And for his originality, integrity and wisdom be was condemned to death. Socrates asked if his friends would think it less shameful if he were guilty. Here was a man who, abandoning all speculations as regards the material world, fearlessly taught that the proper study of mankind was man , was derided, reviled and then condemned to undergo the extreme penalty of the law. The law of conscience was accounted nothing in those days as it is still considered of little account in reference to human laws and administrative enactments, under our present forms of civilized government. The Delphic Oracle pronounced Socrates the wisest of men.
Passive resistance is emphatically submission to physical force under protest.
Resist not evil, said Jesus of Nazareth, and Socrates, by drinking the poison, refrained from resisting what he had adjudged in his own mind as evil. We strip him of his good name . . . Without doing wrong, we will suppose him to be accounted an evil doer, that his virtue may be tried so as by fire. . . . Neither infamy nor ill usage, neither poverty nor distress, neither the malignity of persecution nor the pain of cruel torture can make him swerve from the path of duty. To complete the picture, we will suppose this godly man to be beaten with bats, scourged with whips, put to the torture, laden with chains, nailed to a cross, numbered with transgressors, and yet without sin.