Livingston at the end of my life on earth, if men learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason and to give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions.

SOCRATES: You may remember that in the Laws of Manu it is enjoined on the Brahman that when his hair is white, and his skin is wrinkled, and he has looked on his son's sons, he shall turn his back on his home and his ordinary affairs, and withdrawing to the forest, shall devote the remainder of his days to meditation on the nature of the Infinite Being. When you wrote that to Livingston you had become the Sage of Monticello. You had

turned your back on men.

JEFFERSON: I was consulted by all kinds of men to the end of my days.

SOCRATES: But you had forgotten what men are like if you thought they could endure it not to be confident of their conclusions.

JEFFERSON: Explain yourself.

SOCRATES: I feel that I am going to make a speech.

BRYAN: I shall like it.

JEFFERSON: I don't think I shall. I once told the president of a debating society that most oratory is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting, instead

of persuading. Speeches measured by the hour die with the hour.

SOCRATES: You rather enjoy quoting your

self.

JEFFERSON: No, these speeches are being put into my mouth.

SOCRATES: So are mine being put into my mouth.

BRYAN: Newspapermen like to put words. into people's mouths.

SOCRATES: I do not complain. I am going to deliver my speech.

JEFFERSON: What were we talking about? SOCRATES: I was about to explain why men cannot endure not being confident of their conclusions. And I was going to say that most men have no time for speculation. They have too many immediate worries. Ideas are of no use to them unless they provide means of dealing with the things that worry them. They feel insecure. They have to make a living, and they are constantly menaced by this and that, by drought and plagues, by wars and oppressions, by disease and death. An easy and tolerant skepticism is not for them. They want ideas which they can count upon, sure cures, absolute promises, and no shilly-shallying with a lot of ifs and perhapses. The faith of the

people is always hard, practical, and definite. And that is why your religion of reason is not for them.

JEFFERSON: Because it denies them hard and fast conclusions on which they can rely absolutely?

SOCRATES: Yes. Have you ever stopped to think what it means when a man acquires the scientific spirit? It means that he is ready to let things be what they may be, whether or not he wants them to be that way. It means that he has conquered his desire to have the world justify his prejudices. It means that he has learned how to live without the support of any creed, that he can be happy, or at least serene, that he can be good, or at least humane, no matter what conclusion men may come to as to the origin of the world, or its plan, or its destiny. There are not many men of this sort in any age.

JEFFERSON: Utterly self-sufficient and disinterested men. Are they the only ones who can endure complete freedom of thought?

SOCRATES: They are the only ones. If a man has wants he must pay the price. If he wants gold and silver and big estates, he must want the kind of society in which it is possible for him to have these things. If he wants a

heaven of material well-being, he must want the kind of universe which will guarantee him such a heaven. It is only when he has ceased to care about the result that he can trust himself wholly to free inquiry.

JEFFERSON: Must a man then surrender everything if he is to be free?

SOCRATES: That was my conclusion.

That

is why I refused to flee to Thessaly when they left the prison door open for me. Had I run away in order to be able to eat a few more dinners, I should have been not a philosopher but the slave of my own stomach. Had I submitted to that, could I ever again have been sure that what I thought was the voice of reason was not in fact the rumbling of my own stomach?

JEFFERSON: Is freedom as difficult as you make it out?

SOCRATES: Not quite. I am now a legend devised by Plato to instruct mankind.

JEFFERSON: You mean that freedom may not require the complete renunciation of worldly desires?

SOCRATES: I mean that freedom may also be a matter of degree, and that men could enjoy a good deal of freedom if, while following their worldly desires, they did not think very highly of any of them.

JEFFERSON: But you said that most men were too preoccupied with the problem of living to look at life in this fashion.

SOCRATES: I adhere to that. And while mankind is thus preoccupied it will neither enjoy freedom itself nor tolerate too much of it in others. I was thinking of a considerable minority which now exists for the first time in the history of mankind, a class who no longer really need to worry about their safety or whether they can earn enough to live.

JEFFERSON: They may have other worries. Have you noticed the divorce courts down there?

SOCRATES: I am not a reformer. I was merely going to say that when the necessities of life are secure, a man can begin to be free. We in Athens founded our freedom on chattel slavery. So I think did you. You have got to found it on something. If they can do it with machines and organization and wise laws, well and good. The point is that a man can only begin to be disinterested when he has ceased to be hungry and uncomfortable and frightened. I was free because I wanted so little. You were free because you wanted nothing more. But people are never free who want more than they can have. Their wants create worries, their