MAN DEPENDS ON SOCIETY 275 



"What answer shall we make to this, Crito? Do the 

 laws speak truly or do they not ? " 



Crito. " I think that they do ? " 



Soc. " Then the laws will say, ' Consider Socrates, that 

 if we speak truly you are going to do us an injury. For, 

 after having brought you into the world, and nurtured 

 and educated you, and given you and every other citizen 

 a share in every good we had to give, we further proclaim 

 to every Athenian, that if he does not like us when he 

 has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, he may 

 go where he pleases, and take his goods with him ; and 

 none of us laws will interfere with him. . . . But he 

 who has experience of the manner in which we order 

 justice and administer the State, and still remains, has 

 entered intojin implied contract that he will do as_w^. 

 command him. And he who disobeys us is thrice wrong 

 ist, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents ; 

 2nd, because we are the authors of his education ; 3rd, 

 because he has made an agreement with us that he will 

 duly obey our commands. . . . We do not rudely impose 

 them, but give him the alternative of obeying, or con- 

 vincing us that they are unjust. That is what we offer 

 and he does neither.' . . . 



1 Listen, then, Socrates, to us, who have brought you 

 up. Think not of life and children first and of justice 

 afterwards, but of justice first, that you may be justified 

 before the princes of the world below. For neither will 

 youTnor any that belong to you be happier or holier or 

 juster in this life, or happier in another, if you do as Crito 

 bids. Now you depart in innocence, a sufferer and not 

 a doer of evil, a victim not of the laws but of men. But 

 if you go forth returning evil for evil and injury for injury, 



