obtain mercy. The pure souls also receive their reward, and have their
abode in the upper earth, and a select few in still fairer 'mansions.'

Socrates is not prepared to insist on the literal accuracy of this
description, but he is confident that something of the kind is true. He
who has sought after the pleasures of knowledge and rejected the pleasures
of the body, has reason to be of good hope at the approach of death; whose
voice is already speaking to him, and who will one day be heard calling all
men.

The hour has come at which he must drink the poison, and not much remains
to be done. How shall they bury him? That is a question which he refuses
to entertain, for they are burying, not him, but his dead body. His
friends had once been sureties that he would remain, and they shall now be
sureties that he has run away. Yet he would not die without the customary
ceremonies of washing and burial. Shall he make a libation of the poison?
In the spirit he will, but not in the letter. One request he utters in the
very act of death, which has been a puzzle to after ages. With a sort of
irony he remembers that a trifling religious duty is still unfulfilled,
just as above he desires before he departs to compose a few verses in order
to satisfy a scruple about a dream--unless, indeed, we suppose him to mean,
that he was now restored to health, and made the customary offering to
Asclepius in token of his recovery.

...

1. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul has sunk deep into the
heart of the human race; and men are apt to rebel against any examination
of the nature or grounds of their belief. They do not like to acknowledge
that this, as well as the other 'eternal ideas; of man, has a history in