ABSTRACT
Socrates is part of the history of imaginal being, a history of inner fire. Socrates is depicted as homely, even ugly, yet his passion and beauty of spirit ignite kindred passions in others through the ages. For Socrates, intellectual drive commingles with grace, irony, humour, love. He bites and draws blood, but it is a bite we long for. Socrates' death, as narrated by Plato, must rank as one of the great deaths of all time. He did not leave as a chicken without a head. To meet death as he did, to not be chicken, constitutes more than a model. It is a tribute to life. It is difficult to admit that murder is part of the transmission of thought, that murder structures mind and soul that murder makes mind more alive. What is most wondrous in the work is most elusive, scarcely felt perturbations in a darkish background.
