apology   

spiritual and divine agencies, and not in spirits or demigods?
He cannot.
I am glad that I have extracted that answer, by the assistance of the
court; nevertheless you swear in the indictment that I teach and
believe in divine or spiritual agencies (new or old, no matter for
that); at any rate, I believe in spiritual agencies, as you say and
swear in the affidavit; but if I believe in divine beings, I must
believe in spirits or demigods; - is not that true? Yes, that is true,
for I may assume that your silence gives assent to that. Now what are
spirits or demigods? are they not either gods or the sons of gods? Is
that true?
Yes, that is true.
But this is just the ingenious riddle of which I was speaking: the
demigods or spirits are gods, and you say first that I don't believe
in gods, and then again that I do believe in gods; that is, if I
believe in demigods. For if the demigods are the illegitimate sons of
gods, whether by the Nymphs or by any other mothers, as is thought,
that, as all men will allow, necessarily implies the existence of
their parents. You might as well affirm the existence of mules, and
deny that of horses and asses. Such nonsense, Meletus, could only have
been intended by you as a trial of me. You have put this into the
indictment because you had nothing real of which to accuse me. But no
one who has a particle of understanding will ever be convinced by you
that the same man can believe in divine and superhuman things, and yet
not believe that there are gods and demigods and heroes.
I have said enough in answer to the charge of Meletus: any elaborate
defence is unnecessary; but as I was saying before, I certainly have
many enemies, and this is what will be my destruction if I am
destroyed; of that I am certain; - not Meletus, nor yet Anytus, but
the envy and detraction of the world, which has been the death of many
good men, and will probably be the death of many more; there is no
danger of my being the last of them.
Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of
life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may
fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything
ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to
consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting
the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, according to your view,
the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of
Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with
disgrace; and when his goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to
slay Hector, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew
Hector, he would die himself - "Fate," as she said, "waits upon you
next after Hector"; he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and
death, and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor,
and not to avenge his friend. "Let me die next," he replies, "and be
avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a
scorn and a burden of the earth." Had Achilles any thought of death
and danger? For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he
has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there
he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death
or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true
saying.
Strange, indeed, would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when
I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea
and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any
other man, facing death; if, I say, now, when, as I conceive and
imagine, God orders me to fulfil the philosopher's mission of
searching into myself and other men, I were to desert my post through
fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I
might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the
gods, if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death: then I
should be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For this fear
of death is indeed the pretence of wisdom, and not real wisdom, being