RE: I think death is beautiful.
November 6, 2013 at 6:03 pm
(This post was last modified: November 6, 2013 at 6:04 pm by The Reality Salesman01.)
I've always enjoyed this little gem on the matter.
[edit] Should say "Plato wrote"...but eh...you get the idea.
Socrates Wrote:
But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say,
all the dead are, 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,
Minos 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, too, shall have a
wonderful interest in a place where I can converse with Palamedes,
and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have
suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no
small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with
theirs. Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and
false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; 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! For in that
world they do not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For
besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be
immortal, if what is said is true.
Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know this
of a truththat 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 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, 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.
[edit] Should say "Plato wrote"...but eh...you get the idea.