（十二月十一日）
You ask me. "If there is not in the life of Jesus something more note worthy than in the death of Socrates, how are we to account for the fact that the death of Jesus occupies a place so much larger in the thought of the world than the death of Socrates?" "In the thought of the world?" It may be true that in the religious thought of the world, the death of Jesus may occupy an important place. But in the philosophical thought of the world, the death of Socrates surely occupies an equally important—perhaps more important—place as the death of Jesus．The death of Jesus founded a religion; the death of Socrates founded a philosophy. This philosophy has had a tremendous influence upon the Greek and Roman world, and in the modern time upon our own world．The ideal of the modern world is no longer the Christian ideal of self-abnegation, but the Greek ideal of self-development; no longer the Christian ideal of Faith, but the Socratic ideal of Truth-Truth for which Socrates died!…
I admit that to the Christians the death of Jesus does mean a great deal more than the death of Socrates．But why? Because, it seems to me, centuries of powerful tradition have made it so… The difference is due to the traditional training of the believer. It is something purely subjective, and has no objective validity.
You say (in chap. on "he Heroism of Jesus" in "Great pictures as Moral Teachers"—by H. E. Jackson), "With Socrates it was merely the auestion of his own death. With Jesus it was the problem of sin and its forgiveness." That is not true. Socrates, Problem was not merely his own death.
Socrates died for Truth; he sought Truth and found death. He offended the respectable people by calling their conduct and morality into question, by believing that "a life unexamined is not worth living." He was persecuted in the same manner and for the same offence as Jesus was persecuted. Before his death, his friends offered to help him to escape. This he refused. By his death he gave an ex
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