5.  Moreover, Socrates, you do not appear to me to pursue a just course in giving yourself up when you might be saved; and you press on the very results with respect to yourself which your enemies would press, and have pressed, in their anxiety to destroy you.  Besides this, too, you appear to me to betray your own sons, whom, when it is in your power to rear and educate them, you will abandon, and, so far as you are concerned, they will meet with such a fate as chance brings them, and, as is probable, they will meet with such things as orphans are wont to experience in a state of orphanage.  Surely one ought not to have children, or one should go through the toil of rearing and instructing them.  But you appear to me to have chosen the most indolent course; though you ought to have chosen such a course as a good and brave man would have done, since you profess to have made virtue your study through the whole of your life; so that I am ashamed both for you and for us who are your friends, lest this whole affair of yours should seem to be the effect of cowardice on our part—­your appearing to stand your trial in the court, since you appeared when it was in your power not to have done so, the very manner in which the trial was conducted, and this last circumstance, as it were, a ridiculous consummation of the whole business; your appearing to have escaped from us through our indolence and cowardice, who did not save you; nor did you save yourself, when it was practicable and possible, had we but exerted ourselves a little.  Think of these things, therefore, Socrates, and beware, lest, besides the evil that will result, they be disgraceful both to you and to us; advise, then, with yourself; though, indeed, there is no longer time for advising—­your resolve should be already made.  And there is but one plan; for in the following night the whole must be accomplished.  If we delay, it will be impossible and no longer practicable.  By all means, therefore, Socrates, be persuaded by me, and on no account refuse.

6. Socr. My dear Crito, your zeal would be very commendable were it united with right principle; otherwise, by how much the more earnest it is, by so much is it the more sad.  We must consider, therefore, whether this plan should be adopted or not.  For I not now only, but always, am a person who will obey nothing within me but reason, according as it appears to me on mature deliberation to be best.  And the reasons which I formerly professed I can not now reject, because this misfortune has befallen me; but they appear to me in much the same light, and I respect and honor them as before; so that if we are unable to adduce any better at the present time, be assured that I shall not give in to you, even though the power of the multitude should endeavor to terrify us like children, by threatening more than it does now, bonds and death, and confiscation of property.  How, therefore, may we consider the matter most conveniently?