library_books Bookstacks

Section 115

When he said this, Crito asked, "Very well, Socrates. What instructions do you leave for these men or for me about your children or anything else? What could we do that would be most pleasing to you?" "What I am always saying, Crito," he said. "Nothing new. If you take care of yourselves, whatever you do will be pleasing to me, to mine, and to yourselves, even if you do not promise it now. But if you neglect yourselves and refuse to walk in the footsteps of what has been said today and in the past, no matter how many solemn promises you make now, you will accomplish nothing." "We will eagerly strive to do as you say," said Crito. "But how shall we bury you?" "However you wish," he said, "provided you can catch me and I do not escape you." He laughed softly, looked at us, and said, "I cannot persuade Crito, gentlemen, that I am this Socrates here who is conversing and ordering each part of the argument. He thinks I am the one he will soon see as a corpse, and asks how to bury me! As for the long argument I just made—that when I drink the poison, I will no longer remain with you, but will depart to the joys of the blessed—I seem to be saying this in vain to comfort both you and myself. Please stand as guarantors for me to Crito, in the opposite way he stood guarantor for me before the judges. He guaranteed I would stay. You must guarantee that I will not stay after I die, but will depart. Thus Crito will bear it more easily, and when he sees my body being burned or buried, he will not grieve for me as though I were suffering terrible things. Nor will he say at the funeral that he is laying out Socrates, or carrying out Socrates, or burying Socrates. For know well, excellent Crito, that to speak improperly is not only an error in itself, but it plants a kind of evil in the soul. You must be confident, and say that you are burying my body. Bury it however pleases you and however you think is most customary."