SOCRATES AND THE SHIRKER.

pERT-INPS the wisest and most constant of readers always remain capable of surprise when they come upon some- thing in old writings which seems extraordinarily applicable

to present events. There is nothing to be surprised at, of course ; the great principles of conduct and reason are immutable and of universal application. If there is any place for surprise, it is when the words used seem to fit the present circumstances so exactly that we feel that the author could not have written otherwise had our latest piece of news or our latest problem been before him. Open the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespesra, Milton, Bacon, or Dr. Johnson, and you cannot read many pages before you find something—comment, advice, warning— which exactly fits the situation of to-day. If we may judge from the correspondence which reaches us, the pleasure derived

from 8ortes does not easily pall ; and the pleasure must doubtless be measured by the sense of surprise in the reader that chance has brought under his eye something so curiously appropriate to current affairs. Naturally, then, Plato wrote much that illuminates our thoughts upon the war. We open the Dialogues with the expectation of being rewarded, and of course we are not disappointed. But how handsome is the reward I Could

any one who wanted to convince a young man of his duty to his country, or could any young man hesitating as to what his duty is, come upon more overwhelming arguments than

those which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates in the Crito? There and in the Apology are the most perfect defences of

patriotism on grounds of reason which it is possible to conceive. Not that we need necessarily accept the thesis of Socrates

in the Crito that a man condemned unjustly has no right to try to escape. Some may agree with Shelley that, though

Socrates did well to accept death, his justification was not in the arguments which Plato attributed to him. Whether the thesis was right or wrong does not greatly matter. The lesson of the virtue of patient subordination to the interests of the State is untouched ; it remains unassailable, matchless, immortal.

Crito, it will be remembered, visits Socrates in prison. He tells him that the ship upon the arrival of which Socrates is to be put to death is already at Sunium. He urges him to escape before it is too late. The plans have already been

prepared, and the money for bribes subscribed. Socrates has only to say that he wishes to escape and he is as good as a

free man. Then Socrates begins his wonderful argument which reduces Crito to silence. It is too well known to repeat; here. We shall only dip into it. The point for us is that Crito has tried to induce Socrates to escape from suffering and death as evil things, as things to be feared. That is the argument which secretly holds in bonds to-day the unattached young man who refuses to enlist. The summit of Socrates's argument

is reached when he imagines the Laws of Athens as personified and addressing a noble remonstrance to him for trying to escape. The Laws and Socrates conduct their duologues as follows (we quote throughout from Jowett's translation) 'Tell us,—What complaint have you to make against us which justifies you in attempting to destroy us and the state ? In the first place did we not bring you into existence ? Your father married your mother by our aid and begat you. Say whether you have any objeotioa to urge against those of us who regulate marriage V. None, I should reply. ' Or against those of us who after birth regulate the nurture and education of children, in which you also were trained ? Were not the laws, which have the charge of education, right in commanding your father to train you in music and gymnastic ? ' Right, I should reply. Well then, since you were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you 7 And if this is true you aro not on equal terms with us ; nor can you think that you have a right to do to us what we are doing to you Would you have any right to strike or revile or do any other evil to your father or your master, if you had one, because you have been struck or reviled by him, or received some other evil At his hands ?—you would not say this? And bemuse we think right to destroy you, do you think that you have any right to destroy us in return, and your country as far as in you lies ? Will you, 0 professor of true virtue, pretend that you aro justified in this Has a philosopher like you failed to discover that our country is more to be valued and higher and holier far than mother or father or any ancestor, and more to bo regarded in the oyes of the gods and of men of understanding ? also to be soothed, and gently and reverently entreated when angry, even more than a father, and either to be persuaded, or if not persuaded, to be obeyed ? And when we Are punished by her, whether with imprisonment or stripes, the punishment is to be endured in silence ; and ff she load us to wounds or death in battle, thither we follow as is right ; neither may any one yield or retreat or leave his rank, but whether in battle or in a court of law, or in any other place, he must do what his city and his country order him ; or he must change their view of what is just ; and if he may do no violence to his father or mother, much less may he do `violence to his country.'" When Crito has admitted that the laws must perforce be obeyed without reserve, Socrates goes on to point out that it would indeed be an act of peculiar and extraordinary baseness to defy them, since a man who lives under a certain code has elected to do so of his own free will. Ho need not have lived under those laws if he did not choose. He could have emi- grated. But in consenting to those laws, as he did by the act Of remaining under them, he entered into an obligation to obey them implicitly. The laws are imagined as saying to Socrates :— " Any one who does not like us and the city, and who wants to emigrate to a colony or to any other city, may go where he likes, retaining his property. But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the state, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him. And he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong : first, because In disobeying us he is disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his education ; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands ; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our commands are unjust ; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the alter. native of obeying or eonvincing us ;—that is what we offer, and he does neither."

Socrates goes on to imagine the laws saying to him : "You never went out of the city either to see the games, except once when you went to the Isthmus, or to any other place unless

when you were on military service ; nor did you travel as other men do. Nor had you any curiosity to know other states or their laws ; your affections did not go beyond us and our state ; we were your special favourites, and you acquiesced in our government of you." So might the British laws say to the shirker : You never left England to find out whether you liked better the customs and exactions of other states. At least when you did go abroad it was merely to climb mountains or enjoy yourself in some other way. You always meant to live ,here. You found more here than elsewhere to attract you. You had your favourite music-hall and your favourite golf club. You loved English billiards, and despised the foreign game without pockets. You always had a season ticket on the railway, and in fact had rooted yourself in this land—to which in its extremity you now repudiate all obligation."

Next Socrates imagines the laws reproaching him for flight on the ground that he will not be able to retain his self-respect, whether he goes to live in a decent city or a disreputable one:—

" Will you then flee from well-ordered cities and virtuous men ? and is existence worth having on these terms ? Or will you go to them without shame, and talk to them, Socrates 7 And what will you say to them ? What you say here about virtue and justice and institutions and laws being the best things among men. Would that be decent of you ? Surely not. But if you go away from well- governed states to Crito's friends in Thermal*, where there is great disorder and licence, they will be charmed to hear the tale of your escape from prison, set off with ludicrous particulars of the manner in which you were wrapped in a goatskin or some other disguise, and metamorphosed as the manner is of runaways ; but will there be no one to remind you that in your old age you were not ashamed to violate the most sacred laws from a miserable desire of a little more life 7"

So might the British laws, again, say to the shirker : "If you bolt from the country to avoid military service, what will happen to you ? If you go to a decent land—a British Dominion or to the United States, for example—fingers will always be pointed at you: 'He ran away," He deserted his country,'

He is a coward.' If you go to a second-rate, ill-governed country, the people, it is true, may be merely amused at your escape. They may describe as something rather clever the way in which you climbed on board the steamer just as she left the quay at Liverpool, pursued by the hoots of the mob. But what then ? Will you really be happy ? Will not you be swallowed up in baseness ? How can you ever, with a straight face, condemn or advise others ?. And will not some one find you out and remind you of your perfidy?"

In the Apology Plato attributes to Socrates another noble statement of the reasons why death is always preferable to

disgrace :—

"Whereas, upon your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace ; and when he was so eager to slay Hector, his goddess mother said to him, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die himself—' Fate,' she said, in these or the like words, waits for you next after Hector ; ' he, receiving this warning, utterly despised danger and death, and instead of fearing them feared rather to live in dishonour, and not to avenge his friend. ` Let me die forthwith,' he replies and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a laughingstock and a burden of the earth.' Had Achilles any thought of death and danger ? For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been 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, 0 mon of Athens, is a true saying. Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, 0 men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potida,ea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death—if now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear ; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death, fancying that I was wise when I was not wise."

The mental anguish of the shirker to-day is as old as time. Socrates knew it all, and knew it comparatively late in the history of the world. But he never hesitated. Perhaps it may help some one who reads these words to be reminded that if the anguish is old, so is the cure—as old as it is infallible. If it Booms a severe one, it is the only one. Accept whatever fate may he in store for you. It is far, far better than disgrace. At least you will have peace of mind at the end, for no power

can deprive you of that.