THE PHILOSOPHERS ON CONDUCT.

BY MILTON BENNION, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY

OF UTAH.

IV.

SOCRATES-PLATO.

The selections in this number are restricted to the Apology, which occupies about forty pages in Jowett's translation of Plato's Dialogues. The necessity of brevity makes it impossible to give selections that properly represent the circumstances, and the arguments of Socrates. For this purpose it is necessary to read the Apology entire. Our aim has been to give those passages that illustrate best the moral principles or Socrates.

SELECTIONS FROM THE "APOLOGY OF SOCRATES."*

Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong-acting the part of a good man or of a bad. * * For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen, or that in which he is placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying.

*

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him saying: O my friend, why do you, who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth

* Dialogues of Plato, Jowett's translation, C. Scribner's Sons, N. Y.

and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing, says, "Yes, but I do care;" I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him; and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less. And thus I should say to everyone whom I meet, young and old, citizen and alien, but especially to the citizens, inasmuch as they are my brethren. For this is the command to God, as I would have you know; and I believe that to this day no greater good has ever happened in the state than my service to the God. For I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought of your persons or your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue comes money and every other good of man, public as well as private. This is my teaching, and if this is the doctrine which corrupts the youth, my influence is ruinous indeed. Whatever you do, know that I shall

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never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.

Do not, then, require me to do what I consider dishonorable and impious and wrong, especially now, when I am being tried for impiety on the indictment of Meletus. For if, O men of Athens, by force of persuasion and entreaty, I could overpower your oaths, then I should be teaching you to believe that there are no gods, and convict myself, in my own defense, of not believing in them But that is not the case; for I do believe that there are gods, and in a far higher sense than that in which any of my accusers believe in them. And to you

and to God I commit my cause, to be determined by you as is best for you and for me.

There are many reasons why I am not grieved, O men of Athens, at the vote of condemnation. I expected this, and am only surprised that the votes are so

I had not the boldness, or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to address you, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I say, are unworthy of me. But I thought that I ought not to do anything common or mean in the hour of danger; nor do I now repent the manner of my defense, and I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live.

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The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. And now I depart hence, condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death, and they [the accusers of Socrates] to go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide my reward-let them abide theirs.

If you think that by killing men you can avoid the accuser censuring your

lives, you are mistaken; that is not a way of escape which is either possible or honorable; the easiest and the noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth-that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released was better for me; and therefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my accusers or my condemners, they have done me no harm, although neither of them meant to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care for riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are nothing—then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands. The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die and you to live-which is better, God only knows.

Forest Dale, Utah.

THE VOICE OF THE SHEPHERD.

(For the Improvement Era.)

Be faithful, little flock, and know

That I am near. That every wrong

You suffer weakeneth the foe,

And makes the Saints who suffer strong.

I know my sheep. They cry aloud,
And follow me amid the storm.

For just behind the thunder-cloud
I stand with a redeeming arm.

Remember when you came to me,
In suffering and famished;

OBEDIENCE TO COUNSEL.

BY HEBER Q. HALE, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER OF IMMIGRATION, LABOR AND STATISTICS OF THE STATE OF IDAHO, AND PRESIDENT OF THE BOISE BRANCH OF THE CHURCH.

Hear counsel and receive instruction, that thou mayest be wise in thy latter end.-Proverbs 19: 20.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit by it.-Publius Syrus.

In the incident which I shall hereafter relate, the thought sugggested in the above quotations will be brought strongly to the fore, and will find therein an interpretative significance.

When we speak of obedience to counsel, we do not mean to convey the idea that one must subject one's self unreservedly to the dictates of some civil or ecclesiastical superior; but rather should it be considered in that broad sense in which a son receives counsel from a father, a daughter from a mother, the weak and inexperienced from the wise and resourceful.

There is such a thing in Christ's own Church as special endowments of spiritual power, in which the prophets of all ages have been clothed. Thus, the reason for their keen insight into things their power of looking into the souls of men and penetrating the future. This power, then, which searches the "deep and hidden things," combined with long years of experience under the direction of a wise and judicious mind, makes a man a wise counselor, and even considered from a material standpoint, his opinion and advice, especially on the question of ethics, should be of the greatest worth to the inquirer.

In this enlightened age, no man of reputed wisdom will assume the risk of even a simple undertaking without first asking