Chapter X. That One Ought Not to Shrink From Death in Defence of the Truth. From the Apology of Socrates

[1] ‘PERHAPS therefore some one will say, Are you not ashamed then, Socrates, of having pursued such a course of life, that you are now in danger of being put to death for it? But I should return a just answer to him, You are wrong in what you say, Sir, if you suppose that any man who is of the least good ought to take into account the risk of life or death, instead of looking at this point alone in his actions, whether he is doing what is just or unjust, the works of a good or a bad man.

‘For according to your argument the demi-gods who died at Troy would be good for nothing, especially the son of Thetis, who so despised danger in comparison with incurring disgrace, that though his mother, being a goddess, had spoken to him, I suppose, in this way, when he was so eager to kill Hector, O my Son, if you avenge the murder of your friend Patroclus and kill Hector, you will be killed yourself, for, said she,

“On Hector’s fate thine own will follow close.” [2]

And after hearing this he cared little for death and danger, but fearing much more to live as a coward and not avenge his friends, he exclaims:

“Would I might die this hour” [3]

after inflicting vengeance on the injurious foe, that I remain not here a laughing-stock,

“Cumbering the ground, beside the sharp-beaked ships.” [4]

‘Think you that he cared for death and danger? Thus, O men of Athens, the case stands in very truth: wherever a man has chosen his own post because he thought it best, or has been placed by a commander, there, in my judgement, he is bound to await the danger, taking no account either of death or of anything else than disgrace.

‘If therefore, O men of Athens, when the leaders whom you chose to be my commanders set me in my post at Potidaea, and Amphipolis, and at Delium, or anywhere else, I remained just like any other where they placed me and ran the risk of being killed,----how strangely should I have acted, when the god, as I thought and supposed, ordered me to live the life of a philosopher, examining myself and others, if in this case, through fear either of death or anything else whatever, I should desert my post.

‘Strange it would be indeed, and then in truth any one might justly bring me before the court, on the ground that I do not believe in the existence of gods, since I disobey the oracle, and am afraid of death, and think myself wise when I am not. For to be afraid to die, Sirs, is nothing else than to think oneself to be wise, when one is not: for it is to think that one knows, what one does not know. For no one knows about death even whether it may not be the greatest of all blessings to man; but they fear it as if they certainly knew that it is the greatest of evils. And what is this but that same disgraceful ignorance, for a man to think that he knows what he does not know?

‘But I, Sirs, perhaps on this subject also differ from most men in this; and were I to say that I am wiser than another in any respect, it would be in this, that, as I do not know enough about the state of things in Hades, so I also think that I do not know. But I do know that to do wrong and to disobey one’s superior, whether god or man, is evil and disgraceful. Those evils therefore which I know to be evil I shall always fear and shun, rather than things which, for aught I know, may really be good.

‘Therefore not even if you acquit me now, and refuse to believe Anytus, who said that either I ought not to have come into this court at all, or that, since I had come, it was impossible to avoid putting me to death, and told you that, if I should be acquitted, at once your sons would all be utterly corrupted by practising what Socrates teaches----if in answer to this you should say to me,

Socrates, we are not going to be persuaded by Anytus this time, but we acquit you, on this condition however, that you cease to spend your time in this speculation, and in philosophy; and if you be convicted of doing so any more, you will be put to death;----if then, as I said, you were to acquit me on these conditions, I should say to you, O men of Athens, I honour and I love you, but I shall obey the god rather than you, and as long as I have breath and power, I shall never cease from studying philosophy, and exhorting and instructing any of you whom I may meet from time to time, in my usual style of discourse.’

And a little further on he adds: [5]

‘Let us then consider it also in this way, that there is much reason to hope that death is a good. For the state of the dead is one of two things: either it is like non-existence and absence of all sensation in the dead, or, as is commonly said, it is a sort of transference and migration of the soul from this region to another. And if there is no sensation, but as it were a sleep in which the sleeper sees nothing even in a dream, death must be a wonderful gain.

‘For I suppose, that if a man were obliged to select the night in which he slept so soundly as to see nothing even in a dream, and to compare all the other nights and days of his life with this night,----if, I say, he were obliged to consider and tell us how many days and nights in the course of his life he had passed more happily and more pleasantly than this night, I think that not merely any ordinary person but even the great King himself would find these better nights very few in comparison with all the rest of his days and nights. If therefore death is something of this kind, I call it a gain: for thus all time appears nothing more than a single night.

‘But if on the other hand death is like a departure hence to another place, and if what is said is true, that all the dead exist there, what greater good could there be than this, O my judges? For if on arriving in Hades, after having been delivered from the self-styled judges here, a man shall find the true judges, who are said to give judgement there, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, and Triptolemus, and all the other demi-gods who were just in their own lives, will the change of abode be worth nothing?

‘Or on the contrary, what would any of you pay to associate with Orpheus, and Musaeus, and Hesiod, and Homer? For my part I am willing to die many a death, if indeed these things are true, since I too should find it a delightful occupation there, whenever I met with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other of the ancients who has died through an unjust judgement, to compare my own sufferings with theirs,----no unpleasant thing, methinks it would he. And moreover the chief delight would be to spend my life in examining and scrutinizing the dwellers in that world, as I do those here, to learn which of them is wise, and which, though he thinks so, is not.’

We also have the saying: ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’ [6] And: ‘Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.’ [7] And we know, ‘that if the earthly house of our bodily frame be dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens’:[8] ... and that ‘whilst we are absent from the body we are at home with the Lord,’ [9]who also hath promised to all who have hoped in Him, that they shall rest in the bosoms of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and, in company with all the other Hebrew prophets and righteous men beloved of God, shall pass the long eternity in a blessed life.