Socrates - Apology 汉译

       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 other days and nights of his life, and then 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 pilgim arrives in the world belos, 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 Reiptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that polgrimage will be worth making What would not a man give if he night converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be ture, 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 nect; 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 freat Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or What infinite delight woukd 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 ir was better for me to die and be released from trouble; wherefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not anfry 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 favour to ask of them. When my sons are grown yp, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish thm, 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.