*The dying Socrates.*30 – I admire the courage and wisdom of Socrates in everything he did, said – and did not say. This mocking, love-sick monster and pied piper of Athens, who made the most audacious youths of Athens tremble and sob, was not only the wisest chatterer of all time; he was equally great in silence. I wish he had remained silent also in the last moments of his life – perhaps he would then belong to a still higher order of minds. Whether it was death or the poison or piety or malice – something loosened his tongue and he said: ‘O Crito, I owe Asclepius a rooster.’ This ridiculous and terrible ‘last word’ means for those who have ears: ‘O Crito, life is a disease.’31 Is it possible that a man like him, who had lived cheerfully and like a soldier in plain view of everyone, was a pessimist? He had merely kept a cheerful demeanour while all his life hiding his ultimate judgement, his inmost feeling! Socrates, Socrates suffered from life! And then he still avenged himself – with this veiled, gruesome, pious, and blasphemous saying. Did a Socrates really need revenge? Was there one ounce too little magnanimity in his overabundant virtue? – O friends! We must overcome even the Greeks!