nd this is why I am sitting here in a curved
posture--that is what he would say, and he would have a similar
explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and
air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the
same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is, that the
Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought
it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence; for
I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have
gone off long ago to Megara or Boeotia--by the dog they would, if they
had been moved only by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not
chosen the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running
away, of enduring any punishment which the state inflicts. There is
surely a strange confusion of causes and conditions in all this. It may
be said, indeed, that without bones and muscles and the other parts
of the body I cannot execute my purposes. But to say that I do as I do
because of them, and that this is the way in which mind acts, and
not from the choice of the best, is a very careless and idle mode of
speaking. I wonder that they cannot distinguish the cause from the
condition, which the many, feeling about in the dark, are always
mistaking and misnaming. And thus one man makes a vortex all round and
steadies the earth by the heaven; another gives the air as a support to
the earth, which is a sort of broad trough. Any power which in arranging
them as they are arranges them for the best never enters into their
minds; and instead of finding any superior strength in it, they rather
expect to discover another Atlas of the world who is stronger and more
everlasting and more containing than the good;--of the obligatory and
containing power of the good they think nothing; and yet this is the
principle which I would fain learn if any one would teach me. But as I
have failed either to discover myself, or to learn of any one else,
the nature of the best, I will exhibit to you, if you like, what I have
found to be the second best mode of enquiring into the cause.

I should very much like to hear, he replied.

Socrates proceeded:--I thought that as I had failed in the contemplation
of true existence, I ought to be careful that I did not lose the eye of
my soul; as people may injure their bodily eye by observing and gazing
on the sun during an eclipse, unless they take the precaution of