Apology
gadfly who stirs the generous steed into motion. Why then has he never
taken part in public affairs? Because the familiar divine voice has
hindered him; if he had been a public man, and had fought for the
right, as he would certainly have fought against the many, he would not
have lived, and could therefore have done no good. Twice in public
matters he has risked his life for the sake of justice—once at the
trial of the generals; and again in resistance to the tyrannical
commands of the Thirty.
But, though not a public man, he has passed his days in instructing the
citizens without fee or reward—this was his mission. Whether his
disciples have turned out well or ill, he cannot justly be charged with
the result, for he never promised to teach them anything. They might
come if they liked, and they might stay away if they liked: and they
did come, because they found an amusement in hearing the pretenders to
wisdom detected. If they have been corrupted, their elder relatives (if
not themselves) might surely come into court and witness against him,
and there is an opportunity still for them to appear. But their fathers
and brothers all appear in court (including “this” Plato), to witness
on his behalf; and if their relatives are corrupted, at least they are
uncorrupted; “and they are my witnesses. For they know that I am
speaking the truth, and that Meletus is lying.”
This is about all that he has to say. He will not entreat the judges to
spare his life; neither will he present a spectacle of weeping
children, although he, too, is not made of “rock or oak.” Some of the
judges themselves may have complied with this practice on similar
occasions, and he trusts that they will not be angry with him for not
following their example. But he feels that such conduct brings
discredit on the name of Athens: he feels too, that the judge has sworn
not to give away justice; and he cannot be guilty of the impiety of
asking the judge to break his oath, when he is himself being tried for
impiety.
As he expected, and probably intended, he is convicted. And now the
tone of the speech, instead of being more conciliatory, becomes more
lofty and commanding. Anytus proposes death as the penalty: and what
counter-proposition shall he make? He, the benefactor of the Athenian
people, whose whole life has been spent in doing them good, should at
least have the Olympic victor’s reward of maintenance in the Prytaneum.
Or why should he propose any counter-penalty when he does not know
whether death, which Anytus proposes, is a good or an evil? And he is
certain that imprisonment is an evil, exile is an evil. Loss of money
might be an evil, but then he has none to give; perhaps he can make up
a mina. Let that be the penalty, or, if his friends wish, thirty minæ;
for which they will be excellent securities.
[_He is condemned to death._]
He is an old man already, and the Athenians will gain nothing but
disgrace by depriving him of a few years of life. Perhaps he could have
escaped, if he had chosen to throw down his arms and entreat for his
life. But he does not at all repent of the manner of his defence; he
would rather die in his own fashion than live in theirs. For the
penalty of unrighteousness is swifter than death; that penalty has
already overtaken his accusers as death will soon overtake him.
And now, as one who is about to die, he will prophesy to them. They
have put him to death in order to escape the necessity of giving an
account of their lives. But his death “will be the seed” of many
disciples who will convince them of their evil ways, and will come
forth to reprove them in harsher terms, because they are younger and
more inconsiderate.
He would like to say a few words, while there is time, to those who
would have acquitted him. He wishes them to know that the divine sign
never interrupted him in the course of his defence; the reason of
which, as he conjectures, is that the death to which he is going is a
good and not an evil. For either death is a long sleep, the best of
sleeps, or a journey to another world in which the souls of the dead
are gathered together, and in which there may be a hope of seeing the
heroes of old—in which, too, there are just judges; and as all are
immortal, there can be no fear of any one suffering death for his
opinions.
Nothing evil can happen to the good man either in life or death, and
his own death has been permitted by the gods, because it was better for
him to depart; and therefore he forgives his judges because they have
done him no harm, although they never meant to do him any good.
He has a last request to make to them—that they will trouble his sons
as he has troubled them, if they appear to prefer riches to virtue, or
to think themselves something when they are nothing.
“Few persons will be found to wish that Socrates should have defended
himself otherwise,”—if, as we must add, his defence was that with which
Plato has provided him. But leaving this question, which does not admit
of a precise solution, we may go on to ask what was the impression
which Plato in the “Apology” intended to give of the character and
conduct of his master in the last great scene? Did he intend to
represent him (1) as employing sophistries; (2) as designedly
irritating the judges? Or are these sophistries to be regarded as
belonging to the age in which he lived and to his personal character,
and this apparent haughtiness as flowing from the natural elevation of
his position?
For example, when he says that it is absurd to suppose that one man is
the corrupter and all the rest of the world the improvers of the youth;
or, when he argues that he never could have corrupted the men with whom
he had to live; or, when he proves his belief in the gods because he
believes in the sons of gods, is he serious or jesting? It may be
observed that these sophisms all occur in his cross-examination of
Meletus, who is easily foiled and mastered in the hands of the great
dialectician. Perhaps he regarded these answers as good enough for his
accuser, of whom he makes very light. Also there is a touch of irony in
them, which takes them out of the category of sophistry. (Compare
Euthyph.)
That the manner in which he defends himself about the lives of his
disciples is not satisfactory, can hardly be denied. Fresh in the
memory of the Athenians, and detestable as they deserved to be to the
newly restored democracy, were the names of Alcibiades, Critias,
Charmides. It is obviously not a sufficient answer that Socrates had
never professed to teach them anything, and is therefore not justly
chargeable with their crimes. Yet the defence, when taken out of this
ironical form, is doubtless sound: that his teaching had nothing to do
with their evil lives. Here, then, the sophistry is rather in form than
in substance, though we might desire that to such a serious charge
Socrates had given a more serious answer.
Truly characteristic of Socrates is another point in his answer, which
may also be regarded as sophistical. He says that “if he has corrupted
the youth, he must have corrupted them involuntarily.” But if, as
Socrates argues, all evil is involuntary, then all criminals ought to
be admonished and not punished. In these words the Socratic doctrine of
the involuntariness of evil is clearly intended to be conveyed. Here
again, as in the former instance, the defence of Socrates is untrue
practically, but may be true in some ideal or transcendental sense. The
commonplace reply, that if he had been guilty of corrupting the youth
their relations would surely have witnessed against him, with which he
concludes this part of his defence, is more satisfactory.
Again, when Socrates argues that he must believe in the gods because he
believes in the sons of gods, we must remember that this is a
refutation not of the original indictment, which is consistent
enough—“Socrates does not receive the gods whom the city receives, and
has other new divinities”—but of the interpretation put upon the words
by Meletus, who has affirmed that he is a downright atheist. To this
Socrates fairly answers, in accordance with the ideas of the time, that
a downright atheist cannot believe in the sons of gods or in divine
things. The notion that demons or lesser divinities are the sons of
gods is not to be regarded as ironical or sceptical. He is arguing “ad
hominem” according to the notions of mythology current in his age. Yet
he abstains from saying that he believed in the gods whom the State
approved. He does not defend himself, as Xenophon has defended him, by
appealing to his practice of religion. Probably he neither wholly
believed, nor disbelieved, in the existence of the popular gods; he had
no means of knowing about them. According to Plato (compare Phædo;
Symp.), as well as Xenophon (Memor.), he was punctual in the
performance of the least religious duties; and he must have believed in
his own oracular sign, of which he seemed to have an internal witness.
But the existence of Apollo or Zeus, or the other gods whom the State
approves, would have appeared to him both uncertain and unimportant in
comparison of the duty of self-examination, and of those principles of
truth and right which he deemed to be the foundation of religion.
(Compare Phaedr.; Euthyph.; Republic.)
The second question, whether Plato meant to represent Socrates as
braving or irritating his judges, must also be answered in the
negative. His irony, his superiority, his audacity, “regarding not the
person of man,” necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his situation.
He is not acting a part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has
been all his life long, “a king of men.” He would rather not appear
insolent, if he could avoid it (ouch os authadizomenos touto lego).
Neither is he desirous of hastening his own end, for life and death are
simply indifferent to him. But such a defence as would be acceptable to
his judges and might procure an acquittal, it is not in his nature to
make. He will not say or do anything that might pervert the course of
justice; he cannot have his tongue bound even “in the throat of death.”
With his accusers he will only fence and play, as he had fenced with
other “improvers of youth,” answering the Sophist according to his
sophistry all his life long. He is serious when he is speaking of his
own mission, which seems to distinguish him from all other reformers of
mankind, and originates in an accident. The dedication of himself to
the improvement of his fellow-citizens is not so remarkable as the
ironical spirit in which he goes about doing good only in vindication
of the credit of the oracle, and in the vain hope of finding a wiser
man than himself. Yet this singular and almost accidental character of
his mission agrees with the divine sign which, according to our
notions, is equally accidental and irrational, and is nevertheless
accepted by him as the guiding principle of his life. Socrates is
nowhere represented to us as a freethinker or sceptic. There is no
reason to doubt his sincerity when he speculates on the possibility of
seeing and knowing the heroes of the Trojan war in another world. On
the other hand, his hope of immortality is uncertain;—he also conceives
of death as a long sleep (in this respect differing from the Phædo),
and at last falls back on resignation to the divine will, and the
certainty that no evil can happen to the good man either in life or
death. His absolute truthfulness seems to hinder him from asserting
positively more than this; and he makes no attempt to veil his
ignorance in mythology and figures of speech. The gentleness of the
first part of the speech contrasts with the aggravated, almost
threatening, tone of the conclusion. He characteristically remarks that