History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [54]
Young men of the richer classes, he says, having not much to do, enjoy listening to him exposing people, and proceed to do likewise, thus increasing the number of his enemies. 'For they do not like to confess that their pretence of knowledge has been detected.' So much for the first class of accusers.
Socrates now proceeds to examine his prosecutor Meletus, 'that good man and true lover of his country, as he calls himself'. He asks who are the people who improve the young. Meletus first mentions the judges; then, under pressure, is driven, step by step, to say that every Athenian except Socrates improves the young; whereupon Socrates congratulates the city on its good fortune. Next, he points out that good men are better to live among than bad men, and therefore he cannot be so foolish as to corrupt his fellow-citizens intentionally; but if unintentionally, then Meletus should instruct him, not prosecute him.
The indictment had said that Socrates not only denied the gods of the State, but introduced other gods of his own; Meletus, however, says that Socrates is a complete atheist, and adds: 'He says that the sun is stone and the moon earth.' Socrates replies that Meletus seems to think he is prosecuting Anaxagoras, whose views may be heard in the theatre for one drachma (presumably in the plays of Euripides). Socrates of course points out that this new accusation of complete atheism contradicts the indictment, and then passes on to more general considerations.
The rest of the Apology is essentially religious in tone. He has been a soldier, and has remained at his post, as he was ordered to do. Now 'God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men,' and it would be as shameful to desert his post now as in time of battle. Fear of death is not wisdom, since no one knows whether death may not be the greater good. If he were offered his life on condition of ceasing to speculate as he has done hitherto, he would reply: 'Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you,3 and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet…. For know that this is the command of God; and I believe that no greater good has ever happened in the State than my service to the God.' He goes on:
I have something more to say, at which you may be inclined to cry out; but I believe that to hear me will be good for you, and therefore I beg that you will not cry out. I would have you know, that if you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you will injure me. Nothing will injure me, not Meletus nor yet Anytus—they cannot, for a bad man is not permitted to injure a better than himself. I do not deny that Anytus may perhaps kill him, or drive him into exile, or deprive him of civil rights; and he may imagine, and others may imagine, that he is inflicting a great injury upon him: but there I do not agree. For the evil of doing as he is doing—the evil of unjustly taking away the life of another—is greater far.
It is for the sake of his judges, he says, not for his own sake, that he is pleading. He is a gad-fly, given to the State by God, and it will not be easy to find another like him. 'I dare say you may feel out of temper (like a person who is suddenly awakened from sleep), and you think that you might easily strike me dead as Anytus advises, and then you would sleep on for the remainder of your lives, unless God in his care of you sent you another gad-fly.'
Why has he only gone about in private, and not given advice on public affairs? 'You have heard me speak at sundry times and in diverse places of an oracle or sign which comes to me, and is the divinity which Meletus ridicules in the indictment. This sign, which is a kind of voice, first began to come to me when I was a child; it always forbids but never commands