|
Crito - Conclusion
Crito - Conclusion
Soc. Then the laws will say: "Consider, Socrates, if this is true, that
in your present attempt you are going to do us wrong. For, after having
brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and
every other citizen a share in every good that we had to give, we further
proclaim and give the right to every Athenian, that if he does not like us
when he has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our
acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him; and none
of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him. Any of you who does not like
us and the city, and who wants to go to a colony or to any other city, may go
where he likes, and take his goods with him. But he who has experience of the
manner in which we order justice and administer the State, and still remains,
has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him. And he
who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong: first, because in disobeying
us he is disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his
education; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly
obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our
commands are wrong; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the
alternative of obeying or convincing us; that is what we offer, and he does
neither. These are the sort of accusations to which, as we were saying, you,
Socrates, will be exposed if you accomplish your intentions; you, above all
other Athenians." Suppose I ask, why is this? they will justly retort upon me
that I above all other men have acknowledged the agreement. "There is clear
proof," they will say, "Socrates, that we and the city were not displeasing to
you. Of all Athenians you have been the most constant resident in the city,
which, as you never leave, you may be supposed to love. For you never went out
of the city either to see the games, except once when you went to the Isthmus,
or to any other place unless when you were on military service; nor did you
travel as other men do. Nor had you any curiosity to know other States or
their laws: your affections did not go beyond us and our State; we were your
especial favorites, and you acquiesced in our government of you; and this is
the State in which you begat your children, which is a proof of your
satisfaction. Moreover, you might, if you had liked, have fixed the penalty at
banishment in the course of the trial - the State which refuses to let you go
now would have let you go then. But you pretended that you preferred death to
exile, and that you were not grieved at death. And now you have forgotten
these fine sentiments, and pay no respect to us, the laws, of whom you are the
destroyer; and are doing what only a miserable slave would do, running away
and turning your back upon the compacts and agreements which you made as a
citizen. And first of all answer this very question: Are we right in saying
that you agreed to be governed according to us in deed, and not in word only?
Is that true or not?" How shall we answer that, Crito? Must we not agree?
Cr. There is no help, Socrates.
Soc. Then will they not say: "You, Socrates, are breaking the covenants
and agreements which you made with us at your leisure, not in any haste or
under any compulsion or deception, but having had seventy years to think of
them, during which time you were at liberty to leave the city, if we were not
to your mind, or if our covenants appeared to you to be unfair. You had your
choice, and might have gone either to Lacedaemon or Crete, which you often
praise for their good government, or to some other Hellenic or foreign State.
Whereas you, above all other Athenians, seemed to be so fond of the State, or,
in other words, of us her laws (for who would like a State that has no laws?),
that you never stirred out of her: the halt, the blind, the maimed, were not
more stationary in her than you were. And now you run away and forsake your
agreements. Not so, Socrates, if you will take our advice; do not make
yourself ridiculous by escaping out of the city.
"For just consider, if you transgress and err in this sort of way, what
good will you do, either to yourself or to your friends? That your friends
will be driven into exile and deprived of citizenship, or will lose their
property, is tolerably certain; and you yourself, if you fly to one of the
neighboring cities, as, for example, Thebes or Megara, both of which are well
- governed cities, will come to them as an enemy, Socrates, and their
government will be against you, and all patriotic citizens will cast an evil
eye upon you as a subverter of the laws, and you will confirm in the minds of
the judges the justice of their own condemnation of you. For he who is a
corrupter of the laws is more than likely to be corrupter of the young and
foolish portion of mankind. Will you then flee from well-ordered cities and
virtuous men? and is existence worth having on these terms? Or will you go to
them without shame, and talk to them, Socrates? And what will you say to them?
What you say here about virtue and justice and institutions and laws being the
best things among men? Would that be decent of you? Surely not. But if you go
away from well-governed States to Crito`s friends in Thessaly, where there
is great disorder and license, they will be charmed to have the tale of your
escape from prison, set off with ludicrous particulars of the manner in which
you were wrapped in a goatskin or some other disguise, and metamorphosed as
the fashion of runaways is - that is very likely; but will there be no one to
remind you that in your old age you violated the most sacred laws from a
miserable desire of a little more life? Perhaps not, if you keep them in a
good temper; but if they are out of temper you will hear many degrading
things; you will live, but how? - as the flatterer of all men, and the servant
of all men; and doing what? - eating and drinking in Thessaly, having gone
abroad in order that you may get a dinner. And where will be your fine
sentiments about justice and virtue then? Say that you wish to live for the
sake of your children, that you may bring them up and educate them - will you
take them into Thessaly and deprive them of Athenian citizenship? Is that the
benefit which you would confer upon them? Or are you under the impression that
they will be better cared for and educated here if you are still alive,
although absent from them; for that your friends will take care of them? Do
you fancy that if you are an inhabitant of Thessaly they will take care of
them, and if you are an inhabitant of the other world they will not take care
of them? Nay; but if they who call themselves friends are truly friends, they
surely will.
"Listen, then, Socrates, to us who have brought you up. Think not of life
and children first, and of justice afterwards, but of justice first, that you
may be justified before the princes of the world below. For neither will you
nor any that belong to you be happier or holier or jester in this life, or
happier in another, if you do as Crito bids. Now you depart in innocence, a
sufferer and not a doer of evil; a victim, not of the laws, but of men. But if
you go forth, returning evil for evil, and injury for injury, breaking the
covenants and agreements which you have made with us, and wronging those whom
you ought least to wrong, that is to say, yourself, your friends, your
country, and us, we shall be angry with you while you live, and our brethren,
the laws in the world below, will receive you as an enemy; for they will know
that you have done your best to destroy us. Listen, then, to us and not to
Crito."
This is the voice which I seem to hear murmuring in my ears, like the
sound of the flute in the ears of the mystic; that voice, I say, is humming in
my ears, and prevents me from hearing any other. And I know that anything more
which you will say will be in vain. Yet speak, if you have anything to say.
Cr. I have nothing to say, Socrates.
Soc. Then let me follow the intimations of the will of God.
|
