Socrates' Rooster part IV (the end)

“No way. There isn’t a second-rate idealist alive who can lay a hand on me. But why? What cruelty is this? Why are you chasing me?”

“Because upon dying Socrates ordered me to sacrifice a rooster to Esculapius in thanksgiving since he gave him true health, freeing him from all his ills by way of death.”

“Socrates said all that?

“No, he said that we owed a rooster to Esculapius.”

“So you made the rest up?”

“What other meaning could those words have had?”

“A most beneficial one. One that doesn’t cost blood or errors. Killing me to satisfy a god that Socrates didn’t believe in is to offend Socrates and insult the true gods and to inflict on me, which does exist, an immeasurable harm. For we don’t know all the woe or all the prejudice that lie in mysterious death.”

“Well Socrates and Zeus want your sacrifice.”

“Note that Socrates spoke with irony, with serene irony and without gall. His great soul could amuse itself with the sublime game of imagining reason and popular daydreams to be harmonious, without danger to himself. Socrates and all the creators of new spiritual life speak in symbols: they are rhetorical. When they become familiar with the mystery they close it in poetical form, respecting its ineffable character. The divine love of the absolute has this way of kissing their souls. But notice when they stop this sublime game and give lessons to the world how austere, laconic, and how unattached their maxims and moral precepts are from all useless imagery.”

“Gorgias’ rooster, shut up and die!”

“Go away and be quiet, unworthy disciple. Be ever quiet. You’re unworthy of your kind. You’re all the same. A genius’ disciple, a deaf and blind witness of the sublime soliloquy of a superior consciousness. By way of both your fancy and his you attempt to immortalize his soul’s perfume when you embalm his doctrine with drugs and recipes. You mummify the dead man in order to make him an idol. You petrify ideas and you use subtle thoughts like a blade that draws blood. Yes, you are a symbol of sad, sectarian humanity. From the last words of a wise man or saint you deduce a rooster’s blood as first consequence. If Socrates had been born to confirm his people in their superstitions he wouldn’t have died for what he died for nor would he have been philosophy’s patron saint. Socrates didn’t believe in Esculapius nor was he capable of killing a fly much less a rooster by following the mood of the crowd.”

“I’m sticking to his words. Come here.”

Crito searched for a rock, aimed at the head and blood came flowing out the rooster’s crest.

Gorgias’ rooster lost consciousness and as he fell he sung to the breeze:

“Cockle-doodle-doo. Let destiny be fulfilled. Be done unto me according to the will of imbeciles.”

And the rooster’s blood flowed down Palla Athena’s jasper forehead.

FIN