venants
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 may say will be vain. Yet speak, if you
have anything to say.

_Crito_: I have nothing to say, Socrates.

_Socrates_: Then let me follow the intimations of the will of God.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 71: From the "Crito," translated by Benjamin Jowett. Crito
was an influential and well-to-do citizen of Athens and a friend of
Socrates; but nothing more definite about him is known.]

VI

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES[72]

"Me, already, as the tragic poet would say, the voice of fate calls.
Soon I must drink the poison; and I think that I had better repair to
the bath first, in order that the women may not have the trouble of
washing my body after I am dead."

When he had done speaking, Crito said: "And have you any commands for
us, Socrates--anything to say about your children or any other matter
in which we can serve you?"

"Nothing particular," he said; "only, as I have always told you, I
would have you to look to yourselves; that is a service which you may
always be doing to me and mine as well as to yourselves. And you need
not make professions; for if you take no thought for yourselves, and
walk not according to the precepts which I have given you, not now for
the first time, the warmth of your professions will be of no avail."

"We will do our best," said Crito. "But in what way would you have us
bury you?"

"In any way that you like; only you must get hold of me, and take care
that I do not walk away from you." Then he turned to us, and added
with a smile: "I can not make Crito believe that I am the same
Socrates who has been talking and conducting the argument; he fancies
that I am the other Socrates whom he will soon see a dead body--and he
asks, How shall he bury me? And tho I have spoken many words in the
endeavor to show that when I have drunk the poison I shall leave you
and go to th