The Crest-Wave of Evolution - A Course of Lectures in History, Given to the Graduates' Class in the Raja-Yoga College, Point Loma, in the College-Year 1918-19 by Kenneth Morris
page 154 of 787 (19%)
page 154 of 787 (19%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
it not appeal to you?
And the very spirit in which he approached it and approached his death was precisely the one to engrave his last spoken ideas on the souls of his hearers as nothing else could. No excitement; no uplift or ecstasy of the martyr; quiet reasoning only; full, serene, and, for him, common-place command of the faculties of his mind. The shadow of death made no change in Socrates; how then should they misunderstand or magnify the power of the shadow of death?--"How shall we bury you?" asks Crito. Socrates turns to the others present, and says: "I cannot persuade Crito that I here am Socrates--I who am now reasoning and ordering discourse. He imagines Socrates to be that other, whom he will see by and by, a corpse."--So the scene went on until the last moment, when "Phaedo veiled his face, and Crito started to his feet, and Apollodorus, who had never ceased weeping all the time, burst out into a loud and angry cry which broke down everyone but Socrates." Someone has said that there is nothing in tragedy or history so moving as this death of Socrates, as Plato tells it. And yet its tragic interest, its beauty, is less important, to my thinking, than the insight it gives us into the methods and mental workings of an Adept. Put ourselves into the mind of Socrates. He is going to his death; which to him is about the same as, to us, going to South Ranch or San Diego. You say I am taking the beauty and nobility out of it; but no; I am only trying to see what beauty and nobility look like from within. To him, then, his death is in itself a matter of no personal moment. But the habit of his lifetime has been to turn every moment into a blow struck for the Soul, for the Light, for the Cause of Sublime Perfection. |
|