I said that he deliberately threw down his tools; but possibly this was by request, for he had acquired a habit of engaging in much wordy argument and letting the work slide. He went out upon the streets to talk, and in the guise of a learner he got in close touch with all the wise men of Athens by stopping them and asking questions. In physique he was immensely strong--hard work had developed his muscles, plain fare had made him oblivious of the fact that he had a stomach, and as for nerves, he had none to speak of. Socrates did not marry until he was about forty. His wife was scarcely twenty. Of his courtship we know nothing, but sure it is Socrates did not go and sue for the lady's hand in the conventional way, nor seek to gain the consent of her parents by proving his worldly prospects. His apparel was costly as his purse could buy, not gaudy nor expressed in fancy. It consisted of the one suit that he wore, for we hear of his repairing beyond the walls to bathe in the stream, and of his washing his clothing, hanging it on the bushes and waiting for it to dry before going back to the city. As for shoes, he had one pair, and since he never once wore them, going barefoot Summer and Winter, it is presumed that they lasted well. One can not imagine Socrates in an opera-hat--in fact, he wore no hat, and he was bald. I record the fact so as to confound those zealous ones who badger the bald as a business, who have recipes concealed on their persons, and who assure us that baldness has its rise in headgear. 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.