stening his own end, for life and death are simply
indifferent to him. But such a defence as would be acceptable to his
judges and might procure an acquittal, it is not in his nature to make.
He will not say or do anything that might pervert the course of justice;
he cannot have his tongue bound even 'in the throat of death.' With
his accusers he will only fence and play, as he had fenced with other
'improvers of youth,' answering the Sophist according to his sophistry
all his life long. He is serious when he is speaking of his own mission,
which seems to distinguish him from all other reformers of mankind, and
originates in an accident. The dedication of himself to the improvement
of his fellow-citizens is not so remarkable as the ironical spirit in
which he goes about doing good only in vindication of the credit of the
oracle, and in the vain hope of finding a wiser man than himself. Yet
this singular and almost accidental character of his mission agrees with
the divine sign which, according to our notions, is equally accidental
and irrational, and is nevertheless accepted by him as the guiding
principle of his life. Socrates is nowhere represented to us as a
freethinker or sceptic. There is no reason to doubt his sincerity when
he speculates on the possibility of seeing and knowing the heroes of the
Trojan war in another world. On the other hand, his hope of immortality
is uncertain;--he also conceives of death as a long sleep (in
this respect differing from the Phaedo), and at last falls back on
resignation to the divine will, and the certainty that no evil
can happen to the good man either in life or death. His absolute
truthfulness seems to hinder him from asserting positively more than
this; and he makes no attempt to veil his ignorance in mythology and
figures of speech. The gentleness of the first part of the speech
contrasts with the aggravated, almost threatening, tone of the
conclusion. He characteristically remarks that he will not speak as a
rhetorician, that is to say, he will not make a regular defence such as
Lysias or one of the orators might have composed for him, or, according
to some accounts, did compose for him. But he first procures himself a
hearing by conciliatory words. He does not attack the Sophists; for they
were open to the same charges as himself; they were equally ridiculed by
the Comic poets, and almost equally hateful to Anytus and Meletus. Yet
incidentally the antagonism between Socrate
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