苏格拉底 / Socrates

苏格拉底（公元前470—公元前399），古希腊的哲学家和演说家，雅典人。其父是雕刻匠，早年随父学艺，后从事哲学研究和教学。他认为哲学的目的是认识自己、研究自己、教导人们的生活。他无著作传世，其言行均辑于弟子柏拉图的《苏格拉底言行回忆录》。公元前399年以“渎神违教”之罪被控入狱，不久被判死刑，服毒而死。

Ace in the Hole

Understand these new words before you read this article.

1.migration [ma??gre???n] n.移动；迁移；移民

2.immortal [i'm?:tl] adj.不朽的；流芳百世的

3.pilgrim ['pilɡrim] n.香客，朝圣者

4.unspeakable [?n'spi:k?b?l] adj.恶劣得难以形容的；说不出口的，不可言状的；令人讨厌的；极坏的

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good for one of two things — either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another.Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain.For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others.Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is a gain for eternity is then only a single night.But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges can be greater than this If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there, Mino and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making.What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again.I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting, and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has suffered death through an unjust judgment and there will be no small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own suffering with theirs.Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into the true and false knowledge as in this world, so also in the next and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not.What would not a man give, O judges, to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too? What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions? In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not.For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, 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 the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble wherefore the oracle gave no sign.For which reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners, or with my accusers they have done me no harm, although they did not mean 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 about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really 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, both 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.