Apology · Crito · Phaedo

„Socrates argues that it is wrong to return evil for evil and that the obligations which a citizen owes to his State are more binding than those which a child owes his parents or a slave his master, and, therefore, it is his duty to submit to the laws of Athens at whatever cost to himself.”

„I reasoned thus with myself: I am wiser than this man, for neither of us appears to know anything great and good; but he fancies he knows something, although he knows nothing; whereas I, as I do not know anything, so I do not fancy I do. In this trifling particular, then, I appear to be wiser than he, because I do not fancy I know what I do not know.”

„I came to some such conclusion as this: those who bore the highest reputation appeared to me to be most deficient, in my researches in obedience to the god, and others who were considered inferior more nearly approaching to the possession of understanding.”

„I soon discovered this, therefore, with regard to the poets, that they do not effect their object by wisdom, but by a certain natural inspiration, and under the influence of enthusiasm, like prophets and seers; for these also say many fine things, but they understand nothing that they say.”

„For no one knows but that death is the greatest of all good to man; but men fear it, as if they well knew that it is the greatest of evils.”

„to act unjustly, and to disobey my superior, whether God or man, I know is evil and base.”

„I do not think that it is possible for a better man to be injured by a worse.”

„so the deity appears to have united me, being such a person as I am, to the city, that I may rouse you, and persuade and reprove every one of you, nor ever cease besetting you throughout the whole day. Such another man, O Athenians! will not easily be found; therefore, if you will take my advice, you will spare me. But you, perhaps, being irritated like drowsy persons who are roused from sleep, will strike me, and, yielding to Anytus, will unthinkingly condemn me to death; and then you will pass the rest of your life in sleep, unless the deity, caring for you, should send some one else to you. But that I am a person who has been given by the deity to this city, you may discern from hence; for it is not like the ordinary conduct of men, that I should have neglected all my own affairs, and suffered my private interest to be neglected for so many years, and that I should constantly attend to your concerns, addressing myself to each of you separately, like a father, or elder brother, persuading you to the pursuit of virtue.”

„if I had long since attempted to intermeddle with politics, I should have perished long ago, and should not have at all benefited you or myself. “ — S “it is necessary that he who in earnest contends for justice, if he will be safe for but a short time, should live privately, and take no part in public affairs.”

„I ought rather to meet the danger with law and justice on my side, than through fear of imprisonment or death, to take part with you in your unjust designs.”

„what most men seek after, money-making, domestic concerns, military command, popular oratory, and, moreover, all the magistracies, conspiracies, and cabals”

„examining both myself and others, but that a life without investigation is not worth living for”

„this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death.”

„what has befallen me appears to be a blessing; and it is impossible that we think rightly who suppose that death is an evil.”

„to die is one of two things: for either the dead may be annihilated, and have no sensation of any thing whatever; or, as it is said, there are a certain change and passage of the soul from one place to another. And if it is a privation of all sensation, as it were a sleep in which the sleeper has no dream, death would be a wonderful gain.”

„to a good man nothing is evil, neither while living nor when dead nor are his concerns neglected by the gods.”

„Punish my sons when they grow up, O judges! paining them as I have pained you, if they appear to you to care for riches or anything else before virtue; and if they think themselves to be something when they are nothing, reproach them as I have done you, for not attending to what they ought, and for conceiving themselves to be something when they are worth nothing. If ye do this, both I and my sons shall have met with just treatment at your hands. But it is now time to depart—for me to die, for you to live. But which of us is going to a better state is unknown to every one but God.”

„But why, my dear Crito, should we care so much for the opinion of the many? For the most worthy men, whom we ought rather to regard, will think that matters have transpired as they really have.”

„Would, O Crito that the multitude could effect the greatest evils, that they might also effect the greatest good for then it would be well. But now they can do neither; for they can make a man neither wise nor foolish; but they do whatever chances.”

„I not now only, but always, am a person who will obey nothing within me but reason, according as it appears to me on mature deliberation to be best.”

„We must not then, my excellent friend, so much regard what the multitude will say of us, but what he will say who understands the just and the unjust, the one, even truth itself.”

„For to do evil to men differs in no respect from committing injustice.”

„It is not right, therefore, to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however one may have suffered from him.”

„philosophy itself is nothing else than a preparation for and meditation on death”

„He who grieves at the approach of death can not be a true lover of wisdom, but is a lover of his body.”

„We daily find that we are carried from the knowledge of one thing to another. Things perceived by the eyes, ears, and other senses bring up the thought of other things; thus the sight of a lyre or a garment reminds us of a friend, and not only are we thus reminded of sensible objects, but of things which are comprehended by the mind alone, and have no sensitive existence. For we have formed in our minds an idea of abstract equality, of the beautiful, the just, the good; in short, of every thing which we say exists without the aid of the senses, for we use them only in the perception of individual things; whence it follows that the mind did not acquire this knowledge in this life, but must have had it before, and therefore the soul must have existed before.”

„The former objects that the soul, according to Socrates's own showing, is nothing but a harmony resulting from a combination of the parts of the body, and so may perish with the body, as the harmony of a lyre does when the lyre itself is broken.”

„there are various degrees of harmony, but every soul is as much a soul as any other.”

„one soul is not more or less a soul than another, and therefore one can not he more or less harmonized than another, and one could not admit of a greater degree of virtue or vice than another; and indeed a soul, being harmony, could not partake of vice at all, which is discord”

„every thing that is beautiful is so from partaking of abstract beauty, and great from partaking of magnitude, and little from partaking of littleness. Now, it is impossible, he argues, that contraries can exist in the same thing at the same time; for instance, the same thing can not possess both magnitude and littleness, but one will withdraw at the approach of the other; and not only so, but things which, though not contrary to each other, yet always contain contraries within themselves, can not co-exist; for instance, the number three has no contrary, yet it contains within itself the idea of odd, which is the contrary of even, and so three never can become even; in like manner, heat while it is heat can never admit the idea of its contrary, cold. Now, if this method of reasoning is applied to the soul, it will be found to be immortal; for life and death are contraries, and never can co-exist; but wherever the soul is, there is life: so that it contains within itself that which is contrary to death, and consequently can never admit of death; therefore it is immortal.”

„great need is there in this life to endeavor to become as wise and good as possible.”

„"What are you doing, my friends? I, for this reason, chiefly, sent away the women, that they might not commit any folly of this kind; for I have heard that it is right to die with good omens. Be quiet, therefore, and bear up.”

„philosophy is the highest music”

„is not at all willing to admit at once any thing one has said”

„I shall go among gods who are perfectly good masters, be assured I can positively assert this, if I can any thing of the kind.”

„something awaits those who die, and that, as was said long since, it will be far better for the good than the evil.”

„a man who has really devoted his life to philosophy, when he is about to die, appears to me, on good grounds, to have confidence, and to entertain a firm hope that the greatest good will befall him in the other world when he has departed this life. (…) For as many as rightly apply themselves to philosophy seem to have left all others in ignorance, that they aim at nothing else than to die and be dead. If this, then, is true, it would surely be absurd to be anxious about nothing else than this during their whole life, but, when it arrives, to be grieved at what they have been long anxious about and aimed at." — S “the philosopher, above all other men, evidently free his soul as much as he can from communion with the body”

„"And surely the soul then reasons best when none of these things disturb it—neither hearing, nor sight, nor pain, nor pleasure of any kind; but it retires as much as possible within itself, taking leave of the body; and, so far as it can, not communicating or being in contact with it, it aims at the discovery of that which is.”

„"Would not he, then, do this with the utmost purity, who should in the highest degree approach each subject by means of the mere mental faculties, neither employing the sight in conjunction with the reflective faculty, nor introducing any other sense together with reasoning; but who, using pure reflection by itself, should attempt to search out each essence purely by itself, freed as much as possible from the eyes and ears, and, in a word, from the whole body, as disturbing the soul, and not suffering it to acquire truth and wisdom, when it is in communion with it. Is not he the person, Simmias, if any one can, who will arrive at the knowledge of that which is?”

„by reason of the body it is never possible for us to make any advances in wisdom. For nothing else than the body and its desires occasion wars, seditions, and contests; for all wars among us arise on account of our desire to acquire wealth: and we are compelled to acquire wealth on account of the body, being enslaved to its service; and consequently on all these accounts we are hindered in the pursuit of philosophy.”

„we must be separated from the body, and contemplate the things themselves by the mere soul; and then, as it seems, we shall obtain that which we desire, and which we profess ourselves to be lovers of—wisdom —when we are dead, as reason shows, but not while we are alive. For if it is not possible to know any thing purely in conjunction with the body, one of these two things must follow, either that we can never acquire knowledge, or only after we are dead; for then the soul will subsist apart by itself, separate from the body, but not before. And while we live we shall thus, as it seems, approach nearest to knowledge, if we hold no intercourse or communion at all with the body, except what absolute necessity requires, nor suffer ourselves to be polluted by its nature, but purify ourselves from it, until God himself shall release us. And thus being pure, and freed from the folly of body, we shall in all likelihood be with others like ourselves, and shall of ourselves know the whole real essence, and that probably is truth; for it is not allowable for the impure to attain to the pure.”

„those who pursue philosophy rightly, study to die; and to them, of all men, death is least formidable.”

„fearing to be deprived of other pleasures, and desiring them, they abstain from some, being mastered by others.”

„Fortitude, temperance and justice, and, in a word true virtue, subsist with wisdom, whether pleasures and fears, and everything else of the kind, are present or absent, but when separated from wisdom and changed one for another, consider whether such virtue is not a mere outline and in reality servile, possessing neither soundness nor truth. But the really true virtue is a purification from all such things, and temperance, justice, fortitude and wisdom itself, are a kind of initiatory purification”

„all things which have a contrary should be produced from nothing else than their contrary. As, for instance, when any thing becomes greater, is it not necessary that, from being previously smaller, it afterward became greater?”

„If any thing becomes worse, must it not become so from better? and if more just, from more unjust?”

„From the dead, then, O Cebes! living things and living men are produced.”

„When, therefore, on seeing one thing, you form, from the sight of it, the notion of another, whether like or unlike, this," he said, "must necessarily be reminiscence.”

„But if, having had it before we were born, we lose it at our birth, and afterward, through exercising the senses about these things, we recover the knowledge which we once before possessed, would not that which we call learning be a recovery of our own knowledge? And in saying that this is to remember, should we not say rightly? (…) So that, as I said, one of these two things must follow: either we are all born with this knowledge, and we retain it through life, or those whom we say learn afterward do nothing else than remember, and this learning will be reminiscence.”

„Our souls, therefore, Simmias, existed before they were in a human form, separate from bodies, and possessed intelligence.”

„those who have given themselves up to gluttony, wantonness and drinking, and have put no restraint on themselves, will probably be clothed in the form of asses and brutes of that kind. "And that such as have set great value on injustice, tyranny and rapine, will be clothed in the species of wolves, hawks and kites! Where else can we say such souls go?" "Is it not, then, evident," he continued, "as to the rest, whither each will go, according to the resemblances of their several pursuits?" "Of these, then," he said, "are not they the most happy, and do they not go to the best place, who have practiced that social and civilized virtue which they call temperance and justice, and which is produced from habit and exercise, without philosophy and reflection?" "Because it is probable that these should again migrate into a corresponding civilized and peaceable kind of animals, such as bees perhaps, or wasps, or ants, or even into the same human species again, and from these become moderate men." "But it is not lawful for any one who has not studied philosophy, and departed this life perfectly pure, to pass into the rank of gods, but only for the true lover of wisdom. And on this account, my friends Simmias and Cebes, those who philosophize rightly, abstain from all bodily desires, and persevere in doing so, and do not give themselves up to them, not fearing the loss of property and poverty, as the generality of men and the lovers of wealth; nor, again, dreading disgrace and ignominy, like those who are lovers of power and honor, do they then abstain from them." "Wherefore, Cebes, they who care at all for their soul, and do not spend their lives in the culture of their bodies, despising all these, proceed not in the same way with them, as being ignorant whither they are going, but, being convinced that they ought not to act contrary to philosophy, but in accordance with the freedom and purification she affords, they give themselves up to her direction, following her wherever she leads."”

„those who are truly lovers of wisdom are moderate and resolute”

„For I think, Socrates, that you yourself have arrived at this conclusion, that we consider the soul to be pretty much of this kind—namely, that our body being compacted and held together by heat and cold, dryness and moisture, and other such qualities, our soul is the fusion and harmony of these, when they are well and duly combined with each other.”

„even Hercules himself is said not to have been a match for two.”

„no greater evil can happen to any one than to hate reasoning. But hatred of reasoning and hatred of mankind both spring from the same source. For hatred of mankind is produced in us from having placed too great reliance on some one without sufficient knowledge of him, and from having considered him to be a man altogether true, sincere, and faithful, and then, after a little while, finding him depraved and unfaithful, and after him another. And when a man has often experienced this, and especially from those whom he considered his most intimate and best friends, at length, having frequently stumbled, he hates all men, and thinks that there is no soundness at all in any of them. “Is it not a shame?" he said "And is it not evident that such a one attempts to deal with men without sufficient knowledge of human affairs? For if he had dealt with them with competent knowledge, as the case really is, so he would have considered that the good and the bad are each very few in number, and that those between both are most numerous.”

„How say you?" I asked. "In the same manner," he replied, "as with things very little and very large Do you think that any thing is more rare than to find a very large on a very little man, or dog, or any thing else? and, again, swift or slow, beautiful or ugly, white or black? Do you not perceive that of all such things the extremes are rare and few, but that the intermediate are abundant and numerous?”

„in this respect reasonings do not resemble men, for I was just now following you as my leader, but in this they do resemble them, when any one believes in any argument as true without being skilled in the art of reasoning, and then shortly afterward it appears to him to be false, at one time being so and at another time not, and so on with one after another and especially they who devote themselves to controversial arguments, you are aware, at length think they have become very wise and have alone discovered that there is nothing sound and stable either in things or reasonings but that all things that exist, as is the case with the Euripus, are in a constant state of flux and reflux, and never continue in any one condition for any length of time.”

„Would it not, then, Phædo" he said "be a sad thing if, when there is a true and sound reasoning, and such as one can understand, one should then, through lighting upon such arguments as appear to be at one time true and at another false, not blame one's self and one's own want of skill, but at length, through grief, should anxiously transfer the blame from one's self to the arguments, and thereupon pass the rest of one's life in hating and reviling arguments and so be depraved of the truth and knowledge of things that exist?”

„In the first place, then," he said, "let us beware of this, and let us not admit into our souls the notion that there appears to be nothing sound in reasoning, but much rather that we are not yet in a sound condition, and that we ought vigorously and strenuously to endeavor to become sound, you and the others, on account of your whole future life, but I, on account of my death, since I am in danger, at the present time, of not behaving as becomes a philosopher with respect to this very subject, but as a wrangler, like those who are utterly uninformed. For they, when they dispute about any thing, care nothing at all for the subject about which the discussion is, but are anxious about this, that what they have themselves advanced shall appear true to the persons present. And I seem to myself on the present occasion to differ from them only in this respect, for I shall not be anxious to make what I say appear true to those who are present, except that may happen by the way, but that it may appear certainly to be so to myself.”

„harmony is something compounded, and that the soul is a kind of harmony that results from the parts compacted together in the body”

„It does not, therefore, appertain to harmony to take the lead of the things of which it is composed, but to follow them.”

„if a philosopher that is about to die, full of confidence and hope that after death he shall be far happier than if he had died after leading a different kind of life, shall not entertain this confidence foolishly and vainly.”

„by means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful”

„by magnitude great things become great, and greater things, greater; and by littleness less things become less”

„When one has been added to one, would you not beware of saying that the addition is the cause of its being two, or division when it has been divided; and would you not loudly assert that you know no other way in which each thing subsists, than by partaking of the peculiar essence of each of which it partakes, and that in these cases you can assign no other cause of its becoming two than its partaking of duality; “ — S “a contrary thing is produced from a contrary; but now, that a contrary can never become contrary to itself—neither that which is in us, nor that which is in nature.”

„snow, while it is snow, can never, when it has admitted heat, as we said before, continue to be what it was, snow and hot; but, on the approach of heat, it must either withdraw or perish?”

„the odd can never become even by the approach of the even”

„And they do not cease from suffering this until they have persuaded those whom they have injured, for this sentence was imposed on them by the judges. 145. But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy life, these are they who, being freed and set at large from these regions in the earth as from a prison, arrive at the pure abode above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among these, they who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy shall live without bodies, throughout all future time, and shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these which it is neither easy to describe, nor at present is there sufficient time for the purpose. “But, for the sake of these things which we have described, we should use every endeavor, Simmias, so as to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life, for the reward is noble, and the hope great.”

„the hazard is noble, and it is right to allure ourselves with such things”

„it appears to me to be better to drink the poison after I have bathed myself, and not to trouble the women with washing my dead body.”

„What I always say, Crito," he replied, "nothing new that by taking care of yourselves you will oblige both me and mine, and yourselves, whatever you do, though you should not now promise it, and if you neglect yourselves, and will not live, as it were, in the footsteps of what has been now and formerly said, even though you should promise much at present, and that earnestly, you will do no good at all.”

„I shall gain nothing by drinking a little later, except to become ridiculous to myself, in being so fond of life, and sparing of it, when none any longer remains.”

„“in spite of myself, the tears came in full torrent, so that, covering my face, I wept for myself; for I did not weep for him, but for my own fortune, in being deprived of such a friend.”

„What are you doing, my admirable friends? I, indeed, for this reason chiefly, sent away the women, that they might not commit any folly of this kind. For I have heard that it is right to die with good omens. Be quiet, therefore, and bear up.”

„And, at the same time, he who gave the poison taking hold of him, after a short interval, examined his feet and legs; and then, having pressed his foot hard, he asked if he felt it: he said that he did not. And after this he pressed his thighs; and, thus going higher, he showed us that he was growing cold and stiff. Then Socrates touched himself, and said that when the poison reached his heart he should then depart. 155. But now the parts around the lower belly were almost cold; when, uncovering himself, for he had been covered over, he said (and they were his last words), "Crito, we owe a cock to Æsculapius; pay it, therefore; and do not neglect it.”

„It shall be done," said Crito; "but consider whether you have any thing else to say." To this question he gave no reply; but, shortly after, he gave a convulsive movement, and the man covered him, and his eyes were fixed; and Crito, perceiving it, closed his mouth and eyes. This, Echecrates, was the end of our friend,—a man, as we may say, the best of all of his time that we have known, and, moreover, the most wise and just.”