The Best of the World's Classics (All 10 Volumes). Henry Cabot Lodge
for some time returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison. Socrates said: "You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me the directions how I am to proceed." The man answered: "You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act." At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, Echecrates,[73] as his manner was, took the cup and said: "What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I or not?" The man answered: "We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough." "I understand," he said; "yet I may and must ask the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world—even so—and so be it according to my prayer." Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draft, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a friend. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out into a loud and passionate cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness: "What is this strange outcry?" he said. "I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet then, and have patience." When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he prest his foot hard and asked him if he could feel; and he said, "No"; and then his leg, and so upward and upward, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: "When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end." He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words)—"Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?" "The debt shall be paid," said Crito; "is there anything else?" There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth.
Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever known.
FOOTNOTES:
[72] From the "Phædo." Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Probably the "Phædo" is, of all Plato's writings, the most famous. Its importance is ascribed by Mahaffy not only to what is said of immortality, in passages which have "fascinated the thoughtful men of all ages," but to the touching story of the last hours of Socrates.
[73] Echecrates seems to have been the Locrian philosopher to whom Plato is believed to have gone for some of his early instruction.
ARISTOTLE
Born in Stagira in 384 b.c.; died at Chalcis in Eubœa in 322; the most famous of Greek philosophers; went to Athens in his eighteenth year as a pupil of Plato and remained there for twenty years; in 343 went to the Court of Macedon, where he undertook the education of Alexander the Great, then thirteen years old; in 335 returned to Athens and produced the greater part of his writings; afterward forced to flee from Athens to Chalcis during an uprising against the Macedonians; his numerous writings deal with all branches of science known to his times; the first edition of the Greek text, that of Aldus Manutius, published in 1495–98.[74]
I
WHAT THINGS ARE PLEASANT[75]
Let it be laid down by us, that pleasure is a certain motion of the soul, and a settlement of it, at once rapid and perceptible, into its own proper nature; and that pain is the contrary. If then pleasure be a thing of this nature, it is plain that whatever is productive of the disposition I have described is pleasant; while everything of a nature to destroy it, or produce a disposition the opposite to it, is painful.
Generally speaking, therefore, it is necessary, both that the being in progress toward a state conformable to nature should be pleasant; and that, in the highest degree, when those feelings, whose original is conformable to it, shall have recovered that their nature; and habits, because that which is habitual becomes by that time natural, as it were; for, in a certain way, custom is like nature, because the idea of frequency is proximate to that of always; now nature belongs to the idea of always, custom to that of often. What is not compulsory, also, is pleasant; for compulsion is contrary to nature. Wherefore acts of necessity are painful; and it has been truly remarked, "Every act of necessity is in its nature painful." It must be also that a state of sedulous attention, anxiety, the having the mind on the stretch, are painful, for they all are acts of necessity, and constrained, unless they have become habitual; but it is custom which, under such circumstances, renders them pleasant. The contraries of these must also be pleasant; wherefore, relaxation of mind, leisure, listlessness, amusements, and intervals of rest, rank in the class of things pleasant; for none of these has anything to do with necessity. Everything of which there is an innate appetite, is pleasant; for appetite is a desire of what is pleasant.
Now, of appetites, some are irrational, others attended by reason. I call all those irrational which men desire, not from any conception which they form: of this kind are all which are said to exist naturally, as those of the body; thirst or hunger, for instance, in the case of sustenance; and the appetite of sustenance in every kind. And the appetites connected with objects of taste, and of lust, and, in fact, objects of touch generally; the appetite of fragrant odors, too, as connected with smelling, and hearing, and sight. Appetites attended by reason are all those whatsoever which men exercise from a persuasion: for many things there are which they desire to behold, and possess, on hearsay and persuasion. Now, as the being pleased stands in the perception of a certain affection, and as imagination is a kind of faint perception, there will attend on him who exercises either memory or hope a kind of imagination of that which is the object of his memory or hope; but if so, it is plain that they who exercise memory or hope, certainly feel pleasure, since they have also a perception. So that everything pleasant consists either in the perception of present objects, or in the remembrance of those which have already been, or in the hope of such as are yet to be; for men exercise perception on present, memory on past, and hope on future objects. Now the objects of memory are pleasant, not only such as at the moment while present were pleasant, but some even which were not pleasant, should their consequence subsequently be honorable and good; and hence this saying, "But it is indeed pleasant for a man, when preserved, to remember his toils"; and this, "For after his sufferings, a man who has suffered much, and much achieved, is gladdened at the recollection." But the reason of this is, that to be exempt from evil is pleasant. And all objects are pleasant in hope, which appear by their presence either to delight or benefit in a great degree; or to benefit, without giving pain. In a word, whatever objects by their presence delight us, do so, generally speaking, as we hope for, or remember them. On which account, too, the feeling of anger is pleasant; just as Homer has remarked of anger in his poem, "That which with sweetness far greater than distilling honey as it drops"; for there is no one who feels anger where the object seems impracticable to his revenge; nor with those far their superiors in power do men feel anger at all, or if