and what number is an
odd number, I should have said that whatever
number is not even, is an odd number. Is it
not so ?

Euth. Yes.

Socr. Then see if you can explain to me
what part of justice is holiness, that I may tell
Meletus that now that I have learnt perfectly
from you what actions are pious and holy, and
what are not, he must give up prosecuting me
unjustly for impiety.

Euth. Well then, Socrates, I should say that
piety and holiness are that part of justice which
has to do with the attention which is due to the
gods : and that what has to do with the atten-
tion which is due to men, is the remaining part
of justice.

xv- Socr. And I think that your answer is a
13. good one, Euthyphron. But there is one little
point, of which I still want to hear more. I
do not yet understand what the attention or
care which you are speaking of is. I suppose
you do not mean that the care which we show
to the gods is like the care which we show to
other things. We say, for instance, do we not,
that not every one knows how to take care of
horses, but only the trainer of horses ?

EUTHYPHRON. 25

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. For I suppose that the art that relates
to horses means the care of horses.

Euth. Yes.

Socr. And not every one understands the
care of dogs, but only the huntsman.

Eiith. True.

Socr. For I suppose that the huntsman's art
means the care of dogs.

Euth. Yes.

Socr. And the herdsman's art means the
care of cattle.

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. And you say that holiness and piety
mean the care of the gods, Euthyphron ?

Euth. I do.

Socr. Well, then, has not all care the same
object ? Is it not for the good and benefit of
that on which it is bestowed ? for instance, you
see that horses are benefited and improved
when they are cared for by the art which is
concerned with them. Is it not so ?

Euth. Yes ; I think so.

Socr. And dogs are benefited and improved
by the huntsman's art, and cattle by the herds-
man's, are they not ? And the same is always
true. Or do you think the care is ever meant
to hurt that on which it is bestowed ?

Euth. No indeed ; certainly not.

Socr. But to benefit it ?

Euth. Of course.

Socr. Then is holiness, which is the care
which we bestow on the gods, intended to bene-

26 EUTHYPHKON.

fit the gods, or to improve them ? Should .you
allow that you make any of the gods better,
when you do an holy action ?

Euth. No indeed ; certainly not.

Socr. No : I am quite sure that that is not
your meaning, Euthyphron : it was for that
reason that I asked you what you meant by the
attention due to the gods. I thought that you
did not mean that.

Euth. You were right, Socrates. I do not
mean that.

Socr. Good. Then what sort of attention to
the gods will holiness be ?

Euth. The attention, Socrates, of slaves to
their masters.

Socr. I understand : then it is a kind of
service to the gods ?

Euth. Certainly.

XVI. Socr. Can you tell me what result the art
which serves a doctor serves to produce ? Is it
not health ?

Euth. Yes.

Socr. And what result does the art which
serves a shipwright serve to produce ?

Euth. A ship, of course, Socrates.

Socr. The result of the art which serves a
builder is a house, is it not ?

Euth. Yes.

Socr. Then tell me, my excellent friend :
What result will the art which serves the gods
serve to produce ? You must know, seeing
that you say that you know more about divine
things than any other man.

EUTHYPHRON. 27

Euth. Well, that is true, Socrates.

Socr. Then tell me, I beseech you, what is
that grand result which the gods use our services
to produce ?

Euth. The results are many and noble,
Socrates.

Socr. So are those, my dear sir, which a 14.
general produces. Yet it is easy to see that
the crowning result of them all is victory in
war, is it not ?

Euth. Of course.

Socr. And, I take it, the husbandman pro-
duces many fine results ; yet the crowning
result of them all is that he makes the earth
produce food.

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. Well, then, what is the crowning one
of the many and noble results which the gods
produce ?

Euth. I told you just now, Socrates, that it
is not so easy to learn the exact truth in all
these matters. However, broadly I say this :
if any man knows that his words and deeds in
prayer and sacrifice are acceptable to the gods,
that is what is holy : that preserves the com-
mon weal, as it does private households, from
evil ; but the opposite of what is acceptable to
the gods is impious, and this it is that brings
ruin and destruction on all things.

Socr. Certainly, Euthyphron, if you had XVII.
wished, you could have answered my main
question in far fewer words. But you are
evidently not anxious to instruct me : just now,

28 EUTHYPHRON.

when you were just on the point of telling me
what I want to know, you stopped short. If
you had gone on then, I should have learnt
from you clearly enough by this time what is
holiness. But now I am asking you questions,
and must follow wherever you lead me ; so tell
me, what is it that you mean by the holy and
holiness ? Do you not mean a science of
prayer and sacrifice ?

Euth. I do.

Socr. To sacrifice is to give to the gods, and
to pray is to ask of them, is it not ?

Euth. It is, Socrates.

Socr. Then you say that holiness is the
science of asking of the gods, and giving to
them ?

Euth. You understand my meaning exactly,
Socrates.

Socr. Yes, for I am eager to share your
wisdom, Euthyphron, and so I am all attention :
nothing that you say will fall to the ground.
But tell me, what is this service of the gods ?
You say it is to ask of them, and to give to
them ?

Euth. I do.

XVIII. Socr. Then, to ask rightly will be to ask of
them what we stand in need of from them,
will it not ?

Euth. Naturally.

Socr. And to give rightly will be to give back
to them what they stand in need of from us ?
It would not be very clever to make a present
to a man of something that he has no need of.

EUTHYPHRON. 29

Euth. True, Socrates.

Socr. Then, holiness, Euthyphron, will be
an art of traffic between gods and men ?

Euth. Yes, if you like to call it so.

Socr. Nay, I like nothing but what is true.
But tell me, how are the gods benefited by
the gifts which they receive from us ? What
they give us is plain enough. Every good
thing that we have is their gift. But how are 15.
they benefited by what we give them ? Have
we the advantage over them in this traffic so
much that we receive from them all the good
things we possess and give them nothing in
return ?

Euth. But do you suppose, Socrates, that the
gods are benefited by the gifts which they
receive from us ?

Socr. But what are these gifts, Euthyphron,
that we give the gods ?

Euth. What do you think but honour, and
homage, and, as I have said, what is accept-
able to them.

Socr. Then holiness, Euthyphron, is accept-
able to the gods, but it is not profitable, nor
dear to them ?

Euth. I think that nothing is dearer to them.

Socr. Then I see that holiness means that
which is dear to the gods.

Euth. Most certainly.

Socr. After that, shall you be surprised to XIX.
find that your definitions move about, instead
of staying where you place them ? Shall you
charge me with being the Daedalus that makes

30 EUTHYPHRON.

them move, when you yourself are far more
skilful than Daedalus was, and make them go
round in a circle ? Do you not see that our
definition has come round to where it was be-
fore? Surely you remember that we have
already seen that holiness, and what is pleasing
to the gods, are quite different things. Do you
not remember ?

Euth. I do.

Socr. And now do you not see that you say
that what the gods love is holy ? But does not
what the gods love come to the same thing as
what is pleasing to the gods ?

Euth. Certainly.

Socr. Then either our former conclusion was
wrong, or, if that was right, we are wrong now.

Euth. So it seems.

XX. Socr. Then we must begin again, and inquire
what is holiness. I do not mean to give in
until I have found out. Do not deem me
unworthy ; give your whole mind to the ques-
tion, and this time tell me the truth. For if
any one knows it, it is you ; and you are a
Proteus whom I must not let go until you have
told me. It cannot be that you would ever
have undertaken to prosecute your aged father
for the murder of a labouring man unless you
had known exactly what is holiness and unholi-
ness. You would have feared to risk the
anger of the gods, in case you should be doing
wrong, and you would have been afraid of what
men would say. But now I am sure that you
think that you know exactly what is holiness

EUTHYPHRON. 31

and what is not : so tell me, my excellent
Euthyphron, and do not conceal from me what
you hold it to be.

Euth. Another time, then, Socrates. I am
in a hurry now, and it is time for me to be off.

Socr. What are you doing, my friend ! Will
you go away and destroy all my hopes of learn-
ing from you what is holy and what is not,
and so of escaping Meletus ? I meant to ex-
plain to him that now Euthyphron has made
me wise about divine things, and that I no 16.
longer in my ignorance speak rashly about them
or introduce novelties in them ; and then I was
going to promise him to live a better life for
the future.

THE APOLOGY

CHARACTERS.

SOCRATES.
MELETUS.

SCENE. — The Court of Justice.

THE APOLOGY.

Socr. I cannot tell what impression my ac- i.
cusers have made upon you, Athenians : for steph.
my own part, I know that they nearly made p. 17.
me forget who I was, so plausible were they ;
and yet they have scarcely uttered one single
word of truth. But of all their many falsehoods,
the one which astonished me most, was when
they said that I was a clever speaker, and that
you must be careful not to let me mislead you.
I thought that it was most impudent of them
not to be ashamed to talk in that way ; for as
soon as I open my mouth the lie will be ex-
posed, and I shall prove that I am not a clever
speaker in any way at all : unless, indeed, by
a clever speaker they mean a man who speaks
the truth. If that is their meaning, I agree
with them that I am a much greater orator
than they. My accusers, then I repeat, have
said little or nothing that is true ; but from me
you shall hear the whole truth. Certainly you will
not hear an elaborate speech, Athenians, drest
up, like theirs, with words and phrases. I will say
to you what I have to say, without preparation,
and in the words which come first, for I believe

36 THE APOLOGY.

that my cause is just ; so let none of you expect
anything else. Indeed, my friends, it would
hardly be seemly for me, at my age, to come
before you like a young man with his specious
falsehoods. But there is one thing, Athenians,
which I do most earnestly beg and entreat of
you. Do not be surprised and do not interrupt,
if in my defence I speak in the same way that
I am accustomed to speak in the market-place,
at the tables of the money-changers, where
many of you have heard me, and elsewhere.
The truth is this. I am more than seventy
years old, and this is the first time that I have
ever come before a Court of Law ; so your
manner of speech here is quite strange to me.
If I had been really a stranger, you would have
forgiven me for speaking in the language and

18. the fashion of my native country : and so now
I ask you to grant me what I think I have a
right to claim. Never mind the style of my
speech — it may be better or it may be worse —
give your whole attention to the question, Is
what I say just, or is it not ? That is what
makes a good judge, as speaking the truth
makes a good advocate.

II. I have to defend myself, Athenians, first
against the old false charges of my old accusers,
and then against the later ones of my present
accusers. For many men have been accus-
ing me to you, and for very many years, who
have not uttered a word of truth : and I fear
them more than I fear Anytus and his com-
panions, formidable as they are. But, my

THE APOLOGY. 37

friends, those others are still more formid-
able ; for they got hold of most of you when
you were children, and they have been more
persistent in accusing me with lies, and in try-
ing to persuade you that there is one Socrates,
a wise man, who speculates about the heavens,
and who examines into all things that are be-
neath the earth, and who can ' make the worse
appear the better reason.'1 These men,
Athenians, who spread abroad this report, are
the accusers whom I fear ; for their hearers
think that persons who pursue such inquiries
never believe in the gods. And then they are
many, and their attacks have been going on for
a long time : and they spoke to you when you
were at the age most readily to believe them :
for you were all young, and many of you were
children : and there was no one to answer them
when they attacked me. And the most un-
reasonable thing of all is that commonly I do
not even know their names : I cannot tell you
who they are, except in the case of the comic
poets.2 But all the rest who have been trying
to prejudice you against me, from motives of
spite and jealousy, and sometimes, it may be,
from conviction, are the enemies whom it is
hardest to meet. For I cannot call any one of
them forward in Court, to cross-examine him :
I have, as it were, simply to fight with shadows

1 Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 113.

2 E.g. Aristophanes ; see Introduction. Eupolis,
and probably Ameipsias, had made similar attacks on
Socrates.

38 THE APOLOGY.

in my defence, and to put questions which there
is no one to answer. I ask you, therefore, to
believe that, as I say, I have been attacked by
two classes of accusers — first by Meletus and
his friends, and then by those older ones of
whom I have spoken. And, with your leave,
I will defend myself first against my old
enemies ; for you heard their accusations first,
and they were much more persistent than my
present accusers are.

Well, I must make my defence, Athenians,

19- and try in the short time allowed me to
remove the prejudice which you have had
against me for a long time. I hope that I may
manage to do this, if it be good for you and for
me, and that my defence may be successful ;
but I am quite aware of the nature of my task,
and I know that it is a difficult one. Be the
issue, however, as God wills, I must obey the
law, and make my defence.

III. Let us begin again, then, and see what is the
charge which has given rise to the prejudice
against me, which was what Meletus relied on
when he drew his indictment. What is the
calumny which my enemies have been spreading
about me ? I must assume that they are formally
accusing me, and read their indictment. It would
run somewhat in this fashion : " Socrates is an
evil-doer, who meddles with inquiries into things
beneath the earth, and in heaven, and who
' makes the worse appear the better reason,"
and who teaches others these same things."
That is what they say ; and in the Comedy of

THE APOLOGY. 39

Aristophanes 1 you yourselves saw a man called
Socrates swinging round in a basket, and say-
ing that he walked the air, and talking a great
deal of nonsense about matters of which I
understand nothing, either more or less. I do
not mean to disparage that kind of knowledge,
if there is any man who possesses it. I trust
Meletus may never be able to prosecute me for
that. But, the truth is, Athenians, I have
nothing to do with these matters, and almost
all of you are yourselves my witnesses of this.
I beg all of you who have ever heard me con-
verse, and they are many, to inform your neigh-
bours and tell them if any of you have ever
heard me conversing about such matters, either
more or less. That will show you that the
other common stories about me are as false as
this one.

But, the fact is, that not one of these stories IV.
is true ; and if you have heard that I undertake
to educate men, and exact money from them
for so doing, that is not true either ; though I 2O.
think that it would be a fine thing to be able to
educate men, as Gorgias of Leontini, and Pro-
dicus of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis do. For
each of them, my friends, can go into any city,
and persuade the young men to leave the
society of their fellow-citizens, with any of whom
they might associate for nothing, and to be only
too glad to be allowed to pay money for the
privilege of associating with themselves. And
I believe that there is another wise man from
1 The Clouds.

40 THE APOLOGY.

Paros residing in Athens at this moment. I
happened to meet Callias, the son of Hip-
ponicus, a man who has spent more money on
the Sophists than every one else put together.
So I said to him — he has two sons — Callias, if
your two sons had been foals or calves, we
could have hired a trainer for them who would
have made them perfect in the excellence which
belongs to their nature. He would have been
either a groom or a farmer. But whom do you
intend to take to train them, seeing that they
are men ? Who understands the excellence
which belongs to men and to citizens ? I sup-
pose that you must have thought of this, be-
cause of your sons. Is there such a person,
said I, or not ? Certainly there is, he replied.
Who is he, said I, and where does he come
from, and what is his fee ? His name is
Evenus, Socrates, he replied : he comes from
Paros, and his fee is five minae. Then I thought
that Evenus was a fortunate person if he really
understood this art and could teach so cleverly.
If I had possessed knowledge of that kind, I
should have given myself airs and prided my-
self on it. But, Athenians, the truth is that I
do not possess it.

Perhaps some of you may reply : But, So-
crates, what is this pursuit of yours ? Whence
come these calumnies against you ? You must
have been engaged in some pursuit out of the
common. All these stories and reports of you
would never have gone about, if you had not
been in some way different from other men.

THE APOLOGY. 41

So tell us what your pursuits are, that we may
not give our verdict in the dark. I think that
that is a fair question, and I will try to explain
to you what it is that has raised these calumnies
against me, and given me this name. Listen,
then : some of you perhaps will think that I
am jesting ; but I assure you that I will tell
you the whole truth. I have gained this name,
Athenians, simply by reason of a certain wis-
dom. But by what kind of wisdom ? It is by
just that wisdom which is, I believe, possible to
men. In that, it may be, I am really wise.
But the men of whom I was speaking just now
must be wise in a wisdom which is greater than
human wisdom, or in some way which I cannot
describe, for certainly I know nothing of it
myself, and if any man says that I do, he lies
and wants to slander me. Do not interrupt me,
Athenians, even if you think that I am speaking
arrogantly. What I am going to say is not my
own : I will tell you who says it, and he is worthy
of your credit. I will bring the god of Delphi to
be the witness of the fact of my wisdom and of
its nature. You remember Chaerephon. From
youth upwards he was my comrade ; and he 21.
went into exile with the people,1 and with the
people he returned. And you remember, too,
Chasrephon's character ; how vehement he was
in carrying through whatever he took in hand.
Once he went to Delphi and ventured to put
this question to the oracle, — I entreat you
again, my friends, not to cry out, — he asked if
1 At the time of the oligarchy of the Thirty, 404 B. C

42 THE APOLOGY.

there was any man who was wiser than I : and
the priestess answered that there was no man.
Chaerephon himself is dead, but his brother
here will confirm what I say.

Now see why I tell you this. I am going
to explain to you the origin of my unpopularity.
When I heard of the oracle I began to reflect :
What can God mean by this dark saying ? I
know very well that I am not wise, even in the
smallest degree. Then what can he mean by
saying that I am the wisest of men ? It can-
not be that he is speaking falsely, for he is a
god and cannot lie. And for a long time I
was at a loss to understand his meaning : then,
very reluctantly, I turned to seek for it in this
manner. I went to a man who was reputed to
be wise, thinking that there, if anywhere, I
should prove the answer wrong, and meaning
to point out to the oracle its mistake, and to
say, 'You said that I was the wisest of men,
but this man is wiser than I am.' So I examined
the man — I need not tell you his name, he was
a politician — but this was the result, Athenians.
When I conversed with him I came to see that,
though a great many persons, and most of all
he himself, thought that he was wise, yet he was
not wise. And then I tried to prove to him
that he was not wise, though he fancied that
he was : and by so doing I made him, and
many of the bystanders, my enemies. So when
I went away, I thought to myself, " I am wiser
than this man : neither of us probably knows
anything that is really good, but he thinks that

THE APOLOGY. 43

he has knowledge, when he has not, while I,
having no knowledge, do not think that I have.
I seem, at any rate, to be a little wiser than he
is on this point : I do not think that I know
what I do not know." Next I went to another
man who was reputed to be still wiser than the
last, with exactly the same result. And there
again I made him, and many other men, my
enemies.

Then I went on to one man after another, VII
seeing that I was making enemies every day,
which caused me much unhappiness and
anxiety : still I thought that I must set God's
command above everything. So I had to go
to every man who seemed to possess any know-
ledge, and search for the meaning of the oracle :
and, Athenians, I must tell you the truth ; 22.
verily, by the dog of Egypt, this was the result
of the search which I made at God's bidding.
I found that the men, whose reputation for wis-
dom stood highest, were nearly the most lack-
ing in it ; while others, who were looked down
on as common people, were much better fitted
to learn. Now, I must describe to you the
wanderings which I undertook, like a series of
Heraclean labours, to make full proof of the
oracle. After the politicians, I went to the
poets, tragic, dithyrambic, and others, think-
ing that there I should find myself manifestly
more ignorant than they. So I took up the
poems on which I thought that they had spent
most pains, and asked them what they meant,
hoping at the same time to learn something from

44 THE APOLOGY.

them. I am ashamed to tell you the truth, my
friends, but I must say it. Almost any one of
the bystanders could have talked about the
works of these poets better than the poets
themselves. So I soon found that it is not by
wisdom that the poets create their works, but
by a certain natural power and by inspiration,
like soothsayers and prophets, who say many
fine things, but who understand nothing of what
they say. The poets seemed to me to be in a
similar case. And at the same time I per-
ceived that, because of their poetry, they
thought that they were the wisest of men in
other matters too, which they were not. So I
went away again, thinking that I had the
same advantage over the poets that I had over
the politicians.

VIII. Finally, I went to the artizans, for I knew
very well that I possessed no knowledge at all,
worth speaking of, and I was sure that I
should find that they knew many fine things.
And in that I was not mistaken. They knew
what I did not know, and so far they were
wiser than I. But, Athenians, it seemed to
me that the skilled artizans made the same mis-
take as the poets. Each of them believed him-
self to be extremely wise in matters of the
greatest importance, because he was skilful
in his own art : and this mistake of theirs
threw their real wisdom into the shade. So I
asked myself, on behalf of the oracle, whether
I would choose to remain as I was, without
either their wisdom or their ignorance, or to

THE APOLOGY. 45

possess both, as they did. And I made answer
to myself and to the oracle that it was better
for me to remain as I was.

By reason of this examination, Athenians, IX.
I have made many enemies of a very fierce and 23.
bitter kind, who have spread abroad a great
number of calumnies about me, and people say
that I am 'a wise man.'1 For the bystanders
always think that I am wise myself in any
matter wherein I convict another man of ignor-
ance. But, my friends, I believe that only
God is really wise : and that by this oracle
he meant that men's wisdom is worth little
or nothing. I do not think that he meant
that Socrates was wise. He only made use of
my name, and took me as an example, as
though he would say to men, ' He among you
is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that in
very truth his wisdom is worth nothing at all.'
And therefore I still go about testing and
examining every man whom I think wise,
whether he be a citizen or a stranger, as God
has commanded me ; and whenever I find that
he is not wise, I point out to him on the part
of God that he is not wise. And I am so busy
in this pursuit that I have never had leisure to
take any part worth mentioning in public
matters, or to look after my private affairs. I
am in very great poverty by reason of my
service to God.

1 The expression <r6$os &vi)p, ' wise men,' was the
general title at Athens for Natural Philosophers and
Sophists, indifferently. — Riddell, Introduction, p. xxxii.

46 THE APOLOGY.

X. And besides this, the young men who follow
me about, who are the sons of wealthy per-
sons and have a great deal of spare time,
take a natural pleasure in hearing men cross-
examined : and they often imitate me among
themselves : then they try their hands at cross-
examining other people. And, I imagine, they
find a great abundance of men who think that
they know a great deal, when in fact they know
little or nothing. And then the persons who
are cross-examined, get angry with me instead
of with themselves, and say that Socrates is an
abominable fellow who corrupts young men.
And when they are asked, ' Why, what does he
do ? what does he teach ? ' they do not know
what to say ; but, not to seem at a loss, they re-
peat the stock charges against all philosophers,
and allege that he investigates things in the
air and under the earth, and that he teaches
people to disbelieve in the gods, and ' to make
the worse appear the better reason.' For, I
fancy, they would not like to confess the truth,
which is that they are shown up as ignorant pre-
tenders to knowledge that they do not possess.
And so they have been filling your ears with
their bitter calumnies for a long time, for they
are zealous and numerous and bitter against
me ; and they are well disciplined and plausible
in speech. On these grounds Meletus and
Anytus and Lycon have attacked me. Meletus
is indignant with me on the part of the poets,
and Anytus on the part of the artizans and poli-
24. ticians, and Lycon on the part of the orators.

THE APOLOGY, 47

And so, as I said at the beginning, I shall be
surprised if I am able, in the short time allowed
me for my defence, to remove from your minds
this prejudice which has grown so strong.
What I have told you, Athenians, is the truth :
I neither conceal, nor do I suppress anything,
small or great. And yet I know that it is just
this plainness of speech which makes me
enemies. But that is only a proof that my
words are true, and that the prejudice against
me, and the causes of it, are what I have said.
And whether you look for them now or here-
after, you will find that they are so.

What I have said must suffice as my defence XL
against the charges of my first accusers. I
will try next to defend myself against that
'good patriot' Meletus, as he calls himself,
and my later accusers. Let us assume that
they are a new set of accusers, and read their
indictment, as we did in the case of the others.
It runs thus. He says that Socrates is an evil-
doer who corrupts the youth, and who does not
believe in the gods whom the city believes in,
but in other new divinities. Such is the charge.
Let us examine each point in it separately.
Meletus says that I do wrong by corrupting
the youth : but I say, Athenians, that he is
doing wrong ; for he is playing off a solemn jest
by bringing men lightly to trial, and pretending
to have a great zeal and interest in matters to
which he has never given a moment's thought.
And now I will try to prove to you that it is so.

Come here, Meletus. Is it not a fact that XII.

48 THE APOLOGY.

you think it very important that the younger
men should be as excellent as possible ?

Meletus. It is.

Socrates. Come then : tell the judges, who is
it who improves them ? You take so much in-
terest in the matter that of course you know
that. You are accusing me, and bringing me
to trial, because, as you say, you have dis-
covered that I am the corrupter of the youth.
Come now, reveal to the judges who improves
them. You see, Meletus, you have nothing to
say ; you are silent. But don't you think that
this is a scandalous thing ? Is not your silence
a conclusive proof of what I say, that you have
never given a moment's thought to the matter ?
Come, tell us, my good sir, who makes the
young men better citizens ?

Mel. The laws.

Socr. My excellent sir, that is not my ques-
tion. What man improves the young, who
starts with a knowledge of the laws ?

Mel. The judges here, Socrates.

Socr. What do you mean, Meletus ? Can
they educate the young and improve them ?

Mel. Certainly.

Socr. All of them ? or only some of them ?

Mel. All of them.

Socr. By Here that is good news ! There
is a great abundance of benefactors. And do
25. the listeners here improve them, or not ?

Mel. They do.

Socr. And do the senators ?

Mel. Yes.

THE APOLOGY. 49

Socr. Well then, Meletus ; do the members
of the Assembly corrupt the younger men ? or
do they again all improve them ?

Mel. They too improve them.

Socr. Then all the Athenians, apparently,
make the young into fine fellows except me, and
I alone corrupt them. Is that your meaning?

Mel. Most certainly ; that is my meaning.

Socr. You have discovered me to be a most
unfortunate man. Now tell me : do you think
that the same holds good in the case of horses ?
Does one man do them harm and every one
else improve them ? On the contrary, is it not
one man only, or a very few— namely, those
who are skilled in horses — who can improve
them ; while the majority of men harm them,
if they use them, and have to do with them ?
Is it not so, Meletus, both with horses and with
every other animal ? Of course it is, whether
you and Anytus say yes or no. And young
men would certainly be very fortunate persons
if only one man corrupted them, and every one
else did them good. The truth is, Meletus,
you prove conclusively that you have never
thought about the youth in your life. It is
quite clear, on your own showing, that you take
no interest at all in the matters about which
you are prosecuting me.

Now, be so good as to tell us, Meletus, is it XIII.
better to live among good citizens or bad ones ?
Answer, my friend : I am not asking you at all a
difficult question. Do not bad citizens do harm
to their neighbours and good citizens good ?
E

50 THE APOLOGY.

Mel. Yes.

Socr. Is there any man who would rather
be injured than benefited by his companions ?
Answer, my good sir : you are obliged by the
law to answer. Does any one like to be
injured ?

Mel. Certainly not.

Socr. Well then ; are you prosecuting me
for corrupting the young, and making them
worse men, intentionally or unintentionally ?

Mel. For doing it intentionally.

Socr. What, Meletus ? Do you mean to say
that you, who are so much younger than I, are
yet so much wiser than I, that you know that
bad citizens always do evil, and that good
citizens always do good, to those with whom
they come in contact, while I am so extra-
ordinarily stupid as not to know that if I make
any of my companions a rogue, he will probably
injure me in some way, and as to commit this
great crime, as you allege, intentionally ? You
will not make me believe that, nor any one
else either, I should think. Either I do not
26. corrupt the young at all ; or if I do, I do so
unintentionally : so that you are a liar in either
case. And if I corrupt them unintentionally,
the law does not call upon you to prosecute
me for a fault like that, which is an involuntary
one : you should take me aside and admonish
and instruct me : for of course I shall cease
from doing wrong involuntarily, as soon as I
know that I have been doing wrong. But
you declined to instruct me : you would have

THE APOLOGY. 51

nothing to do with me : instead of that, you
bring me up before the Court, where the
law sends persons, not for instruction, but for
punishment.

The truth is, Athenians, as I said, it is quite XIV.
clear that Meletus has never paid the slightest
attention to these matters. However, now tell
us, Meletus, how do you say that I corrupt the
younger men ? Clearly, according to your
indictment, by teaching them not to believe in
the gods of the city, but in other new divinities
instead. You mean that I corrupt young men
by that teaching, do you not ?

Mel, Yes : most certainly ; I mean that.

Socr. Then in the name of these gods of
whom we are speaking, explain yourself a little
more clearly to me and to the judges here. I
cannot understand what you mean. Do you
mean that I teach young men to believe in
some gods, but not in the gods of the city ?
Do you accuse me of teaching them to believe
in strange gods ? If that is your meaning, I
myself believe in some gods, and my crime is
not that of absolute atheism. Or do you mean
that I do not believe in the gods at all myself,
and that I teach other people not to believe in
them either ?

Mel. I mean that you do not believe in the
gods in any way whatever.

Socr. Wonderful Meletus ! Why do you
say that ? Do you mean that I believe neither
the sun nor the moon to be gods, like other
men ?

52 THE APOLOGY.

Mel. I swear he does not, judges : he says
that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth.

Socr. My dear Meletus, do you think that
you are prosecuting Anaxagoras ? You must
have a very poor opinion of the judges, and
think them very unlettered men, if you imagine
that they do not know that the works of Anax-
agoras of Clazomenae are full of these doctrines.
And so young men learn these things from me,
when they can often buy places in the theatre '
for a drachma at most, and laugh Socrates to
scorn, were he to pretend that these doctrines,
which are very peculiar doctrines too, were his.
But please tell me, do you really think that I
do not believe in the gods at all ?

Mel. Most certainly I do. You are a
complete atheist.

Socr. No one believes that, Meletus, and I
think that you know it to be a lie yourself. It
seems to me, Athenians, that Meletus is a very
insolent and wanton man, and that he is prose-
cuting me simply in the insolence and wanton-
ness of youth. He is like a man trying an
27. experiment on me, by asking me a riddle that
has no answer. ' Will this wise Socrates,' he
says to himself, ' see that I am jesting and con-
tradicting myself? or shall I outwit him and
every one else who hears me ?' Meletus seems

1 He alludes to the caricatures of Anaxagoras by
Aristophanes, and other comic poets, and to tragedians
like Euripides, who introduced the doctrines of Anaxagoras
into their dramas. The doctrine that the sun is a stone
is referred to in an extant play. — Eurip. Orest. 971.

THE APOLOGY. 53

to me to contradict himself in his indictment :
it is as if he were to say, ' Socrates is a wicked
man who does not believe in the gods, but who
believes in the gods.' But that is mere trifling.

Now, my friends, let us see why I think that XV,
this is his meaning. Do you answer me,
Meletus : and do you, Athenians, remember the
request which I made to you at starting, and do
not interrupt me if I talk in my usual way.

Is there any man, Meletus, who believes in
the existence of things pertaining to men and
not in the existence of men ? Make him answer
the question, my friends, without these absurd
interruptions. Is there any man who believes
in the existence of horsemanship and not in
the existence of horses? or in flute -playing
and not in flute-players ? There is not, my
excellent sir. If you will not answer, I will tell
both you and the judges that. But you must
answer my next question. Is there any man
who believes in the existence of divine things
and not in the existence of divinities ?

Mel. There is not.

Socr. I am very glad that the judges have
managed to extract an answer from you. Well
then, you say that I believe in divine beings,
whether they be old or new ones, and that I
teach others to believe in them ; at any rate,
according to your statement, I believe in divine
beings. That you have sworn in your deposi-
tion. But if I believe in divine beings, I sup-
pose it follows necessarily that I believe in
divinities. Is it not so ? It is. I assume that

54 THE APOLOGY.

you grant that, as you do not answer. But do
we not believe that divinities are either gods
themselves or the children of the gods ? Do
you admit that ?

Mel. I do.

Socr. Then you admit that I believe in
divinities : now, if these divinities are gods,
then, as I say, you are jesting and asking a
riddle, and asserting that I do not believe in
the gods, and at the same time that I do, since
I believe in divinities. But if these divinities
are the illegitimate children of the gods, either
by the nymphs or by other mothers, as they
are said to be, then, I ask, what man could
believe in the existence of the children of the
gods, and not in the existence of the gods ?
That would be as strange as believing in the
existence of the offspring of horses and asses,
and not in the existence of horses and asses.
You must have indicted me in this manner,
Meletus, either to test my skill, or because you
could not find any crime that you could accuse
me of with truth. But you will never contrive
to persuade any man, even of the smallest
understanding, that a belief in divine things
and things of the gods does not necessarily
28. involve a belief in divinities, and in the gods,

and in heroes.

XVI. But in truth, Athenians, I do not think that
I need say very much to prove that I have not
committed the crime for which Meletus is
prosecuting me. What I have said is enough
to prove that. But, I repeat, it is certainly true,

THE APOLOGY. 55

as I have already told you, that I have incurred
much unpopularity and made many enemies.
And that is what will cause my condemnation,
if I am condemned ; not Meletus, nor Anytus
either, but the prejudice and suspicion of the
multitude. They have been the destruction of
many good men before me, and I think that
they will be so again. There is no fear that I
shall be their last victim.

Perhaps some one will say : ' Are you not
ashamed, Socrates, of following pursuits which
are very likely now to cause your death?' I
should answer him with justice, and say : ' My
friend, if you think that a man of any worth
at all ought to reckon the chances of life and
death when he acts, or that he ought to think
of anything but whether he is acting rightly or
wrongly, and as a good or a bad man would
act, you are grievously mistaken. According
to you, the demigods who died at Troy would
be men of no great worth, and among them the
son of Thetis, who thought nothing of danger
when the alternative was disgrace. For when
his mother, a goddess, addressed him, as he
was burning to slay Hector, I suppose in this
fashion, ' My son, if thou avengest the death of
thy comrade Patroclus, and slayest Hector,
thou wilt die thyself, for " fate awaits thee
straightway after Hector's death ;'" he heard
what she said, but he scorned danger and
death ; he feared much more to live a coward,
and not to avenge his friend. ' Let me punish
the evil-doer and straightway die,' he said,

56 THE APOLOGY.

' that I may not remain here by the beaked
ships, a scorn of men, encumbering the earth.'1
Do you suppose that he thought of danger or
of death ? For this, Athenians, I believe to be
the truth. Wherever a man's post is, whether
he has chosen it of his own will, or whether
he has been placed at it by his commander,
there it is his duty to remain and face the
danger, without thinking of death, or of any
other thing, except dishonour.

XVII. When the generals whom you chose to com-
mand me, Athenians, placed me at my post at
Potidaea, and at Amphipolis, and at Delium, I
remained where they placed me, and ran the
risk of death, like other men : and it would be
very strange conduct on my part if I were to
desert my post now from fear of death or of
any other thing, when God has commanded
me, as I am persuaded that he has done, to
29. spend my life in searching for wisdom, and in
examining myself and others. That would in-
deed be a very strange thing : and then cer-
tainly I might with justice be brought to trial
for not believing in the gods : for I should be
disobeying the oracle, and fearing death, and
thinking myself wise, when I was not wise. For
to fear death, my friends, is only to think our-
selves wise, without being wise : for it is to
think that we know what we do not know. For
anything that men can tell, death may be the
greatest good that can happen to them : but
they fear it as if they knew quite well that it
1 Horn. //. xviii. 96, 98.

THE APOLOGY. 57

was the greatest of evils. And what is this
but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we
know what we do not know ? In this matter
too, my friends, perhaps I am different from
the mass of mankind : and if I were to claim
to be at all wiser than others, it would be
because I do not think that I have any clear
knowledge about the other world, when, in fact,
I have none. But I do know very well that it
is evil and base to do wrong, and to disobey
my superior, whether he be man or god. And
I will never do what I know to be evil, and
shrink in fear from what, for all that I can tell,
may be a good. And so, even if you acquit
me now, and do not listen to Anytus' argu-
ment that, if I am to be acquitted, I ought
never to have been brought to trial at all ; and
that, as it is, you are bound to put me to death,
because, as he said, if I escape, all your child-
ren will forthwith be utterly corrupted by
practising what Socrates teaches ; if you were
therefore to say to me, ' Socrates, this time we
will not listen to Anytus : we will let you go1,
but on this condition, that you cease from
carrying on this search of yours, and from
philosophy ; if you are found following those
pursuits again, you shall die:' I say, if you
offered to let me go on these terms, I should
reply : — ' Athenians, I hold you in the highest
regard and love ; but I will obey God rather
than you : and as long as I have breath and
strength I will not cease from philosophy, and
from exhorting you, and declaring the truth to

58 THE APOLOGY.

every one of you whom I meet, saying, as I am
wont, " My excellent friend, you are a citizen
of Athens, a city which is very great and very
famous for wisdom and power of mind ; are you
not ashamed of caring so much for the making
of money, and for reputation, and for honour ?
Will you not think or care about wisdom, and
truth, and the perfection of your soul?" And
if he disputes my words, and says that he does
care about these things, I shall not forthwith
release him and go away : I shall question him
and cross-examine him and test him : and if I
think that he has not virtue, though he says
that he has, I shall reproach him for setting
30. the lower value on the most important things,
and a higher value on those that are of less
account. This I shall do to every one whom I
meet, young or old, citizen or stranger : but
more especially to the citizens, for they are
more nearly akin to me. For, know well, God
has commanded me to do so. And I think
that no better piece of fortune has ever befallen
you in Athens than my service to God. For
I spend my whole life in going about and per-
suading you all to give your first and chiefest
care to the perfection of your souls, and not
till you have done that to think of your bodies,
or your wealth ; and telling you that virtue does
not come from wealth, but that wealth, and
every other good thing which men have,
whether in public, or in private, comes from
virtue. If then I corrupt the youth by this
teaching, the mischief is great : but if any man

THE APOLOGY. 59

says that I teach anything else, he speaks
falsely. And therefore, Athenians, I say, either
listen to Anytus, or do not listen to him : either
acquit me, or do not acquit me : but be sure
that I shall not alter my way of life ; no, not if
I have to die for it many times.

Do not interrupt me, Athenians. Remember XVIIL
the request which I made to you, and listen to
my words. I think that it will profit you to
hear them. I am going to say something more
to you, at which you may be inclined to cry
out : but do not do that. Be sure that if you
put me to death, who am what I have told
you that I am, you will do yourselves more
harm than me. Meletus and Anytus can do
me no harm : that is impossible : for I am
sure that God will not allow a good man to be
injured by a bad one. They may indeed kill
me, or drive me into exile, or deprive me of
my civil rights ; and perhaps Meletus and others
think those things great evils. But I do not
think so : I think that it is a much greater evil
to do what he is doing now, and to try to put
a man to death unjustly. And now, Athenians,
I am not arguing in my own defence at all, as
you might expect me to do : I am trying to
persuade you not to sin against God, by con-
demning me, and rejecting his gift to you. For
if you put me to death, you will not easily find
another man to fill my place. God has sent
me to attack the city, as if it were a great and
noble horse, to use a quaint simile, which was
rather sluggish from its size, and which needed

60 THE APOLOGY.

to be aroused by a gadfly : and I think that I
am the gadfly that God has sent to the city to
attack it ; for I never cease from settling upon
31. you, as it were, at every point, and rousing,
and exhorting, and reproaching each man of
you all day long. You will not easily find any
one else, my friends, to fill my place : and if
you take my advice, you will spare my life.
You are vexed, as drowsy persons are, when
they are awakened, and of course, if you listened
to Anytus, you could easily kill me with a single
blow, and then sleep on undisturbed for the
rest of your lives, unless God were to care for
you enough to send another man to arouse you.
And you may easily see that it is God who has
given me to your city : a mere human impulse
would never have led me to neglect all my own
interests, or to endure seeing my private affairs
neglected now for so many years, while it made
me busy myself unceasingly in your interests,
and go to each man of you by himself, like a
father, or an elder brother, trying to persuade
him to care for virtue. There would have been
a reason for it, if I had gained any advantage
by this conduct, or if I had been paid for my
exhortations ; but you see yourselves that my
accusers, though they accuse me of everything
else without blushing, have not had the effrontery
to say that I ever either exacted or demanded
payment. They could bring no evidence of
that. And I think that I have sufficient evi-
dence of the truth of what I say in my poverty.
XIX. Perhaps it may seem strange to you that,

THE APOLOGY. 61

though I am so busy in going about in private
with my counsel, yet I do not venture to come
forward in the assembly, and take part in the
public councils. You have often heard me
speak of my reason for this, and in many
places : it is that I have a certain divine sign
from God, which is the divinity that Meletus
has caricatured in his indictment. I have had
it from childhood : it is a kind of voice, which
whenever I hear it, always turns me back from
something which I was going to do, but never
urges me to act. It is this which forbids
me to take part in politics. And I think that
it does well to forbid me. For, Athenians, it
is quite certain that if I had attempted to take
part in politics, I should have perished at once
and long ago, without doing any good either to
you or to myself. And do not be vexed with
me for telling the truth. There is no man who
will preserve his life for long, either in Athens
or elsewhere, if he firmly opposes the wishes of
the people, and tries to prevent the commission
of much injustice and illegality in the State.
He who would really fight for justice, must do 32.
so as a private man, not in public, if he means
to preserve his life, even for a short time.

I will prove to you that this is so by very XX.
strong evidence, not by mere words, but by
what you value highly, actions. Listen then
to what has happened to me, that you may
know that there is no man who could make me
consent to do wrong from the fear of death ;
but that I would perish at once rather than give

62 THE APOLOGY.

way. What I am going to tell you may be a
commonplace in the Courts of Law ; neverthe-
less it is true. The only office that I ever held
in the State, Athenians, was that of Senator.
When you wished to try the ten generals, who
did not rescue their men after the battle of
Arginusae, in a body, which was illegal, as you
all came to think afterwards, the tribe Antiochis,
to which I belong, held the presidency. On
that occasion I alone of all the presidents op-
posed your illegal action, and gave my vote
against you. The speakers were ready to sus-
pend me and arrest me ; and you were clamour-
ing against me, and crying out to me to submit.
But I thought that I ought to face the danger
out in the cause of law and justice, rather than
join with you in your unjust proposal, from fear
of imprisonment or death. That was before
the destruction of the democracy. When the
oligarchy came, the Thirty sent for me, with
four others, to the Council -Chamber,1 and
ordered us to bring over Leon the Salaminian
from Salamis, that they might put him to death.
They were in the habit of frequently giving
similar orders to many others, wishing to im-
plicate as many men as possible in their crimes.
But then I again proved, not by mere words,
but by my actions, that, if I may use a vulgar
expression, I do not care a straw for death ; but
that I do care very much indeed about not do-
ing anything against the laws of God or man.

1 A building where the Prytanes had their meals and
sacrificed.

THE APOLOGY. 63

That government with all its power did not
terrify me into doing anything wrong ; but
when we left the Council-Chamber, the other
four went over to Salamis, and brought Leon
across to Athens ; and I went away home : and
if the rule of the Thirty had not been destroyed
soon afterwards, I should very likely have been
put to death for what I did then. Many of
you will be my witnesses in this matter.

Now do you think that I should have re- XXL
mained alive all these years, if I had taken part
in public affairs, and had always maintained
the cause of justice like an honest man, and
had held it a paramount duty, as it is, to do
so ? Certainly not, Athenians, nor any other
man either. But throughout my whole life, 33.
both in private, and in public, whenever I have
had to take part in public affairs, you will find
that I have never yielded a single point in a
question of right and wrong to any man ; no,
not to those whom my enemies falsely assert to
have been my pupils.1 But I was never any
man's teacher. I have never withheld myself
from any one, young or old, who was anxious
to hear me converse while I was about my
mission ; neither do I converse for payment,
and refuse to converse without payment : I
am ready to ask questions of rich and poor
alike, and if any man wishes to answer me,
and then listen to what I have to say, he may.
And I cannot justly be charged with causing

1 The reference is specially to Critias, the leading
man in the Oligarchy of Thirty, and to Alcibiades.

64 THE APOLOGY.

these men to turn out good or bad citizens :
for I never either taught, or professed to teach
any of them any knowledge whatever. And if
any man asserts that he ever learnt or heard
any thing from me in private, which every one
else did not hear as well as he, be sure that he
does not speak the truth.

XXII. Why is it, then, that people delight in spend-
ing so much time in my company ? You have
heard why, Athenians. I told you the whole
truth when I said that they delight in hearing
me examine persons who think that they are
wise when they are not wise. It is certainly
very amusing to listen to that. And, I say,
God has commanded me to examine men in
oracles, and in dreams, and in every way in
which the divine will was ever declared to man.
This is the truth, Athenians, and if it were not
the truth, it would be easily refuted. For if
it were really the case that I have already
corrupted some of the young men, and am now
corrupting others, surely some of them, finding
as they grew older that I had given them evil
counsel in their youth, would have come forward
to-day to accuse me and take their revenge.
Or if they were unwilling to do so themselves,
surely their kinsmen, their fathers, or brothers,
or other relatives, would, if I had done them
any harm, have remembered it, and taken their
revenge. Certainly I see many of them in
Court. Here is Crito, of my own deme and of
my own age, the father of Critobulus ; here is
Lysanias of Sphettus, the father of yEschinus :

THE APOLOGY. 65

here is also Antiphon of Cephisus, the father
of Epigenes. Then here are others, whose
brothers have spent their time in my company ;
Nicostratus, the son of Theozotides, and brother
of Theodotus — and Theodotus is dead, so he
at least cannot entreat his brother to be silent :
here is Paralus, the son of Demodocus, and
the brother of Theages : here is Adeimantus, 34.
the son of Ariston, whose brother is Plato
here : and ^antodorus, whose brother is
Aristodorus. And I can name many others to
you, some of whom Meletus ought to have
called as witnesses in the course of his own
speech : but if he forgot to call them then, let
him call them now — I will stand aside while
he does so — and tell us if he has any such
evidence. No, on the contrary, my friends,
you will find all these men ready to support
me, the corrupter, the injurer of their kindred,
as Meletus and Anytus call me. Those of
them who have been already corrupted might
perhaps have some reason for supporting me :
but what reason can their relatives, who are
grown up, and who are uncorrupted, have,
except the reason of truth and justice, that they
know very well that Meletus is a liar, and that
I am speaking the truth ?

Well, my friends, this, together it may be XXIII.
with other things of the same nature, is pretty
much what I have to say in my defence.
There may be some one among you who will
be vexed when he remembers how, even in a
less important trial than this, he prayed and
F

66 THE APOLOGY.

entreated the judges to acquit him with many
tears, and brought forward his children and
many of his friends and relatives in Court, in
order to appeal to your feelings ; and then
finds that I shall do none of these things,
though I am in what he would think the
supreme danger. Perhaps he will harden
himself against me when he notices this : it
may make him angry, and he may give his vote
in anger. If it is so with any of you — I do not
suppose that it is, but in case it should be so —
I think that I should answer him reasonably if
I said : ' My friend, I have kinsmen too, for,
in the words of Homer,1 " I am not born of
stocks and stones," but of woman ; ' and so,
Athenians, I have kinsmen, and I have three
sons, one of them a lad, and the other two still
children. Yet I will not bring any of them
forward before you, and implore you to acquit
me. And why will I do none of these things ?
It is not from arrogance, Athenians, nor because
I hold you cheap: whether or no I can face
death bravely is another question : but for my
own credit, and for your credit, and for the credit
of our city, I do not think it well, at my age,
and with my name, to do anything of that kind.
Rightly or wrongly, men have made up their
minds that in some way Socrates is different
35. from the mass of mankind. And it will be a
shameful thing if those of you who are thought
to excel in wisdom, or in bravery, or in any other
virtue, are going to act in this fashion. I have
1 Od. xix. 163. •

THE APOLOGY. 67

often seen men with a reputation behaving in
a strange way at their trial, as if they thought it
a terrible fate to be killed, and as though they
expected to live for ever, if you did not put
them to death. Such men seem to me to
bring discredit on the city : for any stranger
would suppose that the best and most eminent
Athenians, who are selected by their fellow-
citizens to hold office, and for other honours,
are no better than women. Those of you, Atheni-
ans, who have any reputation at all, ought not
to do these things : and you ought not to allow
us to do them : you should show that you will
be much more merciless to men who make the
city ridiculous by these pitiful pieces of acting,
than to men who remain quiet.

But apart from the question of credit, my XXIV.
friends, I do not think that it is right to en-
treat the judge to acquit us, or to escape con-
demnation in that way. It is our duty to
convince his mind by reason. He does not
sit to give away justice to his friends, but to
pronounce judgment : and he has sworn not to
favour any man whom he would like to favour,
but to decide questions according to law. And
therefore we ought not to teach you to for-
swear yourselves ; and you ought not to allow
yourselves to be taught, for then neither you
nor we would be acting righteously. There-
fore, Athenians, do not require me to do these
things, for I believe them to be neither good
nor just nor holy ; and, more especially do not
ask me to do them to-day, when Meletus

68 THE APOLOGY.

is prosecuting me for impiety. For were I to
be successful, and to prevail on you by my
prayers to break your oaths, I should be clearly
teaching you to believe that there are no gods ;
and I should be simply accusing myself by
my defence of not believing in them. But,
Athenians, that is very far from the truth. I
do believe in the gods as no one of my
accusers believes in them : and to you and to
God I commit my cause to be decided as is
best for you and for me.

(He is found guilty by 281 votes to 220.}

XXV. I am not vexed at the verdict which you
36. have given, Athenians, for many reasons. I
expected that you would find me guilty; and I
am not so much surprised at that, as at the
numbers of the votes. I, certainly, never
thought that the majority against me would
have been so narrow. But now it seems
that if only thirty votes had changed sides, I
should have escaped. So I think that I have
escaped Meletus, as it is : and not only have I
escaped him ; for it is perfectly clear that if
Anytus and Lycon had not come forward to
accuse me too, he would not have obtained the
fifth part of the votes, and would have had to
pay a fine of a thousand drachmae.1

J. Any prosecutor who did not obtain the votes of
one-fifth of the dicasts or judges, incurred a fine of 1000
drachmae, and certain other disabilities. Cf, Diet.
Antiq. s.v. ypa<f>rj.

THE APOLOGY. 69

So he proposes death as the penalty. Be XXVI.
it so. And what counter- penalty shall I
propose to you, Athenians ? What I deserve,
of course, must I not ? What then do I
deserve to pay or to suffer for having deter-
mined not to spend my life in ease ? I
neglected the things which most men value,
such as wealth, and family interests, and
military commands, and popular oratory, and
all the political appointments, and clubs, and
factions, that there are in Athens ; for I thought
that I was really too conscientious a man to
preserve my life if I engaged in these matters.
So I did not go where I should have done no
good either to you or to myself. I went
instead to each one of you by himself, to do
him, as I say, the greatest of services, and
strove to persuade him not to think of his
affairs, until he had thought of himself, and
tried to make himself as perfect and wise as
possible ; nor to think of the affairs of Athens,
until he had thought of Athens herself; and
in all cases to bestow his thoughts on things
in the same manner. Then what do I deserve
for such a life ? Something good, Athenians,
if I am really to propose what I deserve ; and
something good which it would be suitable to me
to receive. Then what is a suitable reward to
be given to a poor benefactor, who requires
leisure to exhort you ? There is no reward,
Athenians, so suitable for him as a public
maintenance in the Prytaneum. It is a much
more suitable reward for him than for any of

70 THE APOLOGY.

you who has won a victory at the Olympic
games with his horse or his chariots. Such a
man only makes you seem happy, but I make
you really happy : and he is not in want, and
I am. So if I am to propose the penalty
37. which I really deserve, I propose this, a public

maintenance in the Prytaneum.

XXVII. Perhaps you think me stubborn and arrogant
in what I am saying now, as in what I said
about the entreaties and tears. It is not so,
Athenians ; it is rather that I am convinced
that I never wronged any man intentionally,
though I cannot persuade you of that, for we
have conversed together only a little time. If
there were a law at Athens, as there is else-
where, not to finish a trial of life and death in
a single day, I think that I could have con-
vinced you of it : but now it is not easy in
so short a time to clear myself of the gross
calumnies of my enemies. But when I am
convinced that I have never wronged any man,
I shall certainly not wrong myself, or admit
that I deserve to suffer any evil, or propose
any evil for myself as a penalty. Why should
I ? Lest I should suffer the penalty which
Meletus proposes, when I say that I do not
know whether it is a good or an evil ? Shall
I choose instead of it something which I know
to be an evil,, and propose that as a penalty ?
Shall I propose imprisonment ? And why
should I pass the rest of my days in prison,
the slave of successive officials ? Or shall I
propose a fine, with imprisonment until it is

THE APOLOGY. 71

paid ? I have told you why I will not do that.
I should have to remain in prison for I have
no money to pay a fine with. Shall I then
propose exile ? Perhaps you would agree to
that. Life would indeed be very dear to
me, if I were unreasonable enough to expect
that strangers would cheerfully tolerate my
discussions and reasonings, when you who are
my fellow -citizens cannot endure them, and
have found them so burdensome and odious to
you, that you are seeking now to be released
from them. No, indeed, Athenians, that is
not likely. A fine life I should lead for an old
man, if I were to withdraw from Athens, and
pass the rest of my days in wandering from
city to city, and continually being expelled.
For I know very well that the young men will
listen to me, wherever I go, as they do here ;
and if I drive them away, they will persuade
their elders to expel me : and if I do not drive
them away, their fathers and kinsmen will
expel me for their sakes.

Perhaps some one will say, ' Why cannot XXVIII.
you withdraw from Athens, Socrates, and hold
your peace ? ' It is the most difficult thing in
the world to make you understand why I can-
not do that. If I say that I cannot hold my
peace, because that would be to disobey God,
you will think that I am not in earnest and
will not believe me. And if I tell you that no 38.
better thing can happen to a man than to
converse every day about virtue and the other
matters about which you have heard me con-

72 THE APOLOGY,

versing and examining myself and others, and
that an unexamined life is not worth living, then
you will believe me still less. But that is the
truth, my friends, though it is not easy to con-
vince you of it. And, what is more, I am not
accustomed to think that I deserve any punish-
ment. If I had been rich, I would have pro-
posed as large a fine as I could pay : that
would have done me no harm. But I am not
rich enough to pay a fine, unless you are
willing to fix it at a sum within my means.
Perhaps I could pay you a mina : l so I propose
that. Plato here, Athenians, and Crito, and
Critobulus, and Apollodorus bid me propose
thirty minas, and they will be sureties for me.
So I propose thirty rninas. They will be
sufficient sureties to you for the money.

(He is condemned to death.}

XXIX. You have not gained very much time,
Athenians, and, as the price of it, you will
have an evil name from all who wish to revile
the city, and they will cast in your teeth that
you put Socrates, a wise man, to death. For
they will certainly call me wise, whether I am
wise or not, when they want to reproach you.
If you would have waited for a little while, your
wishes would have been fulfilled in the course
of nature ; for you see that I am an old man,
far advanced in years, and near to death. I
am speaking not to all of you, only to those
who have voted for my death. And now I am
1 A mina was equivalent then to ,£4 : i : 3.

THE APOLOGY. 73

speaking to them still. Perhaps, my friends,
you think that I have been defeated because I
was wanting in the arguments by which I could
have persuaded you to acquit me, if, that is, I
had thought it right to do or to say anything
to escape punishment. It is not so. I have
been defeated because I was wanting, not in
arguments, but in overboldness and effrontery :
because I would not plead before you as you
would have liked to hear me plead, or appeal
to you with weeping and wailing, or say and
do many other things, which I maintain are
unworthy of me, but which you have been
accustomed to from other men. But when I
was defending myself, I thought that I ought
not to do anything unmanly because of the
danger which I ran, and I have not changed
my mind now. I would very much rather
defend myself as I did, and die, than as you
would have had me do, and live. Both in a
law suit, and in war, there are some things
which neither I nor any other man may do in 39.
order to escape from death. In battle a man
often sees that he may at least escape from
death by throwing down his arms and falling
on his knees before the pursuer to beg for his
life. And there are many other ways of avoid-
ing death in every danger, if a man will not
scruple to say and to do anything. But, my
friends, I think that it is a much harder thing
to escape from wickedness than from death ;
for wickedness is swifter than death. And now
I, who am old and slow, have been overtaken

74 THE APOLOGY.

by the slower pursuer : and my accusers, who
are clever and swift, have been overtaken by
the swifter pursuer, which is wickedness. And
now I shall go hence, sentenced by you to
death ; and they will go hence, sentenced by
truth to receive the penalty of wickedness and
evil. And I abide by this award as well as
they. Perhaps it was right for these things
to be so : and I think that they are fairly
measured.

XXX. And now I wish to prophesy to you, Athen-
ians who have condemned me. For I am
going to die, and that is the time when men
have most prophetic power. And I prophesy
to you who have sentenced me to death, that a
far severer punishment than you have inflicted
on me, will surely overtake you as soon as I am
dead. You have done this thing, thinking that
you will be relieved from having to give an
account of your lives. But I say that the
result will be very different from that. There
will be more men who will call you to account,
whom I have held back, and whom you did
not see. And they will be harder masters to
you than I have been, for they will be younger,
and you will be more angry with them. For if
you think that you will restrain men from
reproaching you for your evil lives by putting
them to death, you are very much mistaken.
That way of escape is hardly possible, and it is
not a good one. It is much better, and much
easier, not to silence reproaches, but to make
yourselves as perfect as you can. This is my

THE APOLOGY. 75

parting prophecy to you who have condemned
me.

With you who have acquitted me I should XXXI.
like to converse touching this thing that has
come to pass, while the authorities are busy,
and before I go to the place where I have to
die. So, I pray you, remain with me until I
go hence : there is no reason why we should
not converse with each other while it is possible.
I wish to explain to you, as my friends, the 40.
meaning of what has befallen me. A wonder-
ful thing has happened to me, judges — for you
I am right in calling judges.1 The prophetic
sign, which I am wont to receive from the
divine voice, has been constantly with me all
through my life till now, opposing me in quite
small matters if I were not going to act rightly.
And now you yourselves see what has happened
to me ; a thing which might be thought, and
which is sometimes actually reckoned, the
supreme evil. But the sign of God did not
withstand me when I was leaving my house in
the morning, nor when I was coming up hither
to the Court, nor at any point in my speech,
when I was going to say anything : though at
other times it has often stopped me in the very
act of speaking. But now, in this matter, it has
never once withstood me, either in my words or
my actions. I will tell you what I believe to
be the reason of that. This thing that has
come upon me must be a good : and those

1 The form of address hitherto has always been
'Athenians,' or 'my friends' (&v$p(s).

76 THE APOLOGY.

of us who think that death is an evil must
needs be mistaken. I have a clear proof that
that is so ; for my accustomed sign would cer-
tainly have opposed me, if I had not been
going to fare well.

XXXII. And if we reflect in another way we shall see
that we may well hope that death is a good.
For the state of death is one of two things :
either the dead man wholly ceases to be, and
loses all sensation ; or, according to the common
belief, it is a change and a migration of the
soul unto another place. And if death is the
absence of all sensation, and like the sleep of
one whose slumbers are unbroken by any
dreams, it will be a wonderful gain. For if a
man had to select that night in which he slept
so soundly that he did not even see any dreams,
and had to compare with it all the other nights
and days of his life, and then had to say how
many days and nights in his life he had spent
better and more pleasantly than this night, I
think that a private person, nay, even the great
King l himself, would find them easy to count,
compared with the others. If that is the nature
of death, I for one count it a gain. For then
it appears that eternity is nothing more than a
single night. But if death is a journey to
another place, and the common belief be true,
that there are all who have died, what good
could be greater than this, my judges ? Would
a journey not be worth taking, at the end of
which, in the other world, we should be released
1 Of Persia.

THE APOLOGY. 77

from the self-styled judges who are here, and 41
should find the true judges, who are said to sit
in judgment below, such as Minos, and Rhada-
manthus, and ^Eacus, and Triptolemus, and
the other demi-gods who were just in their
lives ? Or what would you not give to con-
verse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod
and Homer? I am willing to die many times,
if this be true. And for my own part I should
have a wonderful interest in meeting there
Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and
the other men of old who have died through an
unjust judgment, and in comparing my experi-
ences with theirs. That I think would be no
small pleasure. And, above all, I could spend
my time in examining those who are there, as
I examine men here, and in finding out which
of them is wise, and which of them thinks him-
self wise, when he is not wise. What would
we not give, my judges, to be able to examine
the leader of the great expedition against Troy,
or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, or countless other
men and women whom we could name? It
would be an infinite happiness to converse with
them, and to live with them, and to examine
them. Assuredly there they do not put men to
death for doing that. For besides the other
ways in which they are happier than we are,
they are immortal, at least if the common
belief be true.

And you too, judges, must face death with a XXXIII.
good courage, and believe this as a truth, that
no evil can happen to a good man, either in life,

78 THE APOLOGY.

or after death. His fortunes are not neglected
by the gods ; and what has come to me to-day
has not come by chance. I am persuaded that
it was better for me to die now, and to be
released from trouble : and that was the reason
why the sign never turned me back. And so
I am hardly angry with my accusers, or with
those who have condemned me to die. Yet it
was not with this mind that they accused me
and condemned me, but meaning to do me an
injury. So far I may find fault with them.

Yet I have one request to make of them.
When my sons grow up, visit them with punish-
ment, my friends, and vex them in the same
way that I have vexed you, if they seem to you
to care for riches, or fcr any other thing, before
virtue : and if they think that they are some-
thing, when they are nothing at all, reproach
them, as I have reproached you, for not caring
for what they should, and for thinking that they
are great men when in fact they are worthless.
And if you will do this, I myself and my sons
will have received our deserts at your hands.

But now the time has come, and we must
go hence ; I to die, and you to live. Whether
life or death is better is known to God, and to
God only.

CRITO

CHARACTERS OF THE DIALOGUE.

SOCRATES.
CRITO.

SCENE. — The prison of Socrates.

CRITO.

Socr, Why have you come at this hour, Crito? CHAP. I.
Is it not still early ? Steph.

Crito. Yes, very early. p- 43>

Socr. About what time is it ?

Crito. It is just day-break.

Socr. I wonder that the jailor was willing to
let you in.

Crito. He knows me now, Socrates, I come
here so often ; and besides, I have done him a
service.

Socr. Have you been here long ?

Crito. Yes ; some time.

Socr. Then why did you sit down without
speaking ? why did you not wake me at once ?

Crito. Indeed, Socrates, I wish that I my-
self were not so sleepless and sorrowful. But
I have been wondering to see how sweetly you
sleep. And I purposely did not wake you, for
I was anxious not to disturb your repose. Often
before, all through your life, I have thought that
your temper was a happy one ; and I think so
more than ever now, when I see how easily and
calmly you bear the calamity that has come to
you.

G

82 CRITO.

Socr. Nay, Crito, it would be absurd if at
my age I were angry at having to die.

Crito. Other men as old are overtaken by
similar calamities, Socrates ; but their age does
not save them from being angry with their fate.

Socr. That is so : but tell me, why are you
here so early ?

Crito. I am the bearer of bitter news, Soc-
rates : not bitter, it seems, to you ; but to me,
and to all your friends, both bitter and grievous :
and to none of them, I think, is it more grievous
than to me.

Socr. What is it ? Has the ship come from
Delos, at the arrival of which I am to die ?

Crito. No, it has not actually arrived : but
I think that it will be here to-day, from the
news which certain persons have brought from
Sunium, who left it there. It is clear from
their news that it will be here to-day ; and then,
Socrates, to-morrow your life will have to end.
II. Socr. Well, Crito, may it end fortunately.
Be it so, if so the gods will. But I do not
44. think that the ship will be here to-day.

Crito. Why do you suppose not ?

Socr. I will tell you. I am to die on the day
after the ship arrives, am I not ?

Crito. That is what the authorities say.

Socr. Then I do not think that it will come
to-day, but to-morrow. I judge from a certain
dream which I saw a little while ago in the
night: so it seems to be fortunate that you did
not wake me.

Crito. And what was this dream ?

CRITO. 83

Socr. A fair and comely woman, clad in
white garments, seemed to come to me, and
call me and say, " O Socrates —

'The third day hence shall thou fair Phthia reach.' 1Fl

Crito. What a strange dream, Socrates !

Socr. But its meaning is clear ; at least to
me, Crito.

Crito. Yes, too clear, it seems. But, O my III.
good Socrates, I beseech you for the last time
to listen to me and save yourself. For to me
your death will be more than a single disaster:
not only shall I lose a friend the like of whom
I shall never find again, but many persons, who
do not know you and me well, will think that I
might have saved you if I had been willing to
spend money, but that I neglected to do so.
And what character could be more disgraceful
than the character of caring more for money
than for one's friends ? The world will never
believe that we were anxious to save you, but
that you yourself refused to escape.

Socr. But, my excellent Crito, why should we
care so much about the opinion of the world ?
The best men, of whose opinion it is worth our
while to think, will believe that we acted as we
really did.

Crito. But you see, Socrates, that it is neces-
sary to care about the opinion of the world too.
This very thing that has happened to you proves
that the multitude can do a man not the least,

1 Horn. //. ix. 363.

84 CRITO.

but almost the greatest harm, if he be falsely
accused to them.

Socr. I wish that the multitude were able to
do a man the greatest harm, Crito, for then they
would be able to do him the greatest good too.
That would have been well. But, as it is, they
can do neither. They cannot make a man either
wise or foolish : they act wholly at random.
IV. Crito. Well, be it so. But tell me this,
Socrates. You surely are not anxious about
me and your other friends, and afraid lest, if you
escape, the informers should say that we stole
you away, and get us into trouble, and involve
us in a great deal of expense, or perhaps in the
loss of all our property, and, it may be, bring
some other punishment upon us besides ? If
45. you have any fear of that kind, dismiss it. For
of course we are bound to run those risks, and
still greater risks than those if necessary, in
saving you. So do not, I beseech you, refuse
to listen to me.

Socr. I am anxious about that, Crito, and
about much besides.

Crito. Then have no fear on that score.
There are men who, for no very large sum, are
ready to bring you out of prison into safety.
And then, you know, these informers are cheaply
bought, and there would be no need to spend
much upon them. My fortune is at your service,
and I think that it is sufficient : and if you have
any feeling about making use of my money,
there are strangers in Athens, whom you know,
ready to use theirs ; and one of them, Simmias

CRITO. 85

of Thebes, has actually brought enough for this
very purpose. And Cebes and many others
are ready too. And therefore, I repeat, do not
shrink from saving yourself on that ground.
And do not let what you said in the Court, that
if you went into exile you would not know what
to do with yourself, stand in your way ; for
there are many places for you to go to, where
you will be welcomed. If you choose to go to
Thessaly, I have friends there who will make
much of you, and shelter you from any annoy-
ance from the people of Thessaly.

And besides, Socrates, I think that you will V.
be doing what is wrong, if you abandon your
life when you might preserve it. You are
simply playing the game of your enemies ; it is
exactly the game of those who wanted to destroy
you. And what is more, to me you seem to be
abandoning your children too : you will leave
them to take their chance in life, as far as
you are concerned, when you might bring them
up and educate them. Most likely their fate
will be the usual fate of children who are left
orphans. But you ought not to beget children
unless you mean to take the trouble of bringing
them up and educating them. It seems to me
that you are choosing the easy way, and not the
way of a good and brave man, as you ought,
when you have been talking all your life long of
the value that you set upon virtue. For my
part, I feel ashamed both for you, and for us
who are your friends. Men will think that the
whole of this thing which has happened to you

86 CRITO.

— your appearance in court to take your trial,
when you need not have appeared at all ; the
very way in which the trial was conducted ; and
then lastly this, for the crowning absurdity of
the whole affair, is due to our cowardice. It
will look as if we had shirked the danger out of

46. miserable cowardice ; for we did not save you,
and you did not save yourself, when it was quite
possible to do so, if we had been good for any-
thing at all. Take care, Socrates, lest these
things be not evil only, but also dishonourable
to you and to us. Consider then ; or rather
the time for consideration is past ; we must
resolve ; and there is only one plan possible.
Everything must be done to-night. If we delay
any longer, we are lost. O Socrates, I implore
you not to refuse to listen to me.

VI. Socr. My dear Crito, if your anxiety to save
me be right, it is most valuable : but if it be not
right, its greatness makes it all the more danger-
ous. We must consider then whether we are
to do as you say, or not ; for I am still what I
always have been, a man who will listen to no
voice but the voice of the reasoning which on
consideration I find to be truest. I cannot cast
aside my former arguments because this mis-
fortune has come to me. They seem to me to
be as true as ever they were, and I hold exactly
the same ones in honour and esteem as I used
to : and if we have no better reasoning to sub-
stitute for them, I certainly shall not agree to
your proposal, not even though the power of the
multitude should scare us with fresh terrors, as

CRITO. 87

children are scared with hobgoblins, and inflict
upon us new fines, and imprisonments, and
deaths. How then shall we most fitly examine
the question ? Shall we go back first to what
you say about the opinions of men, and ask if
we used to be right in thinking that we ought
to pay attention to some opinions, and not to
others ? Used we to be right in saying so
before I was condemned to die, and has it now
become apparent that we were talking at ran-
dom, and arguing for the sake of argument, and
that it was really nothing but play and nonsense?
I am anxious, Crito, to examine our former
reasoning with your help, and to see whether
my present position will appear to me to have
affected its truth in any way, or not ; and
whether we are to set it aside, or to yield assent
to it. Those of us who thought at all seriously,
used always to say, I think, exactly what I said
just now, namely, that we ought to esteem some
of the opinions which men form highly, and not
others. Tell me, Crito, if you please, do you
not think that they were right ? For you, 47.
humanly speaking, will not have to die to-
morrow, and your judgment will not be biassed
by that circumstance. Consider then : do you
not think it reasonable to say that we should not
esteem all the opinions of men, but only some,
nor the opinions of all men, but only of some
men ? What do you think ? Is not this true?

Crito. It is.

Socr. And we should esteem the good
opinions, and not the worthless ones ?

88 CRITO.

Crito. Yes.

Socr. But the good opinions are those of
the wise, and the worthless ones those of the
foolish ?

Crito. Of course.

VII. Socr. And what used we to say about this ?
Does a man who is in training, and who is in
earnest about it, attend to the praise and blame
and opinion of all men, or of the one man only
who is a doctor or a trainer ?

Crito. He attends only to the opinion of the
one man.

Socr. Then he ought to fear the blame and
welcome the praise of this one man, not of the
many?

Crito. Clearly.

Socr. Then he must act and exercise, and
eat and drink in whatever way the one man
who is his master, and who understands the
matter, bids him ; not as others bid him ?

Crito. That is so.

Socr. Good. But if he disobeys this one
man, and disregards his opinion and his praise,
and esteems instead what the many, who under-
stand nothing of the matter, say, will he not
suffer for it ?

Crito. Of course he will.

Socr. And how will he suffer? In what
direction, and in what part of himself?

Crito. Of course in his body. That is
disabled.

Socr. You are right. And, Crito, to be
brief, is it not the same, in everything ? And,

CRITO. 89

therefore, in questions of right and wrong, and
of the base and the honourable, and of good
and evil, which we are now considering, ought
we to follow the opinion of the many and fear
that, or the opinion of the one man who under-
stands these matters (if we can find him), and
feel more shame and fear before him than
before all other men ? For if we do not follow
him, we shall cripple and maim that part of us
which, we used to say, is improved by right
and disabled by wrong. Or is this not so ?

Crito. No, Socrates, I agree with you.

Socr. Now, if, by listening to the opinions VIII
of those who do not understand, we disable
that part of us which is improved by health
and crippled by disease, is our life worth living,
when it is crippled ? It is the body, is it not ?

Crito. Yes.

Socr. Is life worth living with the body
crippled and in a bad state ?

Crito. No, certainly not.

Socr. Then is life worth living when that
part of us which is maimed by wrong and
benefited by right is crippled ? Or do we con-
sider that part of us, whatever it is, which has
to do with right and wrong to be of less con- 48.
sequence than our body ?

Crito. No, certainly not.

Socr. But more valuable ?

Crito. Yes, much more so.

Socr. Then, my excellent friend, we must
not think so much of what the many will say
of us ; we must think of what the one man,

90 CRITO.

who understands right and wrong, and of what
Truth herself will say of us. And so you are
mistaken to begin with, when you invite us to
regard the opinion of the multitude concerning
the right and the honourable and the good,
and their opposites. But, it may be said, the
multitude can put us to death ?

Crito. Yes, that is evident. That may be
said, Socrates.

Socr. True. But, my excellent friend, to
me it appears that the conclusion which we
have just reached, is the same as our conclusion
of former times. Now consider whether we
still hold to the belief, that we should set the
highest value, not on living, but on living
well ?

Crito. Yes, we do.

Socr. And living well and honourably and
rightly mean the same thing : do we hold to
that or not ?

Crito. We do.

IX. Socr. Then, starting from these premises,
we have to consider whether it is right or not
right for me to try to escape from prison, with-
out the consent of the Athenians. If we find
that it is right, we will try : if not, we will let
it alone. I am afraid that considerations of
expense, and of reputation, and of bringing up
my children, of which you talk, Crito, are only
the reflections of our friends, the many, who
lightly put men to death, and who would, if
they could, as lightly bring them to life again,
without a thought. But reason, which is our

CRITO. 91

guide, shows us that we can have nothing to
consider but the question which I asked just
now : namely, shall we be doing right if we
give money and thanks to the men who are to
aid me in escaping, and if we ourselves take
our respective parts in my escape ? Or shall
we in truth be doing wrong, if we do all this ?
And if we find that we should be doing wrong,
then we must not take any account either of
death, or of any other evil that may be the
consequence of remaining quietly here, but only
of doing wrong.

Crito. I think that you are right, Socrates.
But what are we to do ?

Socr. Let us consider that together, my
good sir, and if you can contradict anything
that I say, do so, and I will be convinced :
but if you cannot, do not go on repeating to
me any longer, my dear friend, that I should
escape without the consent of the Athenians. I
am very anxious to act with your approval : 1
I do not want you to think me mistaken. But
now tell me if you agree with the doctrine from
which I start, and try to answer my questions
as you think best. 49.

Crito. I will try.

Socr. Ought we never to do wrong inten- X.
tionally at all ; or may we do wrong in some
ways, and not in others ? Or, as we have often
agreed in former times, is it never either good
or honourable to do wrong ? Have all our
former conclusions been forgotten in these few
1 Reading Tret'tras.

92 CRITO.

days ? Old men as we were, Crito, did we not
see, in days gone by, when we were gravely
conversing with each other, that we were no
better than children ? Or is not what we used
to say most assuredly the truth, whether the
world agrees with us or not ? Is not wrong-
doing an evil and a shame to the wrong-doer
in every case, whether we incur a heavier or a
lighter punishment than death as the conse-
quence of doing right ? Do we believe that ?

Crito, We do.

Socr. Then we ought never to do wrong at
all?

Crito. Certainly not.

Socr. Neither, if we ought never to do wrong
at all, ought we to repay wrong with wrong,
as the world thinks we may ?

Crito. Clearly not.

Socr. Well then, Crito, ought we to do evil
to any one ?

Crito. Certainly I think not, Socrates.

Socr. And is it right to repay evil with evil,
as the world thinks, or not right ?

Crito. Certainly it is not right.

Socr. For there is no difference, is there,
between doing evil to a man, and wronging
him ?

Crito. True.

Socr. Then we ought not to repay wrong
with wrong or do harm to any man, no matter
what we may have suffered from him. And in
conceding this, Crito, be careful that you do
not concede more than you mean. For I know

CRITO. 93

that only a few men hold, or ever will hold this
opinion. And so those who hold it, and those
who do not, have no common ground of argu-
ment ; they can of necessity only look with con-
tempt on each other's belief. Do you therefore
consider very carefully whether you agree with
me and share my opinion. Are we to start in
our inquiry from the doctrine that it is never
right either to do wrong, or to repay wrong
with wrong, or to avenge ourselves on any man
who harms us, by harming him in return ? Or
do you disagree with me and dissent from my
principle ? I myself have believed in it for a
long time, and I believe in it still. But if you
differ in any way, explain to me how. If you
still hold to our former opinion, listen to my
next point.

Crito. Yes, I hold to it, and I agree with
you. Go on.

Socr. Then, my next point, or rather my
next question, is this : Ought a man to per-
form his just agreements, or may he shuffle out
of them ?

Crito. He ought to perform them.

Socr. Then consider. If I escape without XI.
the state's consent, shall I be injuring those 50.
whom I ought least to injure, or not ? Shall
I be abiding by my just agreements or not ?

Crito. I cannot answer your question, Soc-
rates. I do not understand it.

Socr. Consider it in this way. Suppose the
laws and the commonwealth were to come and
appear to me as I was preparing to run away

94 CRITO.

(if that is the right phrase to describe my escape)
and were to ask, ' Tell us, Socrates, what have
you in your mind to do ? What do you mean
by trying to escape, but to destroy us the laws,
and the whole city, so far as in you lies ? Do
you think that a state can exist and not be
overthrown, in which the decisions of law are
of no force, and are disregarded and set at
nought by private individuals ? ' How shall we
answer questions like that, Crito ? Much might
be said, especially by an orator, in defence of
the law which makes judicial decisions supreme.
Shall I reply, ' But the state has injured me :
it has decided my cause wrongly.' Shall we
say that ?

Crito. Certainly we will, Socrates.
XII. Socr. And suppose the laws were to reply,
' Was that our agreement ? or was it that you
would submit to whatever judgments the state
should pronounce ? ' And if we were to wonder
at their words, perhaps they would say, ' So-
crates, wonder not at our words, but answer us ;
you yourself are accustomed to ask questions
and to answer them. What complaint have
you against us and the city, that you are trying
to destroy us ? Are we not, first, your parents ?
Through us your father took your mother and
begat you. Tell us, have you any fault to find
with those of us that are the laws of marriage ? '
' I have none,' I should reply. ' Or have you any
fault to find with those of us that regulate the
nurture and education of the child, which you,
like others, received ? Did not we do well in

CRITO. 95

bidding your father educate you in music and
gymnastic ? ' ' You did,' I should say. ' Well
then, since you were brought into the world
and nurtured and educated by us, how, in the
first place, can you deny that you are our child
and our slave, as your fathers were before you ?
And if this be so, do you think that your rights
are on a level with ours ? Do you think that
you have a right to retaliate upon us if we
should try to do anything to you. You had
not the same rights that your father had, or
that your master would have had, if you had
been a slave. You had no right to retaliate
upon them if they ill-treated you, or to answer
them if they reviled you, or to strike them 51
back if they struck you, or to repay them evil
with evil in any way. And do you think that
you may retaliate on your country and its laws ?
If we try to destroy you, because we think it
right, will you in return do all that you can to
destroy us, the laws, and your country, and say
that in so doingyouare doing right, you, the man,
who in truth thinks so much of virtue ? Or are
you too wise to see that your country is worthier,
and more august, and more sacred, and holier,
and held in higher honour both by the gods and
by all men of understanding, than your father and
your mother and all your other ancestors ; and
that it is your bounden duty to reverence it, and
to submit to it, and to approach it more humbly
than you would approach your father, when it
is angry with you ; and either to do whatever it
bids you to do or to persuade it to excuse you ;

96 CRITO.

and to obey in silence if it orders you to
endure stripes or imprisonment, or if it send
you to battle to be wounded or to die ? That is
what is your duty. You must not give way,
nor retreat, nor desert your post. In war, and
in the court of justice, and everywhere, you
must do whatever your city and your country
bid you do, or you must convince them that
their commands are unjust. But it is against
the law of God to use violence to your father
or to your mother ; and much more so is it
against the law of God to use violence to your
country.' What answer shall we make, Crito ?
Shall we say that the laws speak truly, or
not?

Crito. I think that they do.

XIII. Socr. l Then consider, Socrates/' perhaps
they would say, ' if we are right in saying that
by attempting to escape you are attempting to
injure us. We brought you into the world, we
nurtured you, we educated you, we gave you
and every other citizen a share of all the good
things we could. Yet we proclaim that if any
man of the Athenians is dissatisfied with us, he
may take his goods and go away whithersoever
he pleases : we give that permission to every
man who chooses to avail himself of it, so soon
as he has reached man's estate, and sees us,
the laws, and the administration of our city.
No one of us stands in his way or forbids him to
take his goods and go wherever he likes, whether
it be to an Athenian colony, or to any foreign
country, if he is dissatisfied with us and with

CRITO. 97

the city. But we say that every man of you
who remains here, seeing how we administer
justice, and how we govern the city in other
matters, has agreed, by the very fact of remain-
ing here, to do whatsoever we bid him. And,
we say, he who disobeys us, does a threefold
wrong : he disobeys us who are his parents, and
he disobeys us who fostered him, and he disobeys
us after he has agreed to obey us, without
persuading us that we are wrong. Yet we
did not bid him sternly to do whatever we told
him. We offered him an alternative ; we gave 52.
him his choice, either to obey us, or to con-
vince us that we were wrong : but he does
neither.

' These are the charges, Socrates, to which XIV.
we say that you will expose yourself, if you do
what you intend ; and that not less, but more
than other Athenians.' And if I were to ask,
' And why ? ' they might retort with justice that
I have bound myself by the agreement with
them more than other Athenians. They would
say, ' Socrates, we have very strong evidence
that you were satisfied with us and with the
city. You would not have been content to
stay at home in it more than other Athenians,
unless you had been satisfied with it more than
they. You never went away from Athens to
the festivals, save once to the Isthmian games,
nor elsewhere except on military service ; you
never made other journeys like other men ; you
had no desire to see other cities or other laws ;
you were contented with us and our city. So
H

98 CRITO

strongly did you prefer us, and agree to be
governed by us : and what is more, you begat
children in this city, you found it so pleasant.
And besides, if you had wished, you might at
your trial have offered to go into exile. At that
time you could have done with the state's con-
sent, what you are trying now to do without it.
But then you gloried in being willing to die.
You said that you preferred death to exile.
And now you are not ashamed of those words :
you do not respect us the laws, for you are
trying to destroy us : and you are acting just
as a miserable slave would act, trying to run
away, and breaking the covenant and agree-
ment which you made to submit to our govern-
ment. First, therefore, answer this question.
Are we right, or are we wrong, in saying that
you have agreed not in mere words, but in
reality, to live under our government ?' What
are we to say, Crito ? Must we not admit that
it is true ?

Crito. We must, Socrates.

Socr. Then they would say, ' Are you not
breaking your covenants and agreements with
us ? And you were not led to make them by
force or by fraud : you had not to make up your
mind in a hurry. You had seventy years in
which you might have gone away, if you had
been dissatisfied with us, or if the agreement
had seemed to you unjust. But you preferred
neither Lacedasmon nor Crete, though you are
fond of saying that they are well governed, nor
any other state, either of the Hellenes, or the

CRITO. 99

Barbarians. You went away from Athens less 53.
than the lame and the blind and the cripple.
Clearly you, far more than other Athenians,
were satisfied with the city, and also with us
who are its laws : for who would be satisfied
with a city which had no laws ? And now will
you not abide by your agreement ? If you
take our advice, you will, Socrates : then you
will not make yourself ridiculous by going away
from Athens.

' For consider : what good will you do your- XV.
self or your friends by thus transgressing, and
breaking your agreement ? It is tolerably
certain that they, on their part, will at least run
the risk of exile, and of losing their civil rights,
or of forfeiting their property. For yourself,
you might go to one of the neighbouring cities,
to Thebes or to Megara for instance — for both
of them are well governed — but, Socrates, you
will come as an enemy to these commonwealths ;
and all who care for their city will look askance
at you, and think that you are a subverter of
law. And you will confirm the judges in their
opinion, and make it seem that their verdict
was a just one. For a man who is a subverter
of law, may well be supposed to be a corrupter
of the young and thoughtless. Then will you
avoid well-governed states and civilised men ?
Will life be worth having, if you do ? Or will
you consort with such men, and converse with-
out shame — about what, Socrates ? About the
things which you talk of here ? Will you tell
them that virtue, and justice, and institutions,

ioo CRITO.

and law are the most precious things that men
can have ? And do you not think that that
will be a shameful thing in Socrates ? You
ought to think so. But you will leave these
places ; you will go to the friends of Crito in
Thessaly : for there there is most disorder and
licence : and very likely they will be delighted
to hear of the ludicrous way in which you
escaped from prison, dressed up in peasant's
clothes, or in some other disguise which people
put on when they are running away, and with
your appearance altered. But will no one say
how you, an old man, with probably only a few
more years to live, clung so greedily to life that
you dared to transgress the highest laws ? Per-
haps not, if you do not displease them. But if
you do, Socrates, you will hear much that will
make you blush. You will pass your life as
the flatterer and the slave of all men ; and what
will you be doing but feasting in Thessaly? It
will be as if you had made a journey to Thessaly
for an entertainment. And where will be all
our old sayings about justice and virtue then ?
54. But you wish to live for the sake of your
children ? You want to bring them up and
educate them ? What ? will you take them
with you to Thessaly, and bring them up and
educate them there ? Will you make them
strangers to their own country, that you may
bestow this benefit on them too ? Or supposing
that you leave them in Athens, will they be
brought up and educated better if you are alive,
though you are not with them ? Yes ; your

CRITO. lor

friends will take care of them. Will your
friends take care of them if you make a journey
to Thessaly, and not if you make a journey to
Hades ? You ought not to think that, at least
if those who call themselves your friends are
good for anything at all.

' No, Socrates, be advised by us who have XVI.
fostered you. Think neither of children, nor of
life, nor of any other thing before justice, that
when you come to the other world you may be
able to make your defence before the rulers who
sit in judgment there. It is clear that neither
you nor any of your friends will be happier,
or juster, or holier in this life, if you do this
thing, nor will you be happier after you are
dead. Now you will go away wronged, not
by us, the laws, but by men. But if you repay
evil with evil, and wrong with wrong in this
shameful way, and break your agreements and
covenants with us, and injure those whom you
should least injure, yourself, and your friends,
and your country, and us, and so escape, then
we shall be angry with you while you live, and
when you die our brethren, the laws in Hades,
will not receive you kindly ; for they will know
that on earth you did all that you could to des-
troy us. Listen then to us, and let not Crito
persuade you to do as he says.'

Know well, my dear friend Crito, that this XVII.
is what I seem to hear, as the worshippers of
Cybele seem, in their frenzy, to hear the music
of flutes : and the sound of these words rings
loudly in my ears, and drowns all other words.

102 CRITO.

And I feel sure that if you try to change my
mind you will speak in vain ; nevertheless, if
you think that you will succeed, say on.

Crito. I can say no more, Socrates.

Socr. Then let it be, Crito : and let us do as
I say, seeing that God so directs us.

PH^EDO

CHARACTERS OF THE DIALOGUE.

PH.JEDO.

ECHECRATES.

SOCRATES.

CEDES.

SIMMIAS.

APOLLODORUS.

CRITO.

THE SERVANT OF THE ELEVEN.

SCENE. — First Phlius, then the Prison of
Socrates.

PH^EDO

Echecrates. Were you with Socrates yourself, CHAP. I.
Phaedo, on that day when he drank the poison Steph.
in the prison, or did you hear the story from P- 58<
some one else ?

Phcedo. I was there myself, Echecrates.

Ech. Then what was it that our master said
before his death, and how did he die ? I should
be very glad if you would tell me. None of our
citizens go very much to Athens now ; and no
stranger has come from there for a long time,
who could give us any definite account of these
things, except that he drank the poison and
died. We could learn nothing beyond that.

Phcedo. Then have you not heard about the
trial either, how that went ?

Ech. Yes, we were told of that : and we
were rather surprised to find that he did not
die till so long after the trial. Why was that,
Phaedo ?

Phado. It was an accident, Echecrates. The
stern of the ship, which the Athenians send to
Delos, happened to have been crowned on the
day before the trial.

Ech. And what is this ship ?

io6 PHMDO.

Phado. It is the ship, as the Athenians say,
in which Theseus took the seven youths and
the seven maidens to Crete, and saved them
from death, and himself was saved. The
Athenians made a vow then to Apollo, the
story goes, to send a sacred mission to Delos
every year, if they should be saved ; and from
that time to this they have always sent it to the
god, every year. They have a law to keep the
city pure as soon as the mission begins, and
not to execute any sentence of death until the
ship has returned from Delos ; and sometimes,
when it is detained by contrary winds, that is a
long while. The sacred mission begins when the
priest of Apollo crowns the stern of the ship : and,
as I said, this happened to have been done on the
day before the trial. That was why Socrates lay
so long in prison between his trial and his death.

Ech. But tell me about his death, Phaedo.
What was said and done, and which of his
friends were with our master ? Or would not
the authorities let them be there ? Did he die
alone ?

Phado. Oh, no : some of them were there,
indeed several.

Ech. It would be very good of you, if you
are not busy, to tell us the whole story as
exactly as you can.

Phcedo. No : I have nothing to do and I will
try to relate it. Nothing is more pleasant to
me than to recall Socrates to my mind, whether
by speaking of him myself, or by listening to
others.

PH&DO. 107

Ech. Indeed, Phasdo, you will have an audi-
ence like yourself. But try to tell us everything
that happened as precisely as you can.

Phcedo. Well, I myself was strangely moved
on that day. I did not feel that I was being
present at the death of a dear friend : I did
not pity him, for he seemed to me happy,
Echecrates, both in his bearing and in his
words, so fearlessly and nobly did he die. I
could not help thinking that the gods would
watch over him still on his journey to the other
world, and that when he arrived there it would
be well with him, if it was ever well with any
man. Therefore I had scarcely any feeling of 59.
pity, as you would expect at such a mournful
time. Neither did I feel the pleasure which I
usually felt at our philosophical discussions ;
for our talk was of philosophy. A very singular
feeling came over me, a strange mixture of
pleasure and of pain when I remembered that
he was presently to die. All of us who were
there were in much the same state, laughing
and crying by turns ; particularly Apollodorus.
I think you know the man and his ways.

Ech. Of course I do.

Phcedo. Well, he did not restrain himself at
all ; and I myself and the others were greatly
agitated too.

Ech. Who were there, Phaedo ?

Phcedo. Of native Athenians, there was this
Apollodorus, and Critobulus, and his father
Crito, and Hermogenes, and Epigenes, and
.dischines, and Antisthenes. Then there was

io8 Pff^DO.

Ctesippus the Paeanian, and Menexenus, and
some other Athenians. Plato, I believe was ill.

Ech. Were any strangers there ?

Phcedo. Yes, there was Simmias of Thebes,
and Cebes, and Phaedondes ; and Eucleides and
Terpsion from Megara.

Ech. But Aristippus and Cleombrotus ? were
they present ?

Phtzdo. No, they were not. They were said
to be in ./Egina.

Ech. Was any one else there ?

Phcedo. No, I think that these were all.

Ech. Then tell us about your conversation.
III. Phado. I will try to relate the whole story
to you from the beginning. On the previous
days I and the others had always met in the
morning at the court where the trial was held,
which was close to the prison ; and then we
had gone in to Socrates. We used to wait
each morning until the prison was opened, con-
versing : for it was not opened early. When
it was opened we used to go in to Socrates, and
we generally spent the whole day with him. But
on that morning we met earlier than usual ; for
the evening before we had learnt, on leaving
the prison, that the ship had arrived from Delos.
So we arranged to be at the usual place as early
as possible. When we reached the prison the
porter, who generally let us in, came out to us
and bade us wait a little, and not to go in until
he summoned us himself ; ' for the Eleven,' he
said, ' are releasing Socrates from his fetters,
and giving directions for his death to-day.' In

PHALDO. 109

no great while he returned and bade us enter.
So we went in and found Socrates just released, 6O.
and Xanthippe — you know her — sitting by him,
holding his child in her arms. When Xanthippe
saw us, she wailed aloud, and cried, in her
woman's way, ' This is the last time, Socrates,
that you will talk with your friends, or they
with you.' And Socrates glanced at Crito, and
said, ' Crito, let her be taken home.' So some
of Crito's servants led her away, weeping bitterly
and beating her breast. But Socrates sat up
on the bed, and bent his leg and rubbed it with
his hand, and while he was rubbing it said to
us, How strange a thing is what men call
pleasure ! How wonderful is its relation to
pain, which seems to be the opposite of it !
They will not come to a man together : but if
he pursues the one and gains it, he is almost
forced to take the other also, as if they were
two distinct things united at one end. And I
think, said he, that if ^sop had noticed them
he would have composed a fable about them,
to the effect that God had wished to reconcile
them when they were quarrelling, and that, when
he could not do that, he joined their ends to-
gether ; and that therefore whenever the one
comes to a man, the other is sure to follow.
That is just the case with me. There was
pain in my leg caused by the chains : and now,
it seems, pleasure is come following the pain.

Cebes interrupted him and said, By the bye iv.
Socrates, I am glad that you reminded me.
Several people have been inquiring about your

1 10 PH&DO.

poems, the hymn to Apollo, and ^sop's fables
which you have put into metre, and only a day
or two ago Evenus asked me what was your
reason for writing poetry on coming here, when
you had never written a line before. So if you
wish me to be able to answer him when he
asks me again, as I know that he will, tell me
what to say.

Then tell him the truth, Cebes, he said.
Say that it was from no wish to pose as a rival
to him, or to his poems. I knew that it would
not be easy to do that. I was only testing the
meaning of certain dreams, and acquitting my
conscience about them, in case they should be
bidding me make this kind of music. The fact
is this. The same dream used often to come to
me in my past life, appearing in different forms
at different times, but always saying the same
words, ' Socrates, work at music and compose
it.' Formerly I used to think that the dream was
encouraging me and cheering me on in what
61. was already the work of my life, just as the
spectators cheer on different runners in a race.
I supposed that the dream was encouraging
me to create the music at which I was working
already : for I thought that philosophy was the
highest music, and my life was spent in philo-
sophy. But then, after the trial, when the
feast of the god delayed my death, it occurred
to me that the dream might possibly be bidding
me create music in the popular sense, and that
in that case I ought to do so, and not to disobey :
I thought that it would be safer to acquit my

PH&DO. in

conscience by creating poetry in obedience to
the dream before I departed. So first I com-
posed a hymn to the god whose feast it was.
And then I turned such fables of yEsop as I
knew, and had ready to my hand, into verse,
taking those which came first : for I reflected
that a man who means to be a poet has to use
fiction and not facts for his poems ; and I could
not invent fiction myself.

Tell Evenus this, Cebes, and bid him fare- V.
well from me ; and tell him to follow me as
quickly as he can, if he is wise. I, it seems,
shall depart to-day, for that is the will of the
Athenians.

And Simmias said, What strange advice to
give Evenus, Socrates ! I have often met him,
and from what I have seen of him, I think that
he is certainly not at all the man to take it, if
he can help it.

What ? he said, is not Evenus a philosopher?

Yes, I suppose so, replied Simmias.

Then Evenus will wish to die, he said, and
so will ever)' man who is worthy of having any
part in this study. But he will not lay violent
hands on himself; for that, they say, is wrong.
And as he spoke he put his legs off the bed on
to the ground, and remained sitting thus for the
rest of the conversation.

Then Cebes asked him, WThat do you mean,
Socrates, by saying that it is wrong for a man
to lay violent hands on himself, but that the
philosopher will wish to follow the dying man ?

What, Cebes ? Have you and Simmias been

112 PH.&DO.

with Philolaus, and not heard about these
things ?

Nothing very definite, Socrates.
Well, I myself only speak of them from hear-
say : yet there is no reason why I should not
tell you what I have heard. Indeed, as I am
setting out on a journey to the other world,
what could be more fitting for me than to talk
about my journey, and to consider what we
imagine to be its nature ? How could we better
employ the interval between this and sunset ?

VI. Then what is their reason for saying that it
is wrong for a man to kill himself, Socrates ?
It is quite true that I have heard Philolaus say,
when he was living at Thebes, that it is not
right ; and I have heard the same thing from
others too : but I never heard anything definite
on the subject from any of them.

62. You must be of good cheer, said he, possibly
you will hear something some day. But per-
haps you will be surprised if I say that this
law, unlike every other law to which mankind
are subject, is absolute and without exception ;
and that it is not true that death is better
than life only for some persons and at some
times. And perhaps you will be surprised
if I tell you that these men, for whom it
would be better to die, may not do themselves
a service, but that they must await a benefactor
from without.

Oh indeed, said Cebes, laughing quietly, and
speaking in his native dialect.

Indeed, said Socrates, so stated it may seem

PH&DO. 113

strange : and yet perhaps a reason may be
given for it. The reason which the secret
teaching l gives, that man is in a kind of prison,
and that he may not set himself free, nor escape
from it, seems to me rather profound and not
easy to fathom. But I do think, Cebes, that it
is true that the gods are our guardians, and
that we men are a part of their property. Do
you not think so ?

I do, said Cebes.

Well then, said he, if one of your possessions
were to kill itself, though you had not signified
that you wished it to die, should you not be
angry with it ? Should you not punish it, if
punishment were possible ?

Certainly, he replied.

Then in this way perhaps it is not unreason-
able to hold that no man has a right to take his
own life, but that he must wait until God sends
some necessity upon him, as has now been sent
upon me.

Yes, said Cebes, that does seem natural. VII.
But you were saying just now that the philo-
sopher will desire to die. Is not that a paradox,
Socrates, if what we have just been saying, that
God is our guardian and that we are his pro-
perty, be true. It is not reasonable to say that
the wise man will be content to depart from
this service, in which the gods, who are the
best of all rulers, rule him. He will hardly
think that when he becomes free he will take
better care of himself than the gods take of him.
1 The Esoteric system of the Pythagoreans.
I

1 14 PH&DO.

A fool perhaps might think so, and say that he
would do well to run away from his master : he
might not consider that he ought not to run
away from a good master, but that he ought to
remain with him as long as possible, and so in
his thoughtlessness he might run away. But
the wise man will surely desire to remain always
with one who is better than himself. But if
this be true, Socrates, the reverse of what you
said just now seems to follow. The wise man
should grieve to die, and the fool should rejoice.

I thought Socrates was pleased with Cebes'

63. insistence. He looked at us, and said, Cebes

is always examining arguments. He will not

be convinced at once by anything that one says.

Yes, Socrates, said Simmias, but I do think
that now there is something in what Cebes says.
Why should really wise men want to run away
from masters who are better than themselves,
and lightly quit their service ? And I think
Cebes is aiming his argument at you, because
you are so ready to leave us, and the gods, who
are good rulers, as you yourself admit.

You are right, he said. I suppose you mean
that I must defend myself against your charge,
as if I were in a court of justice.

That is just our meaning, said Simmias.
VIII. Well then, he replied, let me try to make a
more successful defence to you than I did to
the judges at my trial. I should be wrong,
Cebes and Simmias, he went on, not to grieve
at death, if I did not think that I was going to
live both with other gods who are good and

Pff&DO. 115

wise, and with men who have died, and who
are better than the men of this world. But you
must know that I hope that I am going to live
among good men, though I am not quite sure
of that. But I am as sure as I can be in such
matters that I am going to live with gods who
are very good masters. And therefore I am
not so much grieved at death : I am confident
that the dead have some kind of existence, and,
as has been said of old, an existence that is far
better for the good than for the wicked.

Well, Socrates, said Simmias, do you mean
to go away and keep this belief to yourself, or
will you let us share it with you ? It seems to
me that we too have an interest in this good.
And it will also serve as your defence, if you
can convince us of what you say.

I will try, he replied. But I think Crito has
been wanting to speak to me. Let us first hear
what he has to say.

Only, Socrates, said Crito, that the man who
is going to give you the poison has been telling
me to warn you not to talk much. He says
that talking heats people, and that the action
of the poison must not be counteracted by heat.
Those who excite themselves sometimes have
to drink it two or three times.

Let him be, said Socrates : let him mind his
own business, and be prepared to give me the
poison twice, or, if need be, thrice.

I knew that would be your answer, said
Crito : but the man has been importunate.

Never mind him, he replied. But I wish

Ii6 PHsEDO.

now to explain to you, my judges, why it seems
to me that a man who has really spent his life
in philosophy has reason to be of good cheer
64. when he is about to die, and may well hope
after death to gain in the other world the
greatest good. I will try to show you, Simmias
and Cebes, how this may be.

IX. The world, perhaps, does not see that those
who rightly engage in philosophy, study only
dying and death. And, if this be true, it would
be surely strange for a man all through his life
to desire only death, and then, when death
comes to him, to be vexed at it, when it has
been his study and his desire for so long.

Simmias laughed, and said : Indeed, Socrates,
you make me laugh, though I am scarcely in a
laughing humour now. If the multitude heard
that, I fancy they would think that what you
say of philosophers is quite true; and my country-
men would entirely agree with you that philo-
sophers are indeed eager to die, and they would
say that they know full well that philosophers
deserve to be put to death.

And they would be right, Simmias, except in
saying that they know it. They do not know
in what sense the true philosopher is eager to
die, or what kind of death he deserves, or
in what sense he deserves it. Let us dismiss
them from our thoughts, and converse by our-
selves. Do we believe death to be anything ?

We do, replied Simmias.

And do we not believe it to be the separation
of the soul from the body ? Does not death

PH^EDO. 117

mean that the body comes to exist by itself,
separated from the soul, and that the soul exists
by herself, separated from the body ? What is
death but that ?

It is that, he said.

Now consider, my good friend, if you and I
are agreed on another point which I think will
help us to understand the question better. Do
you think that a philosopher will care very much
about what are called pleasures, such as the
pleasures of eating and drinking ?

Certainly not, Socrates, said Simmias.

Or about the pleasures of sexual passion ?

Indeed, no.

And, do you think that he holds the remain-
ing cares of the body in high esteem ? Will he
think much of getting fine clothes, and sandals,
and other bodily adornments, or will he despise
them, except so far as he is absolutely forced
to meddle with them ?

The real philosopher, I think, will despise
them, he replied.

In short, said he, you think that his studies
are not concerned with the body ? He stands
aloof from it, as far as he can, and turns towards
the soul ?

I do.

Well then, in these matters, first, it is clear
that the philosopher releases his soul from com- 65.
munion with the body, so far as he can, beyond
all other men ?

It is.

And does not the world think, Simmias, that

u8 PHMDO.

if a man has no pleasure in such things, and
does not take his share in them, his life is
not worth living ? Do not they hold that
he who thinks nothing of bodily pleasures is
almost as good as dead ?

Indeed you are right.

X. But what about the actual acquisition of
wisdom ? If the body is taken as a companion
in the search for wisdom, is it a hindrance or
not ? For example, do sight and hearing con-
vey any real truth to men ? Are not the very
poets for ever telling us that we neither hear
nor see anything accurately ? But if these
senses of the body are not accurate or clear, the
others will hardly be so, for they are all less
perfect than these, are they not ?

Yes, I think so, certainly, he said.

Then when does the soul attain truth ? he
asked. We see that, as often as she seeks to
investigate anything in company with the body,
the body leads her astray.

True.

Is it not by reasoning, if at all, that any real
truth becomes manifest to her ?

Yes.

And she reasons best, I suppose, when none
of the senses, whether hearing, or sight, or pain,
or pleasure, harasses her : when she has dis-
missed the body, and released herself as far as
she can from all intercourse or contact with it,
and so, coming to be as much alone with her-
self as is possible, strives after real truth.

That is so.

PHALDO. 1 19

And here too the soul of the philosopher very
greatly despises the body, and flies from it, and
seeks to be alone by herself, does she not ?

Clearly.

And what do you say to the next point, Sim-
mias ? Do we say that there is such a thing
as absolute justice, or not ?

Indeed we do.

And absolute beauty, and absolute good ?

Of course.

Have you ever seen any of them with your
eyes ?

Indeed, I have not, he replied.

Did you ever grasp them with any bodily
sense ? I am speaking of all absolutes, whether
size, or health, or strength ; in a word of the
essence or real being of everything. Is the
very truth of things contemplated by the body ?
Is it not rather the case that the man, who
prepares himself most carefully to apprehend
by his intellect the essence of each thing which
he examines, will come nearest to the know-
ledge of it ?

Certainly.

And will not a man attain to this pure thought
most completely, if he goes to each thing, as far
as he can, with his mind alone, taking neither
sight, nor any other sense along with his reason
in the process of thought, to be an encumbrance? 66.
In every case he will pursue pure and absolute
being, with his pure intellect alone. He will
be set free as far as possible from the eye, and
the ear, and, in short, from the whole body,

120 Pff&DO.

because intercourse with the body troubles the
soul, and hinders her from gaining truth and
wisdom. Is it not he who will attain the know-
ledge of real being, if any man will ?

Your words are admirably true, Socrates,
said Simmias.

XL And, he said, must not all this cause real
philosophers to reflect, and make them say to
each other, It seems that there is a narrow path
which will bring us safely to our journey's end,
with reason as our guide. As long as we have
this body, and an evil of that sort is mingled
with our souls, we shall never fully gain what
we desire ; and that is truth. For the body is
for ever taking up our time with the care which
it needs : and, besides, whenever diseases attack
it, they hinder us in our pursuit of real being.
It fills us with passions, and desires, and fears,
and all manner of phantoms, and much foolish-
ness : and so, as the saying goes, in very truth
we can never think at all for it. It alone, and
its desires, cause wars and factions and battles :
for the origin of all wars is the pursuit of wealth,1
and we are forced to pursue wealth because we
live in slavery to the cares of the body. And
therefore, for all these reasons, we have no
leisure for philosophy. And last of all, if we
ever are free from the body for a time, and then
turn to examine some matter, it falls in our way
at every step of the inquiry, and causes con-
fusion and trouble and panic, so that we cannot
see the truth for it. Verily we have learnt that
1 Cf. Rep. 373 D.

PHsEDO. 121

if we are to have any pure knowledge at all, we
inust be freed from the body ; the soul by her-
self must behold things as they are. Then, it
seems, after we are dead, we shall gain the
wisdom which we desire, and for which we say
we have a passion, but not while we are alive,
as the argument shows. For if it be not pos-
sible to have pure knowledge while the body
is with us, one of two things must be true:
either we cannot gain knowledge at all, or we
can gain it only after death. For then, and
not till then, will the soul exist by herself, 67.
separate from the body. And while we live,
we shall come nearest to knowledge, if we have
no communion or intercourse with the body
beyond what is absolutely necessary, and if we
are not defiled with its nature. We must live
pure from it until God himself releases us.
And when we are thus pure and released from
its follies, we shall dwell, I suppose, with others
who are pure like ourselves, and we shall of
ourselves know all that is pure ; and that may
be the truth. For I think that the impure is
not allowed to attain to the pure. Such, Sim-
mias, I fancy must needs be the language and
the reflections of the true lovers of knowledge.
Do you not agree with me ?

Most assuredly I do, Socrates.

And, my friend, said Socrates, if this be true, X1L
I have good hope that, when I reach the place
whither I am going, I shall there, if anywhere,
gain fully that which we have sought so ear-
nestly in the past. And so I shall set forth

122 PHMDO.

cheerfully on the journey that is appointed me
to-day, and so may every man who thinks that
his mind is prepared and purified.

That is quite true, said Simmias.

And does not the purification consist, as
we have said, in separating the soul from the
body, as far as is possible, and in accustoming
her to collect and rally herself together from
the body on every side, and to dwell alone by
herself as much as she can both now and here-
after, released from the bondage of the body ?

Yes, certainly, he said.

Is not what we call death a release and
separation of the soul from the body ?

Undoubtedly, he replied.

And the true philosopher, we hold, is alone
in his constant desire to set his soul free ?
His study is simply the release and separation
of the soul from the body, is it not ?

Clearly.

Would it not be absurd then, as I began by
saying, for a man to complain at death coming
to him, when in his life he has been preparing
himself to live as nearly in a state of death as
he could ? Would not that be absurd ?

Yes, indeed.

In truth, then, Simmias, he said, the true
philosopher studies to die, and to him of all
men is death least terrible. Now look at the
matter in this way. In everything he is at
enmity with his body, and he longs to possess
his soul alone. Would it not then be most
unreasonable, if he were to fear and complain

PH^EDO. 123

when he has his desire, instead of rejoicing to
go to the place where he hopes to gain the 68.
wisdom that he has passionately longed for all
his life, and to be released from the company
of his enemy ? Many a man has willingly gone
to the other world, when a human love, or wife
or son has died, in the hope of seeing there
those whom he longed for, and of being with
them : and will a man who has a real passion
for wisdom, and a firm hope of really finding
wisdom in the other world and nowhere else,
grieve at death, and not depart rejoicing ? Nay,
my friend, you ought not to think that, if he be
truly a philosopher. He will be firmly convinced
that there and nowhere else will he meet with
wisdom in its purity. And if this be so, would
it not, I repeat, be very unreasonable for such
a man to fear death ?

Yes, indeed, he replied, it would.

Does not this show clearly, he said, that any xiIL
man whom you see grieving at the approach of
death, is after all no lover of wisdom, but a
lover of his body ? He is also, most likely, a
lover either of wealth, or of honour, or, it may
be, of both.

Yes, he said, it is as you say.

Well then, Simmias, he went on, does not
what is called courage belong especially to the
philosopher ?

Certainly I think so, he replied.

And does not temperance, the quality which
even the world calls temperance, and which
means to despise and control and govern the

124 Pff^EDO.

passions — does not temperance belong only to
such men as most despise the body, and pass
their lives in philosophy ?

Of necessity, he replied.

For if you will consider the courage and the
temperance of other men, said he, you will find
that they are strange things.

How so, Socrates ?

You know, he replied, that all other men
regard death as one of the great evils to which
mankind are subject ?

Indeed they do, he said.

And when the brave men of them submit to
death, do not they do so from a fear of still
greater evils ?

Yes.

Then all men but the philosopher are brave
from fear and because they are afraid. Yet it
is rather a strange thing for a man to be brave
out of fear and cowardice.

Indeed it is.

And are not the orderly men of them in
exactly the same case ? Are not they temperate
from a kind of intemperance ? We should say
that this cannot be : but in them this state of
foolish temperance comes to that. They desire
certain pleasures, and fear to lose them ; and so
they abstain from other pleasures because they
are mastered by these. Intemperance is defined
69. to mean being under the dominion of pleasure :
yet they only master certain pleasures because
they are mastered by others. But that is
exactly what I said just now, that, in a way,

125

they are made temperate from intemper-
ance.

It seems to be so.

My dear Simmias, I fear that virtue is noi
really to be bought in this way, by bartering
pleasure for pleasure, and pain for pain, and
fear for fear, and the greater for the less, like
coins. There is only one sterling coin for
which all these things ought to be exchanged,
and that is wisdom. All that is bought and
sold for this and with this, whether courage, or
temperance, or justice, is real : in one word true
virtue cannot be without wisdom, and it matters
nothing whether pleasure, and fear, and all other
such things, are present or absent. But I think
that the vinue which is composed of pleasures
and fears bartered with one another, and severed
from wisdom, is only a shadow of true virtue,
and that it has no freedom, nor health, nor truth.
True virtue in reality is a kind of purifying from
all these things : and temperance, and justice,
and courage, and wisdom itself, are the purifica-
tion. And I fancy that the men who estab-
lished our mysteries had a very real meaning :
in truth they have been telling us in parables all
the time that whosoever comes to Hades unin-
itiated and profane, will lie in the mire ; while
he that has been purified and initiated shall
dwell with the gods. For ' the thyrsus-bearers
are many,' as they say in the mysteries, ' but
the inspired few.' And by these last, I believe,
are meant only the true philosophers. And I
in my life have striven as hard as I was able,

126 PffJEDO.

and have left nothing undone that I might
become one of them. Whether I have striven
in the right way, and whether I have succeeded
or not, I suppose that I shall learn in a little
while, when I reach the other world, if it be
the will of God.

That is my defence, Simmias and Cebes, to
show that I have reason for not being angry
or grieved at leaving you and my masters here.
I believe that in the next world, no less than in
this, I shall meet with good masters and friends,
though the multitude are incredulous of it.
And if I have been more successful with you
in my defence than I was with my Athenian
judges, it is well.

XIV. When Socrates had finished, Cebes replied
to him, and said, I think that for the most part
you are right, Socrates. But men are very
7O. incredulous of what you have said of the soul.
They fear that she will no longer exist anywhere
when she has left the body, but that she will
be destroyed and perish on the very day of
death. They think that the moment that she
is released and leaves the body, she will be
dissolved and vanish away like breath or smoke,
and thenceforward cease to exist at all. If
she were to exist somewhere as a whole, released
from the evils which you enumerated just now,
we should have good reason to hope, Socrates,
that what you say is true. But it will need no
little persuasion and assurance to show that the
soul exists after death, and continues to possess
any power or wisdom.

PHSEDO. 127

True, Cebes, said Socrates ; but what are we
to do ? Do you wish to converse about these
matters and see if what I say is probable ?

I for one, said Cebes, should gladly hear
your opinion about them.

I think, said Socrates, that no one who heard
me now, even if he were a comic poet, would
say that I am an idle talker about things which
do not concern me. So, if you wish it, let us
examine this question.

Let us consider whether or no the souls of XV.
men exist in the next world after death, thus.
There is an ancient belief, which we remember,
that on leaving this world they exist there, and
that they return hither and are born again from
the dead. But if it be true that the living are
born from the dead, our souls must exist in the
other world : otherwise they could not be born
again. It will be a sufficient proof that this is
so if we can really prove that the living are born
only from the dead. But if this is not so, we
shall have to find some other argument.

Exactly, said Cebes.

Well, said he, the easiest way of answering
the question will be to consider it not in relation
to men only, but also in relation to all animals
and plants, and in short to all things that are
generated. Is it the case that everything, which
has an opposite, is generated only from its
opposite. By opposites I mean, the honourable
and the base, the just and the unjust, and so
on in a thousand other instances. Let us con-
sider then whether it is necessary for everything

128 PIf/EDO.

that has an opposite to be generated only from
its own opposite. For instance, when anything
becomes greater, I suppose it must first have
been less and then become greater ?

Yes.

And if a thing becomes less, it must have
71. been greater, and afterwards become less ?

That is so, said he.

And further, the weaker is generated from
the stronger, and the swifter from the slower ?

Certainly.

And the worse is generated from the better,
and the more just from the more unjust ?

Of course.

Then it is sufficiently clear to us that all
things are generated in this way, opposites from
opposites ?

Quite so.

And in every pair of opposites, are there not
two generations between the two members of
the pair, from the one to the other, and then
back again from the other to the first ? Between
the greater and the less are growth and diminu-
tion, and we say that the one grows and the
other diminishes, do we not ?

Yes, he said.

And there is division and composition, and
cold and hot, and so on. In fact is it not a
universal law, even though we do not always
express it in so many words, that opposites are
generated always from one another, and that
there is a process of generation from one to the
other ?

PH&DO. 129

It is, he replied.

Well, said he, is there an opposite to life, in XVI.
the same way that sleep is the opposite of being
awake ?

Certainly, he answered.

What is it ?

Death, he replied.

Then if life and death are opposites, they are
generated the one from the other : they are two,
and between them there are two generations.
Is it not so ?

Of course.

Now, said Socrates, I will explain to you one
of the two pairs of opposites of which I spoke
just now, and its generations, and you shall
explain to me the other. Sleep is the opposite
of waking. From sleep is produced the state
of waking : and from the state of waking is
produced sleep. Their generations are, first,
to fall asleep ; secondly, to awake. Is that
clear ? he asked.

Yes, quite.

Now then, said he, do you tell me about life
and death. Death is the opposite of life, is it
not?

It is.

And they are generated the one from the
other ?

Yes.

Then what is that which is generated from
the living ?

The dead, he replied.

And what is generated from the dead ?
K

130 PH^EDO.

I must admit that it is the living.

Then living things and living men are gener-
ated from the dead, Cebes ?

Clearly, said he.

Then our souls exist in the other world ? he
said.

Apparently.

Now of these two generations the one is
certain ? Death I suppose is certain enough,
is it not ?

Yes, quite, he replied.

What then shall we do ? said he. Shall we
not assign an opposite generation to correspond ?
Or is nature imperfect here ? Must we not
assign some opposite generation to dying?

I think so, certainly, he said.

And what must it be ?

To come to life again.

And if there be such a thing as a return to
72. life, he said, it will be a generation from the
dead to the living, will it not ?

It will, certainly.

Then we are agreed on this point : namely,
that the living are generated from the dead no
less than the dead from the living. But we
agreed that, if this be so, it is a sufficient proof
that the souls of the dead must exist somewhere,
whence they come into being again.

I think, Socrates, that that is the necessary
result of our premises.

XVII. And I think, Cebes, said he, that our con-
clusion has not been an unfair one. For if
opposites did not always correspond with op-

PHMDO. 131

posites as they are generated, moving as it were
round in a circle, and there were generation in
a straight line forward from one opposite only,
with no turning or return to the other, then,
you know, all things would come at length to
have the same form and be in the same state,
and would cease to be generated at all.

What do you mean ? he asked.

It is not at all hard to understand my mean-
ing,- he replied. If, for example, the one
opposite, to go to sleep, existed, without the
corresponding opposite, to wake up, which is
generated from the first, then all nature would
at last make the tale of Endymion meaningless,
and he would no longer be conspicuous ; for
everything else would be in the same state of
sleep that he was in. And if all things were
compounded together and never separated, the
Chaos of Anaxagoras would soon be realised.
Just in the same way, my dear Cebes, if all
things, in which there, is any life, were to die,
and when they were dead were to remain in
that form and not come to life again, would not
the necessary result be that everything at last
would be dead, and nothing alive ? For if
living things were generated from other sources
than death, and were to die, the result is inevit-
able that all things would be consumed by
death. Is it not so ?

It is indeed, I think, Socrates, said Cebes ;
I think that what you say is perfectly true.

Yes, Cebes, he said, I think it is certainly so.
We are not misled into this conclusion. The

132 Pff^EDO.

dead do come to life again, and the living are
generated from them, and the souls of the dead
exist ; and with the souls of the good it is well,
and with the souls of the evil it is evil.
XVIII. And besides, Socrates, rejoined Cebes, if the
doctrine which you are fond of stating, that our
learning is only a process of recollection, be
true, then I suppose we must have learnt at
some former time what we recollect now. And
that would be impossible unless our souls- had
existed somewhere before they came into this
73. human form. So that is another reason for
believing the soul immortal.

But, Cebes, interrupted Simmias, what are
the proofs of that ? Recall them to me : I am
not very clear about them at present.

One argument, answered Cebes, and the
strongest of all, is that if you question men
about anything in the right way, they will answer
you correctly of themselves. But they would
not have been able to do that, unless they had
had within themselves knowledge and right
reason. Again, show them such things as
geometrical diagrams, and the proof of the
doctrine is complete.1

And if that does not convince you, Simmias,
said Socrates, look at the matter in another way
and see if you agree then. You have doubts,

1 For an example of this see Meno, 82 A. seq. , where,
as here, Socrates proves the doctrine of Reminiscence,
and therefore the Immortality of the Soul, by putting
judicious questions about geometry to a slave who was
quite ignorant of geometry, and, with the help of dia-
grams, obtaining from him correct answers.

PH&DO. 133

I know, how what is called knowledge can be
recollection.

Nay, replied Simmias, I do not doubt. But
I want to recollect the argument about recollec-
tion. What Cebes undertook to explain has
nearly brought your theory back to me and
convinced me. But I am none the less ready
to hear how you undertake to explain it.

In this way, he returned. We are agreed,
I suppose, that if a man remembers anything,
he must have known it at some previous time.

Certainly, he said.

And are we agreed that when knowledge
comes in the following way, it is recollection ?
When a man has seen or heard anything, or
has perceived it by some other sense, and then
knows not that thing only, but has also in his
mind an impression of some other thing, of
which the knowledge is quite different, are we
not right in saying that he remembers the thing
of which he has an impression in his mind ?

What do you mean ?

I mean this. The knowledge of a man is
different from the knowledge of a lyre, is it
not?

Certainly.

And you know that when lovers see a lyre,
or a garment, or anything that their favourites
are wont to use, they have this feeling. They
know the lyre, and in their mind they receive
the image of the youth whose the lyre was.
That is recollection. For instance, some one
seeing Simmias often is reminded of Cebes ;

134 PH&DO.

and there are endless examples of the same
thing.

Indeed there are, said Simmias.

Is not that a kind of recollection, he said ;
and more especially when a man has this
feeling with reference to things which the
lapse of time and inattention have made him
forget ?

Yes, certainly, he replied.

Well, he went on, is it possible to recollect
a man on seeing the picture of a horse, or the
picture of a lyre ? or to recall Simmias on see-
ing a picture of Cebes ?

Certainly.

And it is possible to recollect Simmias him-
self on seeing a picture of Simmias ?
74. No doubt, he said.

XIX. Then in all these cases there is recollection
caused by similar objects, and also by dissimilar
objects ?

There is.

But when a man has a recollection caused
by similar objects, will he not have a further
feeling, and consider whether the likeness to
that which he recollects is defective in any way
or not ?

He will, he said.

Now see if this is true, he went on. Do we
not believe in the existence of equality, — not
the equality of pieces of wood, or of stones ;
but something beyond that, — equality in the
abstract ? Shall we say that there is such a
thing, or not ?

Pff&DO. 135

Yes indeed, said Simmias, most emphatically
we will.

And do we know what this abstract equality
is?

Certainly, he replied.

Where did we get the knowledge of it ? Was
it not from seeing the equal pieces of wood,
and stones, and the like, which we were speak-
ing of just now ? Did we not form from them
the idea of abstract equality, which is different
from them ? Or do you think that it is not
different ? Consider the question in this way.
Do not equal pieces of wood and stones appear
to us sometimes equal, and sometimes unequal,
though in fact they remain the same all the
time ?

Certainly they do.

But did absolute equals ever seem to you to
be unequal, or abstract equality to be inequality?

No, never, Socrates.

Then equal things, he said, are not the same
as abstract equality ?

No, certainly not, Socrates.

Yet it was from these equal things, he said,
which are different from abstract equality, that
you have conceived and got your knowledge of
abstract equality ?

That is quite true, he replied.

And that whether it is like them or unlike
them ?

Certainly.

But that makes no difference, he said. As
long as the sight of one thing brings another

136 PJf^EDO.

thing to your mind, there must be recollection,
whether or no the two things are like.

That is so.

Well then, said he, do the equal pieces of
wood, and other similar equal things, of which
we have been speaking, affect us at all in this
way ? Do they seem to us to be equal, in the
way that abstract equality is equal ? Do they
come short of being like abstract equality, or
not?

Indeed, they come very short of it, he replied.

Are we agreed about this ? A man sees some-
thing and thinks to himself, ' This thing that I
see aims at being like some other thing ; but
it comes short, and cannot be like that other
thing; it is inferior:' must not the man who
thinks that, have known at some previous time
that other thing, which he says that it resembles,
and to which it is inferior?

He must.

Well, have we ourselves had the same sort
of feeling with reference to equal things, and to
abstract equality ?

Yes, certainly.

75. Then we must have had knowledge of equality
before we first saw equal things, and perceived
that they all strive to be like equality, and all
come short of it.

That is so.

And we are agreed also that we have not,
nor could we have, obtained the idea of equality
except from sight or touch or some other sense :
the same is true of all the senses.

PIfsEDO. 137

Yes, Socrates, for the purposes of the argu-
ment that is so.

At any rate it is by the senses that we must
perceive that all sensible objects strive to
resemble absolute equality, and are inferior to
it. Is not that so ?

Yes.

Then before we began to see, and to hear,
and to use the other senses, we must have re-
ceived the knowledge of the nature of abstract
and real equality ; otherwise we could not have
compared equal sensible objects with abstract
equality, and seen that the former in all cases
strive to be like the latter, though they are
always inferior to it ?

That is the necessary consequence of what
we have been saying, Socrates.

Did we not see, and hear, and possess the
other senses as soon as we were born ?

Yes, certainly.

And we must have received the knowledge
of abstract equality before we had these
senses ?

Yes.

Then, it seems, we must have received that
knowledge before we were born ?

It does.

Now if we received this knowledge before XX.
our birth, and were born with it, we knew, both
before, and at the moment of our birth, not only
the equal, and the greater, and the less, but
also everything of the same kind, did we not ?
Our present reasoning does not refer only to

138 PH&DO.

equality. It refers just as much to absolute
good, and absolute beauty, and absolute justice,
and absolute holiness ; in short, I repeat, to
everything which we mark with the name of
the real, in the questions and answers of our
dialectic. So we must have received our
knowledge of all realities before we were
born.

That is so.

And we must always be born with this know-
ledge, and must always retain it throughout life,
if we have not each time forgotten it, after hav-
ing received it. For to know means to receive
and retain knowledge, and not to have lost it.
Do not we mean by forgetting the loss of
knowledge, Simmias ?

Yes, certainly, Socrates, he said.

But, I suppose, if it be the case that we lost
at birth the knowledge which we received
before we were born, and then afterwards, by
using our senses on the objects of sense, re-
covered the knowledge which we had previously
possessed, then what we call learning is the
recovering of knowledge which is already ours
And are we not right in calling that recollec-
tion ?

Certainly.

For we have found it possible to perceive a
thing by sight, or hearing, or any other sense,
and thence to form a notion of some other
thing, like or unlike, which had been forgotten,
but with which this thing was associated. And
therefore, I say, one of two things must be true.

PHsEDO. 139

Either we are all born with this knowledge, and
retain it all our life ; or, after birth, those whom
we say are learning are only recollecting, and
our knowledge is recollection.

Yes indeed, that is undoubtedly true, Socrates.

Then which do you choose, Simmias ? Are XXI.
we born with knowledge, or do we recollect the
things of which we have received knowledge
before our birth ?

I cannot say at present, Socrates.

Well, have you an opinion about this ques-
tion ? Can a man who knows give an account
of what he knows, or not ? What do you
think about that ?

Yes, of course he can, Socrates.

And do you think that every one can give
an account of the ideas of which we have been
speaking ?

I wish I did, indeed, said Simmias : but I
am very much afraid that by this time to-morrow
there will no longer be any man living able to
do so as it should be done.

Then, Simmias, he said, you do not think
that all men know these things ?

Certainly not.

Then they recollect what they once learned ?

Necessarily.

And when did our souls gain this knowledge?
It cannot have been after we were born men.

No, certainly not.

Then it was before ?

Yes.

Then, Simmias, our souls existed formerly,

140 PH&DO.

apart from our bodies, and possessed intelli-
gence before they came into man's shape.1

Unless we receive this knowledge at the
moment of birth, Socrates. That time still
remains.

Well, my friend : and at what other time do
we lose it ? We agreed just now that we are
not born with it : do we lose it at the same
moment that we gain it ? or can you suggest
any other time ?

I cannot, Socrates. I did not see that I was
talking nonsense.

Then, Simmias, he said, is not this the truth ?
XXII. If, as we are for ever repeating, beauty, and
good, and the other ideas2 really exist, and if
we refer all the objects of sensible perception
to these ideas which were formerly ours, and
which we find to be ours still, and compare
sensible objects with them, then, just as they
exist, our souls must have existed before ever
we were born. But if they do not exist, then
our reasoning will have been thrown away.
Is it so ? If these ideas exist, does it not at

1 Cf. Wordsworth's famous Ode on Intimations of
Immortality. It must be noticed that in one respect
Wordsworth exactly reverses Plato's theory. With
Wordsworth ' ' Heaven lies about us in our infancy " :
and as we grow to manhood we gradually forget it.
With Plato, we lose the knowledge which we possessed
in a prior state of existence, at birth, and recover it, as
we grow up. [Mr. Archer-Hind has a similar remark
in his note on this passage.]

2 For a fuller account of the ideas, see post. ch.
xlix. , 100 B. seq.

PH^EDO. 141

once follow that our souls must have existed
before we were born, and if they do not exist,
then neither did our souls ?

Admirably put, Socrates, said Simmias. I
think that the necessity is the same for the one
as for the other. The reasoning has reached 77.
a place of safety in the common proof of the
existence of our souls before we were born,
and of the existence of the ideas of which you
spoke. Nothing is so evident to me as that
beauty, and good, and the other ideas, which you
spoke of just now, have a very real existence
indeed. Your proof is quite sufficient for me.

But what of Cebes ? said Socrates. I must
convince Cebes too.

I think that he is satisfied, said Simmias,
though he is the most sceptical of men in
argument. But I think that he is perfectly
convinced that our souls existed before we were
born.

But I do not think myself, Socrates, he con- XXIII.
tinued, that you have proved that the soul will
continue to exist when we are dead. The
common fear which Cebes spoke of, that she
may be scattered to the winds at death, and
that death may be the end of her existence, still
stands in the way. Assuming that the soul is
generated and comes together from some other
elements, and exists before she ever enters the
human body, why should she not come to an
end and be destroyed, after she has entered
into the body, when she is released from it ?

You are right, Simmias, said Cebes. I think

142 PHMDO.

that only half the required proof has been given.
It has been shown that our souls existed before
we were born ; but it must also be shown that
our souls will continue to exist after we are
dead, no less than that they existed before we
were born, if the proof is to be complete.

That has been shown already, Simmias and
Cebes, said Socrates, if you will combine this
reasoning with our previous conclusion, that all
life is generated from death. For if the soul
exists in a previous state, and if when she
comes into life and is born, she can only be born
from death, and from a state of death, must she
not exist after death too, since she has to be
born again ? So the point which you speak of
has been already proved.

XXIV. Still I think that you and Simmias would be
glad to discuss this question further. Like
children, you are afraid that the wind will really
blow the soul away and disperse her when she
leaves the body ; especially if a man happens
to die in a storm and not in a calm.

Cebes laughed and said, Try and convince
us as if we were afraid, Socrates ; or rather, do
not think that we are afraid ourselves. Per-
haps there is a child within us who has these
fears. Let us try and persuade him not to be
afraid of death, as if it were a bugbear.

You must charm him every day, until you
have charmed him away, said Socrates.
78. And where shall we find a good charmer,
Socrates, he asked, now that you are leaving
us ?

PH&DO. 143

Hellas is a large country, Cebes, he replied,
and good men may doubtless be found in it ;
and the nations of the Barbarians are many.
You must search them all through for such a
charmer, sparing neither money nor labour ;
for there is nothing on which you could spend
money more profitably. And you must search
for him among yourselves too, for you will
hardly find a better charmer than yourselves.

That shall be done, said Cebes. But let us
return to the point where we left off, if you will.

Yes, I will : why not ?

Very good, he replied.

Well, said Socrates, must we not ask our- XXV.
selves this question ? What kind of thing is
liable to suffer dispersion, and for what kind of
thing have we to fear dispersion ? And then
we must see whether the soul belongs to that
kind or not, and be confident or afraid about
our own souls accordingly.

That is true, he answered.

Now is it not the compound and composite
which is naturally liable to be dissolved in
the same way in which it was compounded ?
And is not what is uncompounded alone not
liable to dissolution, if anything is not ?

I think that that is so, said Cebes.

And what always remains in the same state
and unchanging is most likely to be uncom-
pounded, and what is always changing and never
the same is most likely to be compounded, I
suppose ?

Yes, I think so.

144 PH&DO.

Now let us return to what we were speaking
of before in the discussion, he said. Does the
being, which in our dialectic we define as mean-
ing absolute existence, remain always in exactly
the same state, or does it change ? Do absolute
equality, absolute beauty, and every other abso-
lute existence, admit of any change at all ? or
does absolute existence in each case, being
essentially uniform, remain the same and un-
changing, and never in any case admit of any
sort or kind of change whatsoever ?

It must remain the same and unchanging,
Socrates, said Cebes.

And what of the many beautiful things, such
as men, and horses, and garments, and the like,
and of all which bears the names of the ideas,
whether equal, or beautiful, or anything else ?
Do they remain the same, or is it exactly the
opposite with them ? In short, do they never
remain the same at all, either in themselves or
in their relations ?

These things, said Cebes, never remain the
same.

79. You can touch them, and see them, and
perceive them with the other senses, while you
can grasp the unchanging only by the reasoning
of the intellect. These latter are invisible and
not seen. Is it not so ?

That is perfectly true, he said.

XXVI. Let us assume then, he said, if you will, that
there are two kinds of existence, the one visible,
the other invisible.

Yes, he said.

PH&DO. 145

And the invisible is unchanging, while the
visible is always changing.

Yes, he said again.

Are not we men made up of body and soul ?

There is nothing else, he replied.

And which of these kinds of existence should
we say that the body is most like, and most
akin to ?

The visible, he replied ; that is quite obvious.

And the soul ? Is that visible or invisible ?

It is invisible to man, Socrates, he said.

But we mean by visible and invisible, visible
and invisible to man ; do we not ?

Yes ; that is what we mean.

Then what do we say of the soul ? Is it
visible, or not visible ?

It is not visible.

Then is it invisible ?

Yes.

Then the soul is more like the invisible than
the body ; and the body is like the visible.

That is necessarily so, Socrates.

Have we not also said that, when the soul XXVIL
employs the body in any inquiry, and makes
use of sight, or hearing, or any other sense, —
for inquiry with the body means inquiry with
the senses, — she is dragged away by it to the
things which never remain the same, and
wanders about blindly, and becomes confused
and dizzy, like a drunken man, from dealing
with things that are ever changing ?

Certainly.

But when she investigates any question by
L

146 PH&DO.

herself, she goes away to the pure, and eternal,
and immortal, and unchangeable, to which she
is akin, and so she comes to be ever with it, as
soon as she is by herself, and can be so : and
then she rests from her wanderings, and dwells
with it unchangingly, for she is dealing with
what is unchanging? And is not this state of
the soul called wisdom ?

Indeed, Socrates, you speak well and truly, he
replied.

Which kind of existence do you think from
our former and our present arguments that the
soul is more like and more akin to ?

I think, Socrates, he replied, that after this
inquiry the very dullest man would agree that
the soul is infinitely more like the unchangeable
than the changeable.

And the body ?

That is like the changeable.

XXVIII. Consider the matter in yet another way.
80. When the soul and the body are united, nature
ordains the one to be a slave and to be ruled,
and the other to be master and to rule. Tell
me once again, which do you think is like the
divine, and which is like the mortal ? Do you
not think that the divine naturally rules and
has authority, and that the mortal naturally is
ruled and is a slave ?

I do.

Then which is the soul like ?

That is quite plain, Socrates. The soul is
like the divine, and the body is like the mortal.

Now tell me, Cebes ; is the result of all that

PH^EDO. 147

we have said that the soul is most like the
divine, and the immortal, and the intelligible,
and the uniform, and the indissoluble, and the
unchangeable ; while the body is most like the
human, and the mortal, and the unintelligible,
and the multiform, and the dissoluble, and the
changeable ? Have we any other argument to
show that this is not so, my dear Cebes ?

We have not.

Then if this is so, is it not the nature of the XXIX.
body to be dissolved quickly, and of the soul to
be wholly or very nearly indissoluble?1

Certainly.

You observe, he said, that after a man is
dead, the visible part of him, his body, which
lies in the visible world, and which we call the
corpse, which is subject to dissolution and de-
composition, is not dissolved and decomposed
at once ? It remains as it was for a consider-
able time, and even for a long time, if a man
dies with his body in good condition, and in the
vigour of life. And when the body falls in and
is embalmed, like the mummies of Egypt, it
remains nearly entire for an immense time.
And should it decay, yet some parts of it, such
as the bones and muscles, may almost be said
to be immortal. Is it not so ?

Yes.

1 Compare Bishop Butler's Analogy, Pt. i. ch. i,
where a similar argument is used : the soul being indis-
cerptible is immortal. The argument based on the
' divine ' nature of the soul is, of course, also a modern
one. See^. Lord Tennyson, In Menwriam, LIV. -LVI.

148 PHMDO.

And shall we believe that the soul, which is
invisible, and which goes hence to a place that
is like herself, glorious, and pure, and invisible,
to Hades, which is rightly called the unseen
world, to dwell with the good and wise God,
whither, if it be the will of God, my soul too
must shortly go ; — shall we believe that the
soul, whose nature is so glorious, and pure, and
invisible, is blown away by the winds and
perishes as soon as she leaves the body, as the
world says ? Nay, dear Cebes and Simmias,
it is not so. I will tell you what happens to a
soul which is pure at her departure, and which
in her life has had no intercourse that she could
avoid with the body, and so draws after her,
when she dies, no taint of the body, but has
shunned it, and gathered herself into herself,
for such has been her constant study ; — and
that only means that she has loved wisdom
81 rightly, and has truly practised how to die. Is
not this the practice of death ?

Yes, certainly.

Does not the soul, then, which is in that
state, go away to the invisible that is like her-
self, and to the divine, and the immortal, and
the wise, where she is released from error, and
folly, and fear, and fierce passions, and all the
other evils that fall to the lot of men, and is
happy, and for the rest of time lives in very
truth with the gods, as they say that the
initiated do ? Shall we affirm this, Cebes ?

Yes, certainly, said Cebes.
XXX. But if she be defiled and impure when she

PH&DO. 149

leaves the body, from being ever with it, and
serving it and loving it, and from being besotted
by it, and by its desires and pleasures, so that
she thinks nothing true, but what is bodily, and
can be touched, and seen, and eaten, and drunk,
and used for men's lusts ; if she has learnt to
hate, and tremble at, and fly from what is dark
and invisible to the eye, and intelligible and
apprehended by philosophy — do you think
that a soul which is in that state will be pure
and without alloy at her departure ?

No, indeed, he replied.

She is penetrated, I suppose, by the cor-
poreal, which the unceasing intercourse and
company and care of the body has made a part
of her nature.

Yes.

And, my dear friend, the corporeal must be
burdensome, and heavy, and earthy, and visible ;
and it is by this that such a soul is weighed
down and dragged back to the visible world,
because she is afraid of the invisible world of
Hades, and haunts, it is said, the graves and
tombs, where shadowy forms of souls have been
seen, which are the phantoms of souls which
were impure at their release, and still cling to
the visible ; which is the reason why they are

seen.

That is likely enough, Socrates.

That is likely, certainly, Cebes : and these
are not the souls of the good, but of the evil,
which are compelled to wander in such places
1 Professor Jowett compares Milton, Comus, 463 foil.

150 PH&DO.

as a punishment for the wicked lives that they
have lived ; and their wanderings continue
until, from the desire for the corporeal that
clings to them, they are again imprisoned in a
body.

XXXI. And, he continued, they are imprisoned,
probably, in the bodies of animals with habits
similar to the habits which were theirs in their
lifetime.

What do you mean by that, Socrates ?

I mean that men who have practised un-
bridled gluttony, and wantonness, and drunken-
ness, probably enter the bodies of asses, and
82. suchlike animals. Do you not think so ?

Certainly that is very likely.

And those who have chosen injustice, and
tyranny, and robbery, enter the bodies of wolves,
and hawks, and kites. Where else should we
say that such souls go ?

No doubt, said Cebes, they go into such
animals.

In short, it is quite plain, he said, whither
each soul goes ; each enters an animal with
habits like its own.

Certainly, he replied, that is so.

And of these, he said, the happiest, who go
to the best place, are those who have prac-
tised the popular and social virtues which are
called temperance and justice, and which come
from habit and practice, without philosophy or
reason ?

And why are they the happiest ?

Because it is probable that they return into

151

a mild and social nature like their own, such
as that of bees, or wasps, or ants ; or, it may
be, into the bodies of men, and that from them
are made worthy citizens.

Very likely.

But none but the philosopher or the lover of XXXII.
knowledge, who is wholly pure when he goes
hence, is permitted to go to the race of the
gods ; and therefore, my friends Simmias and
Cebes, the true philosopher is temperate, and
refrains from all the pleasures of the body, and
does not give himself up to them. It is not
squandering his substance and poverty that he
fears, as the multitude and the lovers of wealth
do ; nor again does he dread the dishonour and
disgrace of wickedness, like the lovers of power
and honour. It is not for these reasons, that
he is temperate.

No, it would be unseemly in him if he were,
Socrates, said Cebes.

Indeed it would, he replied : and therefore
all those who have any care for their souls, and
who do not spend their lives in forming and
moulding their bodies, bid farewell to such
persons, and do not walk in their ways, think-
ing that they know not whither they are going.
They themselves turn and follow whithersoever
philosophy leads them, for they believe that
they ought not to resist philosophy, or its
deliverance and purification.

How, Socrates ?

I will tell you, he replied. The lovers of XXXIII.
knowledge know that when philosophy receives

152 PH&DO.

the soul, she is fast bound in the body, and
fastened to it : she is unable to contemplate
what is, by herself, or except through the bars
of her prison - house, the body ; and she is
wallowing in utter ignorance. And philosophy
sees that the dreadful thing about the imprison-
ment is that it is caused by lust, and that the
83. captive herself is an accomplice in her own
captivity. The lovers of knowledge, I repeat,
know that philosophy takes the soul when she
is in this condition, and gently encourages her,
and strives to release her from her captivity,
showing her that the perceptions of the eye, and
the ear, and the other senses, are full of deceit,
and persuading her to stand aloof from the
senses, and to use them only when she must,
and exhorting her to rally and gather herself
together, and to trust only to herself, and to the
real existence which she of her own self appre-
hends : and to believe that nothing which is
subject to change, and which she perceives by
other faculties, has any truth, for such things
are visible and sensible, while what she herself
sees is apprehended by reason and invisible.
The soul of the true philosopher thinks that it
would be wrong to resist this deliverance from
captivity, and therefore she holds aloof, so far
as she can, from pleasure, and desire, and pain,
and fear ; for she reckons that when a man has
vehement pleasure, or fear, or pain, or desire, he
suffers from them, not merely the evils which
might be expected, such as sickness, or some
loss arising from the indulgence of his desires ;

153

he suffers what is the greatest and last of evils,
and does not take it into account.

What do you mean, Socrates ? asked Cebes.

I mean that when the soul of any man feels
vehement pleasure or pain, she is forced at the
same time to think that the object, whatever it
be, of these sensations is the most distinct and
truest, when it is not. Such objects are chiefly
visible ones, are they not ?

They are.

And is it not in this state that the soul is
most completely in bondage to the body ?

How so ?

Because every pleasure and pain has a kind
of nail, and nails and pins her to the body, and
gives her a bodily nature, making her think
that whatever the body says is true. And so,
from having the same fancies and the same
pleasures as the body, she is obliged, I suppose,
to come to have the same ways, and way of life :
she must always be defiled with the body when
she leaves it, and cannot be pure when she
reaches the other world ; and so she soon falls
back into another body, and takes root in it,
like seed that is sown. Therefore she loses all
part in intercourse with the divine, and pure,
and uniform.

That is very true, Socrates, said Cebes.

It is for these reasons then, Cebes, that the XXXIV,
real lovers of knowledge are temperate and
brave ; and not for the world's reasons. Or
do you think so ? 84.

No, certainly I do not.

154 P HAL DO.

Assuredly not.1 The soul of a philosopher
will consider that it is the office of philosophy
to set her free. She will know that she must
not give herself up once more to the bondage
of pleasure and pain, from which philosophy is
releasing her, and, like Penelope, do a work,
only to undo it continually, weaving instead of
unweaving her web. She gains for herself
peace from these things, and follows reason
and ever abides in it, contemplating what is
true and divine and real, and fostered up by
them. So she thinks that she should live in
this life, and when she dies she believes that
she will go to what is akin to and like herself,
and be released from human ills. A soul,
Simmias and Cebes, that has been so nurtured,
and so trained, will never fear lest she should
be torn in pieces at her departure from the
body, and blown away by the winds, and vanish,
and utterly cease to exist.

XXXV. At these words there was a long silence.
Socrates himself seemed to be absorbed in his
argument, and so were most of us. Cebes and
Simmias conversed for a little by themselves.
When Socrates observed them, he said : What ?
Do you think that our reasoning is incomplete ?
It still offers many points of doubt and attack,
if it is to be examined thoroughly. If you are
discussing another question, I have nothing to
say. But if you have any difficulty about this
one, do not hesitate to tell me what it is, and,
if you are of opinion that the argument should
1 Reading, ov yap' d\X', with Stallbaum.

155

be stated in a better way, explain your views
yourselves : and take me along with you, if
you think that you will be more successful in
my company.

Simmias replied : Well, Socrates, I will tell
you the truth. Each of us has a difficulty, and
each has been pushing on the other, and urging
him to ask you about it. We were anxious
to hear what you have to say ; but we were
reluctant to trouble you, for we were afraid
that it might be unpleasant to you to be asked
questions now.

Socrates smiled at this answer, and said,
Dear me! Simmias; I shall find it hard to
convince other people that I do not consider
my fate a misfortune, when I cannot convince
even you of it, and you are afraid that I am
more peevish now than I used to be. You
seem to think me inferior in prophetic power
to the swans, which, when they find that they
have to die, sing more loudly than they ever
sang before, for joy that they are about to depart 85.
into the presence of God, whose servants they
are. The fear which men have of death them-
selves makes them speak falsely of the swans,
and they say that the swan is wailing at its
death, and that it sings loud for grief. They
forget that no bird sings when it is hungry, or
cold, or in any pain ; not even the nightingale,
nor the swallow, nor the hoopoe, which, they
assert, wail and sing for grief. But I think
that neither these birds nor the swan sing for
grief. I believe that they have a prophetic

156 PH^EDO.

power and foreknowledge of the good things in
the next world, for they are Apollo's birds : and
so they sing and rejoice on the day of their
death, more than in all their life. And I believe
that I myself am a fellow slave with the swans,
and consecrated to the service of the same God,
and that I have prophetic power from my master
no less than they ; and that I am not more
despondent than they are at leaving this life.
So, as far as vexing me goes, you may talk to
me and ask questions as you please, as long as
the Eleven of the Athenians 1 will let you.

Good, said Simmias ; I will tell you my
difficulty, and Cebes will tell you why he is
dissatisfied with your statement. I think, Soc-
rates, and I daresay you think so too, that it is
very difficult, and perhaps impossible, to obtain
clear knowledge about these matters in this life.
Yet I should hold him to be a very poor creature
who did not test what is said about them in
every way, and persevere until he had examined
the question from every side, and could do no
more. It is our duty to do one of two things.
We must learn, or we must discover for our-
selves, the truth of these matters ; or, if that be
impossible, we must take the best and most
irrefragable of human doctrines, and embarking
on that, as on a raft, risk the voyage of life,2
unless a stronger vessel, some divine word,
could be found, on which we might take our

1 Officials whose duty it was to superintend executions.
Cp. ante, 59. E.

2 See Bishop Butler's Analogy, Introduction.

Pff^DO. 157

journey more safely and more securely. And
now, after what you have said, I shall not be
ashamed to put a question to you : and then
I shall not have to blame myself hereafter for
not having said now what I think. Cebes and
I have been considering your argument ; and
we think that it is hardly sufficient.

I daresay you are right, my friend, said XXXVI.
Socrates. But tell me, where is it insufficient?

To me it is insufficient, he replied, because
the very same argument might be used of a
harmony, and a lyre, and its strings. It might
be said that the harmony in a tuned lyre is
something unseen, and incorporeal, and per-
fectly beautiful, and divine, while the lyre and its 86.
strings are corporeal, and with the nature of
bodies, and compounded, and earthly, and akin
to the mortal. Now suppose that, when the lyre
is broken and the strings are cut or snapped, a
man were to press the same argument that you
have used, and were to say that the harmony
cannot have perished, and that it must still exist :
for it cannot possibly be that the lyre and the
strings, with their mortal nature, continue to
exist, though those strings have been broken,
while the harmony, which is of the same nature
as the divine and the immortal, and akin to
them, has perished, and perished before the
mortal lyre. He would say that the harmony
itself must still exist somewhere, and that the
wood and the strings will rot away before any-
thing happens to it. And I think, Socrates,
that you too must be aware that many of us

158 PH^EDO.

believe the soul to be most probably a mixture
and harmony of the elements by which our
body is, as it were, strung and held together,
such as heat and cold, and dry and wet, and
the like, when they are mixed together well and
in due proportion. Now if the soul is a har-
mony, it is clear that, when the body is relaxed
out of proportion, or over-strung by disease or
other evils, the soul, though most divine, must
perish at once, like other harmonies of sound
and of all works of art, while what remains of
each body must remain for a long time, until it
be burnt or rotted away. What then shall we
say to a man who asserts that the soul, being a
mixture of the elements of the body, perishes
first, at what is called death ?

XXXVII. Socrates looked keenly at us, as he often
used to do, and smiled. Simmias' objection is
a fair one, he said. If any of you is readier
than I am, why does he not answer ? For
Simmias looks like a formidable assailant. But
before we answer him, I think that we had
better hear what fault Cebes has to find with
my reasoning, and so gain time to consider our
reply. And then, when we have heard them
both, we must either give in to them, if they
seem to harmonise, or, if they do not, we must
proceed to argue in defence of our reasoning.
Come, Cebes, what is it that troubles you, and
makes you doubt ?

I will tell you, replied Cebes. I think that

the argument is just where it was, and still open

87. to our former objection. You have shown very

PHsEDO. 159

cleverly, and, if it is not arrogant to say so,
quite conclusively, that our souls existed before
they entered the human form. I don't re-
tract my admission on that point. But I am
not convinced that they will continue to exist
after we are dead. I do not agree with Simmias'
objection, that the soul is not stronger and
more lasting than the body : I think that it is
very much superior in those respects. ' Well,
then,' the argument might reply, ' do you still
doubt, when you see that the weaker part of
a man continues to exist after his death ?
Do you not think that the more lasting part
of him must necessarily be preserved for as
long ? ' See, therefore, if there is anything in
what I say ; for I think that I, like Simmias,
shall best express my meaning in a figure. It
seems to me that a man might use an argument
similar to yours, to prove that a weaver, who
had died in old age, had not in fact perished, but
was still alive somewhere ; on the ground that
the garment, which the weaver had woven for
himself and used to wear, had not perished or
been destroyed. And if any one were incredu-
lous, he might ask whether a human being, or
a garment constantly in use and wear, lasts the
longest ; and on being told that a human being
lasts much the longest, he might think that he
had shown beyond all doubt that the man was
safe, because what lasts a shorter time than the
man had not perished. But that, I suppose, is
not so, Simmias ; for you too must examine
what I say. Every one would understand that

160 PHMDO.

such an argument was simple nonsense. This
weaver wove himself many such garments and
wore them out ; he outlived them all but the
last, but he perished before that one. Yet a
man is in no wise inferior to his cloak, or weaker
than it, on that account. And I think that the
soul's relation to the body may be expressed in a
similar figure. Why should not a man very
reasonably say in just the same way that the
soul lasts a long time, while the body is weaker
and lasts a shorter time ? But, he might go
on, each soul wears out many bodies, especially
if she lives for many years. For if the body is
in a state of flux and decay in the man's life-
time, and the soul is ever repairing the worn-
out part, it will surely follow that the soul, on
perishing, will be clothed in her last robe, and
perish before that alone. But when the soul
has perished, then the body will show its
weakness and quickly rot away. So as yet we
have no right to be confident, on the strength
of this argument, that our souls continue to
88. exist after we are dead. And a man might con-
cede even more than this to an opponent who
used your argument ;l he might admit not only
that our souls existed in the period before we
were born, but also that there is no reason why
some of them should not continue to exist in
the future, and often come into being, and die
again, after we are dead ; for the soul is strong
enough by nature to endure coming into being
many times. He might grant that, without
1 Reading T$ \eyovri & crv \tyeis (Schanz).

PH&DO. 161

conceding that she suffers no harm in all these
births, or that she is not at last wholly destroyed
at one of the deaths ; and he might say that no
man knows when this death and dissolution of
the body, which brings destruction to the soul,
will be, for it is impossible for any man to find
out that. But if this is true, a man's confidence
about death must be an irrational confidence,
unless he can prove that the soul is wholly
indestructible and immortal. Otherwise every
one who is dying must fear that his soul will
perish utterly this time in her separation from
the body.

It made us all very uncomfortable to listen XXXVIII.
to them, as we afterwards said to each other.
We had been fully convinced by the previous
argument ; and now they seemed to overturn
our conviction, and to make us distrust all the
arguments that were to come, as well as the
preceding ones, and to doubt if our judgment
was worth anything, or even if certainty could
be attained at all.

Ech. By the gods, Pha?do, I can understand
your feelings very well. I myself felt inclined
while you were speaking to ask myself, ' Then
what reasoning are we to believe in future ?
That of Socrates was quite convincing, and
now it has fallen into discredit.' For the
doctrine that our soul is a harmony has always
taken a wonderful hold of me, and your mention-
ing it reminded me that I myself had held it.
And now I must begin again and find some
other reasoning which shall convince me that
M

162 PffsEDO.

a man's soul does not die with him at his death.
So tell me, I pray you, how did Socrates pursue
the argument ? Did he show any signs of
uneasiness, as you say that you did, or did he
come to the defence of his argument calmly ?
And did he defend it satisfactorily or no ? Tell
me the whole story as exactly as you can.
89. Phtzdo. I have often, Echecrates, wondered at
Socrates ; but I never admired him more than
I admired him then. There was nothing very
strange in his having an answer : what I chiefly
wondered at was, first, the kindness and good-
nature and respect with which he listened to
the young men's objections ; and, secondly, the
quickness with which he perceived their effect
upon us ; and, lastly, how well he healed our
wounds, and rallied us as if we were beaten and
flying troops, and encouraged us to follow him,
and to examine the reasoning with him.

Ech. How?

Phcedo. I will tell you. I was sitting by the
bed on a stool at his right hand, and his seat
was a good deal higher than mine. He stroked
my head and gathered up the hair on my neck
in his hand — you know he used often to play
with my hair — and said, To-morrow, Phaedo,
I daresay you will cut off these beautiful locks.

I suppose so, Socrates, I replied.

You will not, if you take my advice.

Why not ? I asked.

You and I will cut off our hair to-day, he
said, if our argument be dead indeed, and we
cannot bring it to life again. And I, if I were

PH^DO. 163

you, and the argument were to escape me,
would swear an oath, as the Argives did, not
to wear my hair long again, until I "had renewed
the fight and conquered the argument of Simmias
and Cebes.

But Heracles himself, they say, is not a
match for two, I replied.

Then summon me to aid you, as your lolaus,
while there is still light.

Then I summon you, not as Heracles
summoned lolaus, but as lolaus might summon
Heracles.

It will be the same, he replied. But first let XXXIX.
us take care not to make a mistake.

What mistake ? I asked.

The mistake of becoming misologists, or
haters of reasoning, as men become misan-
thropists, he replied : for to hate reasoning is
the greatest evil that can happen to us. Miso-
logy and misanthropy both come from similar
causes. The latter arises out of the implicit
and irrational confidence which is placed in
a man, who is believed by his friend to be
thoroughly true and sincere and trustworthy,
and who is soon afterwards discovered to be a
bad man and untrustworthy. This happens
again and again ; and when a man has had
this experience many times, particularly at
the hands of those whom he has believed to
be his nearest and dearest friends, and he has
quarrelled with many of them, he ends by hating
all men, and thinking that there is no good at
all in any one. Have you not seen this happen?

164 PHJZDO.

Yes, certainly, said I.

Is it not discreditable ? he said. Is it not
clear that sach a man tries to deal with men
without understanding human nature ? Had
he understood it he would have known that,
9O. in fact, good men and bad men are very few
indeed, and that the majority of men are
neither one nor the other.

What do you mean ? I asked.

Just what is true of extremely large and
extremely small things, he replied. What is
rarer than to find a man, or a dog, or anything
else which is either extremely large or ex-
tremely small ? Or again, what is rarer than
to find a man who is extremely swift or slow,
or extremely base or honourable, or extremely
black or white ? Have you not noticed that in
all these cases the extremes are rare and few,
and that the average specimens are abundant
and many ?

Yes, certainly, I replied.

And in the same way, if there were a com-
petition in wickedness, he said, don't you think
that the leading sinners would be found to be
very few ?

That is likely enough, said I.

Yes, it is, he replied. But this is not the
point in which arguments are like men : it was
you who led me on to discuss this point. The
analogy is this. When a man believes some
reasoning to be true, though he does not under-
stand the art of reasoning, and then soon after-
wards, rightly or wrongly, comes to think that

Pff^DO. 165

it is false, and this happens to him time after
time, he ends by disbelieving in reasoning alto-
gether. You know that persons who spend
their time in disputation, come at last to think
themselves the wisest of men, and to imagine
that they alone have discovered that there is
no soundness or certainty anywhere, either in
reasoning or in things ; and that all existence
is in a state of perpetual flux, like the currents
of the Euripus, and never remains still for a
moment.

Yes, I replied, that is certainly true.

And, Phasdo, he said, if there be a system of
reasoning which is true, and certain, and which
our minds can grasp, it would be very lament-
able that a man, who has met with some of
these arguments which at one time seem true
and at another false, should at last, in the bitter-
ness of his heart gladly put all the blame on
the reasoning, instead of on himself and his own
unskilfulness, and spend the rest of his life in
hating and reviling reasoning, and lose the
truth and knowledge of reality.

Indeed, I replied, that would be very lament-
able.

First then, he said, let us be careful not to XL.
admit into our souls the notion that all reason-
ing is very likely unsound : let us rather think
that we ourselves are not yet sound. And we
must strive earnestly like men to become sound,
you, my friends, for the sake of all your future
life ; and I, because of my death. For I am 91.
afraid that at present I can hardly look at

166 PHsEDO,

death like a philosopher ; I am in a conten-
tious mood, like the uneducated persons who
never give a thought to the truth of the
question about which they are disputing, but
are only anxious to persuade their audience that
they themselves are right. And I think that
to-day I shall differ from them only in one
thing. I shall not be anxious to persuade my
audience that I am right, except by the way ;
but I shall be very anxious indeed to persuade
myself. For see, my dear friend, how selfish
my reasoning is. If what I say is true, it is
well to believe it. But if there is nothing after
death, at any rate I shall pain my friends less
by my lamentations in the interval before I die.
And this ignorance will not last for ever — that
would have been an evil — it will soon come to
an end. So prepared, Simmias and Cebes, he
said, I come to the argument. And you, if
you take my advice, will think not of Socrates,
but of the truth ; and you will agree with me,
if you think that what I say is true : otherwise
you will oppose me with every argument that
you have : and be careful that, in my anxiety to
convince you, I do not deceive both you and
myself, and go away, leaving my sting behind
me, like a bee.

XLI. Now let us proceed, he said. And first, if
you find I have forgotten your arguments,
repeat them. Simmias, I think, has fears and
misgivings that the soul, being of the nature of
a harmony, may perish before the body, though
she is more divine and nobler than the body.

PH&DO. 167

Cebes, if I am not mistaken, conceded that the
soul is more enduring than the body ; but he
said that no one could tell whether the soul,
after wearing out many bodies many times, did
not herself perish on leaving her last body, and
whether death be not precisely this, the destruc- '
tion of the soul ; for the destruction of the
body is unceasing. Is there anything else,
Simmias and Cebes, which we have to
examine ?

They both agreed that these were the ques-
tions.

Do you reject all our previous conclusions,
he asked, or only some of them ?

Only some of them, they replied.

Well, said he, what do you say of our doctrine
that knowledge is recollection, and that therefore
our souls must necessarily have existed some-
where else, before they were imprisoned in our
bodies ? 92.

I, replied Cebes, was convinced by it at the
time in a wonderful way : and now there is no
doctrine to which I adhere more firmly.

And I am of that mind too, said Simmias ;
and I shall be very much surprised if I ever
change it.

But, my Theban friend, you will have to
change it, said Socrates, if this opinion of
yours, that a harmony is a composite thing, and
that the soul is a harmony composed of the ele-
ments of the body at the right tension, is to stand.
You will hardly allow yourself to assert that the
harmony was in existence before the things from

1 68 PH^DO.

which it was to be composed ? Will you do
that ?

Certainly not, Socrates.

But you see that that is what your assertion
comes to when you say that the soul existed
before she came into the form and body of man,
and yet that she is composed of elements which
did not yet exist ? Your harmony is not like
what you compare it to : the lyre and the strings
and the sounds, as yet untuned, come into exist-
ence first : and the harmony is composed last
of all, and perishes first. How will this belief
of yours accord with the other ?

It will not, replied Simmias.

And yet, said he, an argument about harmony
is hardly the place for a discord.

No, indeed, said Simmias.

Well, there is a discord in your argument,
he said. You must choose which doctrine you
will retain, that knowledge is recollection, or
that the soul is a harmony.

The former, Socrates, certainly, he replied.
The latter has never been demonstrated to me ;
it rests only on probable and plausible grounds,
which make it a popular opinion. I know that
doctrines which ground their proofs on prob-
abilities are impostors, and that they are very
apt to mislead, both in geometry and everything
else, if one is not on one's guard against them.
But the doctrine about recollection and know-
ledge rests upon a foundation which claims
belief. We agreed that the soul exists before
she ever enters the body, as surely as the

PH&DO. 169

essence itself which has the name of real being,
exists.1 And I am persuaded that I believe in
this essence rightly and on sufficient evidence.
It follows therefore, I suppose, that I cannot
allow myself or any one else to say that the
soul is a harmony.

And, consider the question in another way, XLII.
Simmias, said Socrates. Do you think that a 93.
harmony or any other composition can exist in
a state other than the state of the elements of
which it is composed ?

Certainly not.

Nor, I suppose, can it do or suffer anything
beyond what they do and suffer ?

He assented.

A harmony therefore cannot lead the ele-
ments of which it is composed ; it must follow
them ?

He agreed.

And much less can it be moved, or make a
sound, or do anything else, in opposition to its
parts.

Much less, indeed, he replied.

Well ; is not every harmony by nature a
harmony according as it is adjusted ?

I don't understand you, he replied.

If it is tuned more, and to a greater extent,
he said, supposing that to be possible, will it
not be more a harmony, and to a greater extent,
while if it is tuned less, and to a smaller extent,
will it not be less a harmony, and to a smaller
extent ?

1 Reading ai/rrj for avrijt (Schanz).

1 70 PH&DO.

Certainly.

Well, is this true of the soul ? Can one soul
be more a soul, and to a greater extent, or less
a soul, and to a smaller extent, than another,
even in the smallest degree ?

Certainly not, he replied.

Well then, he replied, please tell me this ; is
not one soul said to have intelligence and virtue
and to be good, while another is said to have
folly and vice and to be bad ? And is it not
true ?

Yes, certainly.

What then will those, who assert that the soul
is a harmony, say that the virtue and the vice
which are in our souls are ? Another harmony
and another discord ? Will they say that the
good soul is in tune, and that, herself a harmony,
she has within herself another harmony, and
that the bad soul is out of tune herself, and has
no other harmony within her ?

I, said Simmias, cannot tell. But it is clear
that they would have to say something of the
kind.

But it has been conceded, he said, that one
soul is never more or less a soul than another.
In other words, we have agreed that one har-
mony is never more, or to a greater extent, or
less, or to a smaller extent a harmony than
another. Is it not so ?

Yes, certainly.

And the harmony which is neither more nor
less a harmony, is not more or less tuned. Is
that so ?

PHJEDO, 171

Yes.

And has that which is neither more nor less
tuned, a greater, or a less, or an equal share of
harmony ?

An equal share.

Then, since one soul is never more nor less
a soul than another, it has not been more or less
tuned either ?

True.

Therefore it can have no greater share of
harmony or of discord ?

Certainly not.

And, therefore, can one soul contain more
vice or virtue than another, if vice be discord,
and virtue harmony ?

By no means.

Or rather, Simmias, to speak quite accurately, 94.
I suppose that there will be no vice in any soul,
if the soul is a harmony. I take it, there can
never be any discord in a harmony, which is a
perfect harmony.

Certainly not.

Neither can a soul, if it be a perfect soul,
have any vice in it ?

No ; that follows necessarily from what has
been said.

Then the result of this reasoning is that all
the souls of all living creatures will be equally
good, if the nature of all souls is to be equally
souls.

Yes, I think so, Socrates, he said.

And do you think that this is true, he asked,
and that this would have been the fate of our

172 PffsEDO.

argument, if the hypothesis that the soul is a
harmony had been correct ?

No, certainly not, he replied.

XLIII. Well, said he, of all the parts of a man, should
you not say that it was the soul, and particularly
the wise soul, which rules ?

I should.

Does she yield to the passions of the body,
or does she oppose them ? I mean this. . When
the body is hot and thirsty, does not the soul
drag it away and prevent it from drinking, and
when it is hungry does she not prevent it from
eating ? And do we not see her opposing the
passions of the body in a thousand other ways ?

Yes, certainly.

But we have also agreed that, if she is a
harmony, she can never give a sound contrary
to the tensions, and relaxations, and vibrations,
and other changes of the elements of which she
is composed ; that she must follow them, and
can never lead them ?

Yes, he replied, we certainly have.

Well, now do we not find the soul acting in
just the opposite way, and leading all the
elements of which she is said to consist, and
opposing them in almost everything all through
life ; and lording it over them in every way,
and chastising them, sometimes severely, and
with a painful discipline, such as gymnastic and
medicine, and sometimes lightly ; sometimes
threatening and sometimes admonishing the
desires and passions and fears, as though she
were speaking to something other than herself,

PH&DO. 173

as Homer makes Odysseus do in the Odyssey,
where he says that

" He smote upon his breast, and chid his heart :
' Endure, my heart, e'en worse hast thou endured.'"1

Do you think that when Homer wrote that, he
supposed the soul to be a harmony, and capable
of being led by the passions of the body, and
not of a nature to lead them, and be their lord,
being herself far too divine a thing to be like a
harmony ?

Certainly, Socrates, I think not.

Then, my excellent friend, it is quite wrong
to say that the soul is a harmony. For then,
you see, we should not be in agreement either
with the divine poet Homer, or with ourselves. 95.

That is true, he replied.

Very good, said Socrates ; I think that we XLIV.
have contrived to appease our Theban Har-
monia with tolerable success. But how about
Cadmus, Cebes ? he said. How shall we
appease him, and with what reasoning ?

I daresay that you will find out how to do
it, said Cebes. At all events you have argued
that the soul is not a harmony in a way which
surprised me very much. When Simmias
was stating his objection, I wondered how any
one could possibly dispose of his argument :
and so I was very much surprised to see it fall
before the very first onset of yours. I should
not wonder if the same fate awaited the argu-
ment of Cadmus.

1 Horn. Od., xx. 17.

174 PHSEDO.

My good friend, said Socrates, do not be
over confident, or some evil eye will overturn
the argument that is to come. However, that
we will leave to God ; let us, like Homer's
heroes, ' advancing boldly,' see if there is any-
thing in what you say. The sum of what you
seek is this. You require me to prove to you
that the soul is indestructible and immortal ;
for if it be not so, you think that the confidence
of a philosopher, who is confident in death, and
who believes that when he is dead he will fare
infinitely better in the other world than if he
had lived a different sort of life in this world,
is a foolish and idle confidence. You say
that to show that the soul is strong and
godlike, and that she existed before we were
born men, is not enough ; for that does not
necessarily prove her immortality, but only
that she lasts a long time, and has existed
an enormous while, and has known and done
many things in a previous state. Yet she
is not any the more immortal for that : her
very entrance into man's body was, like a disease,
the beginning of her destruction. And, you
say, she passes this life in misery, and at last
perishes in what we call death. You think that
it makes no difference at all to the fears of each
one of us, whether she enters the body once or
many times : for every one but a fool must fear
death, if he does not know and cannot prove
that she is immortal. That, I think, Cebes, is
the substance of your objection. I state it
again and again on purpose, that nothing may

175

escape us, and that you may add to it or take
away from it anything that you wish.

Cebes replied : No, that is my meaning. I
don't want to add or to take away anything at
present.

Socrates paused for some time and thought. XLV.
Then he said, It is not an easy question that
you are raising, Cebes. We must examine
fully the whole subject of the causes of genera-
tion and decay. If you like, I will give you QQ.
my own experiences, and if you think that you
can make use of anything that I say, you may
employ it to satisfy your misgivings.

Indeed, said Cebes, I should like to hear
your experiences.

Listen, then, and I will tell you, Cebes, he
replied. When I was a young man, I had a
passionate desire for the wisdom which is called
Physical Science. I thought it a splendid thing
to know the causes of everything ; why a thing
comes into being, and why it perishes, and why
it exists. I was always worrying myself with
such questions as, Do living creatures take a
definite form, as some persons say, from the
fermentation of heat and cold ? Is it the
blood, or the air, or fire by which we think ?
Or is it none of these, but the brain which gives
the senses of hearing and sight and smell, and
do memory and opinion come from these, and
knowledge from memory and opinion when in
a state of quiescence ? Again, I used to examine
the destruction of these things, and the changes
of the heaven and the earth, until at last I con-

176 Pff^EDO.

eluded that I was wholly and absolutely unfitted
for these studies. I will prove that to you
conclusively. I was so completely blinded by
these studies, that I forgot what I had formerly
seemed to myself and to others to know quite
well : I unlearnt all that I had been used to
think that I understood ; even the cause of
man's growth. Formerly I had thought it
evident on the face of it that the cause of
growth was eating and drinking ; and that,
when from food flesh is added to flesh, and
bone to bone, and in the same way to the
other parts of the body their proper elements,
then by degrees the small bulk grows to be
large, and so the boy becomes a man. Don't
you think that my belief was reasonable ?

I do, said Cebes.

Then here is another experience for you.
I used to feel no doubt, when I saw a tall man
standing by a short one, that the tall man was,
it might be, a head the taller, or, in the same
way, that one horse was bigger than another.
I was even clearer that ten was more than
eight by the addition of two, and that a thing
two cubits long was longer by half its length
than a thing one cubit long.

And what do you think now ? asked Cebes.

I think that I am very far from believing
that I know the cause of any of these things.
Why, when you add one to one, I am not sure
either that the one to which one is added has
become two, or that the one added and the one
97. to which it is added become, by the addition,

PHALDO. 177

two. I cannot understand how, when they are
brought together, this union, or placing of one
by the other, should be the cause of their
becoming two, whereas, when they were
separated, each of them was one, and they were
not two. Nor, again, if you divide one into
two, can I convince myself that this division is
the cause of one becoming two : for then a thing
becomes two from exactly the opposite cause.
In the former case it was because two units
were brought together, and the one was added
to the other ; while now it is because they are
separated, and the one divided from the other.
Nor, again, can I persuade myself that I know
how one is generated ; in short, this method
does not show me the cause of the generation or
destruction or existence of anything : I have in
my own mind a confused idea of another method,
but I cannot admit this one for a moment.

But one day I listened to a man who said XLVI.
that he was reading from a book of Anaxagoras,
which affirmed that it is Mind which orders
and is the cause of all things. I was delighted
with this theory; it seemed to me to be right
that Mind should be the cause of all things,
and I thought to myself, If this is so, then
Mind will order and arrange each thing in the
best possible way. So if we wish to discover
the cause of the generation or destruction or
existence of a thing, we must discover how it
is best for that thing to exist, or to act, or to
be acted on. Man therefore has only to con-
sider what is best and fittest for himself, or for
N

178 PH&DO.

other things, and then it follows necessarily
that he will know what is bad ; for both are
included in the same science. These reflec-
tions made me very happy : I thought that I
had found in Anaxagoras a teacher of the
cause of existence after my own heart, and I
expected that he would tell me first whether
the earth is flat or round, and that he would
then go on to explain to me the cause and the
necessity, and tell me what is best, and that
it is best for the earth to be of that shape. If
he said that the earth was in the centre of the
universe, I thought that he would explain that
it was best for it to be there ; and I was pre-
98, pared not to require any other kind of cause,
if he made this clear to me. In the same way
I was prepared to ask questions about the sun,
and the moon, and the stars, about their
relative speeds, and revolutions, and changes ;
and to hear why it is best for each of them to
act and be acted on as they are acted on. I
never thought that, when he said that things
are ordered by Mind, he would introduce any
reason for their being as they are, except that
they are best so. I thought that he would
assign a cause to each thing, and a cause
to the universe, and then would go on to
explain to me what was best for each thing,
and what was the common good of all. I
would not have sold my hopes for a great deal :
I seized the books very eagerly, and read them
as fast as I could, in order that I might know
what is best and what is worse.

PH&DO. 179

All my splendid hopes were dashed to the XLVII.
ground, my friend, for as I went on reading I
found that the writer made no use of Mind at
all, and that he assigned no causes for the order
of things. His causes were air, and ether, and
water, and many other strange things. I thought
that he was exactly like a man who should
begin by saying that Socrates does all that he
does by Mind, and who, when he tried to give
a reason for each of my actions, should say,
first, that I am sitting here now, because my
body is composed of bones and muscles, and
that the bones are hard and separated by joints,
while the muscles can be tightened and loosened,
and, together with the flesh, and the skin which
holds them together, cover the bones ; and that
therefore, when the bones are raised in their
sockets, the relaxation and contraction of the
muscles makes it possible for me now to bend
my limbs, and that that is the cause of my sitting
here with my legs bent. And in the same way
he would go on to explain why I am talking to
you : he would assign voice, and air, and hear-
ing, arid a thousand other things as causes ; but
he would quite forget to mention the real cause,
which is that since the Athenians thought it
right to condemn me, I have thought it right
and just to sit here and to submit to what-
ever sentence they may think fit to impose.
For, by the dog of Egypt, I think that these
muscles and bones would long ago have been 99.
in Megara or Bceotia, prompted by their opinion
of what is best, if I had not thought it better

180 PH&DO.

and more honourable to submit to whatever
penalty the state inflicts, rather than escape by
flight. But to call these things causes is too
absurd ! If it were said that without bones and
muscles and the other parts of my body I could
not have carried my resolutions into effect, that
would be true. But to say that they are the
cause of what I do, and that in this way I am
acting by Mind, and not from choice of what is
best, would be a very loose and careless way of
talking. It simply means that a man cannot dis-
tinguish the real cause from that without which
the cause cannot be the cause, and this it is, I
think, which the multitude, groping about in the
dark, speak of as the cause, giving it a name
which does not belong to it. And so one man
surrounds the earth with a vortex, and makes
the heavens sustain it. Another represents the
earth as a flat kneading-trough, and supports it
on a basis of air. But they never think of
looking for a power which is involved in these
things being disposed as it is best for them
to be, nor do they think that such a power
has any divine strength: they expect to find
an Atlas who is stronger and more immortal
and abler to hold the world together, and
they never for a moment imagine that it is
the binding force of good which really binds
and holds things together. I would most
gladly learn the nature of that kind of cause
from any man ; but I wholly failed either
to discover it myself, or to learn it from any
one else. However, I had a second string

PffsEDO. 181

to my bow, and perhaps, Cebes, you would
like me to describe to you how I proceeded
in my search for the cause.

I should like to hear very much indeed, he
replied.

When I had given up inquiring into real XLVIII.
existence, he proceeded, I thought that I must
take care that I did not suffer as people do who
look at the sun during an eclipse. For they
are apt to lose their eyesight, unless they look
at the sun's reflection in water or some such
medium. That danger occurred to me. I was
afraid that my soul might be completely blinded
if I looked at things with my eyes, and tried to
grasp them with my senses. So I thought that
I must have recourse to conceptions,1 and
examine the truth of existence by means of
them. Perhaps my illustration is not quite
accurate. I am scarcely prepared to admit that 10O.
he who examines existence through concep-
tions is dealing with mere reflections, any
more than he who examines it as manifested in
sensible objects. However I began in this way.
I assumed in each case whatever principle I
judged to be strongest ; and then I held as true
whatever seemed to agree with it, whether
in the case of the cause or of anything else, and
as untrue, whatever seemed not to agree with
it. I should like to explain my meaning more
clearly : I don't think you understand me yet.

1 The conception is the imperfect image in man's
mind of the self -existing idea, which Plato speaks of in
the next chapter. See ante, 74. A. seq. ; Rep. 507. A. seq.

1 82 PHMDO.

Indeed I do not very well, said Cebes.
XLIX, I mean nothing new, he said ; only what I
have repeated over and over again, both in our
conversation to-day and at other times. I am
going to try to explain to you the kind of cause
at which I have worked, and I will go back to
what we have so often spoken of, and begin
with the assumption that there exists an absolute
beauty, and an absolute good, and an absolute
greatness, and so on. If you grant me this,
and agree that they exist, I hope to be able to
show you what my cause is, and to discover
that the soul is immortaL

You may assume that I grant it you, said
Cebes ; go on with your proof.

Then do you agree with me in what follows ?
he asked. It appears to me that if anything
besides absolute beauty is beautiful, it is so
simply because it partakes of absolute beauty,
and I say the same of all phenomena. Do you
allow that kind of cause ?

I do, he answered.

Well then, he said, I no longer recognise,
nor can I understand, these other wise causes :
if I am told that anything is beautiful because
it has a rich colour, or a goodly form, or the
like, I pay no attention, for such language only
confuses me ; and in a simple and plain, and
perhaps a foolish way, I hold to the doctrine
that the thing is only made beautiful by the
presence or communication, or whatever you
please to call it, of absolute beauty — I do
not wish to insist on the nature of the com-

PHsEDO. 183

munication, but what I am sure of is, that it
is absolute beauty which makes all beautiful
things beautiful. This seems to me to be
the safest answer that I can give myself or
others ; I believe that I shall never fall if I
hold to this ; it is a safe answer to make to
myself or any one else, that it is absolute
beauty which makes beautiful things beautiful.
Don't you think so ?

I do.

And it is size that makes large things large,
and larger things larger, and smallness that
makes smaller things smaller ?

Yes.

And if you were told that one man was taller
than another by a head, and that the shorter
man was shorter by a head, you would not
accept the statement. You would protest that 101.
you say only that the greater is greater by size,
and that size is the cause of its being greater ;
and that the less is only less by smallness, and
that smallness is the cause of its being less.
You would be afraid to assert that a man is
greater or smaller by a head, lest you should
be met by the retort, first, that the greater is
greater, and the smaller smaller, by the same
thing, and secondly, that the greater is greater
by a head, which is a small thing, and that it is
truly marvellous that a small thing should make
a man great. Should you not be afraid of that ?

Yes, indeed, said Cebes, laughing.

And you would be afraid to say that ten is
more than eight by two, and that two is the

184 PHsEDO.

cause of the excess ; you would say that ten
was more than eight by number, and that
number is the cause of the excess ? And in
just the same way you would be afraid to say
that a thing two cubits long was longer than
a thing one cubit long by half its length, instead
of by size, would you not ?

Yes, certainly.

Again, you would be careful not to affirm
that, if one is added to one, the addition is the
cause of two, or, if one is divided, that the
division is the cause of two ? You would pro-
test loudly that you know of no way in which a
thing can be generated, except by participation
in its own proper essence ; and that you can
give no cause for the generation of two except
participation in duality ; and that all things
which are to be two must participate in duality,
while whatever is to be one must participate in
unity. You would leave the explanation of these
divisions and additions and all such subtleties
to wiser men than yourself. You would be
frightened, as the saying is, at your own shadow
and ignorance, and would hold fast to the safety
of our principle, and so give your answer. But
if any one should attack the principle itself, you
would not mind him or answer him until you
had considered whether the consequences of it
are consistent or inconsistent, and when you
had to give an account of the principle itself,
you would give it in the same way, by assum-
ing some other principle which you think the
strongest of the higher ones, and so go on until

PH&DO. 185

you had reached a satisfactory resting-place.
You would not mix up the first principle and its
consequences in your argument, as mere dis-
putants do, if you really wish to discover any-
thing of existence. Such persons will very
likely not spend a single word or thought upon
that : for they are clever enough to be able to
please themselves entirely, though their argu-
ment is a chaos. But you, I think, if you are
a philosopher, will do as I say. 1O2.

Very true, said Simmias and Cebes together.

Ech. And they were right, Phaedo. I think
the clearness of his reasoning, even to the
dullest, is quite wonderful.

Phcedo. Indeed, Echecrates, all who were
there thought so too.

Ech. So do we who were not there, but who
are listening to your story. But how did the
argument proceed after that ?

Phcedo. They had admitted that each of the L.
Ideas exists, and that Phenomena take the
names of the Ideas as they participate in them.
Socrates, I think, then went on to ask, —

If you say this, do you not, in saying that
Simmias is taller than Socrates and shorter
than Phaedo, say that Simmias possesses both
the attribute of tallness and the attribute of
shortness ?

I do.

But you admit, he said, that the proposition
that Simmias is taller than Socrates is not
exactly true, as it is stated : Simmias is not
really taller because he is Simmias, but because

186 PHsEDO.

of his height. Nor again is he taller than
Socrates because Socrates is Socrates, but
because of Socrates' shortness compared with
Simmias' tallness.

True.

Nor is Simmias shorter than Phasdo because
Phaedo is Phaedo, but because of Phasdo's tall-
ness compared with Simmias' shortness.

That is so.

Then in this way Simmias is called both
short and tall, when he is between the two : he
exceeds the shortness of one by the excess of
his height, and gives the other a tallness exceed-
ing his own shortness. I daresay you think,
he said, smiling, that my language is like a
legal document for precision and formality.
But I think that it is as I say.

He agreed.

I say it because I want you to think as I do.
It seems to me not only that absolute greatness
will never be great and small at once, but also
that greatness in us never admits smallness,
and will not be exceeded. One of two things
must happen : either the greater will give way
and fly at the approach of its opposite, the less,
or it will perish. It will not stand its ground,
and receive smallness, and be other than it was,
just as I stand my ground, and receive smallness
and remain the very same small man that I was.
But greatness cannot endure to be small, being
great. Just in the same way again smallness
in us will never become nor be great : nor will
any opposite, while it remains what it was,

PH&DO. 187

become or be at the same time the opposite of
what it was. Either it goes away, or it perishes 1O3.
in the change.

That is exactly what I think, said Cebes. LI.

Thereupon some one — I am not sure who —
said,

But surely is not this Just the reverse of
what we agreed to be true earlier in the argu-
ment, that the greater is generated from the
less, and the less from the greater, and, in short,
that opposites are generated from opposites ? l
But now it seems to be denied that this can
ever happen.

Socrates inclined his head to the speaker
and listened. Well and bravely remarked, he
said : but you have not noticed the difference
between the two propositions. What we said
then was that a concrete thing is generated
from its opposite : what we say now is that the
absolute opposite can never become opposite to
itself, either when it is in us, or when it is in
nature. We were speaking then of things in
which the opposites are, and we named them
after those opposites : but now we are speaking
of the opposites themselves, whose inherence
gives the things their names ; and they, we say,
will never be generated from each other. At
the same time he turned to Cebes and asked,
Did his objection trouble you at all, Cebes ?

No, replied Cebes ; 1 don't feel that difficulty.
But I will not deny that many other things
trouble me.

1 70 E. seq.

i88 PHMDO.

Then we are quite agreed on this point, he
said. An opposite will never be opposite to
itself.

No, never, he replied.

LII. Now tell me again, he said ; do you agree
with me in this ? Are there not things which
you call heat and cold ?

Yes.

Are they the same as snow and fire ?

No, certainly not.

Heat is different from fire, and cold from
snow ?

Yes.

But I suppose, as we have said, that you do
not think that snow can ever receive heat, and
yet remain what it was, snow and hot : it will
either retire or perish at the approach of heat.

Certainly.

And fire, again, will either retire or perish
at the approach of cold. It will never endure
to receive the cold and still remain what it was,
fire and cold.

True, he said.

Then, it is true of some of these things, that
not only the idea itself has a right to its name
for all time, but that something else too, which
is not the idea, but which has the form of
the idea wherever it exists, shares the name.
Perhaps my meaning will be clearer by an
example. The odd ought always to have the
name of odd, ought it not ?

Yes, certainly.

Well, my question is this. Is the odd the only

PH&DO. 189

thing with this name, or is there something else,
which is not the same as the odd, but which 104.
must always have this name, together with its
own, because its nature is such that it is never
separated from the odd ? There are many
examples of what I mean : let us take one of
them, the number three, and consider it. Do
you not think that we must always call it by
the name of odd, as well as by its own name,
although the odd is not the same as the number
three ? Yet the nature of the number three,
and of the number five, and of half the whole
series of numbers, is such that each of them is
odd, though none of them is the same as the
odd. In the same way the number two, and
the number four, and the whole of the other
series of numbers, are each of them always even,
though they are not the same as the even. Do
you agree or not ?

Yes, of course, he replied.

Then see what I want to show you. It is
not only opposite ideas which appear not to
admit their opposites ; things also which are not
opposites, but which always contain opposites,
seem as if they would not admit the idea which
is opposite to the idea that they contain : they
either perish, or retire at its approach. Shall
we not say that the number three would perish
or endure anything sooner than become even
while it remains three ?

Yes, indeed, said Cebes.

And yet, said he, the number two is not the
opposite of the number three.

190

No, certainly not.

Then it is not only the ideas which will not
endure the approach of their opposites ; there
are some other things besides which will not
endure such an approach.
LIII. That is quite true, he said.

Shall we determine, if we can, what is their
nature ? he asked.

Certainly.

Will they not be those things, Cebes, which
force whatever they are in to have always not
its own idea only, but the idea of some opposite
as well ?

What do you mean ?

Only what we were saying just now. You
know, I think, that whatever the idea of three is
in, is bound to be not three only, but odd as well.

Certainly.

Well, we say that the opposite idea to the
form which produces this result will never come
to that thing.

Indeed, no.

But the idea of the odd produces it ?

Yes.

And the idea of the even is the opposite of
the idea of the odd ?

Yes.

Then the idea of the even will never come
to three ?

Certainly not.

So three has no part in the even ?

None.

Then the number three is uneven ?

PHJEDO. 191

Yes.

So much for the definition which I under-
took to give of things which are not opposites,
and yet do not admit opposites ; thus we have
seen that the number three does not admit the
even, though it is not the opposite of the even,
for it always brings with it the opposite of the
even ; and the number two does not admit the
odd, nor fire cold, and so on. Do you agree 1O5.
with me in saying that not only does the
opposite not admit the opposite, but also that
whatever brings with it an opposite of anything
to which it goes, never admits the opposite of
that which it brings ? Let me recall this to
you again ; there is no harm in repetition.
Five will not admit the idea of the even, nor
will the double of five — ten — admit the idea of
the odd. It is not itself an opposite,1 yet
it will not admit the idea of the odd. Again,
one and a half, a half, and the other num-
bers of that Jcind will not admit the idea of
the whole, nor again will such numbers as a
third. Do you follow and agree ?

I follow you and entirely agree with you, he
said.

Now begin again, and answer me, he said. LIV.
And imitate me ; do not answer me in the terms
of my question : I mean, do not give the old
safe answer which I have already spoken of, for
I see another way of safety, which is the result
of what we have been saying. If you ask me,
what is that which must be in the body to make
1 Reading owe tvavriov (Schanz).

192 PHJE.DO.

it hot, I shall not give our old safe and stupid
answer, and say that it is heat ; I shall make a
more refined answer, drawn from what we have
been saying, and reply, fire. If you ask me, what
is that which must be in the body to make it sick,
I shall not say sickness, but fever : and again
to the question what is that which must be
in number to make it odd, I shall not reply
oddness, but unity, and so on. Do you under-
stand my meaning clearly yet ?

Yes, quite, he said.

Then, he went on, tell me, what is that which
must be in a body to make it alive ?

A soul, he replied.

And is this always so ?

Of course, he said.

Then the soul always brings life to whatever
contains her?

No doubt, he answered.

And is there an opposite to life, or not ?

Yes.

What is it ?

Death.

And we have already agreed that the soul
cannot ever receive the opposite of what she
brings ?
LV. Yes, certainly we have, said Cebes.

Well ; what name did we give to that which
does not admit the idea of the even ?

The uneven, he replied.

And what do we call that which does not
admit justice or music ?

The unjust, and the unmusical.

Pff^EDO. 193

Good ; and what do we call that which does
not admit death ?

The immortal, he said.

And the soul does not admit death ?

No.

Then the soul is immortal ?

It is.

Good, he said. Shall we say that this is
proved ? What do you think ?

Yes, Socrates, and very sufficiently.

Well, Cebes, he said, if the odd had been
necessarily imperishable, must not three have 1O6.
been imperishable ?

Of course.

And if cold had been necessarily imperish-
able, snow would have retired safe and unmelted,
whenever warmth was applied to it. It would
not have perished, and it would not have stayed
and admitted the heat.

True, he said.

In the same way, I suppose, if warmth were
imperishable, whenever cold attacked fire, the
fire would never have been extinguished or have
perished. It would have gone away in safety.

Necessarily, he replied.

And must we not say the same of the im-
mortal ? he asked. If the immortal is imperish-
able, the soul cannot perish when death comes
upon her. It follows from what we have said
that she will not ever admit death, or be in
a state of death, any more than three, or the
odd itself, will ever be even, or fire, or the heat
itself which is in fire, cold. But, it may be said,

194 PffjEDO.

Granted that the odd does not become even at
the approach of the even ; why, when the odd
has perished, may not the even come into its
place ? We could not contend in reply that it
does not perish, for the uneven is not imperish-
able : if we had agreed that the uneven was
imperishable, we could have easily contended
that the odd and three go1 away at the approach
of the even ; and we could have urged the
same contention about fire and heat and the
rest, could we not ?

Yes, certainly.

And now, if we are agreed that the immortal
is imperishable, then the soul will be not im-
mortal only, but also imperishable ; otherwise
we shall require another argument.

Nay, he said, there is no need of that, as far
as this point goes ; for if the immortal, which
is eternal, will admit of destruction, what will
not?

LVI. And all men would admit, said Socrates, that
God, and the essential form of life, and all else
that is immortal, never perishes.

All men, indeed, he said, and, what is more,
I think, all gods would admit that.

Then if the immortal is indestructible, must
not the soul, if it be immortal, be imperishable ?

Certainly, it must.

Then, it seems, when death attacks a man,
his mortal part dies, but his immortal part
retreats before death, and goes away safe and
indestructible.

It seems so.

Pff^DO. 195

Then, Cebes, said he, beyond all question
the soul is immortal and imperishable ; and our 1O7.
souls will indeed exist in the other world.

I, Socrates, he replied, have no more objec-
tions to urge ; your reasoning has quite satisfied
me. If Simmias, or any one else, has anything
to say, it would be well for him to say it now :
for I know not to what other season he can
defer the discussion, if he wants to say or to
hear anything touching this matter.

No, indeed, said Simmias ; neither have I
any further ground for doubt after what you
have said. Yet I cannot help feeling some
doubts still in my mind ; for the subject of our
conversation is a vast one, and I distrust the
feebleness of man.

You are right, Simmias, said Socrates, and
more than that, you must re-examine our ori-
ginal assumptions, however certain they seem
to you ; and when you have analysed them
sufficiently, you will, I think, follow the argu-
ment, as far as man can follow it ; and when
that becomes clear to you, you will seek for
nothing more.

That is true he said.

But then, my friends, said he, we must think LVII.
of this. If it be true that the soul is immortal,
we have to take care of her, not merely on
account of the time which we call life, but also
on account of all time. Now we can see how-
terrible is the danger of neglect. For if death
had been a release from all things, it would
have been a godsend to the wicked ; for when

196 PHJEDO.

they died they would have been released with
their souls from the body and from their own
wickedness. But now we have found that the
soul is immortal ; and so her only refuge and
salvation from evil is to become as perfect and
wise as possible. For she takes nothing with
her to the other world but her education and
culture ; and these, it is said, are of the greatest
service or of the greatest injury to the dead
man, at the very beginning of his journey
thither. For it is said that the genius, who
has had charge of each man in his life, proceeds
to lead him, when he is dead, to a certain place,
where the departed have to assemble and receive
judgment, and then go to the world below with
the guide who is appointed to conduct them
thither. And when they have received their
deserts there, and remained the appointed time,
another guide brings them back again after
many long revolutions of ages. So this journey
is not as .^Lschylus describes it in the Telephus,
1O8. where he says that ' a simple way leads to
Hades.' But I think that the way is neither
simple nor single ; there would have been no
need of guides had it been so ; for no one could
miss the way, if there were but one path. But this
road must have many branches and many wind-
ings, as I judge from the rites of burial on earth.1
The orderly and wise soul follows her leader,
and is not ignorant of the things of that world ;
but the soul which lusts after the body, flutters

1 Sacrifices were offered to the gods of the lower
world in places where three roads met.

PHsEDO. 197

about the body and the visible world for a long
time, as I have said, and struggles hard and
painfully, and at last is forcibly and reluctantly
dragged away by her appointed genius. And
when she comes to the place where the other .
souls are, if she is impure and stained with evil,
and has been concerned in foul murders, or if
she has committed any other crimes that are
akin to these, and the deeds of kindred souls,
then every one shuns her and turns aside from
meeting her, and will neither be her companion
nor her guide, and she wanders about by herself
in extreme distress until a certain time is com-
pleted, and then she is borne away by force to
the habitation which befits her. But the soul
that has spent her life in purity and temperance
has the gods for her companions and guides,
and dwells in the place which befits her. There
are many wonderful places in the earth ; and
neither its nature nor its size is what those who
are wont to describe it imagine, as a friend has
convinced me.

What do you mean, Socrates ? said Simmias.
I have heard a great deal about the earth my- LVTII.
self, but I have never heard the view of which
you are convinced. I should like to hear it
very much.

Well, Simmias, I don't think that it needs
the skill of Glaucus to describe it to you, but I
think that it is beyond the skill of Glaucus to
prove it true : I am sure that I could not do so ;
and besides, Simmias, even if I knew how, I
think that my life would come to an end before

I98

the argument was finished. But there is nothing
to prevent my describing to you what I believe
to be the form of the earth, and its regions.

Well, said Simmias, that will do.

In the first place then, said he, I believe
that the earth is a spherical body placed in the
centre of the heavens, and that therefore it has
no need of air or of any other force to support
109. it : the equiformity of the heavens in all their
parts, and the equipoise of the earth itself,
are sufficient to hold it up. A thing in equi-
poise placed in the centre of what is equiform
cannot incline in any direction, either more or
less : it will remain unmoved and in perfect
balance. That, said he, is the first "thing that
I believe.

And rightly, said Simmias.

Also, he proceeded, I think that the earth is
of vast extent, and that we who dwell between
the Phasis and the pillars of Heracles inhabit
only a small portion of it, and dwell round the
sea, like ants or frogs round a marsh ; and I
believe that many other men dwell elsewhere
in similar places. For everywhere on the earth
there are many hollows of every kind of shape
and size, into which the water and the mist and
the air collect ; but the earth itself lies pure in
the purity of the heavens, wherein are the stars,
and which men who speak of these things
commonly call ether. The water and the mist
and the air, which collect into the hollows of
the earth, are the sediment of it. Now we
dwell in these hollows though we think that we

PffsEDO. 199

are dwelling on the surface of the earth. We
are just like a man dwelling in the depths of
the ocean, who thought that he was dwelling
on its surface, and believed that the sea was
the heaven, because he saw the sun and the
stars through the water ; but who was too weak
and slow ever to have reached the water's sur-
face, and to have lifted his head from the sea,
and come out from his depths to our world,
and seen, or heard from one who had seen,
how much purer and fairer our world was than
the place wherein he dwelt. We are just in that
state ; we dwell in a hollow of the earth, and
think that we are dwelling on its surface ; and
we call the air heaven, and think it to be the
heaven wherein the stars run their courses. But
the truth is that we are too weak and slow to
pass through to the surface of the air.1 For if
any man could reach the surface, or take wings
and fly upward, he would look up and see a
world beyond, just as the fishes look forth from
the sea, and behold our world. And he would
know that that was the real heaven, and the real
light, and the real earth, if his nature were able 110.
to endure the sight. For this earth, and its
stones, and all its regions have been spoilt and
corroded, as things in the sea are corroded by
the brine : nothing of any worth grows in the
sea, nor, in short, is there anything therein
without blemish, but, wherever land does exist,
there are only caves, and sand, and vast tracts
of mud and slime, which are not worthy even
1 Omitting elvai ravrbv (Schanz).

200 PH^DO.

to be compared with the fair things of our
world. But you would think that the things of
that other world still further surpass the things
of our world. I can tell you a tale, Simmias,
about what is on the earth that lies beneath
the heavens, which is worth your hearing.

Indeed, Socrates, said Simmias, we should
like to hear your tale very much.
LIX. Well, my friend, he said, this is my tale.
In the first place, the earth itself, if a man
could look at it from above, is like one of those
balls which are covered with twelve pieces of
leather, and is marked with various colours, of
which the colours that our painters use here
are, as it were, samples. But there the whole
earth is covered with them, and with others
which are far brighter and purer ones than
they. For part of it is purple of marvellous
beauty, and part of it is golden, and the white
of it is whiter than chalk or snow. It is made
up of the other colours in the same way, and
also of colours which are more beautiful than
any that we have ever seen. The very hollows
in it, that are* filled with water and air, have
themselves a kind of colour, and glisten amid
the diversity of the others, so that its form
appears as one unbroken and varied surface.
And what grows in this fair earth — its trees
and flowers and fruit — is more beautiful than
what grows with us in the same proportion :
and so likewise are the hills and the stones
in their smoothness and transparency and
colour : the pebbles which we prize in this

PH^EDO. 201

world, our cornelians, and jaspers, and emeralds,
and the like, are but fragments of them : but
there all the stones are as our precious stones,
and even more beautiful still. The reason of
this is that they are pure, and not corroded
or spoilt, as ours are, with the decay and brine
from the sediment that collects in the hollows,
and brings to the stones and the earth and
all animals and plants deformity and disease.
All these things, and with them gold and silver
and the like, adorn the real earth : and they 11L
are conspicuous from their multitude and size,
and the many places where they are found; so
that he who could behold it would be a happy
man. Many creatures live upon it ; and there
are men, some dwelling inland, and others round
the air, as we dwell round the sea, and others
in islands encircled by the air, which lie near
the continent. In a word, they use the air as
we use water and the sea, and the ether as we
use the air. The temperature of their seasons
is such that they are free from disease, and live
much longer than we do ; and in sight, and
hearing, and smell, and the other senses, they
are as much more perfect than we, as air is
purer than water, and ether than air. Moreover
they have sanctuaries and temples of the gods,
in which the gods dwell in very truth ; they
hear the voices and oracles of the gods, and
see them in visions, and have intercourse with
them face to face : and they see the sun and
moon and stars as they really are ; and in other
matters their happiness is of a piece with this.

202 PH^DO.

LX. That is the nature of the earth as a whole,
and of what is upon it ; and everywhere
on its globe there are many regions in
the hollows, some of them deeper and more
open than that in which we dwell ; and others
also deeper, but with narrower mouths ; and
others again shallower and broader than ours.
All these are connected by many channels
beneath the earth, some of them narrow and
others wide ; and there are passages, by which
much water flows from one of them to another,
as into basins, and vast and never-failing rivers
of both hot and cold water beneath the earth,
and much fire, and great rivers of fire, and
many rivers of liquid mud, some clearer and
others more turbid, like the rivers of mud
which precede the lava stream in Sicily, and
the lava stream itself. These fill each hollow
in turn, as each stream flows round to it.
All of them are moved up and down by a
certain oscillation which is in the earth, and
which is produced by a natural cause of
the following kind. One of the chasms in
the earth is larger than all the others, and

112. pierces right through it, from side to side.
Homer describes it in the words —

' Far away, where is the deepest depth beneath the
earth.'1

And elsewhere he and many others of the poets
have called it Tartarus. All the rivers flow into
this chasm, and out of it again ; and each of

1 //. viii. 14.

PH&DO. 203

them comes to be like the soil through which it
flows. The reason why they all flow into and
out of the chasm is that the liquid has no bottom
or base to rest on : it oscillates and surges up
and down, and the air and wind around it do
the same : for they accompany it in its passage
to the other side of the earth, and in its return ;
and just as in breathing the breath is always in
process of being exhaled and inhaled, so there
the wind, oscillating with the water, produces
terrible and irresistible blasts as it comes in and
goes out. When the water retires with a rush
to what we call the lower parts of the earth, it
flows through to the regions of those streams,
and fills them, as if it were pumped into them.
And again, when it rushes back hither from
those regions, it fills the streams here again, and
then they flow through the channels of the earth,
and make their way to their several places, and
create seas, and lakes, and rivers, and springs.
Then they sink once more into the earth, and
after making, some a long circuit through many
regions, and some a shorter one through fewer,
they fall again into Tartarus, some at a point
much lower than that at which they rose, and
others only a little lower ; but they all flow in
below their point of issue. And some of them
burst forth again on the side on which they
entered ; others again on the opposite side ;
and there are some which completely encircle
the earth, twining round it, like snakes, once
or perhaps oftener, and then fall again into
Tartarus, as low down as they can. They can

204 PHMDO.

descend as far as the centre of the earth from
either side but no farther. Beyond that point
on either side they would have to flow uphill.
LXI. These streams are many, and great, and
various ; but among them all are four, of which
the greatest and outermost, which flows round
the whole of the earth, is called Oceanus.
Opposite Oceanus, and flowing in the reverse
direction, is Acheron, which runs through
113. desert places, and then under the earth until it
reaches the Acherusian lake, whither the souls
of the dead generally go, and after abiding there
the appointed time, which for some is longer,
and for others shorter, are sent forth again to
be born as animals. The third river rises
between these two, and near its source falls
into a vast and fiery region, and forms a lake
larger than our sea, seething with water and
mud. Thence it goes forth turbid and muddy
round the earth, and after many windings comes
to the end of the Acherusian lake, but it does
not mingle with the waters of the lake ; and
after many windings more beneath the earth,
it falls into the lower part of Tartarus. This
is the river that men name Pyriphlegethon ;
and portions of it are discharged in the lava
streams, wherever they are found on the earth.
The fourth river is on the opposite side : it is
said to fall first into a terrible and savage
region, of which the colour is one dark blue.
It is called the Stygian stream, and the lake
which its waters create is called Styx. After
falling into the lake and receiving strange

Pff^DO. 205

powers in -its waters, it sinks into the earth,
and runs winding about in the opposite direc-
tion to Pyriphlegethon, which it meets in the
Acherusian lake from the opposite side. Its
waters too mingle with no other waters : it
flows round in a circle and falls into Tartarus
opposite to Pyriphlegethon. Its name, the poets
say, is Cocytus.

Such is the nature of these regions ; and LXII.
when the dead come to the place whither each
is brought by his genius, sentence is first passed
on them according as their lives have been good
and holy, or not. Those whose lives seem to
have been neither very good nor very bad, go
to the river Acheron, and embarking on the
vessels which they find there, proceed to the
lake. There they dwell, and are punished for
the crimes which they have committed, and are
purified and absolved ; and for their good deeds
they are rewarded, each according to his deserts.
But all who appear to be incurable from the
enormity of their sins — those who have com-
mitted many and great sacrileges, and foul and
lawless murders, or other crimes like these —
are hurled down to Tartarus by the fate which
is their due, whence they never come forth
again. Those who have committed sins which
are great, but not too great for atonement, such,
for instance, as those who have used violence
towards a father or a mother in wrath, and then
repented of it for the rest of their lives, or who
have committed homicide in some similar way, 114.
have also to descend into Tartarus : but then

206

when they have been there a year, a wave casts
them forth, the homicides by Cocytus, and the
parricides and matricides by Pyriphlegethon ;
and when they have been carried as far as the
Acherusian lake they cry out and call on those
whom they slew or outraged, and beseech and
pray that they may be allowed to come out into
the lake, and be received as comrades. And if
they prevail, they come out, and their sufferings
cease ; but if they do not, they are carried back
to Tartarus, and thence into the rivers again,
and their punishment does not end until they
have prevailed on those whom they wronged :
such is the sentence pronounced on them by
their judges. But such as have been pre-
eminent for holiness in their lives are set free
and released from this world, as from a prison :
they ascend to their pure habitation, and dwell
on the earth's surface. And those of them
who have sufficiently purified themselves with
philosophy, live thenceforth without bodies, and
proceed to dwellings still fairer than these,
which are not easily described, and of which I
have not time to speak now.1 But for all these
reasons, Simmias, we must leave nothing un-
done that we may obtain virtue and wisdom in
this life. Noble is the prize, and great the
hope.
LXIII. A man of sense will not insist that these

1 The account of the rewards and punishments of the
next world given in Rep. x. 614 B. seq. , the story of Er
the son of Armenius, is worth comparing with the pre-
ceding passage.

PH&DO. 207

things are exactly as I have described them.
But I think that he will believe that something
of the kind is true of the soul and her habita-
tions, seeing that she is shown to be immortal,
and that it is worth his while to stake everything
on this belief. The venture is a fair one, and
he must charm his doubts with spells like these.
That is why I have been prolonging the fable
all this time. For these reasons a man should
be of good cheer about his soul, if in his life
he has renounced the pleasures and adorn-
ments of the body, because they were nothing
to him, and because he thought that they
would do him not good but harm ; and if he
has instead earnestly pursued the pleasures
of learning, and adorned his soul with the
adornment of temperance, and justice, and
courage, and freedom, and truth, which be- 115.
longs to her, and is her own, and so awaits
his journey to the other world, in readiness
to set forth whenever fate calls him. You,
Simmias and Cebes, and the rest will set forth
at some future day, each at his own time. But
me now, as a tragic poet would say, fate calls
at once ; and it is time for me to betake myself
to the bath. I think that I had better bathe
before I drink the poison, and not give the
women the trouble of washing my dead body.

When he had finished speaking Crito said, LXIV.
Be it so, Socrates. But have you any com-
mands for your friends or for me about your
children, or about other things ? How shall
we serve you best ?

208 PHMDO.

Simply by doing what I always tell you, Crito.
Take care of your own selves, and you will
serve me and mine and yourselves in all that
you do, even though you make no promises now.
But if you are careless of your own selves, and
will not follow the path of life which we have
pointed out in our discussions both to-day and
at other times, all your promises now, however
profuse and earnest they are, will be of no
avail.

We will do our best, said Crito. But how
shall we bury you ?

As you please, he answered ; only you must
catch me first, and not let me escape you.
And then he looked at us with a smile and said,
My friends, I cannot convince Crito that I am
the Socrates who has been conversing with you,
and arranging his arguments in order. He
thinks that I am the body which he will pre-
sently see a corpse, and he asks how he is to
bury me. All the arguments which I have
used to prove that I shall not remain with you
after I have drunk the poison, but that I shall
go away to the happiness of the blessed, with
which I tried to comfort you and myself, have
been thrown away on him. Do you therefore
be my sureties to him, as he was my surety at
the trial, but in a different way. He was surety
for me then that I would remain ; but you
must be my sureties to him that I shall go away
when I am dead, and not remain with you :
then he will feel my death less ; and when he
sees my body being burnt or buried, he will not

PffsEDO. 209

be grieved because he thinks that I am suffering
dreadful things : and at my funeral he will not
say that it is Socrates whom he is laying out,
or bearing to the grave, or burying. For, dear
Crito, he continued, you must know that to use
words wrongly is not only a fault in itself; it
also creates evil in the soul. You must be of
good cheer, and say that you are burying my
body : and you must bury it as you please, and 116.
as you think right.

With these words he rose and went into LXV.
another room to bathe himself : Crito went with
him and told us to wait. So we waited, talking
of the argument, and discussing it, and then
again dwelling on the greatness of the calamity
which had fallen upon us : it seemed as if we
were going to lose a father, and to be orphans
for the rest of our life. When he had bathed,
and his children had been brought to him, — he
had two sons quite little, and one grown up, —
and the women of his family were come, he
spoke with them in Crito's presence, arid gave
them his last commands ; then he sent the
women and children away, and returned to us.
By that time it was near the hour of sunset, for
he had been a long while within. When he
came back to us from the bath he sat down,
but not much was said after that. Presently the
servant of the Eleven came and stood before
him and said, ' I know that I shall not find you
unreasonable like other men, Socrates. They
are angry with me and curse me when I bid
them drink the poison because the authorities
p

210 PH^EDO.

make me do it. But I have found you all along
the noblest and gentlest and best man that has
ever come here ; and now I am sure that you
will not be angry with me, but with those who
you know are to blame. And so farewell, and
try to bear what must be as lightly as you can ;
you know why I have come.' With that he
turned away weeping, and went out.

Socrates looked up at him, and replied, Fare-
well : I will do as you say. Then he turned to
us and said, How courteous the man is ! And
the whole time that I have been here, he has
constantly come in to see me, and sometimes
he has talked to me, and has been the best of
men ; and now, how generously he weeps for
me ! Come, Crito, let us obey him : let the
poison be brought if it is ready ; and if it is not
ready, let it be prepared.

Crito replied : Nay, Socrates, I think that
the sun is still upon the hills ; it has not set.
Besides, I know that other men take the poison
quite late, and eat and drink heartily, and even
enjoy the company of their chosen friends, after
the announcement has been made. So do not
hurry ; there is still time.

Socrates replied : And those whom you speak
of, Crito, naturally do so ; for they think that they
will be gainers by so doing. And I naturally
shall not do so ; for I think that I should gain
117. nothing by drinking the poison a little later,
but my own contempt for so greedily saving up
a life which is already spent. So do not refuse
to do as I say.

PH&DO. 211

Then Crito made a. sign to his slave who was LXVL
standing by ; and the slave went out, and after
some delay returned with the man who was to
give the poison, carrying it prepared in a cup.
When Socrates saw him, he asked, You under-
stand these things, my good sir, what have I
to do?

You have only to drink this, he replied, and
to walk about until your legs feel heavy, and
then lie down ; and it will act of itself. With
that he handed the cup to Socrates, who took it
quite cheerfully, Echecrates, without trembling,
and without any change of colour or of feature,
and looked up at the man with that fixed glance
of his, and asked, What say you to making a
libation from this draught ? May I, or not ?
We only prepare so much as we think sufficient,
Socrates, he answered. I understand, said
Socrates. But I suppose that I may, and must,
pray to the gods that my journey hence may be
prosperous : that is my prayer ; be it so. With
these words he put the cup to his lips and drank
the poison quite calmly and cheerfully. Till then
most of us had been able to control our grief
fairly well ; but when we saw him drinking, and
then the poison finished, we could do so no
longer: my tears came fast in spite of myself, and
I covered my face and wept for myself : it was
not for him, but at my own misfortune in losing
such a friend. Even before that Crito had been
unable to restrain his tears, and had gone away ;
and Apollodorus, who had never once ceased
weeping the whole time, burst into a loud cry,

212 PHMDO.

and made us one and all break down by his
sobbing and grief, except only Socrates himself.
What are you doing, my friends ? he exclaimed.
I sent away the women chiefly in order that
they might not offend in this way ; for I have
heard that a man should die in silence. So
calm yourselves and bear up. When we heard
that we were ashamed, and we ceased from
weeping. But he walked about, until he said
that his legs were getting heavy, and then he
lay down on his back, as he was told. And
the man who gave the poison began to examine
his feet and legs, from time to time : then he
pressed his foot hard, and asked if there was
any feeling in it ; and Socrates said, No : and
118. then his legs, and so higher and higher, and
showed us that he was cold and stiff. And
Socrates felt himself, and said that when it
came to his heart, he should be gone. He was
already growing cold about the groin, when he
uncovered his face, which had been covered,
and spoke for the last time. Crito, he said, I
owe a cock to Asclepius ; do not forget to pay
it.1 It shall be done, replied Crito. Is there
anything else that you wish ? He made no
answer to this question ; but after a short
interval there was a movement, and the man

1 These words probably refer to the offering usually
made to Asclepius on recovery from illness. Death is
a release from the ' fitful fever of life. ' See, for instance,
66 B. seq. , 67 C. Another explanation is to make
the word refer to the omission of a trifling religious
duty.

PHsEDO. 213

uncovered him, and his eyes were fixed. Then
Crito closed his mouth and his eyes.

Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend,
a man, I think, who was the wisest and justest,
and the best man that I have ever known.

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