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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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Writers who, after Xenophon and Plato, have related the death of Socrates, appear to have held themselves bound to vie with those who preceded them in giving pathos to the story. The purpose here has been rather to render it intelligible: to show its connection with the political history of Athens; to derive from it illustration of the political history. The magnanimity of Socrates, the principal factor of the pathos, surely deserves admiration; yet it is not that in which he has most outshone other men. The singular merit of Socrates lay in the purity and the usefulness of his manners and conversation; the clearness with which he saw, and the steadiness with which he practised, in a blind and corrupt age, all moral duties; the disinterestedness and the zeal with which he devoted himself to the benefit of others; and the enlarged and warm benevolence, whence his supreme and almost only pleasure seems to have consisted in doing good. The purity of Christian morality, little enough indeed seen in practice, nevertheless is become so familiar in theory that it passes almost for obvious, and even congenial to the human mind. Those only will justly estimate the merit of that near approach to it which Socrates made, who will take the pains to gather, as they may from the writings of his contemporaries and predecessors, how little conception was entertained of it before his time; how dull to a just moral sense the human mind has really been; how slow the progress in the investigation of moral duties, even where not only great pains have been taken, but the greatest abilities zealously employed; and, when discovered, how difficult it has been to establish them by proofs beyond controversy, or proofs even that should be generally admitted by the reason of men.
It is through the light which Socrates diffused by his doctrine enforced by his practice, with the advantage of having both the doctrine and the practice exhibited to highest advantage in the incomparable writings of disciples such as Plato and Xenophon, that his life forms an era in the history of Athens and of man.b
It is our great good fortune to possess a long and sympathetic description of the closing scenes of his life in the unsurpassed prose of his disciple Plato. Though told in the form of a dialogue and much too long for quotation in full, the presentation of Socrates is so vivid and veracious that a part of it must be given.a
PLATO’S ACCOUNT OF THE LAST HOURS OF SOCRATES
When we entered, we found Socrates just freed from his bonds, and Xantippe, you know her, holding his little boy and sitting by him. As soon as Xantippe saw us, she wept aloud and said such things as women usually do on such occasions, as “Socrates, your friends will now converse with you for the last time and you with them.” But Socrates, looking towards Crito, said, “Crito, let some one take her home.” Upon which some of Crito’s attendants led her away, wailing and beating herself.
But Socrates sitting up in bed, drew up his leg, and rubbed it with his hand, and as he rubbed it, said: “What an unaccountable thing, my friends, that seems to be, which men call pleasure; and how wonderfully is it related towards that which appears to be its contrary, pain, in that they will not both be present to a man at the same time, yet, if any one pursues and attains the one, he is almost always compelled to receive the other, as if they were both united together from one head.
“And it seems to me,” he said, “that if Æsop had observed this he would have made a fable from it, how the Deity, wishing to reconcile these warring principles, when he could not do so, united their heads together, and from hence whomsoever the one visits the other attends immediately after; as appears to be the case with me, since I suffered pain in my leg before from the chain, but now pleasure seems to have succeeded.
“‘A bypath, as it were, seems to lead us on in our researches undertaken by reason,’ because as long as we are encumbered with the body, and our soul is contaminated with such an evil, we can never fully attain to what we desire; and this, we say, is truth. For the body subjects us to innumerable hindrances on account of its necessary support, and moreover if any diseases befall us, they impede us in our search after that which is; and it fills us with longings, desires, fears, all kinds of fancies, and a multitude of absurdities, so that, as it is said in real truth, by reason of the body it is never possible for us to make any advances in wisdom.
“For nothing else but the body and its desires occasion wars, seditions, and contests; for all wars amongst us arise on account of our desire to acquire wealth; and we are compelled to acquire wealth on account of the body, being enslaved by its service; and consequently on all these accounts we are hindered in the pursuit of philosophy. But the worst of all is, that if it leaves us any leisure, and we apply ourselves to the consideration of any subject, it constantly obtrudes itself in the midst of our researches, and occasions trouble and disturbance, and confounds us so that we are not able by reason of it to discern the truth. It has then in reality been demonstrated to us, that if we are ever to know anything purely, 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 anything 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 the 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. Such things, I think, Simmias, all true lovers of wisdom must both think and say to one another. Does it not seem so to you?”
“Most assuredly, Socrates.”
“If this, then,” said Socrates, “is true, my friend, there is great hope for one who arrives where I am going; there, if anywhere, to acquire that in perfection for the sake of which we have taken so much pains during our past life; so that the journey now appointed me is set out upon with good hope, and will be so by any other man who thinks that his mind has been as it were purified.”
“Certainly,” said Simmias.
“But does not purification consist in this, as was said in a former part of our discourse, in separating as much as possible the soul from the body, and in accustoming it to gather and collect itself by itself on all sides apart from the body, and to dwell, as far as it can, both now and hereafter, alone by itself, delivered as it were from the shackles of the body?”
“Certainly,” he replied.
“Is this then called death, this deliverance and separation of the soul from the body?”
“Assuredly,” he answered.
“But, as we affirmed, those who pursue philosophy rightly, are especially and alone desirous to deliver it, and this is the very study of philosophers, the deliverance and separation of the soul from the body, is it not?”