2019-03-29

CHAPTER ONE: Plato II. Socrates

They must have liked his company, for he gave every indication of physiological prosperity.?

He was not so welcome at home, for he neglected his wife and children; and from Xanthippe's（蘇格拉底的老婆）?point of view he was a good-for-nothing（一無是處） idler who brought to his family more notoriety（臭名昭著） than bread.?

Xanthippe liked to talk almost as much as Socrates did; and they seem to have had some dialogues which Plato failed to record.?

Yet she, too, loved him, and could not contentedly see him die even after three-score years and ten（70歲：蘇格拉底70歲去世）.

*score：二十

Why did his pupils reverence（v. 尊敬） him so??

Perhaps because he was a man as well as a philosopher: he had at great risk saved the life of Alcibiades in battle; and he could drink like a gentleman（酒品好）—without fear and without excess（別人敬酒他就喝，但不過超過自己能喝的限度）.?

But no doubt they liked best in him the modesty of his wisdom: he did not claim to have wisdom, but only to seek it lovingly; he was wisdom's amateur（業(yè)余：不應該是貶義詞，我在自己的主業(yè)之外還有一個自己喜歡的副業(yè)，我因為愛來做這個事情，所以可以翻譯為“初心”）, not its professional.?

It was said that the oracle（神諭） at Delphi, with unusual good sense（言之鑿鑿的神諭，神諭很多時候是晦暗不明的，所以前面用unusual來修飾）, had pronounced him the wisest of the Greeks; and he had interpreted this as an approval of the agnosticism（不可知論，懷疑論，疑神論） which was the starting-point of his philosophy—"One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing."?

*Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. 哲學啟航于懷疑。

Who knows how these cherished beliefs became certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought?