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JAIN JOURNAL
Socrates
"Experience has proved that to have pure knowledge of any thing we must be rid of the body...... In mortal life, I believe, we approach nearest to truth when the body is least intruded, when we have not given way to the corporeal nature, having kept ourselves pure toward the hour when God pleases to release us. Rid of the foolish body, we shall be pure and we shall commune with the pure, and ourselves attain the pure light which is none other than the light of wisdom."
Thus spoke Socrates, whom Plato described to be 'the wisest and just and best', before he was administered with a cup of hemlock and with him the golden age in Greece came to an end. “Within the memory of man", Xenophon had said, “no one ever bowed his head more beautifully to Death.” When Socrates came of age as a philosopher, there were two currents flowing in Greece side by side, -one Pythagorean, nearmystic, and the other rationalist, and while Socrates was influenced profoundly by both, his personal preference was for a belief in the soul though he did nothing to stem the belief in reason.
The great Athenian was put to death in 399 B.C. at the age of seventy ; from this his birth falls in or about 470 B.C. Thus he was born about twenty-six years after the death of Pythagoras. His father Sophroniscus was a friend of the family of the 'just' Aristeides ; his mother Phaenarete acted as a “mid-wife'. He had been depicted by his important contemporaries as being intimate with the leading personalities of the Periclean circle. He must already have been a conspicuous figure at Athens when Aristophanes and Ameipsias both made him the subject of their comedies in 423 B.C. but both have made a special point of his poverty which, according to Plato, was caused by his occupation with his mission to mankind. Professionally a sculptor or stone-cutter, he was well-versed in geometry and astronomy. He married a shrew named Xantippe knowingly as a matter of self-discipline and had by her three sons, one of whom was infant at the time of his death. Socrates often caused her irritation with his casual ways, his improvidence and his absence-minded. ness and like a true philosopher accepted her occasional outbursts.
Socrates was well-known for his prowess and endurance. He served as a hoplite, perhaps at Samos, at Potidaea where he saved the life of Alcibiades, Delium and Amphipolis. In politics he took no part because office would mean compromise with his principles. Once only he was
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