And Socrates met the end which he expected:  death at the hands of his fellow-citizens.

And here perhaps a little glimmer of light is thrown into one of the darkest corners of human experience.  The wise old author of Ecclesiastes writes:  “There is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness; and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.  There is a vanity which is done upon the earth, that there be just men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again, there be wicked men to whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous:  I said that this also is vanity.”  “I returned and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all” (Eccles. viii. 14; ix. 11).  It is this element of chance that threatens to make a mockery of effort, and sometimes seems to make life but a travesty.  The terrible feature of Tennyson’s description of Arthur’s last, dim battle in the west is not the “crash of battle-axe on shattered helm,” but the all-engulfing mist.

Perhaps this is all intended to teach us that riches and favor, and even bread, are not the essentials of life, and that failure to attain these is not such ruin as we often think.  But no man ever struggled for wisdom, righteousness, unselfishness, and heroism without attaining them; even though the more he attained the more dissatisfied he became with all previous attainment.  And if our slight attainments in wisdom and knowledge always brought wealth and favor, we might rest satisfied with the latter, instead of clearly recognizing that wisdom must be its own reward.  Uncertainty and deprivation are the best and only training for a hero, not sure reward paid in popular plaudits.

Political economists speak of the productiveness and prospectiveness of capital.  We may well borrow these terms, using them in a somewhat modified sense.  In our sense capital is productive in so far as it gives an immediate return; it is prospective in proportion as the return is expected largely in the future.  A “pocket” may yield an immediate very large return of gold nuggets at a very slight expense of labor and appliances, but it is soon exhausted.  In a mine the ore may be poor near the surface, but grow richer as the shaft deepens; the vein is narrow above, but widens below.  The returns are at first small, its inexhaustible richness becomes apparent only after considerable time and labor.  The value of the “pocket” is purely productive, that of the mine largely or purely prospective.  Indeed it may be opened at a loss.  But even a rich mine may be worked purely for its productive value; it may be “skinned.”