“ When I heard this, I was astonished and said, "Is this really true, O thou wise Diotima?" And she answered with all the authority of a sophist: "Of that, Socrates, you may be assured; think only of the ambition of men, and you will marvel at their senselessness unless you consider how they are stirred by the love of an immortality of fame. They are ready to run risks greater far than they would have run for their children, and to spend money and undergo any amount of toil, and even to die for the sake of leaving behind them a name which shall be eternal. ”

“ To the man of letters, to the man of wide reading, they will at least serve to recall, when far from libraries and books, those authors who have been the delight and the instructors of a lifetime. They will bring at least the pleasures of memory and that keener pleasure which arises when we meet a poem or a passage of prose which we know as an old and well-loved friend, remote from home, upon some alien page. ”

“ I would not have him sorrow at my hard lot, or say at the burial, 'Thus we lay out Socrates,' or, 'Thus we follow him to the grave or bury him'; for false words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. Be of good cheer then, my dear Crito, and say that you are burying my body only, and do with that as is usual, and as you think best. ”

“ Socrates. No; come along, form the court, fetch Philosophy, and see what he has to say for himself. To condemn unheard is a sadly crude proceeding, not for us; leave that to the hasty people with whom might is right. We shall give occasion to the enemy to blaspheme if we stone a man without a hearing, profest lovers of justice as we are. We shall have to keep quiet about Anytus and Meletus, my accusers, and the jury on that occasion, if we can not spare an hour to hear this fellow before he suffers.
Plato. Very true, Socrates. We will go and fetch Philosophy. ”

“ Whilst we lived together, nothing could sever our companies: but now at our death, I fear me they will make us change our countries. For as thou being a Roman, has been buried in Egypt: even so wretched creature I, an Egyptian, shall be buried in Italy, which shall be all the good that I have received by thy country. If therefore the gods where thou art now have any power and authority, sith our gods here have forsaken us: suffer not thy true friend and lover to be carried away alive, that in me, they triumph of thee: but receive me with thee, and let me be buried in one self tomb with thee. ”

“ Is not the latter that deceiving art which makes us wander up and down and take the things at one time of which we repent at another, both in our actions and in our choice of things great and small? But the art of measurement is that which would do away with the effect of appearances, and, showing the truth, would fain teach the soul at last to find rest [106] in the truth, and would thus save our life. Would not mankind generally acknowledge that the art which accomplishes this is the art of measurement? ”

“ Now for thyself, I can find no cause of fault in thee touching our match, but for my part, how may I show my duty towards thee, and how much I would do for thy sake, if I cannot constantly bear a secret mischance or grief with thee, that requireth secrecy and fidelity? I confess, that a woman's wit commonly is too weak to keep a secret safely: but yet, Brutus, good education, and the company of virtuous men, have some power to reform the defect of nature. And for myself, I have this benefit, moreover, that I am the daughter of Cato, and wife of Brutus. ”

“ When they do not carry out an intention which they have formed, they seem to have sustained a personal bereavement; when an enterprise succeeds, they have gained a mere instalment of what is to come; but if they fail, they at once conceive new hopes and so fill up the void. With them alone to hope is to have, for they lose not a moment in the execution of an idea. This is the lifelong task, full of danger and toil, which they are always imposing upon themselves. None enjoy their good things less, because they are always seeking for more. ”

“ Socrates: For doing evil to another is the same as injuring him?
Crito: Very true.
Socrates: Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. But I would have you consider, Crito, whether you really mean what you are saying. For this opinion has never been held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of persons; and those who are agreed and those who are not agreed upon this point have no common ground, and can only despise one another when they see how widely they differ. ”

“ Who would be willing to sacrifice himself to the law of honor when he knew not whether he would ever live to be held in honor? The pleasure of the moment and any sort of thing which conduced to it took the place both of honor and of expediency. No fear of God or law of man deterred a criminal. Those who saw all perishing alike thought that the worship or neglect of the gods made no difference. ”

“ And this inferiority of a man to himself is merely ignorance, as the superiority of a man to himself is wisdom.
They all assented.
And does not ignorance consist in having a false opinion and being deceived about important matters?
To that they unanimously assented also.
Then, I said, no man voluntarily pursues evil or that which he thinks to be evil. To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less. ”

“ Lovers, too, feel delight in conversing, writing, and composing something, ever about the object beloved; because, in all those energies, they have a perception, as it were, of the object they love. And this is in all cases a criterion of the commencement of love, when persons feel pleasure not only in the presence of the object, but are enamored also of it when absent, on memory; wherefore, even when pain arises at absence, nay in the midst of mourning, and the very dirge of death, there yet arises within us a certain pleasure. For the pain is felt because the object is not present ”

“ For wisdom is a most beautiful thing, and Love is of the beautiful; and therefore Love is also a philosopher or lover of wisdom, and being a lover of wisdom is in a mean between the wise and the ignorant. And this again is a quality which Love inherits from his parents; for his father is wealthy and wise, and his mother poor and foolish. Such, my dear Socrates, is the nature of the spirit Love. The error in your conception of him was very natural, and as I imagine from what you say, has arisen out of a confusion of love and the beloved—this made you think that love was all beautiful. ”

“ The dead lay as they had died, one upon another, while others hardly alive wallowed in the streets and crawled about every fountain craving for water. The temples in which they lodged were full of the corpses of those who had died in them; for the violence of the calamity was such that men, not knowing where to turn, grew reckless of all law, human and divine. ”

“ To you, Socrates, whom I know to be the noblest and gentlest and best of all who ever came to this place, I will not impute the angry feelings of other men, who rage and swear at me when, in obedience to the authorities, I bid them drink the poison—indeed, I am sure that you will not be angry with me; for others, as you are aware, and not I, are the guilty cause. ”

“ At first, when any one of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to go up and turn his neck round and walk and look at the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then imagine some one saying to him that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now he is approaching real being and has a truer sight and vision of more real things—what will be his reply? ”

“ And is there anything surprizing in one who passes from divine contemplation to human things, misbehaving himself in a ridiculous manner; if, while his eyes are blinking and before he has become accustomed to the darkness visible, he is compelled to fight in courts of law, or in other places, about the images or shadows of images of justice, and is endeavoring to meet the conceptions of those who have never yet seen the absolute justice? ”

“ And this is the reason why, when the hour of conception arrives, and the teeming nature is full, there is such a flutter and ecstasy about beauty whose approach is the alleviation of pain. For love, Socrates, is not, as you imagine, the love of the beautiful only. ”

“ Nay, but our questioner will rejoin with a laugh, if he be one of the swaggering sort, that is too ridiculous, that a man should do what he knows to be evil when he ought not, because he is overcome by good. Is that, he will ask, because the good was worthy or not worthy of conquering the evil? And in answer to that we shall clearly reply, because it was not worthy; for if it had been worthy, then he who, as we say, was overcome by pleasure, would not have been wrong. But how, he will reply, can the good be unworthy of the evil, or the evil of the good? ”

“ When they want to get something, we hear a great deal, to be sure, about community of goods—how wealth is a thing indifferent—and [251] what is gold and silver?—neither more nor less worth than pebbles on the beach. But when an old comrade and tried friend needs help and comes to them with his modest requirements, ah, then there is silence and searchings of heart, unlearning of tenets and flat renunciation of doctrines. All their fine talk of friendship, with Virtue and The Good, have vanished and flown, who knows whither? ”

“ Why then do you confess that you want wisdom? In truth, because you are often struck and disconcerted by semblances, and their speciousness gets the better of you; and hence you sometimes suppose the very same things to be good, then evil, and lastly, neither; and, in a word, you grieve, you fear, you envy, you are disconcerted, you change. Is it from this that you confess yourself unwise? And are you not changeable too in love? Riches, pleasure, in short, the very same things, you sometimes esteem good, and at other times evil. ”

“ Certainly military actions altogether exclude it; for no one chooses war, nor makes preparations for war for the sake of war; for a man would be thought perfectly defiled with blood, if he made his friends enemies in order that there might be battles and massacres. The energy of the statesman is also without leisure; and besides the actual administration of the state, the statesman seeks to gain power and honors, or at least happiness for himself and his fellow citizens, different from the happiness of the state, which we are in search of, clearly as being different. ”

“ For the true enslaver of a people is he who can put an end to their slavery, but has no care about it; and all the more, if he be reputed the champion of liberty in Hellas. And so we have met at last, but with what difficulty! and even now we have no definite object. By this time we ought to have been considering, not whether we are wronged, but how we are to be revenged. The aggressor is not now threatening, but advancing; he has made up his mind, while we are resolved about nothing. And we know too well how by slow degrees and with stealthy steps the Athenians encroach upon their neighbors. ”

“ When he is not invited, he is distracted; and if he is, he sups like a slave with his master, solicitous all the while not to say or do anything foolish. And what think you? Is he afraid of being whipt like a slave! No such easy penalty. No; but rather, as becomes so great a man, Cæsar's friend, of losing his head. And when did you bathe the more quietly; when did you perform your exercises the more at your leisure; in short, which life would you rather wish to live—your present, or the former? ”

“ Whereas, I said, our argument shows that the power is already in the soul; and that as the eye can not turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too, when the eye of the soul is turned round, the whole soul must be turned from the world of generation into that of being, and become able to endure the sight of being and of the brightest and best of being—that is to say, of the good. ”

“ Now supposing that happiness consisted in making and taking large things, what would be the saving principle of human life? Would the art of measuring be the saving principle or would the power of appearance? ”

“ For good fortune is something of necessity different from happiness, as every external good of the soul is produced by chance or by fortune; but it is not from fortune that any one is just or wise. Hence it follows, as established by the same reasoning, that the state which is best, and acts best, will be happy: for no one can fare well who acts not well; nor can the actions either of man or city be praiseworthy without virtue and wisdom. For valor, justice and wisdom have in a state the same force and form as in individuals ”

“ Well, I said, there is a certain thing called fear or terror; and here, Prodicus, I should particularly like to know whether you would agree with me in defining this fear or terror as expectation of evil.
Protagoras and Hippias agreed, but Prodicus said that this was fear and not terror.
Never mind about that, Prodicus, I said; but let me ask whether, if our former assertions are true, a man will pursue that which he fears when he need not? Would not this be in contradiction to the admission which has been already made, that he thinks the things which he fears to be evil? ”

“ For you may say generally that all desire of good and happiness is due to the great and subtle power of Love; but those who, having their affections set upon him, are yet diverted into the paths of money-making or gymnastic philosophy are not called lovers—the name of the genus is reserved for those whose devotion takes one form only—they alone are said to love, or to be lovers. ”

“ Suppose, again, the salvation of human life to depend on the choice of odd and even, and on the knowledge of when men ought to choose the greater or less, either in reference to themselves or to each other whether near or at a distance; what would be the saving principles of our lives? Would not knowledge?—a knowledge of measuring, when the question is one of excess and defect, and a knowledge of number, when the question is of odd and even? The world will acknowledge that, will they not? ”

“ What prose to take and where to take it are by no means easy questions to solve. Yet they are well worth solving, so far as patient effort can do it, for in this period of easy printing it is desirable to put in convenient form before those who read examples of the masters which will draw us back from the perishing chatter of the moment to the literature which is the highest work of civilization and which is at once noble and lasting. ”

“ There is something wrong there; why, at the Games, if an actor who has to present Athene or Poseidon or Zeus plays his part badly, derogating from the divine dignity, the stewards have him whipt; well, the gods are not angry with them for having the officers whip the man who wears their mask and their attire; I imagine they approve of the punishment. To play a slave or a messenger badly is a trifling offense, but to represent Zeus or Heracles to the spectators in an unworthy manner—that is a crime and a sacrilege. ”