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WISE GUY: The Life and Philosophy of Socrates
by M. D. Usher
Long ago in ancient Greece, a boy named Socrates declared that all he knew was nothing. So he spent his whole life asking questions.
He was a curious boy, and cheeky too, but more than anything in all the world he wanted to be happy, he wanted to be good, and he wanted to be wise.
Every day he went to see his friend, cobbler named Simon. He sat and studied Simon while he worked. Simon cut leather into stripes and stitched the pieces carefully together into shoes. He was an excellent cobbler.
"Hmmm," Socrates wondered. "Is cobbling a kind of wisdom?"
He aslo watched a carpenter in town build furniture from wood. First the carpenter built a table, each as finely crafted as the other.
"Hmmm," Socrates pondered. "If both are made of wood and have four legs, what makes one a table and one a bed? And what makes a carpenter a carpenter?" Socrates cratched his head. "It must have something to do with ideas," he decided.
He thought a lot about ideas, and questioned everyone to find out more:
"What about ideas you cannot see as you would a table or a bed?"
"What is goodness? What is courage? What is justice? What is Love?"
Though important people huffed and puffed, claiming to know the answers and pretending to be wise, he found that no one understood ideas as Simon understood his leather, or the carpenter his wood.
"How can you be truly wise if you don't know what these things are?" Socrates asked.
People listened closely to his questions. They'd sit outside for hours in the warm, inviting sun.
"Hmmm," Socrates said, looking up into the sky. "Do you think goodness might be like the sun, the source of vision, light, and life?"
And when the sun went down, as it always does, Socrates would spend the night with friends. They'd eat and drink and talk and DANCE! Socrates loved to dance and wave his arms twist his hips.
"The body, like the mind," he said, "must be nimble, fit, and strong."
But he was not a very handsome man. Some people ridiculed the way he looked - part crab, part pig, part donkey.
He didn't mind their jokes. He just smiled and said, "I see better with these bulging eyes, smell better with my turned-up nose, kiss better with these donkey lips!"
Socrates was also poor, but happy with the things he had.
"Look at all the things I do not need!" he'd say with a laugh whenever he went shopping.
And when he prayed, which he sometimes did, his prayer went like this:
Dear Pan, and all you gods here, graciously
Grant that I be beautiful within,
And may my behavior in this world agree
With what is hidden underneath this skin.
And may I count the wise man rich,
And desire only so much gold
As the modest purse of a prudent man
World want to have or hold.
Apollo, god of wisdom, loved Socrates dearly. "No one is as wise, or good, or brave as he," Apollo said.
The other gods agreed.
But certain men were not so pleased. "How can a man who says that he knows nothing be the wisest man of all?" they grumbled.
They felt threatened. They were jealous and embarrassed.
So they accused the thinker Socrates of things he never did or said. Then they sent him off...
... to jail!
Socrates was sad. "Nevertheless," he said, "it is still better to suffer a wrong than to commit one."
His friends came every day to visit him in jail. They talked - and DANCED! - until he died.
"Friends," he used to say, "have things in common."
And his friends have been asking questions ever since.
The saying "Friends have things in common" is an old proverb the Greeks traced back to Pythagoras (pih-THA-goh-rus), a musician and mathematician who was the first person to call himself a philosopher, which is a Greek word meaning "friend of wisdom." Socreates' way of life has inspired countless people throughout history, how many of these people do you know?