eadgear.

Socrates belonged to the leisure class. His motto was, "Know Thyself."
He considered himself of much more importance than any statue he could
make, and to get acquainted with himself as being much more desirable
than to know physical phenomena. His plan of knowing himself was to ask
everybody questions, and in their answers he would get a true reflection
of his own mind. His intellect would reply to theirs, and if his
questions dissolved their answers into nothingness, the supremacy of his
own being would be apparent; and if they proved his folly he was equally
grateful--if he was a fool, his desire was to know it. So sincere was
Socrates in this wish to know himself that never did he show the
slightest impatience nor resentment when the argument was turned upon
him.

He looked upon his mind as a second party, and sat off and watched it
work. Should it become confused or angered, it would be proof of its
insufficiency and littleness. If Socrates ever came to know himself, he
knew this fact: as an economic unit he was an absolute failure; but as a
gadfly, stinging men into thinking for themselves, he was a success. A
specialist is a deformity contrived by Nature to get the work done.
Socrates was a thought-specialist, and the laziest man who ever lived in
a strenuous age. The desire of his life was to live without
desire--which is essentially the thought of Nirvana. He had the power
never to exercise his power except in knowing himself.

He accepted every fact, circumstance and experience of life, and counted
it gain. Life to him was a precious privilege, and what were regarded as
unpleasant experiences were as much a part of life as the pleasant ones.
He who succeeds in evading unpleasant experiences cheats himself out of
so much life. You know yourself by watching yourself to see what you do
when you are thwarted, crossed, contradicted, or deprived of certain
things supposed to be desirable. If you always get the desirable things,
how do you know what you would do if you didn't have them? You exchange
so much life for the thing, that's all, and thus do we see Socrates
anticipating Emerson's Essay on Compensation.

Everything is bought with a price--all things are of equal value--no one
can cheat you, for to be cheated is a not undesirable experience, and in
the act, if you are really filled with the thought, "Know Thyself," you
get the compensation by increase in mental growth.

However, to deliberately