The name of Socrates is familiar to every one among his earliest classical recollections. Who has not heard of the Athenian sage, the great moralist of heathenism, and his persecution and constancy even to death? There is no name indeed which stands forth more conspicuously in the history of the philosophy, or of the religion, or of the general civilization of the ancient world. It marks a distinct era in the progress of the human race. The character of a great period in the history of man is concentrated, in fact, in the life and teaching of this extraordinary individual; and his name accordingly has descended to us with all the importance of the crisis itself at which he flourished; recommended as it is to our affection and admiration, not so much by the characteristics of his personality, as by the tradition of his influence and authority.

For when we come to consider his particular biography, we find our attention arrested by little that belongs merely to the individual. We read of a long life passed for the most part in uniform tenour within the walls of his native Athens; and until we come to its tragic close, scarcely distinguished in point of incident from that of the mass of his contemporaries. When, again, we ask for writings from which, as from the proper mirror of the philosopher's mind, we may collect some express lineaments of his character and teaching, we find nothing even on this ground on which our curiosity can fasten; so little have we derived that interest, which the mention of Socrates now awakens, from himself immediately; and so much, on the other hand, are we indebted for our acquaintance with this philosopher to a popular feeling preserving and handing down to us the name which represents the thought and character of an age.

The conjuncture of events at the time of Socrates was Socrates, peculiarly favourable to the development of such a character. Socrates, born at Athens in the year 469 or 470 B.C., grew up to manhood during those years when Athens, standing on the proud eminence of her victories of Marathon and Salamis, was consolidating her power as a sovereign state and seat of empire. In the course of the fifty years which intervened between her triumphant resistance to the Persian invasion and the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, Athens, like Rome in her struggle with her Italian neighbours, had gradually converted her allies in the islands and on the coasts of Asia Minor and Thrace into dependent subjects and tributaries. But Athens had not, like Rome, the prudence to combine these scattered members of her empire, elements of discord and trouble as much as of strength to the sovereign state, by the free communication of the rights of citizenship. Nor indeed could this wise expedient have availed in the case of Athens as in that of Rome. For the states over which the empire of Athens extended were either independent governments reluctantly submitting to her yoke, or the weak dependencies of a rival power, and indisposed to acknowledge the sovereignty of Athens but so long as that power wanted the vigour and the enterprise to head a coalition against the common oppressor. There were thus in the very constitution of the Athenian empire, materials of jealousy and disunion, which no line of conduct but the impolitic one of surrendering an arbitrary rule into the hands of the people who had groaned under it, could long have kept from explosion. And, in fact, it was not the policy of Athens (masterly as that policy was under the hands of her great leaders) which sustained her empire for more than fifty years, so much as the inertness of her great rival, Lacedemon, and the difficulty of bringing the several grievances of the subject-states to bear on some decisive point, capable of influencing the movement of the whole in a strenuous concerted effort of resistance. At length we see this effort in the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, as well as the difficulty of it in the complicated diplomacy by which that great movement was preceded, and in the reluctance of Lacedemon to bring home to herself the necessity of exertion.

But, whilst Athens was thus aggrandizing herself against a day of retribution from the insulted states of Greece, she enjoyed the sunshine of her day of empire, in the brilliant assemblage, which she then witnessed within her walls, of the great, and the learned, and the eloquent, from all parts of Greece. While her arms and her enterprise were setting foot on every sea and land, her attractiveness as a home of genius and civilization, was evidenced in the number of strangers frequenting her porticoes, and groves, and theatres, and temples, and the houses of her nobles. During thirty years of this period of glory, the philosopher Anaxagoras was employed in propagating there the doctrines of the Ionic school, honoured by the patronage of her great men, and the revered master of her choicest spirits in the newly-acquired taste for philosophical inquiry. During, also, a considerable portion of the same period, the sophist Prodicus was domesticated within her walls, surrounded by crowds of admiring pupils from the highest ranks of her citizens, eagerly catching the inspiration of that rhetorical ability for which he was famed. Occasionally, too, amongst the distinguished visitors of the city, might be seen other illustrious professors of the day, also familiarly known by the name of sophists, then a complimentary designation.—Protagoras of Abdera, Gorgias of Leontium, Hippas of Elis,—drawn there by the demand for that literary merchandise, of which they claimed the monopoly. There also were now collected, as in a school of all arts, the great masters of the drama, of sculpture, and painting, and music, and the gymnastic exercises. So that Athens, at this time, contained within her own bosom abundant resources for the enlargement of the mind, whether in the eminent men who formed her society, in the lectures and conversation of the professors of science, or in noble works, the specimens and examples of what genius could effect. Athens contained, also, doubtless, much to enervate and corrupt the moral judgment, whilst she presented every thing to exalt the imagination and refine the taste. Her political institutions, well-balanced as they had been left by Solon, were now violently disturbed. In the course of these years of imperial greatness and prosperity, they received a large infusion of that licentious spirit, which the naval successes of the Athenians had engendered in the lower order of the citizens,2 and the flattery of successive demagogues had fostered and diffused through the whole of the state. Now, also, faction divided the ties of family and kindred, and formed associations of the people for every lawless purpose of private ambition and cupidity. Their highest and purest court,—one principal anchor of the state, according to the intention of their great legislator,3—the Areopagus, was mutilated in its powers. And whilst numerous courts of law, thronged by their hundreds of judges, chosen by lot from the whole body of citizens, were constantly open; and an idle populace were encouraged, by pay from the public treasury, to attend on the business of these courts, the functions of the legislative and deliberative bodies were virtually suspended. The peremptory power of these judicial committees, in which the people at large felt and exercised a despotic authority, became the real executive of the state. Then came into intense activity the vile system of sycophancy,—a system, under which the life and property of the wealthy were at the mercy of every needy adventurer who could speak to the passions of the people, and earn a livelihood for himself by a career of successful prosecutions.

Nor was public corruption unattended by its usual evils of private luxury and debauchery. At this time too, there might be observed in the heart of a city which prided itself on its pious feelings,4 and amidst the frequency and splendour of festivals and external rituals of religion,5 a profane scepticism with regard to the fundamental principles of religion and morality. A spirit of self-conceit and of presumption of knowledge, already natural to the Athenians, had now widely spread among the people; and every one was by turns dogmatist or sceptic,6 according as it was his own opinion that he asserted,—or as he might display his ingenuity in questioning some received principle, or disputing some opinion proposed by another.

Add to these circumstances, the effect of a large slave population, the degraded ministers to the wants and the wealth of an insolent body of citizens, and of a number of resident foreigners engaged in carrying on the manufactures and trade of the city, paying a tax for their protection, and contributing to the military strength of the state, though excluded from its franchise. The slave, indeed, and the

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1 Isocrat. Panegyr. Kai ῥὸ ἐλάθε τῶν ἀδικητομένων ὑπὸ ἡμῶν τοσοῦτον ἔστιν, κ.τ.λ. p. 39. 2 Aristot. Polit. ii. 9, τῆς νεώτερας γὰρ ἐν τοῖς Μεγάλοις ὁ δῆμος ἄνευ γενέσεως ἐφορματισθῇ, κ.τ.λ. 3 Plutarch. Solon, 19, εἰδότως ἂν ἦν ἰδίῳ βουλής ἀνεξάρτητος ἐργούμεναι, ἤτοι ἐν σᾶλαι τὴν πολικ ἐστίν, κ.τ.λ. Tom. i. p. 352, ed. Reiske. 4 Aristoph. Nub. 208, ἀδὲ μὴ Ἀθηναῖ. Ἐτ. τὶ σὺ λέγεις; ὅτι πάθον, ἐπεὶ διακόπτεις ὑπὸ ἀρχῆς καθημένων. 5 Soph. Οἰδ. Col. 1006, ἢ τὸ γὰρ ἀνεξάρτητος ἐπιτρέπει τῷ πολικῷ σεβεῖσθαι, ἢ τὸ τῶν ἐπιτρέπει. 6 Xenophon, in his Memorabilia, i. c. 4, gives an instance in Aristodemus of one who not only had a contempt for all religion, but even derided those who concerned themselves with it. foreigner, lived more happily at Athens than at Lacedaemon, or perhaps any other city of Greece, especially during a time of war, when their services were needful to the state. Slavery, therefore, acted probably less injuriously on the character of the Athenian master, than it did elsewhere in Greece. It was tempered by the social humors of the people. But the facility thus afforded to the citizens of living in indolence and ease, and abandoning all domestic employment for the excitement of the public assemblies, and the courts, and the spectacles, naturally induced a neglect of the private and domestic duties. There is reason to believe, that whilst the Athenians appeared in the face of the world the most light-hearted of men, they were secretly unhappy in their homes; living in listlessness from day to day on the alms of their public pay; many of them reduced from affluence to poverty through the loss of lands and property by the ravages and pressure of war, and yet unable or unwilling to use the necessary exertions to relieve themselves from their distress. It is evidently no singular instance which Xenophon has given of this state of things at Athens, when he tells us of Aristarchus complaining to Socrates of the number of poor female relatives who, from losses in the course of the Peloponnesian war, were thrown on him for support. The difficulty which Aristarchus felt, was, that he could not expect persons who were free-born and his own kindred, to undertake any manual labour, so as to assist in maintaining themselves. Happily, however, he adopts the friendly suggestion of Socrates, and makes the experiment of setting them actively to work. The experiment succeeds; and thus contentment and cheerfulness are introduced to a home where before all was gloom and mutual suspicion.

In the meantime, a great number of mechanics and tradesmen had risen to wealth and importance, in consequence of the demand for every species of labour and trade, resulting from the multiplied population of the city and its numerous foreign dependencies and connexions, and, in particular, from the magnificent public works carried on during the administration of Pericles. All this while, Athens was becoming more and more a mercantile community, in the midst of strong aristocratic prejudices, still surviving, and rendered, indeed, more intense by the opposition growing up around them. In many instances, the older families would be declining in wealth, exhausted by the burthens of the state or the extravagance of individual expenditure; whilst new families, the creations of successful trade and enterprise, would be obtaining influence by the force of their wealth, and encroaching on the privileged ground hitherto occupied only by right of birth. It may be easily conceived, therefore, that the mass of the society of the city would be now all fermentation and restlessness; the one class pushing their interests and their claims to equality founded on their personal title, whilst the other obstinately clung to the exclusiveness and the pride of hereditary right.

But we shall best judge of the distempered state of the social atmosphere of Athens, by adverting to the character of female society as it existed there. It has often been remarked, as the glory of modern and Christian civilization, that it has restored woman to her due place in the scale of social importance, and thus most effectually chastened and elevated the general intercourse of human life. In a country so essentially social as Greece, and especially at Athens, it was practically impossible to impose on the women the absolute seclusion of eastern despotism. Still it was even at Athens considered the rule of propriety, that the wives and daughters of citizens should live in the strict privacy of their homes, and be known and noticed as little as possible among the other sex, even for their virtues. But whilst the virtuous matron was excluded from the social circles, the place which she should have held in Athenian society was filled by other females, strangers to family ties, and attracted to Athens by the licentiousness and wealth of an imperial city. The union of high intellectual endowments, and a masculine dignity of understanding, in some distinguished individuals of this class, with the graces of female loveliness, appealed with a powerful interest to the sensual elegance of Grecian taste. We find, accordingly, at Athens, at this time, forming, as it were, the female court of the sovereign people, the Milesian Aspasia, and others of less name, living in the profession of a scandalous course of life, not only without shame, but even in the enjoyment of public respect. It was not the general of the commonwealth only that felt the spell of the charms of Aspasia, but grave philosophers resorted to her house; and even the ladies of private families, in violation of the restrictions of custom, were taken there by their friends; all eager to hear those interesting conversations, and lectures in political and rhetorical science for which she was famed. We may judge how deeply corrupted must have been the standard of public opinion in Greece, when female profligacy could thus veil itself from the eye of moral observation, under the graces of splendid accomplishments of mind and person. So thoroughly had refinement of intellectual taste and of manners, together with the grossest impurity of morals, pervaded the whole society of Athens, that even those who were elevated above the world around them in talents, and strength of character, and kindliness of disposition, as Socrates was, imbibed in some measure the poison of the infected atmosphere which they breathed.

Such, then, was that state of things in which Socrates was trained, and which will greatly account to us for that peculiar form which the character of his philosophical teaching exhibits. For he was ever an Athenian instructing Athenians. He spoke as one fully conversant with the habits of thought and action of his countrymen; as knowing what kind of instruction they most needed, and by what mode of address he might best win their attention. We might expect, therefore, to see in him some leading traits of the Athenian civilization of his time; a teaching, admirable indeed in its main features, but bearing, at the same time, some marks of that corrupt state of society which called it forth, and to which it was immediately addressed.

The son of Sophroniscus a sculptor, and Pharnareté a midwife, and himself brought up in his father's art, he yet enjoyed those advantages of mental culture and social refinement which were common to every citizen of the democratic Athens. The meanness of his birth and his poverty, much as high birth and wealth were esteemed there, would not exclude him from familiar intercourse with persons of the highest rank and consideration in the state. Nor, indeed, could the advantages of education be restricted to a privileged few, where every one lived in public, and where knowledge was for the most part acquired and communicated by conversation and oral discussion.

If, in the general relaxation of discipline at Athens, the citizen was no longer obliged to submit himself to a prescribed course of education under the eye of the state, and it was

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1 Aristoph. Nub. 5, ἀνδρῶν ἐστιν, ἐς πολέων, πολλῶν ὄντων ὅτι ἐκεῖ καλάρισται ἐξερεῖ μοι τῶν αἰχμάλωτων. 2 The story is beautifully told by Xenophon in his simple manner in the Memorabilia, book ii. chapter 7. See also Mem. ii. 8. 3 Thucyd. ii. 43, τῆς τε γὰρ ὑπαρχόντης φύσεως μὴ χείρων γενεᾶς ἢ μεγάλη ἢ δόξα, καὶ ἡ ἐν ἐν ἀληθείᾳ ἀρετῆς πρὸς ἡ ἀφήκει ἐν τοῖς ἀρετῶν κλέος ἡ. 4 Plato, Menex.—Xenoph. Mem. ii. 6.—Plutarch. Pericles. 24. Καὶ ἦν Ἀσπασία ἐκείνη ὅτι μετὰ τῶν γυναικῶν ἔφοιτε, καὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἐπισκοποῦσαν ὅτι συνέβη ἤτοι ὁ ἀνήρ, κ.τ.λ. Tom. i. p. 638, Reiske. Socrates left each person to avail himself, or not, of the sources of instruction presented in the intellectual society of the city. Socrates was not a person to neglect the advantages placed in his way. Money he had not, to pay to the Sophists, the great masters of his day. But he had from childhood an inquisitive mind. He felt that he was thrown on his own resources of thought, and that he must be his own master in the art of education. And to this great object he appears to have bent, from the earliest time, all the powers of his energetic mind, making it constant employment to inquire from every one, and collect on every occasion, some hint towards the right prosecution of it. We may picture to ourselves the young Socrates, resembling the Socrates of mature life, freely entering into conversation with all to whom he had access; feeling and acknowledging his own ignorance; listening attentively to all that he heard; weighing and discussing it in his own mind with patience and acuteness; and not resting until he had traced it out in all its bearings to the utmost of his power. Thus would he gradually form and strengthen that faculty of observation, and that analytical acumen for which he was afterwards so eminently distinguished.

Nor has Plato improbably put a prophecy of his future eminence in the mouth of one of the great masters of the day, when he makes Protagoras say of him, with the self-complacency of the man of established reputation: "For my part, Socrates, I commend your spirit, and the method of your reasoning; for whilst in other points I am no bad sort of person, as I think, I am the farthest from being an envious one. For concerning you in particular, I have already observed to many, that of all I meet, I admire you by far the most; of those of your own age, even to the extreme; and I say too, I should not be astonished if you were to turn out a man of celebrity for philosophy." To the same effect is the story, that his father, being at a loss how to educate him, consulted the Delphic oracle, and was advised to leave him entirely to his own bent, inasmuch as he had a director in himself superior to a thousand teachers.

The simple interpretation of what is here thrown into the form of marvel probably is, that he gave, even when a child, striking indications of a devotedness to those studies which became the business of his manhood.

The notice of a wealthy individual of Athens, the excellent Crito, appears to have been early attracted to Socrates. Crito was of about the same age as Socrates; and an attachment to the pursuit of philosophy, and an admiration of the character of Socrates, naturally led to that intimacy which he now commenced with the young philosopher, and steadily maintained through his subsequent life. Through him Socrates was relieved from the necessity of earning his livelihood by the profession of a sculptor; or, as Lactuus expresses it, "was raised from the workshop." Sculpture, indeed, was in high honour at Athens, especially at this time. For Pericles, enjoying the protection of Pericles, was now adorning the city with the immortal productions of his own chisel, as well as other noble works of art executed under his taste and direction. But to follow up the profession with success, required a devotion of mind and hand that must preclude the opportunities indispensable for the moral student. And though, for a time, Socrates worked at the art,—and with success, if a statue of the Graces in the citadel of Athens, attributed to him, were really his workmanship—we may imagine how distasteful the occupation, however intellectual in itself, must have been to a mind, so eager for observation on living man, so intent on mental and moral phenomena, as that of Socrates; and how gladly he would exchange the labour of his paternal art for that philosophic leisure which the friendship of Crito held out to him.

The world of that day reproached the philosophers with servility, taunting them with being ever seen at the "gates of the rich." In some instances, the reproach may have been just. But in general, the fact was the reverse. Their society rather was courted by the great and wealthy, who were proud of the reputation of being patrons of philosophy. To Socrates, indeed, the patronage of a man of wealth would be peculiarly acceptable, not so much for the means of subsistence, about which he was absolutely thoughtless and indifferent, as for the society itself to which he would thus be introduced, and the opportunity of carrying on his researches into philosophy, both by books and by the oral instructions of its living professors. To him it would be the very means by which he would enlarge his field of moral observation. The social evenings of Athens were the natural sequences of the mornings of the agora, and the courts, and the council, and the assembly. They prolonged in festive conversation that strife of words and competition of argument, which had been begun in the busy and serious discussions of the morning, and of which the last murmurs had scarcely died away on the ear of the assembled guests. For Athenian life was a life of constant excitement. What Demosthenes observed a hundred years afterwards, and an apostle four hundred years later still,—that the Athenians did nothing but go about and ask the news of the day,—was a characteristic of the people already strongly developed at this period of their history. Socrates, who, in his own person, gave a philosophical cast to this inquisitive spirit, would be peculiarly interested by such opportunities of exercising it as were presented in the animated encounters of the symposium. There he would see human nature displayed in some of its most striking forms. There he would meet the citizen full of years and honours, experienced in the arts of government and diplomacy, and in the service of the state by land and sea; the poet flushed with his victories in the dramatic contest; the sophist armed at all points for the display; the philosopher expounding his theories; the orator, the idol of the people in his day; the courtly patron of literature; and a circle of young men, the flower of the highest rank in the state; each bearing his part in the free and lively interchange of thought, emulously provoking one another to discussion, and contending for the mastery in the conflict of debate.

By such society Socrates would be effectually prepared for that active enterprise of philosophy, which formed the whole engagement of his life. In the meagre information handed down to us respecting the details of his history, we are not able to ascertain at what precise period of life he began his career of public teaching, or at least attracted notice as the philosopher of Athens. The transition would probably be gradual, from the youthful inquirer, to the mature and expert teacher of others. This transition would be the less perceptible in the case of Socrates, from the circumstance, that he never professed to teach, even when he was most actively employed in teaching; but still, at the last, as he had done from the first, merely to inquire. For his part, he disdained the profession of philosophy. He was disgusted with the vain pretension advanced by the Sophists, of being masters of every science, and capable of imparting instruction on any given subject. He accordingly set out with the antagonist position, that he knew nothing: that his only wisdom, if he possessed any beyond other men, consisted in his being aware of his real ignorance, whilst others ignorantly presumed on the possession of a knowledge which they had not. His teaching, therefore, was only a continuation of the process of educa-

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1 Plato, Laches, p. 186, c., ἐγὼ μὲν οὖν, κ.τ.λ. p. 176, Bip. ed. 2 Plato, Protag. Op. iii. p. 193. 3 Plutarch, de Gen. Socr. 4 Plato, Apol. p. 78, ὅμως ἀληθῶς. 5 Diog. Laert. in vit. ii. 5. 6 Xenoph. Mem. i. 2, σοῦ πάντως ἐπιστήσετο διδάσκαλος ἑαυτὸν τύχον. 7 Diog. Laert. ii. 5. Pausanias, i. 22; ix 33. Socrates

tion of his own mind, by extending it to the minds of others. He was fond of describing it as an examination or scrutiny of the mind; a method of finding out the real condition of each mind, and so of preparing it for the due exercise of its powers in the practical emergencies of human life. He saw that the evils of life arose, in great part, from the wrong judgments of men,—from their mistaking their own powers, presuming on their knowledge, and ability, and the truth of opinions adopted without inquiry. He endeavoured then to effect the cure of human error and unhappiness by a reformation of the intellect. The first step towards this would be taken, if men could be only divested of this vain self-confidence; if they could be brought to suspect that they might be mistaken in their judgments, and so to question themselves.

This preliminary labour was employment enough for any one man's life, especially in a society such as that of Athens, so entirely infected with the sophistical leaven. Socrates wisely confined his exertions to this simple object. He is content to excite inquiry,—to provoke discussion,—and thus to suggest the necessity of self-discipline in order to right judgment. He does not, like other philosophers, quit the seclusion of a study, or the field of foreign travel, to come forth to the world the accomplished teacher of the accumulated wisdom of years of solitary thought and reflection. Whilst philosophizing in the agora and the streets of Athens, in the workshops of the artizan, or at the banquets of the rich, he is still employed in the work of disciplining the mind. Thus he passes on insensibly from the education of himself to the education of others, and it is difficult consequently, or rather impossible, to say in his case, where the character of the learner ends, or where that of the philosopher and teacher begins.

Yet, entirely as Socrates disregarded all positive knowledge, and threw himself on the resources of a shrewd and extensive observation of human nature, we must not suppose that he neglected to inform himself in the existing systems of philosophy, and the particular sciences as they were then understood and taught. There is reason to believe, that he had accurately studied the systems of the early physical philosophers of the Ionic school, as well as the moral and mathematical theories of the Pythagoreans, and the dialectics of the school of Elea. Without supposing him so deeply versed in the doctrines of the several schools, as would be inferred from his exact discussions in the dialogues of Plato, there is still ample evidence, from the more direct account of Xenophon, that he was by no means ignorant of them. He had doubtless read much, as well as observed much, when he commenced his philosophic mission. Xenophon indeed tells us that Socrates considered the physical and dialectical theories of his predecessors as unprofitable. But he takes care to add, that Socrates was not unacquainted with these theories. And in particular, as to the sciences of astronomy and geometry, he thought the attention of the student wasted in investigating their more abstruse theorems. But he was able (as Xenophon further observes), to speak on the subjects of these sciences also from his own knowledge of them.

Nor are we to suppose that, whilst he had properly no master in that line of philosophical study which he had marked out for himself, he had no aid in the cultivation of his mind, from the living masters of philosophy in his day. The long residence of Anaxagoras at Athens, probably coincides in time with part of the early life of Socrates. To him, therefore, Socrates would naturally have access, as well as to Archelaus, his disciple, and the inheritor of his doctrines. If he had no personal intercourse with Anaxagoras, it is at least highly probable, from the testimony of Plato, that he was acquainted with the famous treatise of Anaxagoras, which contained his theory of the universe. And perhaps we may distinctly trace the early and abiding influence of the lessons of this great philosopher throughout the teaching of Socrates, in his uniform maintenance of the principle of an all-disposing mind, the glory of the system of Anaxagoras.

To the writings of Heraclitus, his attention appears to have been drawn by the poet Euripides; if the anecdote be true, as related by Laertius, that on being asked by Euripides, who had put them into his hand, what he thought of them, he replied, alluding to the studied obscurity of that philosopher; "What I understand is excellent; so also, I suppose, is what I do not understand; only there is need of some Delian diver to reach the sense." He had also opportunities of conversing with Zeno the Eleatic, and Theodorus of Cyrene; the former eminent for his dialectical skill, the latter the most distinguished geometrician of the time. And though his scanty means precluded his attendance on the professional lectures of Prodicus, the fashionable teacher of rhetoric at that day at Athens, it cannot be doubted that he would on several occasions have been among the company assembled at the house of some wealthy citizen, and there heard from the lips of that accomplished master of language those elaborate oratorical displays which made his name proverbial for wisdom. With the poet Euripides, indeed, the disciple of Anaxagoras and Prodicus, and who was his senior only by a few years, he appears to have lived in habits of intimacy. With Euripides he would probably often have discussed those ethical topics which the poet so greatly delighted to transfuse into his tragic scenes, and associate with the interest of dramatic incident. They were in fact brother-labourers in the same cause, though in different ways. For whilst Euripides endeavoured to work a reformation of his countrymen, by didactic addresses insinuated through their feelings, amidst the interest of tragic story, Socrates appealed at once to their understandings, and amidst the business or pastime of real life. The envy of contemporaries was prone to attribute the excellence of the poet in some of his dramatic efforts, to the aid of his philosopher-friend. The truth probably is, that the benefit of their intercourse was mutual; that, whilst the poet's imagination was informed and chastened by the shrewd and severe wisdom of the philosopher, the philosopher also, ever intent on his calling, would enlarge his mind with riches drawn from the genius, and taste, and learning of the poet.

The co-existence of literary and philosophic elegance with the most disgusting coarseness of moral feeling and conduct, in the character of the Athenian courtezan, has been already noticed. To Aspasia, the heroine of her class, as we may call her, when we refer to her influence over Pericles, and the encomiums of her by Plato and others, Socrates is expressly stated to have been indebt-

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1 Xenoph. Mem. i. 6. 2 Xenoph. Mem. iv. 7. 3 He reckons himself in Xenoph. Conviv. i. 5, among the ἀναγράφει τῆς φιλοσοφίας. 4 It must be admitted, however, that the chronology of the life of Anaxagoras is very doubtful. 5 Archelaus is called both a Milesian and an Athenian. The probability is that he was a Milesian, since philosophy had scarcely yet found a home at Athens. 6 See the Phaedo, p. 97. The writings of Anaxagoras appear to have been extensively circulated. Socrates is made in Plato's Apology to say to Melitus, ὅτι αὐτὸς διερεύνη γραμμάτων εἶναι, ὥσπερ ὁκ ἐδίδαξε ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἀναξαγόρου Βούλω τῶν Καλλιγραφῶν γράμματα τῶν ἄνδρων. 7 Diog. Laert. in vit. ii. 7. 8 Plato, Memo. p. 96. Κινδυνεύοντας, ὡς Μέσων, ἐγὼ τε καὶ σύ, φάντα τινὲς ἔχων ἀνδρῶν, καὶ ὑπὸ τοῦ Πορφύρου ὑπὸ ἰατρῶν πεποιηκότες, καὶ ὑπὸ Προδίκου. P. 382. Bipont. 9 Aristoph. Nub. Diog. Laert. in vit. ii. 5. Whilst Xenophon also introduces him familiarly conversing with Theodota, whom he describes as living in great splendour at Athens, the object of general admiration for her personal charms, and inviting her to become his disciple. Plato leads us to believe that Socrates was himself the disciple of another of the same class, the Mantinean Diotimé, who, among her other accomplishments, was distinguished in particular for her skill in the art of divination.

Instruction in music formed an important part of Athenian education. Socrates, it seems, did not neglect the opportunities which the presence of the great masters of the art in Athens afforded him of learning its principles. Conus accordingly is claimed for him, as his master in music. Damon, another celebrated musician, though not more eminent in the science which he professed, than as a politician and sophist, was resident at Athens during part of the administration of Pericles, the intimate and counsellor of that great statesman, as well as his instructor in music. From him also, we are told, Socrates received instruction in the art. By these accounts, however, we may probably understand, not that he became a proficient in the musical art, but that he had listened to Damon as well as to Conus, discoursing on the subject, and studied its theories under them, so far, at least, as music entered into the general pursuit of philosophy.

It should be observed, indeed, that though Socrates strongly discouraged the presumption of knowledge in all with whom he conversed, he did not disapprove of the acquisition of particular kinds of knowledge. He communicated whatever he knew to every one that came in his way; and where he was himself unacquainted with any subject, he referred his hearers to those who possessed the information. He was not in fact opposed to knowledge in itself. He was glad to embrace it wherever it could be found. But he was an enemy to the substitution of mere intellectual acquisitions,—and those often superficial and unreal,—for education of the mind and character. He felt, and justly felt, that knowledge by itself was vanity. The tendency of the age was to ascribe value exclusively to mental acuteness and dexterity. Ingenuity and cleverness obtained the merit and the prize of wisdom. His labour was to draw his countrymen from thinking too highly of their boasted knowledge. He wished them to see how greatly they overrated intellectual acquirements,—how much they had yet to learn if they would be real proficients in wisdom.

Socrates indeed appears to have regarded philosophy in the light of a sacred mission, to which he was specially called, rather than of a study and exercise of the mind. This notion of philosophy had already been exemplified by Pythagoras and his followers. But they had realized it by forming themselves into distinct communities or colleges; separating themselves from the world around, by a solemn initiation, and the practice of an ascetic discipline. Socrates, however, had no thought of changing the outward form of society. He did not propose, like Pythagoras, to institute a refuge from the pollutions and misery of the world, or to educate a peculiar brotherhood, who should afterwards act on the social mass. He did not address himself to the few. His school was all Athens, or rather indeed all Greece. Leaving society as it was, he sought to infuse a new spirit into it, by carrying his philosophy into every department of it. He therefore went about among all classes of people, preferring none, despising none, but adapting his instructions to every variety of condition and character. Thus did he in truth, according to the observation commonly applied to him from the time of Cicero, bring down philosophy from heaven to earth; but not so much by being the first to give a moral tone to philosophy, as by the universality and philanthropy of his teaching. Philosophy in his hands was no longer an exclusive and privileged profession. It no longer spoke as from an oracular shrine, and in the language of mystery. It now conversed with every man at his own home,—submitted to be familiarly approached and viewed without reserve,—and, instead of waiting to be formally consulted by its votaries only, volunteered to mingle in the business, and interests, and pleasures of every-day life.

His manner of life and of teaching is thus described by Xenophon.

"He was constantly in public. For early in the morning he would go to the walks and the gymnasia; and when the agora was full, he was to be seen there; and constantly during the remainder of the day, he would be wherever he was likely to meet with the most persons; and for the most part he would talk, and all that would might hear him."

The nature of his conversations is thus further reported by the same faithful authority:

"No one ever saw Socrates doing, or heard him saying, anything impious or profane. For not only did he not discourse about the nature of all things, as most others, inquiring how, what by the sophists is called the universe, consists, and by what laws each heavenly thing is produced; but he would point out the folly of those who studied such matters. And the first inquiry he would make of them was, whether they proceeded to such studies from thinking themselves already sufficiently acquainted with human things; or whether they thought they were acting becomingly in passing by human things, and giving their attention to divine. He would wonder, too, it was not evident to them, that it was not possible for men to find out these matters; since even those who most prided themselves on discoursing of them, did not agree in opinion with each other, but were affected like madmen in relation to one another. For of madmen, whilst some did not fear even the fearful, others were terrified at things not terrible; whilst some were not ashamed to say or do anything even before the multitude, others objected even to going out into the world; whilst some paid no honour to sacred things, or altars, or any other religious object, others worshipped even stones, and common stocks, and brutes. So of those who speculated on the nature of the universe, whilst some thought that Being was one only, others thought it was infinite in number; whilst some thought that all things were in perpetual motion, others thought it impossible for any thing to be moved; whilst some thought that all things were in course of generation and destruction, others thought that nothing could possibly be generated or destroyed. He would further consider respecting them thus: whether, as the learners of human things think they shall be able to make practical use of their knowledge for themselves and any one else at pleasure, so also the searchers into divine things hold, that having ascertained by what laws each thing..." Socrates is generated, they shall be able to produce at pleasure winds, and waters, and seasons, and whatever else of the kind they may want; or whether they have no such expectation, but it suffices them only to know how every thing of this kind is generated. Such, then, was his manner of speaking about those who busied themselves with these matters. But, for his part, he was ever discoursing about human things, inquiring what was pious, what impious, what honourable, what base, what just, what unjust, what sobriety, what madness, what courage, what cowardice, what a state, what a statesman, what a government of men, what the character of a governor; and about other subjects, which, by being known, would make men honourable and virtuous, whilst those who were ignorant of them, would justly be called slavish.

Xenophon has thus fully touched the character of the teaching of Socrates in its leading points, and the nature of his constant occupation at Athens. The intermissions of military service appear to have been the only occasions of any variation in this uniform course of life. No other country had any charms for him, as no other afforded such rich opportunities of conversing with men, and studying human nature. His activity was essentially different from that either of his predecessors or successors in the path of philosophy. They travelled from place to place searching for knowledge, storing their minds with various observations, and making philosophy their formal business. Socrates, as he had no stated school or place of audience, so he had no design of framing any system of philosophy, or of enlarging the researches and discoveries of former philosophers, or of pursuing knowledge as an ultimate object. He regarded himself as called by the voice of Deity, to undertake the reformation of men, and especially of his fellow-citizens, as constituting his proper sphere of duty, from their corruptions of sentiment and conduct. He stood, therefore, by the great stream of human life which was ever flowing at Athens, and watched its course. He is said once to have visited Samos in company with Archelaus, the disciple of Anaxagoras, and also to have gone to the Pythian and the Isthmian games. With these exceptions, and those of the occasions of military service abroad, he appears to have constantly remained at home, unattracted from the town, the seat of his philosophic mission, by invitations even to the courts of princes. In vain did Scopas of Cranon, and Eurylochus of Larissa, offer him money, and invite him to visit them. He could refuse also the hospitality of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, the same with whom the poet Euripides found a kind and honourable refuge in his old age, from the envy of his countrymen, and domestic grievance. His refusal of the invitation of Archelaus is said indeed to have been accompanied with the declaration of his feeling, that he could not brook the acceptance of a favour which it was entirely out of his power to return. Nay, so entirely engrossed was he in the work to which he had devoted himself, that he was a stranger, as Plato represents him, even to the immediate neighbourhood of the city. The banks of the Ilyssus, even then classic ground, rich with legendary associations, could not seduce him from the agora and the crowd; so that he seemed scarcely at home beyond the walls of Athens.

No Athenian, however, could decline the military service of the state. And this service, at the time of Socrates, often engaged the citizen in hazardous enterprizes and long absences far from his home. The first occasion on which Socrates is related to have served, was in the Chersonese at Potidea, just before the opening of the Peloponnesian war. The service in which the Athenian soldiers were engaged here was one of great hardship. It was in the winter season, and the climate in those parts was most severe. Amongst those who distinguished themselves by their resoluteness and gallantry, none was so conspicuous as the philosopher. Whilst others were clothing themselves with additional garments, and wrapping their feet in wool, he was observed in his usual dress, and walking barefoot on the ice, with more ease than others with their shoes. Nor even amidst these circumstances, did he merge the character of the philosopher in that of the soldier. He was seen one morning at sun-rise fixed in contemplation. At noon he was in the same position, and still in the evening, and so continued through the night, until the sun-rise of the following day. Such, too, was his bravery in the engagements at Potidea, that he earned for himself the prize of distinction, but readily sacrificed his claim to the wishes of the generals, in favour of a more illustrious candidate in the person of Alcibiades. Alcibiades himself would have refused the honour as due rather to Socrates; for to the unwillingness of Socrates to leave him wounded on the field, he had been even indebted for his own life, and the preservation of his arms, after the battle. But the philosopher, with a true magnanimity, insisted on the award of the generals.

The next occasion of military service, in which he was scarcely less distinguished than at Potidea, was in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war, at the battle of Delium in Boeotia. The battle was an unsuccessful one to the Athenians, and they were forced to retreat in disorder. Alcibiades was also present on this occasion, and overtook Socrates in company with Laches, one of the generals, on the way. He was on horseback, and comparatively therefore out of danger, whilst they were on foot. He had opportunity, therefore, of admiring the presence of mind which Socrates displayed on the occasion, even beyond Laches, and the steadiness and vigilance with which he kept the enemy from pressing upon them, and so secured their retreat.

These incidents seem to rest on indisputable evidence. The account of them is put into the mouth of Alcibiades by Plato, in that most ingenious of his dialogues, the Banquet. The very form in which they are introduced, related as they are by an eye-witness, and that witness Alcibiades, the person, next to Socrates himself, most interested in them, may justly be regarded as giving a sanction to their history, independent of the fictitious circumstances of the dialogue.

The third occasion on which Socrates served as a soldier

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1 Plato, Laches, 187, e. "Οὐ μεῖς δοκεῖ εἶδαι ὅτι ἢς ἀν δρόμων Ἀσπάσουσι ὁ λόγος, ὥσπερ γένεται, καὶ πληροῖ τὸ διαλεγόμενον ἄνεργον ἐν τῷ παραλήπτευσθαι τὸν ἰδίαν ἀνθρώπου παραλήπτευσθαι τὸν ἰδίαν ἀνθρώπου βεβήκειν, κ. τ. λ." P. 180.

2 Xeroph. Læst. in vit.

3 Plato, Phaedr. 230. "Τὸ δὲ ἦ ἐν διαφορᾷ, ἐπορεύοντος τῆς ἡμέρας ἑτέρων ὕψος ἐν ἔργῳ, ἐξερευνοῦσθαι τὸν καὶ ὁ ἐπιχειρεῖ ὑπερον. Εὑρὼν ἐν τῷ ἀντίκει ἐν τῇ ἐπιχειρεῖ ἀναποικίας, ἀντὶ ἐξ ἐν τῶν ἐπιχειρεῖ ἀναποικίας ἐξερευνοῦσθαι, Ἡ ἐν τῷ ἐπιχειρεῖ ἀναποικίας ἀναποικίας ἐξερευνοῦσθαι. Π. 287; also Crito, p. 120.

4 Plato, Conviv. p. 270. "The story is again alluded to by Plato, in the dialogue, Laches." Laches is made to say that he had had experience of the actions of Socrates, and reminds Socrates of the day of their common danger, ἣν ἦν ἐν ἀναποικίᾳ Ἀσπάσουσι, κ. τ. λ. P. 182.

5 Plato, Conviv. 220, a. p. 266; also Charmides. Socrates was again in Thrace, at Amphipolis, in the same year as that of the unfortunate expedition to Delium. No particulars are mentioned of this adventure. But the fact itself is sufficiently attested. Nor, though it follows immediately on the affair of Delium, is it improbable on that account. For at this busy period of the war, when the Athenians were making demonstrations of their power, by the presence of their forces in different places at once, and when Brasidas was pushing his successes against them in Thrace, no individual of the military age, (and Socrates was not more than forty-six or forty-seven years of age at this time), would enjoy any long interval of relaxation from foreign service.

With these exceptions, Socrates appears then to have constantly resided at Athens. All this time, throughout his whole life indeed, he lived in great poverty, content with the least that might suffice for mere sustenance and clothing from day to day.

Yet it was no artificial, and melancholy, and fanatical life that he led. He accustomed himself to a strict moderation, not with any view to the mortification of the body, or as thinking that abstinence was in itself a virtue, but in order to self-command; by rendering himself as independent as possible of the circumstances of the body, to disencumber the soul of every burthen and obstruction to its free operation. There was nothing, indeed, of austerity in his life or manner. He might be seen walking barefoot, but it was not for the pain that it might inflict. It was only that he might bear cold and privations of every kind the better, and suffer the less inconvenience when exposed to necessary hardships, and require the less for his ordinary subsistence. So far was he from studying a disciplining of bodily severity for its own sake, that he was observed at times mingling in the social festivities of his fellow-citizens with the full freedom of Athenian conviviality, and shewing that he could bear excesses which mastered others, without losing his self-command.

One account, indeed, but not a very credible one, as it rests on the authority of Aristoxenus, an envious writer, states that he was supported by the alms of friends, contributed from time to time for his relief. With his very limited wants, and his ready access to the house of Crito and other liberal patrons of philosophy at Athens, he would not have to depend on this precarious charity. The pittance which sufficed for the humblest citizen would suffice for him. He is said to have inherited a patrimony of seventy or eighty mines. But this sum, it is added, he lost (though the time is not stated when the loss occurred) by the failure of the person with whom it had been placed at interest. He possessed also a house in Athens; and he was able, however scantily, to support a family. So that we cannot suppose he was absolutely destitute of all resources of subsistence. He appears then rather to have voluntarily renounced every kind of worldly possession, so far as his own personal comfort was concerned, than to have been absolutely reduced to want by the pressure of circumstances. Poverty, in fact, was his profession, and not the mere necessity of his case. If he prided himself in any thing, it was in his avowal of his contempt for riches, and disregard of domestic interests and comforts, in contrast with the general habits of an age of selfish activity and profusion. The means of enriching himself, at least of extricating himself from want, were often placed in his power, and he as often rejected them. Alcibiades offered him land on which he might build a house, but he refused it pointedly, observing, "Had I wanted shoes, would you have offered me leather to make shoes for myself?—and ridiculous should I have been in taking it." Charmides would have given him slaves, as a source of revenue by their labour. This offer also he refused. In the same spirit, he would often cast a look at the number of things that were sold, and say to himself, "Of how many things I have no need!" Thus was his whole plan of life studiously opposed to the acceptance of any provision for his comfort or ease. It was a service of the Deity in which he felt himself engaged, and in the prosecution of that, solemnly devoted to a course of hardy poverty.

In the domestic relations of life, he lived an Athenian among Athenians. He differed from other heads of families at Athens in this respect, that in his dedication of himself to his philosophic mission, he took no thought about the management of his private affairs. His home was abroad; his household the people of Athens. Still he discharged the duties of a husband, and the father of a family; and that under trying circumstances, unless the proverbial severity of temper of his wife Xanthippe be esteemed an idle scandal of the day. No Athenian, indeed, was truly domestic, in the sense of making his home the scene of his highest interest and enjoyment. Nor was Socrates domestic in this sense. Still less was he so than other Athenians; inasmuch as his very profession of life was a call from the bosom of his family. But in the midst of these avocations from his immediate home, and the vexations to which he was subjected there, he was not estranged from the ties of domestic affection. Xenophon has recorded a simple and touching trait of the character of Socrates under this particular point of view—a trait the more interesting, as almost every thing else that we know of the philosopher is drawn from his life in public. It occurs in the course of a conversation between Socrates and his son Lamprocles, who had complained of the insufferable temper of his mother Xanthippe. "What," said he to the youth, "do you think it more annoying to you to hear what she says, than it is to the actors, when in the tragedies they say everything bad of one another?" "But they, I conceive," replied the son, "bear it easily, because they do not suppose that the speaker, in contradicting them, intends to hurt them, or that, in threatening, he intends to do them any ill." "Then are you," resumed Socrates, "vexed, when you well know that what your mother says to you, she says, not only intending no evil, but even wishing more good to you than to any one else; or do you regard your mother as unkindly affected towards you?" Lamprocles disclaiming this latter supposition; "Do you, then," he added, "say of her, who is both kind to you, and takes every possible care of you when you are sick, that you may recover, and want nothing proper for you, and who, moreover, prays to the gods in your behalf for many a good, and pays vows,—that she is vexatious?" For my part, I think, if you cannot bear such a mother, you cannot bear what is good for you."

From the description given by Plato of the family of Socrates in the prison-scene, it would appear, that Socrates had other three children besides Lamprocles,—for Lampro-

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1 Plato, Apolog. 28. c. op. i. p. 67. Diog. Laert. in vit. Aelian, Var. Hist. iii. 17. 2 About L.400 of our money. Plutarch (in his life of Aristides) finds fault with Demetrius Phaleretus for having endeavoured to remove the imputation of poverty from Socrates, by stating that Socrates had land of his own and seventy mines put out to interest by Crito. Demetrius, however, seems only to have stated what he believed to be the truth. The idea of his extreme indigence originated probably with the caricatures of his profession of poverty by the comic poets; and true as it was substantially, was afterwards, it seems, maintained by his friends and admirers, as the evidence of the consistency of his life with his avowed contempt for worldly possessions. 3 Diog. Laert. in vit. 4 Plato, Apolog. Ἀλλ' ἐν τετράμυροι εἴησαν διὰ τὴν ῥῶν θεῶν λατρείας. Op. i. p. 5. 5 Ibid. 6 Xenoph. Mem. ii. 2. cles died at an early age, before his father,—who were yet children, one of them a boy, another a child in the arms, at the time of their father's death. We learn from other authorities, that two of his children were named Sophroniscus and Menexenus; but they are said to have been the children, not of Xanthippe, but of another wife, Myrto, the granddaughter of Aristides the just. To account for this, it has been stated, that after their disasters in Sicily, the Athenians made a decree authorizing double marriages, with the view of recruiting their exhausted population. But this statement does not appear to be borne out by the earlier authorities on the subject of Athenian legislation. Nor is it probable that a law should have been enacted, directly sanctioning a form of polygamy. It appears, that during the pressure and confusion of the Peloponnesian war, persons obtained the freedom of the city of Athens, whose title was objectionable on the constitutional ground of their not being born of citizen-parents on both sides. Thus had Pericles, after the death of his two legitimate sons, obtained the admission of his son, Pericles, by Aspasia, to the privilege of citizenship; though he had himself carried, some time before, a law of strict limitation, under which, nearly four thousand were deprived of the franchise. Such extension of the privilege to the offspring of illegal unions, possibly gave a pretext to the supposition, that a decree passed at Athens sanctioning bigamy.

Some difficulty, however, arises on the subject of the marriage of Socrates, from the conflict of authorities. Whilst it is asserted on the one hand, that he was married to Myrto and Xanthippe at the same time; on the other hand, others assign them both as his wives, but in succession, and also differ as to the order of succession. But the silence of Plato and Xenophon respecting any other wife of Socrates but Xanthippe, and their coincidence in speaking of her only as the mother of his children, may be regarded as sufficiently decisive of the point against every subsequent authority. Indeed, the reference to Aristotle, given by Laertius, which is the chief ground for believing that Socrates was married also to Myrto, is very questionable. Plutarch doubts whether the treatise to which Laertius appeals for the fact, is the genuine work of Aristotle. From the manner, too, in which the name of Myrto appears to have been introduced in the account, nothing more may have been intended, than that Socrates found her in a state of widowhood and distress from poverty, and took care of her at his own home. Aristides belonged to the same tribe and the same demus or borough, as Socrates; and a reverence for the virtues of the grandfather, may have combined with these almost domestic ties, to call forth such an act of friendliness to the disconsolate Myrto. And, if this be the case, as is probable, it would only add an interesting instance of that liberal benevolence which characterized the whole conduct of Socrates.

It is a confirmation of this conclusion, that all the anecdotes of the private life of Socrates, with one exception, and that evidently a fabricated instance, bring Xanthippe on the scene. On his inviting some wealthy persons to supper, it is Xanthippe who is distressed by their deficient means of hospitality, and to whom he replies, "Take courage; if they are worthy people, they will be satisfied; if they are worth-

less, we shall care nothing about them." It is Xanthippe whom he reproves for her particularity about her dress on the occasion of some public spectacle, as more desirous of "being seen than to see." It is of her again that Alcibiades expressed his wonder how he could bear with her, when he simply, but pointedly referred him to her just claims on his affection as the mother of his children. On another occasion, his disciple, Antisthenes, is said to have asked him, with reference to Xanthippe, why he did not study to improve the disposition of his wife, whose violence of temper (he observed) was unexampled in the history of domestic life. Instead of confirming the censorious remark, he turned it, according to his usual method, to a practical illustration of his philosophy. "If Xanthippe was hard to be controlled," was the tenor of his answer; "it was only a proper discipline to him for the management of men; as those who would be masters in horsemanship, began with managing the most spirited horse, after which, every other would be tractable."

These stories, and the like, handed down or invented by the humour of the times, may be merely exaggerations of the fact of the inconvenience and dissatisfaction occasionally felt at the philosopher's home, by his habitual neglect of his domestic concerns, and the duty of exertion consequently imposed on Xanthippe beyond Athenian women in general. She appears indeed to have tenderly loved her husband, if Plato has faithfully traced the picture of her visit to his prison, and her extreme anguish at that trying hour. And he also knew her value, if his affection may be judged of, as surely it may, by the kind and gentle considerateness of his manner in committing her to the care of his friends at parting, and his absolute reserve of his feelings on that occasion.

The picture indeed is drawn by the hand of a consummate master; and Plato, it is true, was not present on the occasion. But we must believe, that in painting a scene that must have been impressed on the mind of the disciples of the philosopher, above every other incident of his life, and of which persons then living must have retained a lively recollection, he took his outlines at least of these interesting particulars from the real state of the case.

But the allusion to these circumstances brings us prematurely to the solemn tragedy which closed his intrepid and energetic career. We have yet to contemplate him pursuing for many a year his unwearied labour of awakening his countrymen from their dreams of knowledge and happiness to the realities of their condition in the world. Great indeed must have been the address, which could recommend the severe and wholesome truths inculcated by him, to the hearing of the vain and volatile Athenians. To none is the practical application of a principle, so condemnatory of human folly and impertinence, as the maxim, "know thyself," truly welcome. And yet this was the burden of the teaching of Socrates for a series of years among a people, whom it was far easier to please by praising to excess, than not to displease by censuring ever so slightly. They would listen, indeed, patiently to general invectives on their public conduct, conveyed in the impassioned eloquence of their orators; as persons will even now sympathize with general descriptions of the depravity of human nature, or of whole classes of men. But all refuse the pain of direct self-appli-

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1 Plutarch, De Gen. Soer. p. 331. 2 Aristotle, cited by Laertius in vit. Soer. 3 The same who was among the generals at the battle of Arginusse, and who were cruelly and insiquitously sacrificed to party spirit after their great victory. 4 Plutarch in Pericl. Op. i. p. 667. 5 The poverty of the family of Aristides appears from Zelian, Var. Hist. x. 15. 6 Plutarch in Aristides, Op. ii. p. 542. Plutarch adds, that Panaxius had sufficiently refuted the story of the double marriage in his observations on Socrates. The story is also questioned by Athænæus, Deipnosoph. xiii. 2. 7 Porphyry in Theodoret. Therapeut. xii. tells of altercations, even to blows, between Xanthippe and Myrto, whilst Socrates stands by and laughs, amidst their joint attacks on himself. 8 Diog. Laert. in Vit. 9 Zelian, Var. Hist. vii. 10. 10 Diog. Laert. in Vit. 11 Xenoph. Conviv. ii. 12 Plato, Phædo p. 135. cation of the truth; and Athenians, especially, regarded with invidiousness every attempt to impart to them moral instruction. Every Athenian, they thought, was capable of communicating this kind of knowledge, at least every educated Athenian, every individual of the higher order of citizens. They wanted no one to teach them virtue. Hence the allusion made on so many occasions by Socrates to the question, whether virtue could be taught or not. It was, indeed, part of the profession of the Sophists to teach virtue; but it was an accomplishment or art, and not as a discipline of life, that it entered into the system of the Sophists. Socrates uprooted this vain notion. He laboured to impress on the Athenians, that so far from their being able to teach virtue, there were none who knew what virtue was. They had yet to learn themselves in order to that purpose. This, then, was his great difficulty. It was not the difficulty of communicating new knowledge, but that of leading men to unlearn their presumptions and conceits, and to feel the necessity of moral instruction. That he should have succeeded then in any degree in such an attempt,—that he should have been able to carry on the effort for so many years, in the very centre of Greek civilization,—that, proceeding on so broad and fundamental a principle of reformation, presenting no definite system on which a sect might fasten, no specific lure to the zeal of party, he should have drawn around him so many followers and admirers,—this is the extraordinary effect in the case of Socrates, which shows the powerful charm of his address. To persons offering any particular instruction, or professing to qualify them for the office of statesmen and orators, the Athenians were most ready to attend; and many doubtless did attend to the conversations of Socrates with this view. They could not but admire the skill which he displayed in arguing with every one that came in his way; not with the vulgar only, but with those who had the highest reputation for talent in reasoning; and for the extent of their knowledge. They saw his superiority to the Sophists, on the very ground on which the Sophists set up their pretensions. Many, accordingly, flocked to him as the best master in political science and dialectical skill, particularly as he was always accessible, and his instructions were perfectly gratuitous. Some, too, of a better nature than the rest, were won by the honest and manly purpose which shone through his teaching and manner on all occasions; whatever disguise of irony, or humour, or sophistry, he might assume. There were even some of the young men, whose habits of life were reproved, and principles condemned, by his searching interrogatories, but who yet were won to attention by the charm of his instruction, and patiently heard from him truths which they would not have listened to from any other lips. For who else could stay, even for a moment, the wild impetuosity of Alcibiades, or the ferocious arrogance of Critias? Their motives in resorting to Socrates were chiefly selfish and political. It was in pursuit of their schemes of ambition that they sought his society. Still he was able to retain them for a time at least, though they found his instructions very different from what they calculated on receiving; and so long as they continued to associate with him, they exercised a degree of self-restraint which strikingly contrasted with the habitual profligacy of their lives.

Alcibiades is represented by Plato, as confessing that he, whom the feeling of shame was scarcely known, yet felt abashed before Socrates; that he was enchanted by him as by the flute of Marsyas, and constrained to acknowledge his own deficiencies and neglect of private duty in the midst of his officious zeal for the public service. And this feeling, Alcibiades says, was general; for that there was no one, woman, or man, or boy, that could hear him, or even his words repeated by the most indifferent speaker, but felt taken by surprize, and riveted in attention.

This attention, too, it should be observed, was excited by the address of Socrates, amidst much in his outward form and mien, that, by exciting ridicule, might have repelled the sentiment of respect. The comparison of him to the satyr Marsyas, with all allowance made for comic exaggeration, was true in more respects than that of the enchantment of his conversation. His countenance, strongly marked by that arch intelligence, which half-concealed, half-betrayed, the earnest deep thought, under the light veil of irony and humour, presented features resembling those of the grotesque images of the Silent. There were the prominent dilated eyes, scarcely parted by the low ridge of the nose, the broad expanded nostrils, the wide mouth with its thick lips, such as the sculptors delighted to represent in those rude but poetical forms. Then his manner of looking about him, his head fixed, whilst his eyes traversed the space around, glancing from side to side, excited the smile of wonder in the spectator, as to what this strange solemnity of aspect might portend. Add to this, the clumsy protuberance of his figure, so repugnant to Grecian notions of the symmetry of form, and the awkwardness of his movement before the eyes of a people who had a lively perception of elegance in every gesture and motion. These were circumstances which, to the fastidious taste of the Greeks, would appear more important than we, in these times, can well conceive. They judged of intellectual character more from physiognomy (physiognomy, that is, considered as a science, of mental indications from bodily forms in general) than we are apt to do. Thus in regard to Socrates, the physiognomist, Zopyrus, who, as Cicero informs us, professed to discern the manners and natures of men from their body and features, pronounced that Socrates was stupid and heavy, because the outline of his throat was not con-

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1 Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2. 24. Κατάμενον εἰς τὴν τῶν ναυτῶν τῶν γραμματέων ἐν Ἀθήναις σκηνής; Ἐγὼ δέ. Πλέον ἂν εὖ ὑπὸ τῶν γραμματέων ἰδίᾳ, ἢ συνειδέσθαι τε καὶ ἐπιχειρεῖσθαι συνειδεῖσθαι δοκεῖ ἐσίν; Μα ἀλλ', ὅτι ἄλλα ἔργα, καὶ γὰρ ἂν πάντων τοῦτο ἦν ὁμοίως ἀναγκαῖον σχῆμα γὰρ ἂν ἄλλα τῷ ἐξωτερικῷ, ἢ μᾶλλον ἤμεστον ἐκείνῳ, κ.τ.λ.

2 Isocrates speaks of them as τὴν ἐπιχείρησιν ἀναγκαῖον, and again, as τὴν ἐπιχείρησιν ἀναγκαῖον. Or. c. Soph.

3 Plato, Euthyphro, 3. c. Ἀλκιβιάδης γὰρ ταῦτα, ὡς ἂν ἴσως, ἐν ἐρώτησιν ἀληθῶς, ἢ τὰ ἄλλα ἐπιχείρησιν ἀναγκαῖον, ἢ μᾶλλον ἐπιχείρησιν ἀναγκαῖον ἂν εἴη ἢ ἂν καὶ ἄλλα ἐπιχείρησιν ἀναγκαῖον τῶν τοιούτων, ἀναγκαῖον ἂν εἴη ἢ ἂν ἄλλα ἔργα. Ὁρ. 1. 6.

See the same indicated at the opening of the Protagoras, where Socrates ironically throws out his opinion, that virtue cannot be taught; founding it on the fact of the indiscriminate admission of all persons to advise on political affairs in the Assembly, whilst on particular subjects, as in a question of building, those only were consulted who were proficient in the art.

4 Plato, Op. iii. p. 105; also Meno. Op. iv. p. 375.

5 Plato, Conviv. 215, Op. x. p. 257.

6 Xenoph. Conviv. v. Plato, Theatet. 143 e.

7 The idea of his attempting to dance excites a laugh in the guests in Xenophon's Banquet. Xenoph. Sympos. He says there that he practised dancing for the sake of exercise.

8 Xenoph. Conviv. ii. 19.

9 Aristotle introduces in his Analytics (Anal. Prior. ii. c. ult.) a notice of the subject, as affording matter of consideration to the dialectician.

10 Cicero, De Fato, c. 5. cave, but full and obtuse. Prejudices accordingly drawn from the personal appearance of Socrates may reasonably be believed to have tended to render his teaching unwelcome in its first impressions. But soon this fastidiousness would give way as he proceeded; and those who began to listen with a smile at the uncouthness of his form, and the quaintness of his manner, would be attracted to admiration of the intelligent and kindly expression which lighted up those rude features, and would find themselves lingering in his presence in spite of themselves.

The story of Euthydemus "the handsome," as he was called, may be taken as a specimen of such an effect. Euthydemus, proud of his personal accomplishments, and not wishing to be thought indebted to any one for his learning and eloquence, had studiously avoided the society of Socrates. Socrates, however, with his usual dexterity, contrives to excite his attention, and gradually interests him in conversation. Euthydemus shrinks back at first on his self-conceit, but at length is so won upon by the persuasive reason of the philosopher, as freely to acknowledge his own ignorance and need of instruction; and, ever afterwards, he is found by the side of Socrates, his devoted admirer and follower.

Some, indeed, took offence at the plain truths which Socrates brought home to them, and no longer frequented his society. But these were the inferior sluggish minds, which no arts of address could rouse to a sense of their intellectual poverty. Generous, susceptible minds overcame their first reluctance, and yielded themselves fully to his guidance. The faithful attachment of many was evidenced, to the last moment of the philosopher's life. He might have commanded the use of Crito's wealth, had he desired it. Such, indeed, was the confidence which Crito reposed in his sincerity of purpose, and so highly did he value his instructions, that no other would he commit the education of his sons, but made them fellow disciples with himself of his own revered master and friend. And this friendship was warmly requited by Socrates. For it was by his counsel that Crito was saved from the malicious arts of the sycophants. These pests of Athenian society were not to be encountered by the simple testimony of a life contradicting their mercenary calumnies; and Crito was one of those who would rather pay their money, and compromise the attack, than take the trouble of defending themselves. They were only to be foiled by turning their own weapons against themselves. By the suggestion of Socrates, accordingly, Crito enlisted in his service a clever individual of this class, Archedemus, who effectually checked the iniquities of which his patron was the object, by counter-prosecutions of the sycophants, and exposure of their conduct; acting as a watch-dog, according to Xenophon's description, against those rapacious wolves.

The devotedness of Plato and Xenophon to their master, speaks from every line of their writings. These writings are, in fact, as much monuments of the influence of Socrates over their minds, as of their own genius. And what human teacher has ever had such glorious trophies erected of the conquests of his philosophy as the extant works of these master minds? Entirely different as they are in character,—the one flowing with the full stream of impassioned feeling, and lively elegant imagination, and the abundant treasures of literary and traditional wisdom,—the other sensible and acute and practical, forcible by his very simplicity and the terseness of his unaffected eloquence,—they bear distinct yet conspiring evidence of the ascendancy of that mind which could impart its own tone and character to such disciples. Both of them, indeed, lead us to think that they felt his society as a kind of spell on them. For, when Plato speaks of the charm of the discourses of the Sophists, he seems to speak in irony of them what he thought in truth of Socrates himself. So too, when Xenophon introduces Socrates describing himself as skilled in "philters and incantations," he is evidently presenting that idea which the conversations of Socrates impressed on his own mind. He seems almost to confess this of himself when he informs us, how Socrates triumphantly appealed to the marked devotedness of his followers, in saying, "Why think you that this Apollodorus and Antisthenes never quit me?" Why too, that Cebes and Simmias come here from Thebes? Be assured, that this is not without many philters, and incantations, and spells."

To the same honourable band of attached disciples might be added many other names afterwards renowned in the annals of Grecian history and literature. Isocrates, Aristippus, Antisthenes, each of whom became afterwards masters themselves, were content to follow in his train. Antisthenes especially, who, by perverting the Socratic simplicity of life into a profession of austerity, became the founder of the Cynic school, was never from his side. He would walk from the Piraeus to Athens, a distance of about four miles, every day, in order to be with Socrates. And whilst Cebes and Simmias came from Thebes, Euclid, the founder of the Megarian sect, was not deterred by the bitter hostility between Athens and his own city of Megara, from seeking the society of Socrates at the hazard of his life. Even during the war, when the Megareans were excluded by a rigid decree, he continued his visits to Athens, adopting, it is said, the disguise of female attire, and so passing unobserved into the city at nightfall, and returning at daybreak. The same individual gave still more conclusive evidence of his zealous attachment to Socrates afterwards; when he opened his house and his heart to receive, at Megara, his brother disciples, in their panic on the death of their master. So strong was the tie of reverence and affection which subsisted between the philosopher and those whom he drew around him. They formed, indeed, a sort of select family, each of whom was engaged in the pursuit of his own peculiar employments and tastes in the world, whilst all looked up to Socrates as their father and head, and ever recurred to his society as to their common home.

This domestic intercourse subsisted in the midst of a city harassed with jealousies and dissensions, and with severe afflictions of war and pestilence. Socrates remained unmoved through all these convulsions of the city, preserving a constant evenness of temper, so that Xanthippe could testify of him, that she never saw him returning at evening with a countenance changed from that with which he left home in the morning. Nor could even the merriment of which he was sometimes the object, discompose his settled gravity and good humour. On one occasion, returning from supper late in the evening, he was assaulted by a riotous party of young men, personating the Furies, in masks, and with lighted torches. The philosopher, however, without being irritated by the interruption, suffered them to indulge their mirth; only he required them to pay that tribute which he exacted from every one that came in his way, to stop and answer his questions, as if he had met them in the Lyceum, or any other accustomed place of his daily conversations. Himself sound in mind and body, (for his habitual temperance saved him from the infection of the plague which so obstinately ravaged Athens,) he was enabled to give advice and assistance to all of his country in the midst of the physical and moral desolation, in which every one else seems, more or less, to have participated.

Thus were the years of a long life quietly and usefully spent; and he had nearly reached that limit at which nature herself would have gently closed the scene of his philanthropic exertions, when the hand of human violence interposed to hasten the approaching end.

The annals of party spirit at Athens had already recorded many a deed of dark and wanton cruelty. But they were yet to be stained with the iniquity of a persecution even to death, of him, who had been the greatest benefactor and ornament, not only of Athens, but of the whole community of the Grecian name.

The banishment by ostracism had this redeeming merit, that it was an avowal in the face of Greece, of the envious and factious spirit, which drove from the state the individual whose talents or virtues too greatly distinguished him from among his fellow-citizens. The enmity to which Socrates fell a sacrifice, exhibits a deeper character of malignity; inasmuch as it masked itself under a hypocritical zeal for religion and virtue, and thus courted public sympathy for proceedings, against which every voice in Athens and in all Greece should have indignantly protested. Ostracism, again, was content to remove the obnoxious great man from the eyes of his fellow-citizens. The attack on Socrates was satisfied with nothing short of the destruction of its victim.

It was in the midst of the tranquil, but busy course of his daily engagement, that Socrates was suddenly arrested, and without, it seems, any previous intimation of the intended attack, summoned to the portico of the king-Archon, to answer a charge of impiety.

The accusation was in this form: "Socrates is guilty of the crime of not acknowledging the gods whom the state acknowledges, but introducing other new divinities: he is guilty also of the crime of corrupting the young." The penalty proposed was death. It has been commonly supposed that the charge was laid before the court of Areopagus. But it would appear rather, from the course of the trial, to have been before one of the popular courts, and probably, from the great number of dicasts or jurors who voted on the cause, before the principal court, the Hellica.

The circumstances connected with the accusation remain, after the utmost inquiry now possible, involved in considerable mystery. We are told that Melitus was the accuser, and that he was supported in the prosecution by Anytus and Lycon. These three individuals are also said to have represented distinct classes of persons interested in the proceedings; Melitus, who was himself a poet, appearing in behalf of the offended poets; Anytus, a wealthy tradesman and demagogue, resenting the affronts of his brother-tradesmen; Lycon, an orator, or politician by profession, standing up as the assertor of the pretensions of his factious order. But these particulars, though they may account to us in a great measure for the success of the prosecution, do not exhibit the secret agency by which it was effected. The accusers themselves were men of no note or importance in the state. Melitus was a young man; a vain and weak person, it seems, of whom nothing more is known than that the accusation was made in his name. Nor of Anytus and Lycon have we anything to mark the importance, beyond the fact, that the former was included, together with Alcibiades and Thrasybulus, among the persons exiled by the Thirty, and the notice taken of him by Plato, where he represents him the inexorable foe of every thing in the shape of a philosopher, and as parting from a conversation with Socrates in anger.

Merely personal offence, however, could not have given sufficient pretext or weight to so grave an accusation. Nor can we suppose that it was even the combined interest of the three classes represented by the three accusers—the poets, the tradesmen, and the orators—which carried the condemnation of so respected a person. The ground of the attack must lie deeper; and the men whose names appear so prominently in this fatal conspiracy against the life of the venerable old philosopher, could only have been the puppets moved by some secret and more commanding force. The trial would seem to have been only a solemn pageant, exhibited before the public, as a prelude and justification of a deed of murder already resolved on by its real though invisible perpetrators. Whilst the charges themselves, as set forth by the nominal accusers, were but feebly sustained, it is evident that no defence, however just and able, could have availed to avert the sentence of condemnation. The body of jurors before whom the cause was heard, appear to have been disposed to acquit the accused, if we may judge from the number of votes which were given in his favour; and yet the majority were overruled. This in itself would lead us to think that some secret influence had been exercised, to obviate the chance of failure of the ordinary ostensible means of judicial assault. And so Socrates himself appears to have felt; if Plato and Xenophon have faithfully reported the substance of his reply to the accusation in their Apologies. His defence, as there represented, is that of one who retires, on his own consciousness of right, from a bootless conflict with adversaries who are not to be appeased by argument and persuasion. It does not set forth the strength of his cause as against an opponent, but simply asserts the truth and merit of the course of life which he had been pursuing. The sentence accordingly excites no surprize in him. He yields himself up as to the sweeping of a tempest, with which it is vain to parley. Would we then explore the circumstances of the trial and condemnation of Socrates, we must obtain a deeper insight into the moving power of Grecian politics—the spirit of the heathen religion, and the mode of its action on the conduct of states and individuals. This appears to be the proper solution of the case of Socrates. The circumstances of the case evidently point to this. And though, from the want of information, we cannot very distinctly trace the working of the religion of the times in the particular instance before us, we may, from a closer consideration of the facts, not unreasonably suspect its active operation and instrumentality.

Speculators have sometimes spoken of the mild and tolerant spirit of paganism. The observation, however, is superficial and untrue. The facility with which the polytheistic worshipper transferred his offerings and prayers to every new idol, has been mistaken for a readiness to admit any variation from the established worship, or any freedom of opinion respecting divine things, without offence. The contrary is the fact. The heathen, resting his religion on ancient tradition and the authority of the priests, and not on any intrinsic evidences of its truth, could not but feel a jealousy of any departure from what he had thus received, or any attempt to bring the subject into discussion. It was not only the primitive Christians that were stigmatized by heathens as atheists, because they renounced the divinities of the heathen creed, but the same reproach was long before cast upon those among the heathens themselves, who, with however pious disposition, ventured to speculate on religion. A traditional religion will tolerate any laxity of thought or conduct which professedly admits its authority, whilst it imperatively puts down every thing which impugns the principle of absolute deference to its authority. Thus we shall find, that, where that principle is carried to the utmost, there co-exists with it a scarcely concealed infidelity, and an unrestrained licentiousness of conduct; and, at the same time, also an extreme sensitiveness in regard to deviation from the orthodox profession and language. We have unhappily seen this in those Christian countries, where the true faith, the principle of devout submission to the word of God, has been transformed and perverted into a doctrine of implicit deference to the authority of the ministers themselves of that word. There,—as, for example, in Spain and Italy,—where the authority of the church is bowed to most submissively, practical infidelity and immorality shew their front with impunity, whilst the expression of opinion or argument on questions of theology is discouraged and silenced, if no longer now, as once, crushed at its outbreak by the dark terrors of an Inquisition. The same fact was intensely exemplified in heathen Athens. At no place was piety, as piety was understood by heathens, more in honour. No state boasted such a tradition of sacred associations as Athens. In none were there so many festivals and solemnities of religious observance, as in Athens.1 In none did the priests of religion hold such sway. Witness their power over Alcibiades, at the moment of his political triumph, and amidst the caresses and admiration of his fellow-citizens, when he felt himself obliged to relinquish his command in Sicily, and desert his country, rather than encounter at home the threatened prosecution for his profanation of sacred things. Witness their power again in the instance of the same Alcibiades, at his restoration to the command of the army, when, to conciliate their favour, he delays the urgent expedition, and keeps the soldiers under arms along the road by which the sacred procession passed from Athens to Eleusis. Witness further, the frequent prosecutions at Athens on charges of impiety of which we read, and of which we have monuments in extant orations. But, amidst this strictness of external profession, in no place was there a more entire license as to practical irreligion. Their festivals abounded with rude and obscene mirth. Their drama, whilst it inculcated in direct precept the belief and worship of the gods, indulged in the most profane ribaldry and ludicrous representation of sacred things. Yet were these follies and excesses tolerated, because under them a regard was still maintained to the authority which upheld the religion, as in the "mysteries" and "morali" enacted with the connivance of the papal power in modern times; and the people at large were satisfied with a religious system, which was exhibited to them as so good-humoured and humane. They were tolerated, indeed, but not without the like injury to the religious feelings, as in the parallel cases, where a corrupted secular Christianity has ventured on the like palliations of its despotism. For all the while the people were losing their hold of the popular religion. Those who thought at all on the subject, either rejected it altogether, or accounted it a mere matter of opinion and external ordinance; whilst those, on the other hand, who were content to receive every thing traditional as divine on the mere principle of deference to the priests, readily engrafted every new superstition on the received religion. Thus, whilst infidelity and superstition grew up at Athens, and flourished together, and often perhaps in the same mind, the connexion between religion and morality was altogether lost sight of and dissolved. Men began to regard themselves as devout, and friends of the gods, whilst they were committing deeds of violence and lust, and blindly and wickedly endeavoured to support the cause of religion by forcible suppression of the truth, and persecution of those who subjected their tenets or their rites to the test of inquiry. Thus, whilst Aristophanes was amusing the people, not of Athens only, but from all parts of Greece, at the public festivals, with ludicrous representations of the popular theology, and loosening more and more any existing associations of reverence towards the objects of their worship, severe prosecutions were carried on from time to time against all who in any way made religion a matter of debate, or seriously brought it into question with the people. The same persons can take part in the vulgar jest, and shew their real contempt of religion by their carelessness about oaths and the practical duties of religion, and yet join zealously in the prosecution of offenders against established notions of religion. It is the same habit of mind in both cases; a habit of looking at religion as a general rule of orthodox profession,—as a rule binding on a community, and a test of its soundness of doctrine,—rather than as a personal concern, and a trial of the spirit of a man.

"He has brought Gentiles into the temple, he has abolished circumcision, he has profaned our religion," was the outcry against St. Paul; and yet these same persons thus clamorous against the apostle, were minding earthly things all the while, sticklers for externals, yet idolaters in their personal religion, as men of covetousness, and slaves to the appetites of the body.

At Athens, accordingly, though there was no freedom of religious opinion, the religion might be employed to excite festive mirth, and gratify the levity and licentiousness of a dissolute yet intellectual populace, amidst the charms of poetry and music and the solemn graceful dance. For then the associations of deference to the mysterious agency which held together the traditions of the popular creed were not violently broken asunder. There still remained in the minds of the people an awe at the indefinite mystic truth, hidden under the embroidered veil held before their eyes. They knew that the splendid drama of religion, which at once gratified their refined intellectual taste and their sensibility, was not the whole of their religion. They had also the Eleusinian mysteries; rites of religion performed in secrecy, and fenced round with the terror of death to him that should divulge them; delegated to a few, the initiated only, and incommunicable to the vulgar; of which the popular rites were but the rude symbols.2 The popular wor-

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1 Aristoph. Nub. 298. ὡς ἐν τοῖς ἀρχαίοις ἔθνεσιν, ἡμᾶς μυστηρίων ἰδίων, ἢ περὶ ἀγαθῶν ἀναμένοντας, ἐπισκοποῦνται τὰ δεινά διαμερίζονται, καὶ ἐν ἀπολογίᾳ καὶ ἀγαθοποιίᾳ, ἐπιστρέφονται τὸ ἴδιον δόξας βασιλεύει τὸ πανεύκολον ἐν ἀγαθῷ, ἐν ἀγαθῷ.

2 Isocrat. Panegyr. p. 54. Ἀς ὅτι ἐκεῖ ἀλλοι ἢ ἐκεῖ μυστηρίων ἰδίων ... καὶ τὴν τελετήν, ἥς οἱ μυστικοὶ στῆν τε τῆς τῆς ἀνθρώπου, καὶ τοῦ σύμπαντος ἀλών, ἤδη τοῦ Ἀθηναίου ἐξουσίας. ship might wear the form of caricature, the grotesque, the farcical, and even the profane, as being merely the pantomime in which some recondite interior religion was dimly and wildly shadowed. The people laughed at what they saw and heard at their festivals. But amidst their laugh there was evidently a feeling of awe, which subdued the luxury of their mirth; a consciousness that, whilst they sportively shook the chain of their superstition, its iron entered into their soul. We see, on the other hand, Aspasia, the favourite of Pericles, at the time of the greatest popularity of that most popular leader, summoned before the courts, to answer a charge of impiety, and scarcely defended by the eloquence and the tears of Pericles himself, from the inexorable power, whose vengeance she had provoked by her philosophical speculations. Protagoras, admired as he was and courted at Athens for his talents in his profession of a Sophist, was expelled from the city and borders of Attica by the Athenians, and his books were collected by proclamation and burnt in their agora, for his avowed scepticism as to the existence of the gods.1 Æschylus, whose very poetry is instinctive with religion, was accused before the Areopagus of divulging the mysteries in one of his tragedies.2 The philosopher Anaxagoras, like Galileo under his papal inquisitors, suffered imprisonment at the hands of Athenian persecutors, for having asserted the material nature of the heavenly bodies, and only escaped death by the intervention of Pericles, and by exile from his adopted home. The extent again, to which prosecutions for offences against the popular religion could be carried at Athens, is shewn in the number of persons who were imprisoned on suspicion of being implicated in the impieties charged on Alcibiades, and the execution of so many, on that occasion of panic, on the unsupported evidence of secret informers. Lastly, not many years before the accusation of Socrates, Diagoras the Melian, and Theodorus of Cyrene, were branded with the epithets of atheists; and the former was forced to fly from Athens on a charge of profanation of the rites, with the price of a talent set on his head for any one who should kill him. And long after the time of Socrates, the same spirit subsisted to drive Aristotle from the Lyceum, and later still, to intimidate the speculations of Epicurus. So strictly was the authority of the established worship guarded by a jealous and watchful inquisitorial power, in a state which boasted of its perfect liberty of speech, its sophia, above all others.

In fact, there was no liberty of speech on this subject in Greece. Everything relating to religion was to be received as handed down from former ages; as the wisdom of an immemorial antiquity, borne along on the lips of the priest and the prophet, or impressed on mystic rituals, the hereditary trust of sacred families, or symbolized in the pomp and pageant of festivals and games, in the graceful majesty of temples, and the solemn shadows of sacred groves. The inward devotion of such a religion naturally took the form of silence, and reserve, and awe. It was concentrated in the simple dread of profanation. The more superstitious indeed a people is, the more necessary is it that the rites of their religion should be strictly shut up from all inquiry, and a feeling of reserve should be inculcated as essential to the religious character. It is the indefiniteness of superstition that holds together the system. Let any one part of the vaguely-floating system be touched too palpably, and the whole crumbles. Thus it has been found; that superstition and infidelity have always gone hand in hand. Diagoras was made an atheist from being at first superstitious. The Athenian people, in like manner, from their superstitious character, were peculiarly exposed to a reaction of impiety. And it was but a wise policy, therefore, that the religion of Athens should be jealously guarded with an awe forbidding all inquiry into its truth.

The colloquial and lively spirit of the Athenians mitigated the intensity of this feeling in the minds of the people at large; and the managers of the system were fain to relieve it, by blending recreation, and mirth, and interesting spectacles, with its public celebration. Grecian superstition accordingly, whilst it bore the essential marks of its oriental origin, in the submissiveness exacted of its votaries, and its mystic reserve, assumed also the mask of cheerful expression characteristic of the genius of the people. Still we see that submissiveness and that reserve strongly marked in the stern denial of the right, not only of private judgment on questions of religion, but even of bringing such questions at all into discussion.

Now, though, as we have already observed, we cannot distinctly trace the steps by which this spiritual despotism was brought to bear on Socrates, we cannot doubt that his case which must have attracted its notice. During more than forty years, Socrates had been seen at Athens, going about among all classes of the people, exciting among them a spirit of moral inquiry, urging on them the importance and the duty of self-knowledge, of taking no opinion on mere hearsay, or insolent and self-satisfied trust, but of bringing every thing to the test of discussion and learning; of acquainting themselves, as their first step to knowledge, with the depth and extent of their ignorance. Observers saw in this extraordinary teacher, one of their own citizens, educated in their own institutions, familiar with the habits of Athenian life, ever at home among themselves, recommending himself alike to the young and the old, by the honest though quaint dignity of his manner, and the interest and charm of his conversation. He was not, like Anaxagoras, or Protagoras, or Prodicus, a stranger sojourning among them; a philosopher or rhetorician by profession, or one pursuing philosophy as a trade and a source of subsistence, waiting to be resorted to and courted by the affluent and noble, and reserving himself for occasions of display or profit; but he was found, an Athenian among Athenians, in the market place, in the streets, in the work-shops, at the tables of the wealthy, himself seeking out persons to instruct, asking questions of all around him, and engaging them, even in spite of themselves, in conversation with him.3 In other teachers, philosophy had spoken, according to the observation already made, as from an oracular shrine, to those only who came to inquire of it as votaries and disciples. With Socrates, philosophy walked abroad, insinuating itself into the scenes and business of daily life, and drawing forth the secret treasures of men's minds with its own hands. According to that homely but apt illustration of his mode of teaching, which he was so fond of employing, from midwifery,

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1 Diog. Laer. ix. c. 8. Cic. De Nat. Deor. i. 23. See the story of the daughter of Nereus, as told by Demosthenes, in his oration against Neaira, p. 1669. She had been married under the pretence of being an Athenian citizen, to an Athenian who served the office of the king-archon. As the wife of this officer of the state, she was admitted to the rites of religion, and solemnly inducted into the mystic temple of Bacchus at Lampsacus. But it was unlawful for any but a true-born citizen to enter into the temple, or to witness the rites; and her husband consequently was tried before the court of Areopagus for the impiety, and only escaped on the plea of his ignorance of the fact, and on the condition of his dismissing her from his house.

2 Ælian, Var. Hist. v. 19.

3 Plato, Euthyphro, 3 d. "Εγὼ δὲ φιλοσοφεῖν, μὴ ἐπὶ ῥητορικῆς δοκίμων αὐτῶν ὁ, ἐν τῷ ἐνώπιον ἀκαδημασίᾳ παιδεύειν ἢ ἀκούειν, ἢν ἂν μεῖζον, ἢ ἂν λιγότερον ἢ ἂν ἄνω τοῦτο μεῖζον ἢ ἂν λιγότερον ἢ ἂν ἄνω τοῦτο. Ὁρ. τ. i. p. 6. Xenoph. Mem. i. 2. Ἀλλὰ τοῦτο τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἢ ἂν ἄνω τοῦτο μεῖζον ἢ ἂν λιγότερον ἢ ἂν ἄνω τοῦτο. (Critias is speaking) ἀλλὰ τοῦτο τὸ καταγεγραμμένον ἢ ἂν ἄνω τοῦτο μεῖζον ἢ ἂν λιγότερον ἢ ἂν ἄνω τοῦτο. P. 21. Socrates his method freely offered its services in assisting at the birth of the thought with which the pregnant mind was labouring. He busied himself, he used to say, with the officiousness of his maternal art, in exploring the genuineness of the fruit of the intellectual womb, which his dexterous questions had brought to light. Such a person then could not but fix on himself the eyes of every attentive observer of the state of society in Athens. Such teaching evidently could not but have a very considerable influence on public opinion. Particularly when he was seen to be acceptable to men of all parties in the state, to the leaders of the aristocratic faction as well as the humblest citizen, it could not but be inferred that his influence was not a transitory one, dependent on the predominance of any party, but that it would reach to the fundamental constitution of the society at large of the city, and be a leaven of fermentation to the whole mass. What, then, it would naturally be asked, must be the effect of such a teacher on existing opinions in religion? He taught, indeed, that men should acquiesce in what was established in religion; that they should inquire no further here than what simply was the law of the state. He treated, too, the popular imagery of religion with respect. For he would often clothe his instructions in the language of the legends and traditions of their mythology. Nor did he attempt to explain them away, though he waived all discussion of them. He was seen, too, on all stated occasions, sacrificing at the altars of the gods, and joining in the rites. But, it would be asked, if the citizens were taught to examine into received opinions generally, would they abstain from carrying this principle into the subject of religion? Would they continue still blindly and submissively to follow the voice of authority? Would they not rather, so far as they were disciples of Socrates, begin to speculate on divine things, abandoning that reverence which they had hitherto maintained for the objects of public worship, disputing and discussing without reserve, and exposing to the vulgar gaze what had been all along venerated in mystic silence, and under the veil of symbol? The mercurial temperament of the Athenian was just the soil in which the seeds now scattered by the hand of Socrates might be expected to vegetate. The excessive prosperity, too, of Athens, during the fifty years immediately following the Persian war, and then its condition of struggle against internal faction and the confederate arms of Peloponnesus, were circumstances calculated to foster the profane irreligious spirit in a light-hearted people. Then, instances were not wanting of young men, the intimates of Socrates, and whose minds had been especially cultivated by conversation with him, who proved in the end traitors to the religion, as well as to the civil liberties of their country. Critias, afterwards one of the thirty tyrants, and Alcibiades, at once the pride and the pest of his fellow-citizens, whom they loved and hated, and banished and longed for by turns, were striking evidences to the superficial observation of the evil apprehended from the teaching of Socrates. For here were young men of genius, susceptible by nature of the fullest influence of the lessons of the philosopher. And yet these had failed under his hands. What, therefore, might not be expected of minds of inferior order? How would not the religion and the institutions of the city fall into profane neglect and contempt, should the Socratic spirit of inquiry be imbibed by the next generation of citizens? The observation, indeed, was only a very superficial one, which would infer from such instances the evil of the teaching which these individuals misapplied. Still it is plain, that such cases were pointed at with vindictive reference to Socrates and philosophy in general. We find the orator Æschines attributing the death of Socrates to the circumstance of his having educated Critias; not that he must be supposed to have believed this to have been the whole account of the trial and condemnation of Socrates; but as an orator, he states for the purposes of his argument, what he conceives would be readily believed as part of the account of that event. Plato also studiously addresses himself to the defence of philosophy, from objection on this ground, with evident allusion to Alcibiades and the like cases; arguing that the same individuals who were most susceptible of the good of philosophy, were also such as would be the most apt to abuse it. And probably he had the same design, and refers to the degenerate sons of Pericles himself, as an instance in point to those who cherished the memory of that great man, and of the times in which he flourished, to show that the philosopher was not to be held responsible for the extravagances and vices of the disciples.

The exhibition of the comedy of "The Clouds," appears to have been designed to bring before the people the supposed evil tendency of the teaching of Socrates, as exemplified in such distinguished instances. It was produced in the year B.C. 423, when the philosopher had attained his forty-seventh year, and was at the height of his reputation throughout Greece, and about twenty-three years before his death. There we have Socrates introduced by name under broad caricature, as the representative of the class of sophists, and a consummate master of the arrogant pretension, and sordid cunning, and impiety of the class. The clouds are his only divinities. A profligate spendthrift youth, and a dotard father, are his dupes. The inquisitive method which Socrates practised, is also held up to ridicule and contempt, by identifying it with the frivolous questionings of the grammarians, and dialecticians, and rhetoricians of the day, and with the perverse sophistry which held truth a matter of indifference, or, which amounted to the same thing, called every man's opinion truth, and boasted of its skill to make the worse appear the better cause. It was but too evident to Athenian spectators at least, that the Socrates of Aristophanes was not the Socrates whom they had been accustomed to see and converse with in real life. And the play accordingly failed at the first exhibition. Not all its charms of poetry, and humour, and skilful composition, could obtain for it a favourable reception. Though Aristophanes was aware that the portrait which he had drawn, was not a portrait of the individual, but of the class, there can be little doubt, that he calculated on the sympathy of the people, in giving the name of Socrates to his personification of the sophistical spirit; and that he felt it necessary to depreciate the influence of Socrates as the commanding influence of the day, by attributing to his method all the vices of the schools of the sophists. Socrates is honoured and complimented in the very attempt to weaken the respect for his instructions, and to awaken a clamour against him. The failure of "The Clouds," at the first representation, and one account adds, even at the second, (for the play is said to have been retouched for the third time), has

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1 See especially Plato's Theaetetus in illustration of this. 2 Critias is placed by Sextus Empiricus among the atheists. He is said to have resolved all religion into the enactments of legislators providing against the secret commission of crimes, by inculcating the all-seeing power of the gods. He gives also several lines from a poem of Critias to this effect. Adv. Math. lib. viii. p. 318. 3 Plato, Euthyphr., pp. 11-13, and Phaedrus. 4 See the Protagoras and Repub. vi.—Xenophon adverts in like manner to the charge of corruption as supported by the instances of Critias and Alcibiades. Memor. i. 2. See also the conversation which Xenophon reports between Socrates and Hippias. Isocrates, in Besir, p. 229, c. with the like feeling, denies that Alcibiades was educated by Socrates; meaning, it seems, that Alcibiades was too short a time with Socrates to be benefited by the instructions of the philosopher. Socrates, been attributed to the influence of Alcibiades. Alcibiades indeed has been supposed by some commentators to have been no less the object of attack in the play than Socrates himself, and to have been designated under the name of Phidippides, the youthful and accomplished victim of the sophist. There are certainly some traits in the character of Phidippides, which would seem to point at Alcibiades, whom perhaps the poet, bold as he was, could hardly venture to bring on the stage by name or closer description at this particular time. And we may perhaps justly allow some weight to party influence in neutralizing the effect of "The Clouds" at its first exhibition. Still, when we observe in other instances the great power which the comic muse could wield against a political opponent, as in the attack on Cleon in "The Knights," we cannot but think that there was some strong countervailing feeling in the estimation of Socrates himself. If the account of Ælian be true, Socrates could join in the laugh raised against him; for he was present in the theatre during the acting of the play, and finding that he was the object of attraction, placed himself where all could command a view of him. He knew, and every one in Athens knew, that he was a very different person from the sophists with whom the play identified him. They indeed were corruptors of the young; for they unsettled every established principle in the minds of the young, and gave no substitute for what they profligately swept away. They left the young to be drifted away by the tide of their passions, with no criterion of truth or of right beyond the present opinion or the present interest. But Socrates, whilst he taught the young to inquire into the truth of their opinions, lessened their presumption and self-confidence, by shewing them how apt they were to mistake mere assumptions for knowledge, and to be conceited of their ignorance. His object was truth, and accurate knowledge. He stated difficulties and objections, but not in the spirit of a sceptic, but in order to awaken curiosity, to clear away confusion of thought, and inculcate sound principles of judgment and conduct. He could well then laugh at the jest which glanced from him to its proper objects, the sophists themselves, the very persons against whom his whole teaching was directed. He felt doubtless that he had a hold on the people at large, which the sophists had not. They were for the most part known only to the great and wealthy; those who could receive them into their houses, as they went from city to city through Greece; who sought their society as patrons of literature, or aspirants after political distinction, and who could pay for their instructions. He on the contrary was accessible to all. He would receive no money from any one. He was the frequent guest of the rich; but he was no less the associate of the artizan and the poor. And too many must have been present in the theatre, when the Socrates of "The Clouds" was amusing the audience by his sleight-of-hand philosophy, who would remember the real Socrates as a man of honesty, and truth, and disinterested benevolence, from whom they had received much useful counsel from time to time, and whom they had ever found affable, and at leisure to enter into their feelings and views with patience and kindness. If we compare the Socrates of the Memorabilia of Xenophon with the Socrates of "The Clouds," we may judge how great was the contrast to those who compared the well-known philosopher of the agora with his portrait as drawn by Aristophanes. If we can smile at the caricature of "The Clouds," and yet love the excellent moralist of the Memorabilia, we may also conceive how harmless the satire of Aristophanes would really be against the object of it; whilst the jokes of the poet, true as to the personal peculiarities of the philosopher, amused a volatile and clever people. For them to have confounded Socrates with the class of sophists, would have been in them the like palpable mistake, as it would be to confound the philosopher Bacon, on account of some points of resemblance, with the alchemist and empiric of the preceding ages.

It might seem matter of reproach against Aristophanes, that, in selecting the name of Socrates to represent the sophistical spirit which had then so largely corrupted the education and the government of Athens, he pointed the shafts of the comic muse against the very person who was in truth its most successful antagonist. In such a view of the case, however, sufficient justice would not be done to the discernment of the poet. He shrewdly observed in Socrates the master genius which would ultimately cast into the shade all those busy professors of the art of education, who, under the name of sophists, or professors of all knowledge, were then attracting the notice of the world to themselves and their doctrines. Socrates, in himself, Aristophanes could not but admire and recommend to the imitation of his country. He doubtless knew Socrates to be a true patriot no less than himself,—to be steadily aiming to bring back the Athenians to the purity of their institutions, from which they had so sadly degenerated, by his instructive conversations, as he was by the satirical strokes of the drama. Socrates, too, appears to have been his personal friend; for Plato introduces them in his Banquet as meeting on terms of intimacy, about the very time of the exhibition of "The Clouds." But with that freedom which the state of manners, under an absolute democracy, sanctioned and encouraged, Aristophanes did not scruple to bring even the revered name of Socrates on the stage, to give the due point to his satire. He overlooked the individual, the Socrates with whom he familiarly conversed, and presented before the spectators what he saw in Socrates, the living speaking impersonation of the influence of education on the character of a people, for good or for evil. Anaxagoras, or Protagoras, or Prodicus, or any other of the well-known philosophers or sophists of the day, might have occupied the foreground in the comedy of "The Clouds;" had the poet sought to give merely a fugitive sketch of the sophistical spirit of his times, or to single out for ridicule some of its external superficial features. This is what Plato has done on many occasions, and especially in that most animated picture in the dialogue entitled Protagoras, where he groups together the figures of the leading sophists in such admirable relief with each other, and such happy contrast with the unpretending but dignified form of his own loved master and friend. Such a view, however, could not have answered the design of Aristophanes in his play of "The Clouds." His object was to seize the deep-influential characters of the system of education which was then extending itself throughout Greece, and especially as it was manifested at Athens, the great school of all Greece. Naturally, therefore, and wisely, he fixed his eye on an Athenian—and that Athenian, Socrates,—not only as the first Athenian who had appeared in the office of a philosophical instructor, but who, as an Athenian, gave to his lessons the character of Athenian civilization, and fully exemplified the influence of philosophical education in the hands of an Athenian, and as operating on Athenians.

The poet, indeed, as addressing the eye and the ear of the ordinary observer, and not Athenians only, but strangers of the Grecian name from all parts, mingles with his colouring some playful lights borrowed from the forms of the well-known professional sophists of the day. But neither are these representations, nor the allusions which he

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1 Ælian, Var. Hist. 2 Plutarch well characterises the teaching of Socrates, in speaking of him, as εὐθὺς ἀνεξίη καὶ ἀφελεῖα μᾶλλον ὑπὸ φιλόσοφων ἐξερμαντοῦσας. De Soc. Gen. p. 301. makes to the real eccentricities of manner and uncutness of person in Socrates, the points on which he desires to fix the attention of the theatre. It is the important modification of the Athenian character, under a system of education which had now reached its maturity. Under the administration of Pericles, that system had already infected the policy of the state, and perverted its courts of justice into sinks of corruption and oppression. Now, at length, it was found domesticated at Athens in the sanctuary of private life. An Athenian had appeared in the character of a professor of philosophy; and around him were gathered citizens of all ranks, from the noble youth who aspired to the helm of the state, and the wealthy patron of literature, to the mean artizan who worked at the forge, and the drudge of the market. What was further to be observed now, was, that the system came recommended by the eloquence of lively and exciting conversation. And how powerful must have been such conversation, as it came forth from the lips of the speaker in the elegant and terse Attic idiom! It was no wonder, therefore, that the comic poet should have seized this moment for portraying the danger which he anticipated to his country from the fashionable education of the day, and thrown all the force of his ridicule on the most attractive form in which it then presented itself, as displayed in the personal teaching and example of Socrates.

The testimony of Plato is to the same effect. Plato has not given us an exact portrait of Socrates any more than Aristophanes has; for he has evidently transferred to the Socrates of his Dialogues, not less of his own cast of mind and manner, than Aristophanes did to the Socrates of his comedy, of the general tone of the sophists. And this is to be accounted for, as in the case of Aristophanes, from the fact, that Plato regarded Socrates as the impersonation of the philosophy of the times. He felt that, to give his own doctrines a proper authority and weight, he could not employ a more effectual organ than the tongue of him who had first given to philosophy an Attic expression, and from whom it would henceforth derive its proper Grecian character.

But though the drama of "The Clouds" was unsuccessful as an attack on Socrates, if it were intended as such, or as an attack on the sophists under the name of Socrates, which is the more probable view of its design, it must not be supposed that the play produced no effect unfavourable to Socrates. The tradition, that Aristophanes was employed by Anytus and Melitus to write down Socrates, does not seem altogether without reason; though it can hardly be literally true, when we look to the distance of time which intervened between the production of the play and the accusation. In the Apology of Plato there is an allusion to the prejudice excited in the young men by the representation given of the philosopher in this play. Nor had "The Clouds" been the only attack on Socrates by Aristophanes; not to mention other comic writers who had made him the object of their humour. In the year 405, not more than five years before the prosecution, the play of "The Frogs" had been exhibited, in which a pointed allusion is made to the influence of Socrates in terms of reprobation. In the mean time, also, the same note had been struck; for the play of "The Birds" was produced in the middle of this interval between "The Clouds" and "The Frogs," in the year 414; and in that again the Athenians are warned against the corruptions and enchantments of the philosopher. And it is very possible that many who lived to witness the formal accusation of Socrates, might have received their earliest prejudices against the philosopher by what they heard in the theatre then,—prejudices, too, which the course of events, the miseries of the Peloponnesian war, and the anarchy consequent upon it, may have ripened into exasperation. For they saw their country fallen from its proud station in Greece, to the condition of a dependent state; and they were led to ascribe their misfortunes to a change of habits since the days of Marathon and Salamis,—to their having deserted the palestra and the field, and become, from a body of devoted patriots and soldiers, students of rhetoric and masters in debate. During all this time Socrates continued the unrivalled teacher of the youth of Athens; increasing, indeed, in renown and popularity; and surrounded by a number of students of philosophy and political science from all parts of Greece. He had, in fact, converted Athens into a university of Greece. For though he had no professed school,—no ἐπιστημονικός, as Aristophanes jocosely represents the scene of Socrates amongst his disciples,—no regular place of meeting, such as Plato had in the Academia, and Aristotle in the Lyceum,—there might be seen around him in familiar conversation, in every part of the city, day after day, the statesmen, and orators, and generals of the republic,—philosophers of established repute from other cities,—the sons of the noblest families of Athens as well as of the humblest citizens,—and the resident foreigners and occasional visitors of the city; some seeking instruction in the art of government, some investigating by his guidance the chief good of man, some studying the theory of eloquence and criticism, some exploring, by the light of his searching questions, the depth of metaphysics, and the subtle speculations of the earlier philosophers; all according to their different pursuits, and in their different degrees, receiving information and general mental culture from the great Athenian sage. Those who clung to the thought of Athens in its days of military glory and empire, would painfully observe how great a change had taken place in the internal habits of the city. Formerly it was enough for the intellectual improvement of the youth, that in childhood he had the grammarian for his instructor, and as he grew up to manhood, was consigned to the poets;

Now even the slaves were becoming literary. The distresses of war had occasioned the addition to the roll of citizens, of many even from that class. "And these might be seen, as the comic poet represents them, 'each with his book, learning clever things;'"

Formerly, their wise men were obliged to leave the ignorance and rudeness of their own city, and learn philosophy by foreign travel. Solon had brought back with him from his travels the wisdom of Crete and of Asia to enrich their code of laws, but had not given philosophy a domicile at Athens; had not affected domestic life there with its refinements.

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1 Aristoph. Ranae, 1487. 2 Aristoph. Aves, 1292, 1554. 3 See Thucyd. iii. 82. 4 In Xenoph. Mem. iii. 5, the younger Pericles asks Socrates how the Athenians are to be brought again to become enamoured of their ancient virtue, glory, and happiness; and afterwards he expresses his wonder how the state ever began to decline. Socrates imputes their degeneracy to their neglect of the institutions of their ancestors. The particulars mentioned are, want of respect to elders, neglect of bodily exercises, even to the ridicule of them, insubordination to authorities, mutual irritation, envy, quarrelsome ness, litigation, covetousness, incompetence of their generals. 5 If we except the profession of the Sophists, when at its height of public favour, skill in the composition of tragedy was the most highly rewarded of all talents at Athens. Plato, Laches, 183, b. p. 169. The poets of Athens, therefore, were naturally jealous of the popularity of philosophers and sophists. 6 Aristophan. Ran. 1052. 7 Aristophan. Ran. 1111. Socrates. From that time, however, a change, introduced by the literary taste of Pisistratus, had gradually prepared the way for establishing a school of philosophy at Athens. Pericles, too, had given a great stimulus to the literary spirit by his own fondness for intellectual pursuits, and the society of intellectual men. In the midst of his active political life, he could find time and thought for the elaborate disquisitions of the ingenious persons whom he invited to him. He could spend a whole day in disputing with Protagoras on so subtle a question as the theory of causation; such was the intense interest which he displayed in every thing tending to the development of mental energy, and such the encouragement he gave to the change of taste then in progress by his own example. In the person of Socrates was found the genius formed to preside over the growing taste for literary and philosophical refinement, and to give it the form of an established institution. What, therefore, were merely indefinite fears at the time of the exhibition of "The Clouds," assumed a more distinct character of alarm to ancient prejudices within a quarter of a century afterwards. The rapidity and violence of several successive revolutions of the government during the latter part of that interval, further prepared the minds of the people for any sudden outbreaks of party spirit, and made every man an object of suspicion to his neighbour. A democracy of an hundred years' existence had been overthrown, and first an oligarchy of four hundred, then a tyranny of thirty, established by foreign arms, in its place. Nor, as it had not been without fraud and bloodshed that the people had been spoiled of their "ancient liberty," were they disposed to surrender it in quiet; or were those who seized on the government able to retain it long on the same footing. A struggle ensued; in which the individuals of contending parties only sought to provide, each for his own aggrandizement and interest, or at least his own safety, under the constant expectation of some counter-revolution. The people had found that some of those very persons who would never have been suspected of oligarchical views, had in the late changes taken part against the popular government, so that they knew not, at last, whom to trust even of themselves. We are not to wonder that an accusation of Socrates should have succeeded before an Athenian jury at this period of morbid sensitiveness of the public mind.

An accusation of impiety was, we must remember, too, an accusation of a political offence. A change of the popular religion was a change of the fundamental constitution of a Greek state. And as in the absolute rule of a single despot, so in the tyranny of a multitude, the reputation of zeal for religion is studiously maintained from policy, if from no higher motive, to throw around its arbitrary acts the reverence and fear due to the religious character. The teaching of Socrates was indeed eminently religious, but it differed from what the state regarded as such. He proved the existence of an invisible divine power, wisely designing and governing all things, and inculcated the duties of piety and morality as flowing from the belief of such an agency. Such clearly was not the state-religion. This was no system of truth or morality. It was tradition and legend, and immemorial usage, and ritual observance. And it was enough for a charge of impiety that Socrates rested religion on other grounds. A pious Athenian, and yet not pious after the manner of the Athenians, was, in their view, an introducer of new gods. He might well be believed to be a worshipping of the clouds and the air, when he pointed out to them, that the gods would not receive the sacrifice offered by wicked men, that even their silent counsels were not concealed from the divine cognizance, and that justice was an indispensable duty of the worshipping of the gods.

That the accusation further should be credible, as brought in this form, is not strange, when it is known that, during the Peloponnesian war, the worship of new gods had been introduced into the city; as at Rome during the depression of its fortunes in the first years of the second Punic war. So greatly had the vicissitudes of fortune influenced the minds of men, observes Livy, describing this effect,—so great was the infatuation of religion, and that chiefly foreign, into the state,—that either the men or the gods appeared to have suddenly become different. So at Athens, it appears, the forms of superstition had been multiplied, under the pressure of civil and domestic calamity acting on the fears and credulity of the people. The strong reproof which Euripides puts into the mouth of Theseus, of the austere life of Hippolytus, would seem to point at some ascetic devotees among the Athenians themselves, practising a more refined and scrupulous religion, distinct from that of the vulgar;

"Hōn ὑπὸ ἀληθείας, καὶ ἐν ἀδιάφορῳ Βρέφεις Στρεψον πανταχοῦ, Ὀφείλει τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἤδη, Βάσκων, ἀπὸ τῶν γυμνοτάτων τῶν παιδών."

In Aristophanes we find still more evident allusion to the introduction of new objects of worship, new fanatical rites, in which the women chiefly officiated, and in which a gross licentiousness mingled with the gloom and solemnities of barbaric superstition.

Again, education was intimately connected with politics in a Grecian state. The state took in hand its youthful citizens, and trained them according to its peculiar institutions, and in its own spirit. At least, in all the early constitutions, great attention was paid to education. Lycurgus made Sparta a constant school of war to his citizens. So too Solon, though he had, with greater knowledge of human nature than Lycurgus, adapted his institutions to the people for whom he legislated, provided that the people should be trained to the system of laws prescribed to them. But this care of the early legislators had begun to be lost sight of in practice. In Aristotle's day it had disappeared everywhere. In Sparta it was still nominally reverenced. In Athens, an entire relaxation of the educational discipline had taken place already in the time of Socrates. Pericles, flattering the democratic spirit of the Athenians of his day, could boast of their ease from labours and the obligation of exercises, and congratulate them on the courage which they could display at the time of action, without being insured beforehand by a course of hardy discipline. But now, whilst the state was remiss in not enforcing education according to its ancient system, a new system had grown up, the offspring of the luxury and refinement of its days of imperial greatness. This new and unauthorized education was diffused throughout the mass of the inhabitants beyond the pale of the citizens. Solon's law imposed the duties of the exercises on the citizens, but excluded the slaves from the gymnasiurn. Now all classes were hearers of the philosopher; the smith, the carpenter, the fuller, the dresser of leather, were engaged in discussing problems of ethics and politics, no less than the high-born and wealthy citizen, and the orator, and the statesman, and the general. This was an evident indication of a corresponding change in the government itself; a change, which really came to maturity not long after the time of Socrates, when the machinery of the government passed from the hands of the generals and the men of practical ability, into those of the orators of the republic, and when rhetoric, or oratory, became the master science, and only another name for politics.

Those, then, whose attention had been drawn to the person of Socrates many years before, and had then only laughed at the exaggerations of the comic muse, might naturally begin to suspect, in the progress of events at Athens, that there was a real danger to the institutions of the country couched under the humorous mien and conversation of the real Socrates. They would now, as they watched his increasing influence and reputation, recall their early associations of the ludicrous with the name of Socrates, not with the good humour with which they were originally received, but with the undefined fears since acquired, in the course of their daily observation, of one in whose hands the destinies of their country seemed to be placed. They would probably then think that they had judged his case too leniently before as spectators, and that they were now called upon to pronounce authoritatively as judges, not so much from the representations and arguments of the accusers, as from their own experience of the great change which their country had evidently undergone, and was still undergoing. Even indeed at the time of trial, nearly half of the great body of jurors were in favour of his acquittal; and Melitus would have failed altogether, but for the speeches of Anytus and Lycon, men of popular and rhetorical powers, who addressed the court in support of the charge; so strongly did the weight of his personal character, and the interest which he had excited by his friendly and instructive intercourse with every class of citizens, prevail in his favour.

We should take into account, further, the general neutrality of Socrates on questions of politics, and his decisive energy on particular political occasions, in which he was called upon by the circumstances of his position to take part. Both lines of conduct would create enemies. Neutrality in a state distracted with parties is the most unpolar course which can be adopted; however candid and reasonable the principle of such conduct may be, all parties look with jealousy at one who will not be associated with them in the guilt and the danger of party-struggles. They envy him his exemption from their violence, his reputation of candour, his safety under every vicissitude of party-ascendancy. Corcyra, as a state, was obnoxious to the other states of Greece for its neutral policy. So was the individual at Athens who kept aloof from public business, amidst that restless pragmatical spirit which actuated the state and its citizens. Athenians could not understand and appreciate the motives of one who abstained from the public assemblies, and the courts, and the theatres,—who shrank from all public offices,—was a member of no faction or club,—engaged in no trade,—disregarded even his own domestic concerns,—and lived a private man, where every one else was the servant of the public, busy with the affairs of the state, and incessantly pushing his own interests by his political activity. The laws of Solon indeed inculcated the principle, that every one should take his side in the contention of parties. Solon wished to interest the people in the maintenance of the constitution which he had given them; and accordingly, obliged them by penalties to attend to public affairs. This was evidently his reason for compelling their attendance in the assemblies and courts, as also for this singular provision. The increased action of the democratic spirit in the time of Socrates must have greatly fostered the opinion thus declared in their ancient laws. And thus we find philosophers in general held in disrepute at Athens, on account of their inactivity and unconcern in public affairs. The busy sophist, the orator, and the man of the world, censured them as pusillanimous, and indolent, and incapable of the duties of a citizen. Some of the early philosophers, indeed, had been distinguished as statesmen, and legislators, and generals. The Pythagoreans in Magna Graecia appear still to have sustained this character in some measure. But now philosophers were observed, for the most part, to lead a contemplative life of leisure, and to present a striking contrast to the general society of Grecian states. Plato takes every opportunity in his writings of defending philosophy from this calumny directed against the persons of its votaries, evidently treating it as a grievance which he had felt in his own case. Aristotle also indicates the prevalence of the same objection against philosophers at his day, when he studiously maintains that exertions of the mind in mere speculation are to be regarded as even more really practical than those which are directed to external results. Socrates accordingly was a puzzle to many of his contemporaries. They wondered that he should freely dispense the treasures of his wisdom, and not convert it into a marketable commodity. Whilst they gave him credit for integrity, they regarded such a proceeding as mere folly. They asked how he could think to qualify others for public life, without taking part in it himself, if he really knew what it was to be a statesman. But he was content, in reply, to point to the number whom he had laboured to render capable of public duties, as a more effectual service on his part to the state, than a mere personal activity.

But though the general conduct of Socrates was to avoid all interference in affairs of state, he had shewn on one or two very important occasions his patriotic feeling, and the energy with which he could carry it into effect. He had served with distinguished courage at Potidaea, Amphipolis, and Delium, as we have seen; and proved himself, on those hard-fought days, one who, as Pericles characterizes the Athenians, could philosophize without effeminacy, and, without being injured to the dangers of the field, could brave them at the moment of trial with no diminished spirit. But still greater occasions of trial were those of civil exertion at home, to which he was called not long before the accusation of impiety. Perhaps one of the most memorable instances of resolute firmness which history presents, is to be observed in the fact, that when the uproar of faction was demanding the iniquitous condemnation of the generals who commanded at Arginusae, Socrates stood alone among his colleagues in office, and refused to put the question to the vote, as the epistates, or superintendent of the

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1 Aristot. Eth. Nic. x. Tά δε σολωτική ἰστραπήλησις μὴ διδάσκειν εἰς πολιτική, ἀρχέτι δ' αὐτῶν εὖδεις, ἀλλ' εἰ συλλεγόμενοι, κ. τ. λ. Τίνες ἐξ ἐκείνων ἢ ἰστραπήλησις . . . ὅτι γὰρ ἂν τὸ ἀκεῖ τῇ ἐργασίᾳ εἶδεν ἑαυτῷ ἐξερευνῆσαι, κ. τ. λ. 2 Thucyd. ii. 40. Ἡν τοῦτο ἀκεῖνος ἄξιος ἦν καὶ πολιτικῆς ἐπιθυμίας, καὶ ἴσως πρὸς ἐργασίαν τετραπλησσομένος ἢ πολιτικῆς μὴ ἴσως, γιγνόμενος μὲν γὰρ τὸ μετά τοῦτο περιστατικόν ἐστιν ἀναγκαῖον ἢ ἀξιώσιν τετραπλησσομένῳ. 3 Plutarch, Solon, 20, tom. i. p. 354, ed. Reiske. 4 Aristot. Pol. vi. 3. Ἀλλ' ἡ τῶν πρακτικῶν σολωτική ἰστραπήλησις, κ. τ. λ. Also Ethic. Nic. x. 7. The oration of Isocrates against the sophists is addressed to the same popular calumny against philosophy. 5 Xenoph. Mem. i. 6. Ὁ Σωκράτης, ἐγὼ τοῦ ἐν τῷ δίκαιῳ νομίζω, εὔρει ἢ εὖ ἐπιστημονικόν, κ. τ. λ. . . . Καὶ πάλιν τοῦτο τοῦ Ἀριστοτέλους ἐρεύνησεν, κ. τ. λ. Ibid. Each of the ten Athenian tribes had its turn of presidency in the council of Five Hundred for thirty-six days of the year; fifty out of the whole tribe being chosen by lot as its representatives during this period. These fifty were further subdivided into tens; and each of these tens, under the name of pröödri, served a week in succession, as it was allotted, until the official term of the tribe was completed. Again, of these ten presidents, seven were appointed by lot, to occupy the chair in succession during their week of office; each one of the seven becoming in his turn epistates, or superintendent for a day. The tribe Antiochis, to which Socrates belonged, happened to be the presiding tribe on the occasion of the impeachment of the generals; and it came to the lot of Socrates to be in the chair of office on the day when the question of their condemnation was so passionately debated. The generals had nobly done their duty to their country, and gained the most brilliant victory which had been achieved at sea in the course of the war by the Athenian arms. But the crisis was an unfortunate one for them. Athens was then on the verge of ruin. The jealousy of parties was at its height. The hopelessness of recovering the lost ground by military strength at this time, gave an opening and encouragement to personal intrigue, and the arts of an unscrupulous diplomacy; and a victory, however honourable to their arms, and hopeful as to the future, seems only to have been hailed with very doubtful congratulations by the struggling factions of the city; each looking at it rather as it might act for or against his party,—as it might tend to the strength of his rivals or their depression,—than as a great public triumph. However this may be, for the event remains a matter of perplexity to the historian, the successful generals were brought to trial through the treachery of their own officers, on the specious charge of having neglected the collecting of the dead bodies of their men after the action. The charge was specious, because it was partly true, and was attested indeed by the very officers who were sent by them on that service, and who were now brought as witnesses against their commanders. It was true, so far as the endeavour to collect the dead bodies had been frustrated by a violent storm which followed the engagement. Still the endeavour had been made. The charge was further specious, because it appealed to religious prejudices, as well as to the democratic spirit. The generals seemed to have been regardless of the solemn rites due to the dead, and of the persons and feelings of the lower orders of the people. The occasion therefore furnished abundant topic of invective to the demagogues; and their addresses too fatally succeeded in obtaining an ungrateful and factious vote of death against the generals. Socrates was threatened with criminal information by the orators of the people; and the people themselves were urging on his assailants, and clamouring against him. Still he remained unmoved, and would not put the unjust question to the vote; preferring the hazard of bonds and death to himself, on the side of the law and right, to a compliance with the popular will in an illegal act. The iniquity was perpetrated ultimately in spite of his resistance; but he at least did his utmost to prevent it.

Such was his conduct under the ascendancy of the democratic power. Afterwards, when the oligarchy was established, and the Thirty were exercising their acts of cruelty and extortion without restraint, he was the first to give a check to their tyranny. In their career of confiscation and blood, they marked out Leon of Salamis for destruction. They conceived that the terror of their power would compel even Socrates to be a ready instrument to their rati- cacity; and they were desirous also doubtless to implicate him in the criminality of the act. Accordingly, they appointed him with four others to go to Salamis, and bring Leon to Athens, that he might be put to death. They were disappointed, however, in their expectation, so far as they depended on Socrates as an instrument in the dark deed. The order was executed, and the unhappy Leon was sacrificed to their cruel avarice and fears. But Socrates had no hand in it, and resisted it as far as he could. Unawed by their stern command, he said nothing, but as soon as he had left the Tholus, the place where the Thirty were assembled, he left his four colleagues to proceed on their bloody errand and went home. He would not, indeed, have dared thus to disobey the order with impunity; he would surely have felt their vengeance;—for there is nothing that tyrants resent more than a clemency volunteered by the ministers of their cruelties,—but that happily that reign of terror was soon after put down.

By these intrepid acts, Socrates had shewn that the philosopher, in declining the contentions of political life, did not incapacitate himself for his duties when the exigencies of his situation should require him to perform them. As Thales had proved that the philosopher could, if he pleased, make money, by applying to that purpose his observations on the seasons, and his prognostics of an abundant crop of olives; so did Socrates defend philosophy in his own person, and by his conduct on these great occasions, against the imputation of inactivity and selfish ease. It is quite evident, too, that such a spirit as that displayed in these remarkable instances, had he entered into political life, would have subjected him to violent collisions with the successive leaders of party at Athens. "You well know, Athenians," are the words which Plato's "Apology" puts into his mouth, "that had I long ago attempted to take part in political affairs, I should long ago have perished, and I should neither have done you any service nor myself. And be not aggrieved with me for saying the truth. For there is no one of men that can be safe, in giving a spirited opposition either to you or to any other popular government, and in preventing the occurrence of many unjust and iniquitous things in the state; but he that would in reality fight for the right, must, if he would be safe but a little while, lead a private life and not engage in public business." "Think you, indeed," he further asks, "that I should have lived for so many years, had I engaged in public business; and had I, engaging in it in a manner becoming a good man, succoured the cause of right, and, as behoved me, made that the thing of greatest consequence? Far from it; for neither could any one individual of men

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1 Xenophon, whose own reputation for courage gives a strong sanction to his opinion, says of this act of Socrates, ἐν εὐρύς ἀπὸ ἄλλων εἰδὼς ἀνδρείαν τοῦτον. Mem. iv. 4, p. 208. He alludes in the same place to the story of Leon. 2 Thucyd. ii. Plat. Apol. 28. 3 Herodot. Thalia, 3. 6. Cambyses was glad that his order, given in a moment of passion, to kill Croesus, was not obeyed; but he could not forgive those who had ventured to reckon upon his return to better feelings; and he accordingly commands that they should be executed for their disobedience. 4 Plato, Apol. 32. 5 Cicero, De Divin. i. 49. 6 Plato, Apol. 31, 32. 7 Ibid. the sad spectacle of one who had been the friend of every poor man at Athens, no less than of the rich and noble, requited with prosecution and death by those very hands conjoined in the unnatural act, which each should have warded off the blow inflicted by the other. The genius of Intolerance was indeed behind the scene, mixing the poisoned cup for its destined victim. But the actors on the public stage of the trial were, at the same time, wreaking their own vengeance on a political opponent; and the more exasperated against him, in proportion as; by his imper- turbable demeanour and real inoffensiveness, he seemed to defy their assaults, and to throw them back on the consciousness of their injustice and ingratitude towards him.

Nor can there be any doubt, that there were many individuals, whose pride he had hurt, whose ignorance he had exposed, whose ill-humour he had irritated, and who, such is the infirmity of human nature, would rejoice in the opportunity of revenge by the verdict of a public condemnation of his doctrine. In affronting the sophists, by his free discussions of their pretensions, he had excited, doubtless, the hostility of many of the higher order of citizens, their patrons and disciples. Many fathers of families too must then have been suffering from that corruption of public morals which, under the teaching of the sophists, had clothed itself with plausibilities of argument, and impudently arrogated, for its vain pretensions, the importance of philosophy. Disobedient, profligate sons, lifting their hands against their fathers, and adding bitterness to their unnatural rebellion, by the hollow false-hearted principles upon which they had learned to justify it,—forward, petulant youths, insulting the dignity of age by their pretensions to superior wisdom, and their turbulence,—these were the fruits of sophistical education, which came home to every family at Athens. Few that felt the evil in their own homes, would stop to inquire whether Socrates was the teacher whom they had to blame for their suffering. Most would hastily conclude, that all such instruction of the young was pernicious, and their offence at the mischievous doctrine of the sophists would become a disgust to philosophy and philosophers.

Some, indeed, would distinctly trace to Socrates the annoyance which they had experienced from particular individuals. There were many who had frequented the society of Socrates, with no sincere intention of profiting by his lessons,—who observed his inquisitive manner, and its effect in convicting and refuting the errors of those with whom he conversed, and who endeavoured, for their own wanton gratification, to imitate him in their intercourse with others. These would take delight in confounding and perplexing others, and exposing and ridiculing their pretensions to wisdom. It is easy to conceive, that the superficial resemblance to the manner of Socrates in these persons, and the vexation produced by it, would excite angry objection against the real method of Socrates. These persons would be pointed at as his disciples. These would be referred to as instances of the evil tendency of the teaching of the philosopher himself; the discredit of the spurious disciples being reflected on the master, to whom it belonged not in any degree.

It appears, further, as might have been expected, that the doctrines of Socrates were studiously misrepresented at the time. Allusions or illustrations employed by him in his reasonings were construed into positive opinions on the subjects to which he thus referred. For example, when, inculcating honest industry, he quoted Hesiod, saying, "Work there is none that is a scandal, inaction is the scandal," the captious absurdly but maliciously interpreted him, as applying the words of the poet to sanction the doing every thing, whether right or wrong, for the sake of gain. When he quoted from Homer the account of Ulysses silencing the uproar of the people, against the practice of employing worthless persons in the public service, it was represented, that he approved the coercing the common people and the poor by harshness and violence. Again, in urging the necessity of looking to the qualification of those who should be appointed to office, and illustrating this by the fact, that no one would choose, by lot, a pilot, or carpenter, or flute-player, or any one, indeed, in matters where error was far less mischievous than in politics,—he was charged with encouraging contempt of the established laws, and exciting the young to acts of violence. And, (which is the most invidious form of misrepresentation), a general charge of corrupting the young was thrown out against him, unsupported by any specific statements of the means of corruption which he employed. As in the polemics of later days, so in the controversy between Socrates and his assailants, the obloquy of general hackneyed terms of reproach was resorted to as the substitute for definite grounds of imputation. Thus were the off-hand allegations against all philosophers, "that they searched into the things in the air and the things under the earth, and rejected all belief in the gods, and made the worse appear the better reason,"—used as a cover, on this occasion, to the envy and malignity which shrank from the light and the evidence of facts.

The accusation of Melitus, it will be observed, was distributed into three heads: 1. Contempt of the established religion. 2. The introduction of new divinities. 3. The corruption of the young. The second of these charges requires to be more particularly noticed, because it has reference to a peculiarity in the conduct of Socrates which gave it a colour of truth.

The mind of Socrates appears to have been deeply imbued with religious feeling. The observation of final causes particularly excited his interest; so much so, as to lead him to think that no other account should be attempted to be given of the phenomena of the world, but as they are the results of a wise and benevolent design. He delighted thus in contemplating every thing in a moral and religious point of view. He thought that the introduction of physical and mechanical causes into the study of nature, only perplexed and misled the mind. He had at first been greatly attracted by the speculations of Anaxagoras. What won his attention in the system of this philosopher, was its distinguished merit beyond all previous systems, in assigning mind as the master principle of the universe. But when he came to study the writings of Anaxagoras more closely, he was grievously disappointed, and threw up the system in disgust. For he found that it lost sight of the grand and true principle with which it set out, and, after all, constructed the universe out of mere material and mechanical elements.

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1 Xenophon speaks of persons who were pointedly corrected by Socrates, μὴ μήνες ἀπὸ ἰδίων ἐλαστρεῖν ἴματα τοῖς σάτην εὐθυμεῖν τῆς ἐργασίας ἐκράζειν. Mem. i. 4. Such persons would bear a grudge against him, as Anytus in particular appears to have done, and would not be very scrupulous, with this angry feeling dwelling in their minds, as to the mode of resenting the affront.

2 Op. 311. ἀπεργεῖν δὲ τὸν ἀνδρὸς.

3 Plato, Euthyphro, 3. ὅτι ἂν πανορμεύσωσιν, ἂν τοῦτο τὸ ἔθιμον, γεγεννημένον τοῦτο τὸ γεγονόν καὶ ὡς ἀναβαλλόν ὑπὸ ἐργασίας τῆς ἐξουσίας, ἀλλὰ ἐν ἀναβαλλόν τῷ τοῦτο τὸ γεγονόν ἐν τοῖς σολεῖς.

4 Plat. Apol. 29. p. 54.

5 Athenians preserved the same character at the time of St. Paul in this respect, also, as well in their eagerness after news; as is seen in their accusing him of setting forth strange gods. (Acts xvii. 18.) ἐν τοῖς διαμαρτυρίαις τῶν ἐκαταγγέλλειν ἐναντίον ἐναντίον ἐναντίον.

6 Plato, Phaedo.—Apolog. He saw, indeed, how futile, as to any real knowledge of the universe, had been the inquiries of the early philosophers. As an Athenian, he participated in that general prejudice against physical science, which Athenians had ignorantly imbibed against all philosophy, when they characterized it as idle talk and drivelling dotage. But as a genuine philosopher, in spite of his Athenian prejudices, he saw and felt that there was a real moral agency pervading the world; and he judged that, by observation of this, principles of real use for the right direction of human life might be discovered. Tinctured too, as an Athenian, with the superstition of his countrymen, and at the same time correcting it by his superior judgment and feeling, he was disposed to draw every phenomenon into his moral and religious theory of the universe. To stop to inquire into any thing whether it might be explained on simple natural causes, or to doubt its moral design, would appear to his mind as sceptical and profane. Hence, we see at once displayed in him the common character of the Athenian, in his dislike of physical science, and his susceptibility of superstitious influences from the most trivial things; and, on the other hand, the wisdom and religiousness of the true philosopher, in his constant devout disposition to refer all things to a providential design and moral agency.

It is well known how anxiously the heathens watched the most minute circumstances, not only in their religious rites, but in the actions of daily life, as intimations of the will of the gods. Not only dreams and visions, but flights of birds, the meeting any particular object, sneezing, a voice, or any sound, and the like trivial things, were regarded with seriousness and awe. Socrates felt the mystic influence of such incidents; only he thought more deeply on them than the generality; and that,—not with the vulgar emotions of fear or of hope, according as the omen might be interpreted,—but with calm and pious reference to the benevolent design which he attributed to them as divine intimations. Further, not only did he apply this sentiment to the outward circumstances of daily life; but he also took into his view the state of his own mind. He conceived that he received at times mysterious signs distinctly perceptible to himself; not indeed of any positive good to be expected from a particular course of conduct, but of precaution,—warnings against evil concerning others as well as himself. These presages he interpreted,—or others perhaps, taking his account of his impressions in too literal a manner, have so represented it,—as a voice addressed to him on each occasion. Instances too, are alleged in which this divine voice was the means of saving him and those who obeyed its direction, from danger. In the retreat of the Athenians after the unfortunate battle at Delium, it is said to have prevented his taking a particular road, and thus saved him, together with Alcibiades and Laches, from being pursued and overtaken by the enemy; whilst others taking another way were overtaken and slain. This circumstance, according to Plutarch, was a great occasion of the fame at Athens of the "demonion"—or "genius," as it was called by Latin writers,—of Socrates. To this voice is attributed his active devotion of his life to the moral reform of his countrymen by private and personal addresses to them, and his refraining at the same time from all political exertion.

The name of a particular daemonion, or genius, was evidently not assigned by Socrates himself to these extraordinary presages; while he confidently declared their reality. It was rather the misconstruction of the vulgar, and of his assailants, interpreting what he affirmed generally of divine intimations, as assertions of the presence of some particular divinity ascertained by his own convictions, and distinct from the gods worshipped at Athens. Heathens were incapable of forming a notion of the Deity, but as a local and tutelary god. They could not rise to the sublime conception of the one universal Being, ὁ δαιμόνιος, the God in all the world, than whom there is none else. In the view of Socrates, this belief in a presaging voice addressed to his private ear, was nothing more than an extension of the prophetic science, or divination of the heathen world, to practical purposes, and to the cultivation of religious feelings.

It must be remembered, that the Athenians had their augurs or prophets among the regular officers of the republic, without whose presence no matter of public counsel or of war was ever transacted. These were the recognized interpreters of the divine will. But Socrates claimed a special authority for the presages with which he was peculiarly favoured, and thus seemed to innovate on the science, and encroach on the established forms, of divination. He enjoined, indeed, a devout reference to the Delphic oracle, in all questions of hazardous conduct, teaching that, whilst human reason was the guide in all matters of human power, in those, on the contrary, which were out of human power, as the future event of actions, resort should be had to every means offered for exploring the will of the gods. He professed to have adopted his own course of life on the evidence of such communications. He advised Xenophon to consult the Delphic oracle, as to whether he should do well in accepting the invitation of Proxenus to join the expedition of Cyrus. But with this reverence for the recognized sources of divine information, he combined a suspicion of the pretenders to prophecy, who were countenanced by the popular superstition,—the ἰεροποιοί and ἱεροποιοί,—who abounded at Athens. He relied rather on the sagacious auguries of his own mind, drawn from observation of some passing incident, or some rapid conclusion respecting the consequences of actions—a kind of intuitive judgment and forecaste, mingling and confounding itself with his religious impressions,—a second hearing, as it were,—a perception of a voice unperceived by the common ear, mysteriously telling of danger to come from some particular course of conduct. Thus was a pretext given to his enemies to say, that he introduced "new divinities;" whilst public opinion tolerated the grossest pretensions to divine relations, and a system of mercenary imposture founded on them. Public opinion upheld the system of divination as it existed, with its external array of augurs, and prophets, and ceremonial. Socrates, on the contrary, led every man to consult the will of the Deity, not without devout preparations in the inward recesses of his own mind, nor without reference to his own obedience and moral improvement. Superstition, doubtless, strongly tinctured his notions of religious duty. This made him construe many things into divine intimations, which were frivolous and irrelevant. Still he rose above the superstition of the popular divination, in the personal piety which laid hold of each occasion for its exercise and cultivation, and taught men to regard the Divinity as interested in the protection of the good, and ever present to the words, and actions, and even the silent thoughts of men.

Xenophon appears to have faithfully stated the difference between the popular divination and that professed by Socrates, in the following account: "He introduced nothing new beyond others who, acknowledging the reality of divination, make use of omens, and voices, and objects pre- The jealousy of the sophists in particular, the very class with whom the accusation of Melitus identified him, would also swell the popular envy against him on this head. For the sophists, among their pretensions, claimed to be regarded as endowed with a predictive sagacity, so as to be expert practical guides respecting the future. Socrates would defend them in this point in two ways,—both as directing persons to have recourse to their own judgment, and the regular means of information on all ordinary questions to which human reason was competent; and as teaching a reference to a secret divine intimation on all other matters beyond the compass of man's understanding. For in both respects would the sophists find their course interfered with. The use of men's own judgment, or the appeal to the signs of the Divine will, would equally lessen the value for those counsels which they pretended to impart.

What added still further to this invincible feeling was, that the reputation of Socrates now eclipsed theirs throughout Greece. And Socrates appears himself confidently to have appealed to this public estimation of his character against the partial censures of his countrymen at the time of his trial. He vindicated his assertion of divine intimations specially granted to him, by referring to the oracle of Delphi as having honoured him with its distinct approbation. Chaerephon, in the devoutness of his admiration of his master, had, on some occasion, consulted the oracle respecting him, and obtained an answer that Socrates was the wisest of men. The authenticity of the anecdote has been questioned. But the introduction of it in the two "Apologies," may be taken as a voucher of its substantial truth. It at any rate shews the favourable opinion which had been conceived of him out of Athens itself; that, as Lycurgus had been complimented by the verdict of an oracle, so the same tribute of public applause might, with equal probability, be assigned to Socrates.

According to Laertius, the sentence of condemnation was carried by a majority consisting of 281 votes. The number was little more than sufficient to decide the question on that side; for it only exceeded the number of votes of acquittal by three. "Had but three votes only fallen differently," says Socrates himself, in the "Apology" of Plato, "I should have been acquitted." Nor, indeed, would Melitus alone, without the aid of Anytus and Lycon, (he is made there confidently to declare) have obtained even a fifth part of the votes to save him the penalty of a thousand drachmas, affixed by the law to an unsustained prosecution. But when the penalty of death was further put to the vote, and he was found unwilling to propose the substitution of any other penalty, such as a fine or exile, but evinced his indignant contempt of their unjust sentence, by asking rather, in his ironical way, instead of even a slight punishment, the highest honour of the state, that of a public maintenance in the Prytaneum, the multitude of the jurors was so exasperated by the unbending spirit thus displayed, that eighty additional votes were given on the hostile side, determining the sentence of death. So evidently was the whole case ruled by passion and the arts of demagogues exciting the people to treat it as a slight on their majesty, rather than as a cause in a court of justice. Otherwise it could not have happened, that when the previous question of guilt had been carried with nearly an equal number of dissentients, the severest penalty should have obtained such an accession of voices in its favour.

We have already remarked the little solicitude shewn by

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1 Xenophon here differs from Plato's Apology, in saying, that Socrates received intimations of what was to be done; whereas Plato expressly says the directions were only negative. 2 Xeoph. Mem. i. 1, p. 3. Xenoph. Apol. 13, ἐγὼ δὲ τοῦτο δαιμονίου καλῶ. 3 Herodotus, Clio. c. 158, 159. The same is illustrated in the story of Glaucon in Erato, c. 86. The oracles were consulted, also, on frivolous matters, such as the petty thefts of Amasis. Euterpe, c. 174. 4 Inscri. c. Soph. 2, 4, περὶ τῶν μελλόντων μὴ εἶδεν προσποιούμενος. 5 Xenoph. Apol. p. 249. Plato, Apol. p. 48. Socrates in regard to his defence from the accusation. As he strongly disapproved the affected artificial rhetoric of his times, and the practice of appealing to the passions against the judgment of the hearer, so neither would he study beforehand what he should say on the occasion of his trial. Twice had he essayed (he observes to Hermogones) to consider what he should say in his defence, and as often had he been prevented by those secret divine intimations to which he habitually referred his conduct. Nor again would he receive the proffered services of friends in pleading his cause. The celebrated orator Lysias composed an oration for this purpose. On reading it, he expressed his admiration of it, but declined it as unsuitable to him. When Lysias wondered that he could admire it, and yet say it was unsuitable, he observed, in his usual manner of illustration, by an apposite case: "Would not also fine coats and shoes be unsuitable to me?" Plato, however, it is said, could not be restrained from appearing in his behalf, and made an effort to address the court. But the uproar was so great, that on his uttering the words, "ascend the bema," he was met with the cry, "descend," and forced to abandon the attempt.

So neither, again, would he resort to those appliances to the feelings which were usual in the Athenian courts. The Athenian jurymen expected that the defendant should come before him in the character of a suppliant, and entreat his clemency rather than claim his justice. He was to be assailed with prayers and tears, no less than with arguments addressed to his understanding. But Socrates would not condescend to these methods of persuasion. He would not produce his wife and children in the court, to excite compassion, or bring forward his connexions and friends to intercede in his behalf. He felt it unbecoming in him at his age, and with his reputation as a philosopher, to supplicate for his life. It would have given to his whole previous demeanour the appearance of insincerity and hypocrisy. It would have shewn that dread of death, against which all his teaching had been directed. It would have been an evidence that he disregarded the sanctity of religion, in trying to influence his jurors to decide by favour against their oaths, and so far would have substantiated the charge of Melitus against him. For the same reason, he had refused to offer to submit to a mitigated penalty, when challenged, according to the practice in the Athenian courts, to propose his own estimate of the offence. Afterwards, indeed, he softened this bold vindication of his merits, by adding, in the same ironical manner, that he could perhaps pay the fine of a mina of silver, and would therefore fix that amount of damages; or that as Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, suggested the sum of thirty minae, and would be good sureties for the payment, he would fix the latter amount.

To have seriously proposed any such estimate would, in his opinion, have been an admission of his guilt.

He displayed throughout the trial, the same calm and cheerful temper which characterized his ordinary behaviour. There were in his manner, even at that solemn crisis, touches of the same ironical humour, the same half-carnest, half-playful strokes of argumentative attack, which had given so much interest and point to his daily familiar conversations; and when the trial was over, he evinced no further emotion than the indignation of a sincere and honest man, at the malicious and mischievous arts by which the result had been accomplished. He was sustained by the consciousness that no crime had been proved against him; whilst his assailants must feel the reproaches of conscience for the real impiety and iniquity of which they had been guilty; some for having instigated others to bear false witness against him; some for having themselves borne this false witness.

The disgrace of the condemnation fell not on him, he asserted, but on those who had passed such a sentence. He consoled himself with the thought, that it was the will of the Deity, and it was best for him now to die; that, though condemned by his present judges, like another Palamedes, he should receive from posterity that verdict of approbation which was withheld from Ulysses, whose successful plot the life of that chief was sacrificed. Availing itself also of the prophetic power which the popular belief attributed to the words of a dying man, he warned his countrymen, as he left the court, that they were embarked in a course which must involve them in bitter repentance. He concluded his address with the following striking admonition: "I have only this request to make. As for my sons, when they shall have grown up, punish them, I pray you, by troubling them in the same manner in which I have been in the habit of troubling you, if they appear to you to concern themselves either with money or any thing else in preference to virtue. And if they would seem to be something when they are nothing, reproach them as I do you, that they take no concern about what they ought, and think themselves to be something when they are nothing. And if you do this, I shall have suffered justice at your hands, both myself and my sons. But it is now time to depart; for me to die, for you to live; but which of us is going to a better thing is uncertain to every one except only the Deity."

In his way from the court to the prison to which he was now consigned, he was observed with eye and men and step composed, in perfect unison with his previous address. On perceiving some of those who accompanied him, weeping, "Why is this," he said; "is it now that you weep? did you not long ago know, that, from the moment of my birth, the sentence of death had been decreed against me by nature? If, indeed, I were perishing beforehand in the midst of blessings flowing in upon me, it would be plain that I and my kind friends would have to grieve; but if I terminate my life at a time when troubles are expected, for my part I think you ought all to be in good heart, as feeling that I am happy." Apollodorus, whose admiration of his master amounted to an amiable weakness, complained to him of the great hardship of his suffering by an unjust sentence. Acknowledging the affectionate feeling thus shewn to him in a familiar manner, by passing his hand over the head of his attached disciple, he, at the same time, gently reproved him, saying, "Would you then, my dear Apollodorus, rather see me dying justly than unjustly?" and smiled at the question. On seeing Anytus pass by, he could not forbear, it is said, the expression of a strong censure on the conduct of that individual towards his own son. He foretold, what the unhappy result proved too true, that the heart of Anytus would one day be embittered by the evil fruits of that low and unworthy education to which, with mercenary views, he had subjected his son, a young man with whom the philosopher had formerly conversed, and who had seemed destined for better things.

The execution of Socrates, by the poisoned cup, would have followed immediately on his condemnation, but for the peculiar circumstances under which the trial had taken place. It was after the commencement of the Delian festival; an annual commemoration, of the safe return of Theseus and his devoted companions to Athens, from the fatal labyrinth of Crete, and the acquittal thenceforth of the bloody tribute exacted by Minos, by the mission of a vessel to Delos with sacrifices to Apollo, and other religious rites. When the priest of Apollo had once crowned the stern of the sacred vessel with the festive garland, it was not lawful to pollute the city by a public execution, until the solemn pomp should have been performed, and the vessel had returned. This ceremony had been performed only the day before the trial of Socrates. Thus he obtained the respite of thirty days between his trial and execution.

These were days of high interest and importance not only to his sorrowing friends, but to the cause of that admirable practical philosophy which all his previous life had inculcated. During this time he employed himself in literary exercises which he had never practised before. He composed a poem in honour of the god Apollo, whose festival was then in course of celebration. And feeling a religious scruple as to whether by the general pursuit of philosophy, he had fully complied with the suggestions of dreams repeatedly urging him, as he said, to "cultivate music," he now applied himself to the fulfilment of this supposed charge, by turning the fables of Æsop into verse. But these were only pastimes illustrative of the serenity of his mind. Now, too, in his prison, with the chains on his body, and the near prospect of a violent death, he could discourse with an unanswerable cogency and eloquence of argument, of the vanity of human things, and the real happiness of man, as consisting in the cultivation of the spiritual and immortal principles of his nature. He had professed his whole life to be a meditation or discipline of death. He now had the opportunity—which, as a philosopher, (could the voice of natural instinct have been silenced,) he would most have desired—of realizing, by his own example, that death to which his thoughts and pursuits had been studiously directed. Unlike his successors in the schools of the Stoics, he did not advocate a doctrine of suicide, however he deprecated the importance of human life. With that good sense which restrained his religion and his philosophy from running into fanaticism, he held it to be impious in anyone to release himself, by his own hand, from that post of duty in which the Deity had placed him. Though, however, he had not courted death, or rashly placed himself in the way of it, he felt that, in the circumstances in which he was now placed, he was called to go through this last act of his philosophic profession. He seems, indeed, to have rejoiced in the opportunity thus afforded him of summing up his philosophy in one great principle, from which every observation and argument, in the course of previous teaching, had been drawn, by demonstrating, so far as reason could avail to demonstrate the fact, the absolute and eternal existence of the great principles of moral truth. The occasion was one which the genius of Plato would not fail to seize as most felicitous for the development of its own enthusiastic and transcendental view of the philosophy of Socrates. Plato, accordingly, has, in that most exquisite of his Dialogues, the Phædo, invited us to the couch of Socrates, on the last sad morning of his imprisonment, to listen to the philosopher, with the chill of death almost upon him, discoursing on the immortality of the soul. The affectionate and eloquent disciple doubtless shed natural tears over his dying master. But he wished also to elevate his own philosophy to the dignity of being the dying confession of the great sage of Athens. And he wished, further, that his own philosophy should speak, as it were, the funeral oration over him to whom it was indebted for its earliest inspirations, and pour its own libation on his tomb. Thus he has especially elaborated the last scene of his master's life, and made us contemplate with the deepest interest the death of Socrates, not only as an act of heroic self-devotion and patient martyrdom to the truth, taught by the great sage himself; but as a splendid episode in the dramatic development of his own philosophy.

During his imprisonment, Socrates was not denied the solace of receiving his friends, and conversing with them day after day. Early each morning might be seen a company of devoted friends, whom nothing could separate from him, assembled at the hall of justice, where the trial had taken place, and which was close to the prison, watching for the jailor to open the gate and admit them. Being admitted, they would commonly remain with him in the prison until evening, engaged in earnest and instructive conversation. His wife and children, too, appear to have been constantly with him. He was importuned by these affectionate followers to suffer them to effect his escape. Crito earnestly entreated him to be allowed to execute a plan which he had concerted for rescuing him. Simmias, the Theban, also brought a sum of money with him to Athens for that purpose. Cebes and others were equally ready with their resources. They argued, that, so far from being at a loss what to do with himself out of Athens, as he had said on his trial, they could ensure him friends in Thessaly, and many other places, who would most gladly welcome him, and protect him. But to none of these importunities would he yield. He answered, that, while he highly estimated their kindness, he was pledged to obey reason only, and that he saw no ground in his present circumstances for taking a different view of his case. As for the duty of providing for his children, by preserving his own life,—a consideration which Crito appears to have strongly pressed on him,—this was not now a matter for him to consider—it was for those to consider, who, as his Athenian judges, treated life and death as such light concerns; for his part, he must look simply to what was right or wrong to be done. Thus steadily and calmly did he persevere in his resolution of awaiting the utmost extremity.

At length it was announced that the Theoric galley had been seen off Sunium, and might very shortly be expected to arrive at Athens. Crito proceeded in anxious haste to the prison, and being well-known to the jailor from his frequent visits there, obtained admission at a very early hour. He found Socrates asleep, and sat by him in silence, wondering to see him sleep so soundly in so much trouble, until he at length awoke to receive the fatal intelligence. This he received with the same composure as if it had been some ordinary communication. His only answer to Crito was, that he was quite resigned to the will of the gods, if it were so, but that he was persuaded by a dream, from which he had just waked, that the vessel would not come that day, but the following one. His reliance on dreams as divine intimations, has been already mentioned. He told Crito, accordingly, of his having dreamed that a woman of noble form, clothed in white, came to him and called him, and said to him in the words of Homer, "On the third day to deep-soiled Pthia thou shalt come." The event, at any rate, accorded with his expectation from the dream. On the morrow the vessel reached the harbour of Piraeus; and the following day was appointed for the execution.

By the dawn of that day, the sorrowing party again met at the accustomed place, and were informed by the jailor, that the Eleven,—the officers who superintended the public executions,—had given orders that the chains should be taken off, and that Socrates should die on that day. After being kept waiting some time, they went in and found the philosopher already loosed from his chains, and sitting on the couch, with Xanthippe and his youngest child in her arms, by his side. By his desire they conduct her home, the kind Crito Socrates entrusting her to the care of his attendants, amidst cries of passionate grief, which had broken forth from her afresh at the sight of them now come to bid their last farewell. The occasion naturally leads to the conversation which follows—a discussion, according to Plato, on the immortality of the soul.—Socrates interrogating and arguing with all his wonted vivacity; whilst the party around him answer and listen with eager interest, and, as may naturally be conceived, with undescribable sensations of mingled delight and pain.

Crito would have dissuaded him from this exertion, for he feared, from what he had been told by the executioner, that the heat of the body thus produced, would add to his discomfort in his last moments, by rendering the effects of the poison more lingering. He only observed, that "it mattered not; the executioner should only be ready to do his duty, and mix the draught twice, or even thrice over, if it should be found necessary."

The discourse being brought to a close, he rose to proceed to the bath, as an immediate preparation for his death; when Crito detained him for a while, to ask his last commands about his children, or any other matter in which their services might gratify him. He replied, "that he had nothing new to say beyond what he had ever been saying—that by attending to themselves, they would most gratify him and his, as well as themselves, in all they might do, though they might even make no promise now; but that if they neglected themselves, and were unwilling to follow in the track pointed out in all that he had said to them up to this last occasion, all that they could do would be of no avail, however much, and however earnestly, they might promise at the present moment." Crito assented to this advice, but in his eagerness still to do some act of kindness to his revered friend, subjoined, "But in what way are we to bury you?" This mode of speaking of his burial, gives occasion to a very characteristic reproof from him, of this solicitude on the part of Crito. "As you please," was his answer, "if at least you can take me, and I do not escape from you." Then gently smiling, and looking off to the surrounding company, he added, "I cannot, my friends, persuade Crito, that I am the Socrates that is now conversing, and ordering every thing that has been said; but he thinks that I am that man whom he will shortly see a corpse, and asks how you should bury me. But what I have all along been talking so much about,—that when I shall have drunk the poison, I shall no longer stay with you, but shall, forsooth, go away to certain felicities of the blest,—this I seem to myself to have been saying in vain, whilst comforting at the same time you and myself. Bail me therefore, to Crito the opposite bail to that which he bailed me to the judges; for he was bail for my staying; but do you be bail for my not staying when dead, but going away; that Crito may hear it more easily, and may not feel aggrieved for me, as if I were suffering something dreadful, when he sees my body either burning, or being interred; nor may say at the burial, that he lays out, or carries out, or interes Socrates. For," he continued, turning himself again to Crito, "be assured, excellent Crito, that the speaking improperly is not only wrong in itself, but also produces some evil in the soul. However, take courage, and say that you are burying my body; and bury it as may be agreeable to you, and in the manner you may hold most lawful."

He then went into another apartment to bathe, Crito following him, whilst the rest of the party awaited his return. After bathing, he received his children,—two of whom were yet little ones, the third a youth,—and the females of his family. Having conversed some time with these in the presence of Crito, and given them his final commands, he dismissed them, and came out again to the assembled friends. This affecting interview had occupied a considerable time, and when he returned, it was near sunset. Socrates had not long sat down, when the officer of the Eleven presented himself, and respectfully intimated to him that the fatal moment was at hand. The noble and gentle demeanour of the philosopher during his imprisonment had won upon this man; and used as he had been to the scenes of execration and horror within those walls, he was struck by the contrast in the case of Socrates, and bursting into tears as he gave his message, turned himself away, and retired. Socrates himself was touched by this demonstration of considerate feeling. He cordially returned the salutation, promising a ready compliance with the order. Then addressing the company, he observed, "How courteous the man is! through all the time he would come to me, and would converse with me sometimes, and was the best of men; and now how generously does he weep for me!" He then called for the poisoned cup. Crito's affection would still have delayed it, for he urged that the sun was not yet gone down, and that others on the like occasions had not used such despatch, but had supped and drunk beforehand as they pleased. Socrates answered that this might be reasonable for others; for him it was reasonable not to do so; and persisted in requiring the cup to be brought. The process of bruising the hemlock took some time; but at length the man who was to administer the poison came with it now ready for the draught. He calmly inquired what he was to do; and, being told that he was only to walk about after drinking it, until he found a heaviness in the legs, and then to lie down, he took the cup into his hand without the slightest change of colour or of countenance. But before he put it to his lips, partly, it seems, from religious feeling, and partly in humour, he further asked whether he might make a libation to any one from the cup. Nor did even his usual quaint manner of putting a question, which he knew would somewhat surprise the hearer, forsake him on this occasion; for he looked at the man, at the same time, with that peculiar glance usual to him, which his contemporaries jocosely designated by a word denoting its resemblance to the manner in which the bull glares around him with the head downward. Learning that the whole draught was not more than sufficient for the fatal purpose, he said, "At any rate one may, and ought to pray to the gods, that the migration hence to those regions may be prosperous; which indeed I do pray, and so may it be!" With these words, he drank off the poison with the most perfect composure and readiness.

At the sight of this, the bystanders could no longer command their emotions. Their tears flowed profusely. Some rose up from their seats,—Crito set the example,—and covered their faces, to give vent to their sorrow. Apollodorus sobbed aloud. He gently expostulated with them for this outbreak of grief, saying, "What are you doing, my friends, so strangely? I indeed sent away the women not least on this account, that they might not offend in such a way; for I have heard that one ought to die amidst auspicious sounds: I pray you, therefore, be tranquil, and bear up." This rebuke had the effect of repressing their tears. The heaviness which he had been led to expect from the working of the poison now began to come on, and he left off walking, and reclined, with his face upward, and covered over. The torpor gradually spread towards the upper regions of the body,—the lower parts becoming, one after the other, congealed, and insensible,—until it reached the heart. In this interval, he uncovered himself, and said, "Crito, we owe a cock to Esculapius; pay it, I pray you, and neglect it not;" intimating probably that now all the diseases of life were healed, and that he was restored to real and pure existence by the death of the body. These were his last words. Crito asked whether he had any thing more to say, but received no answer. There was no further indication of life.

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1 Plato, Phaedo, p. 63, d. et sqq. 2 Ibid. p. 115, a. et sqq. 3 Ibid. Thus died Socrates, when he had now completed his seventieth year, B.C. 400, or 399, in the full vigour of a healthy old age; happy in his own estimation, and in that of his admiring disciples, in having terminated his life in so glorious a manner, with unimpaired faculties of mind and body, and after a defence sustained with so much truth, and justice, and fortitude.

His death spread dismay at the moment among those who had been most conspicuous in their attachment to the philosopher, as they naturally dreaded the overflowings of that malignant spirit which had swept down their master. The chief of these appear to have fled to Megara, where they could reckon on finding a refuge from Athenian hostility, and a home with their fellow-disciple, the friendly Euclid. It is remarkable, however, that Isocrates, timid as he was by nature, should not have scrupled to remain at Athens, and to testify his affectionate regret for his master, by appearing the next day in public, clothed in mourning. But with the fall of its great victim, the spirit of persecution was sated for a time. An act had been perpetrated, to which the eyes of all Greece would be bently turned; and the greatness of the sacrifice seems at the moment to have absorbed the attention of its agents and instruments, in the contemplation of it and its possible effects. If we may believe the representation of subsequent writers, shame and repentance soon followed the cruel act; and those who were most ostensibly involved in its guilt, were either banished or sentenced to death, or laid violent hands on themselves. Of the banishment of Anytus, and the death of Melitus, we are told by Laertius, that Antisthenes was the immediate cause. In what way he was instrumental to the death of Melitus, is not stated. But with regard to Anytus, Antisthenes is said to have occasioned his banishment, apparently without the intention of doing so, by a stroke of practical humour. For meeting with some young men from Pontus, inquiring for Socrates, whose fame had induced them to visit Athens, he conducted them to Anytus, who, as he observed to them, was "wiser than Socrates;" upon which, the indignation of the bystanders was excited, and they drove Anytus forth from the city. He fled to Heraclea; but there found no peace, being forced by public proclamation to leave the city forthwith. Though, however, these individuals soon after received the retribution due to their offence, it would not follow that they suffered from their countrymen on account of the part they had taken against Socrates. The ascendancy of another political faction, (and Athens was ever fluctuating between contending parties), would be quite sufficient to account for their overthrow and desperation. On the other hand, the testimony of Plutarch is explicit to the point, though he mentions no individuals by name, that the sycophants who had assailed Socrates became the objects of popular hatred to such a degree, that none would associate with them in any way, not even to return them an answer when addressed by them, and that at last they hanged themselves, being no longer able to endure the public execration. His friends, indeed, performed the last obsequies to his remains; but his fellow-citizens afterwards concurred in honouring him, by erecting a brazen statue of him, the work of Lysippus, in the Pompéum, and expressing their sorrow, by closing the public gymnasia for a while.

This at any rate is certain, that persecution, as it ever does, overwrought its part in the case of Socrates. It oppressed, indeed, the individual, but it gave the seal of martyrdom to the cause in which he had been engaged. It produced a temporary intimidation, under which men would hear less of the name and teaching of Socrates openly avowed, but throughout which the admiration and love of the heroic philosopher would be cherished in secret, and his doctrine would be fostered in the shade, to appear in the sunshine of a future day. If the Athenians had desired to plant the root of philosophy in their city, they could not more effectually have done so, than by their violence against Socrates. Such, in fact, was the result. Philosophy henceforth obtained an Athenian naturalization and name; and the schools of Athens may date their period of nearly a thousand years from this memorable act, which, in its intent and spirit, fiercely but blindly endeavoured to extinguish there the very profession of philosophy.

The cause, however, in which Socrates had been engaged, was too true, for any opposition to it, though conducted with the greatest prudence, to have been long successful. It had already advanced too far, and interested too many persons in the maintenance of it, to be put down by a sudden blow. The burning of a book, or a formal condemnation of the opinions of a writer, are but futile means, as experience shews, of suppressing obnoxious doctrines. How much less could opposition avail, where, as in the case of Socrates, the offending doctrines had been scattered over, not the pages of a book, but the strenuous exertions of a long life,—already engraved in characters which no obliterating hand could reach, and doubtless so worked into many a mind, as not to be distinguishable from its own proper convictions,—doctrines too, so confirmed by the noble example of their teacher, in carrying them out to their full consequences by his death? For the death of Socrates, it should be observed, was not simply a test of his sincerity in his teaching. It was this, and still more. It was the ultimate and decisive opposition to those false principles, against which every action and discourse of his life had been directed. He had been all along exposing the presumptuousness and vanity of the principles on which men ordinarily judged and acted. He was now further to shew, that this opposition on his part was not to be daunted by those principles, when set in formidable array against his own life; and that, professing a low estimate of the present life, he would not disown or shrink from that profession at the moment of greatest trial.

If we inquire, accordingly, what was the substance of the positive teaching of Socrates, we must address ourselves to the contemplation of his active life, and his resigned patient death. He had no design of establishing philosophy as a literary pursuit or intellectual pastime; though he probably foresaw, that that taste for inquiry into truth which he was ever awakening, must soon lead to the formation of a philosophical literature at Athens. He already witnessed, indeed, the commencement of such a literature, the result of this excitement, if it be true that he had read the Lysis of Plato, and observed respecting it, "How much the young man makes me say that I never said!" He wished rather to divert men from the vanity of setting themselves up as philosophers, and make them employ their thoughts in learning and investigating, instead of prematurely commencing at once as well-informed persons and teachers of others, with crude and superficial notions and principles.

If we look, then, to the course of his practical teaching,—to the general tenor of his conversations and actions, and the example throughout of his life and death,—we shall find that his whole labour was directed to the establishment of true moral and religious principles, in opposition to the false and mischievous principles which he observed, were commonly acted upon and avowed in the world. The excellence and supremacy of self-knowledge was what he was ever inculcating; and of self-knowledge, not as a matter of intellectual curiosity, or for its value as a science, but in order to self-government and to happiness. He found that this was the last kind of knowledge which men ever thought of acquiring; that they had, in fact, no concern about it; or that if they were reminded of its necessity, they presumed on their possession of it already. His first effort, then, was to open the minds of men to a perception of the value of this knowledge, and of their own need of it. The questions which he would put—the refutations which he addressed to the various propositions or conclusions elicited from others in the course of his conversations—the perplexities to which he would reduce them—and the unsatisfied state in which he would commonly leave them, after exciting their doubts—all had a direct tendency to convince men of the insufficiency of their intellectual acquirements, and of their want of some more adequate and availing information. To the same purport was his disparagement of physical science, and of all merely speculative knowledge, in comparison with that which was useful for human life. For he was far from an utilitarian, in the modern sense of that term. He did not value particular studies, because they ministered to the necessities or conveniences of human life, or undervalue them because they had no such bearing. But he saw that his clever and ingenious countrymen were studious of intellectual refinement—that they delighted in the specious, and the admirable, and the sublime, more than in the solid and the unostentatious qualifications of the good member of a private family and the useful citizen. He was aware, too, from his own acquaintance with the existing physical philosophy, how imperfect that knowledge was, how entirely hypothetical, and incapable of practical application. We must make allowance, therefore, in estimating his objection to speculative science, for the polemical spirit in which he assailed a branch of knowledge then, at once, so barren, and so encroaching in its claims on public attention. We must regard him as preparing the way for the due cultivation of the other, the higher as well as more important knowledge, that of man's own nature, then so little thought of, and so neglected. This seems to be invariably his design on every occasion, whatever may be the immediate purport of his discourse.

When he came to direct the minds of men, once awakened to the importance of moral study, to the subject itself of human nature, he had to encounter on the very threshold the most perverse notions. All their maxims of life were based on the absolute importance of the present life. The body, and its present appetites and desires, were regarded as the whole of man. The tyrant, in the enjoyment of absolute power to gratify every passion without restriction or penalty, was considered as the apt representation of the highest human felicity. All men's plans of life accordingly were directed to the acquisition of power for themselves. They studied to improve their external circumstances, and not themselves. Then their religion was merely the fear of mysterious powers influencing the prosperous or adverse events of the present world, and which were therefore to be conciliated or appeased by offerings and vows. Socrates set himself strenuously to refute these vain presumptions. He argued the folly of supposing, that men really accomplished their own wishes in gratifying each prevailing inclination. He showed, that whilst they did what they pleased at the moment, they did not in fact attain that pleasure which they sought; and led them therefore to surmise, that there must be some end of human pursuit beyond the gratification of the passions, and further, some ultimate end to the whole sum of the active energies of the soul, beyond the present life, and distinct from all bodily associations. But he not only suggested such a thought by shewing the reasonings on the opposite view of human life to be inconsequential and absurd; he further practically refuted the prevailing fallacies on the subject, by his own example on the other side. He proved to the world, by divesting himself of all the worldly accessories of happiness, and depending exclusively on the internal resources of his mind and character, and by his perpetual cheerfulness under those privations, that happiness did not result from externals, or from the body, but from the internal nature of man, nor from any thing positive and absolute in that nature, so much as from its state of discipline and command over the appetites of the body. Theories of morals were yet to be formed. It remained for Plato to erect the true and sublime standard of human conduct in the perfections of the Divinity, and for Aristotle afterwards to shew the application of the law of habits to the subject. Socrates has the merit of having prepared the way for these developments of the subject, by demonstrating the folly of seeking the ideal of happiness in any enjoyment of the body, or in any thing present.

So also as to religion, though he could not advance, in his conceptions of the retributive justice of the Divine Being, beyond the circle of darkness which limits the natural observation of man, he proved the absurdity of supposing that mere external punishment was the only suffering undergone for offences committed. Secret faults, as he pointed out, did not escape with impunity. He appealed to the remorse of conscience, to shew how surely, however invisibly, wrong doing was visited with its punishment; and whilst in his own mind he concluded that there would be a future state, in which each man would receive the merited consequences of his actions, he must also have excited, in the minds of his hearers, a strong though undefined apprehension of a period of general retribution after death in another world. At least they must have seen that it was not so certain, as they may have once supposed, that though a present punishment may have been evaded, punishment would not follow at a future day. In well-disposed minds, there would thus be a foundation laid of a doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Under the teaching of Socrates himself, this truth, perhaps, would scarcely assume the form of a doctrine, so distinctly as it is stated by Plato. It would be simply a practical conviction. And thus Socrates himself probably scarcely propounded it in formal terms, nor without those qualifying doubts which both his memorialists describe him as joining with its enunciation. But Plato, following him, took up the doctrine as a formal truth, and worked it up into a perfect theory, with the formal array of argument and didactic exposition.

There was nothing, indeed, of system in any part of the teaching of Socrates. In the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon, we have probably a very complete specimen of the substance of what he taught, and, in the desultory manner in which the subjects of the several conversations there given are introduced, of the actual way in which he would throw out his questions and reflections on different points, as they happened to suggest themselves on each occasion. There we find the various duties of the good man and the good citizen summarily sketched, without the formality of statement or systematic connexion. He inquires what is just, or pious, or temperate,—and he leads his hearers to consider the true definitions of the several virtues; but it is chiefly with the view of laying open their mistakes and confusion of thought on the subject, and to divert them from sophistical disquisitions on virtue, to the discharge of virtue in all its parts, rather than to give any precise idea of it himself.

Certainly there are grave objections to the morality which he taught. It did not enjoin that perfect purity of sentiment and action, which, judging from its general excellence, we might perhaps have expected. It forbade excesses of licentiousness as evil, but it did not also forbid licentious indulgence as altogether vicious, or fix its stigma on those monstrous forms of vice which polluted Grecian society. Nor, again, did it give a right tone to the resentful feelings. It enjoined the requiting of ill to enemies,—placing retaliation as a duty on a par with the return of kindness to friends. With these exceptions, the morality inculcated by Socrates, founded as it was on the indications in man's nature of a destiny beyond the present world, bears strongly the marks of the law written by the finger of God, and proves that the Creator has not left Himself without witness, where the light of his revelation has not shone. Supposing even that those great truths, thus taught, were the broken planks from the wreck of a primitive Faith, floated down on the stream of ages, we must yet believe a providential disposition, in the fact of that ready acceptance which they could obtain with one, brought up, as Socrates was, amidst the grossest corruptions of heathenism. His was an instance, how the unsophisticated heart responds to the notices of divine truth, when once they are duly presented to it; and how, wherever there is a sincere pursuit of right, the moral eye will be enabled to pierce the surrounding gloom, and to discern, for the most part, the true outline and form of right.

It is observable, however, that, whilst Socrates correctly perceived that the laws of religion and morality possessed a sacred importance, independently of all positive enactments of men, he yet appeals to the laws of the state for the particular rules of religious and moral duty. When instructing Euthydemus on the worship of the gods, he cites the Delphic oracle, which enjoined the law of the state as the rule of acceptable worship. When asked by the sophist Hippias what is just, he answers, that it is what the laws prescribe. Such reference was perfectly natural in a Greek, accustomed as Greeks were to view every thing in subordination to politics, and to regard the duty of the citizen as paramount to every other duty. This feeling had its influence with Socrates, and induced him to regard the authority of the state as possessing in itself a moral force of obligation. The respect which he throughout shewed to the laws of his own state, was that of one who not only obeyed what they commanded, but strictly reverenced their authority. We must not, however, suppose, that he thus intended to place positive and moral laws on the same footing. The reference which he gives to the written law of the state, as the directory on questions of religion and morals, is the substitute in his teaching for a systematic development of the moral and religious duties. The law of the state presented, to one who had no thought of systematizing the subject for himself, the best expression of those great truths which he was drawing forth from the higher source of man's eternal nature. He is content to point out to his hearers, in a general way, the wisest and readiest collection of rules for those cases which came under the great comprehensive duties of piety and justice. Evidently he is not treating the subject with the exactness of the theorist, in assigning this importance to the law of the state; but he is enforcing the use of the law of the state as an authoritative practical guide to right conduct.—His internal view of religion, for example, was founded on observation of the signs of benevolent design throughout the material and intellectual world; and he was thus led to the acknowledgment of a pure Theism. But in his conduct, he knew not how to realize the obligations which the perception of this truth imposed on him. With his reverence, accordingly, for the laws of his country, as well as under the influence of that superstition to which his piety habitually verged, he sought a direction to his religious sentiments from the authority of the state, and thus in practice was a polytheist.—His object was further to prevent men from trusting to the conceits of their own judgment in matters of conduct, and to recommend a proper deference to the wisdom and authority of their ancient laws, then so presumptuously slighted by each vain pretender to superior prudence and political sagacity.

In assailing, as Socrates did, the follies of his countrymen by the dexterity of an acute reason, he was ever exposing their ignorance. The impression on his own mind appears to have been, that men erred rather from the want of due information respecting their moral condition, than from the perverseness of their will,—from folly, rather than from vice. Himself an accurate observer of human life, and with a disposition to follow the path of duty wherever it might lead him, he had in his own case felt the importance of intellectual cultivation, in order to right conduct. From his own circumstances, accordingly, and a natural predilection for those exercises of the mind which were his habitual pursuit, he overrated this importance; and, instead of simply regarding the information of the mind as a necessary ingredient in moral improvement, he made it all in all. Thus, according to him, wisdom or philosophy was virtue, and ignorance and folly, vice. He carried this view of morals so far, as to place the knowledge of duty on a footing with the knowledge of arts. Nor was he even startled with the paradox, that if such were the case—if the knowledge of right were the whole of morality—there would be less immorality in intentional wrong conduct, than in unintentional done through ignorance.

1 Xenoph. Mem. iv. 8, 11. Ἰκανὸς δὲ καὶ λόγῳ ἐπιστῶν τε καὶ διορίζοντας τὰ ποιήματα, κ. τ. λ. 2 Xenoph. Mem. iv. 4, 9. Ἀλλὰ μά δε, ἐφ' ὅσον ἄξιον, πρὶν γ' ἂν αὐτὸς ἀποφέρῃ, ὅ τι νομίζεις τὸ δέκαμον εἶναι ἀρετῆς γὰρ, ἐπὶ τῶν Ἑλλήνων καταγεγαλακτέων, ἐρώτων μεν καὶ ἐλύχνων πάντας, αὐτὸς δε οὐδεὶς ἐλλον ἐπιχειρεῖ ἀρετῆς ὑπόθεσιν ἀποφεύγεσθαι περὶ ὀδοῦ, κ. τ. λ. 3 Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2, 16; ii. 6, 35. Aristot. Rhet. ii. 23. 4 Ibid. iv. 3, 16. Also, i. 3, 1. 5 See, in the "Crito" of Plato, a beautiful address, put into the mouth of Socrates, from the personified majesty of the laws. 6 Xenoph. Mem. iv. 2, 20. Δοκεῖ δὲ σοι μάθειν καὶ ἐπιστήσει τῶν διατάξεων εἶναι, ὥσπερ τῶν γραμματικῶν, κ. τ. λ. Seneca, arguing also the need of moral information for the performance of duty, refers to the same illustration of morality from the arts, as that given by Xenophon, to show that there is no real analogy between the two subjects:—"Vis scire," he says, "quam dissimilis sit harum artium condicio et hujus? In illis excusatius est, voluntate peccare, quam causi; in hac maxima culpa est, sponte delinquere. Quod dico, tale est Grammaticae non erubescit solecismum, si sciens facit: erubescit, si nesciens. Medicus, si deficere aegrum non intelligit, quantum ad artem, magis pecat, quam si se intelligere dissimulat. At in hac arte vivendi, turpior volentium culpa est." Ep. 95, 8. He seems to have had the argument of Socrates, as given by Xenophon, (Mem. iv. 2, 20,) in his view. So also Aristotle says: Καὶ ἐν μὲν τέχνῃ ὁ ἐκδιδόντων ἀπερίπατος περὶ ἀφορμῆς ἤτοι, ὥσπερ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἀρετῶν. Eth. Nic. vi. 5. Thus vice was in no case, in the view of Socrates, an act of the will, but of the mistaken judgment. He did not mean by this to assert, that men did not act wrong willingly in the particular instances of misconduct, so as not to deserve blame for their misconduct; but that the seat of vice was in the perverse understanding,—for that the will was invariably towards good. If, accordingly, vice may be regarded as seated in the understanding, and not in the heart, it would follow, that that man is less vicious in principle, who knows what is right and acts wrong, than one who acts wrong without knowing what is right. The former alternative, however, was impossible, according to his theory. For knowledge, by its intrinsic excellence, must prevail over every other principle. So far was Socrates led by the working of his method, and his observation of the ignorance and folly of men, to overlook facts, at least, as evident on the other side,—the plain instances of men acting wrong in spite of their better knowledge, and of greater blame assigned to wrong thus done in spite of knowledge. His error is further to be traced to a confusion of the ideas of right and happiness, in the term “good.” That the will is, by the original constitution of man, invariably towards good, if we take good in the sense of real interest or happiness, is quite true; but it is far from true, if we include the notion of right in that of good. Men, when they take even perverted views of their happiness, may be regarded as unconsciously desiring the real happiness of their nature. The will, therefore, in this sense, may be said to be always towards good. But in the latter sense of the term “good”—that in which it includes right,—the contrary rather is true. Men see the light, but love darkness rather than light; and the seat of vice is, accordingly, not in the understanding, but in the heart. But there is this justification of the language of Socrates on moral subjects, that the ignorance which he attacked, was, in truth, a vicious and blamable ignorance. Men did not take pains to inform themselves on moral subjects. They neglected themselves, pursuing and professing every other kind of knowledge but that which was most at hand for their acquisition, and most concerned them. Seeing, then, the moral errors into which men ran from this neglect, Socrates not unreasonably set his mark of reprobation no ignorance, as the source of immorality. Immediately, indeed, and ostensibly, he attacked the general ignorance of men, holding out philosophy as the remedy of vice and unhappiness. But the ultimate and real object of his attack all the while was, the immoral disposition, the self-neglect, and the irregular habits of life, from which the incapacity and ignorance of men on moral subjects commonly result. Then, further, it was the ignorance of self, chiefly, that he laboured to remove. He found conceit as to themselves, the prevailing fault of the men of his age and country. And he hoped, by exposing their ignorance on various subjects, to make them question their presumptions relating to their own nature, and character, and duties. Thus would he, in effect, be correcting moral error,—the folly of men persuading themselves and others that they knew what they had never cared to examine, much less to know.

As the peculiar aspect under which he presented the subject of morals arose, in a great measure, from his manner of interrogating in conversation, so the general character of his philosophy is to be sought in its intimate connexion with the peculiar method which he pursued. His philosophy, being essentially colloquial, laid down no positive principles in any particular science, or even any general principles for the conduct of the understanding in scientific or moral inquiries. But it sought to rouse the understanding to a perception of its condition of weakness, and defects, and ignorance, previous to its interrogation of itself; and its acquisition of knowledge, and its strengthening by exercise and discipline. Like the great reformer of modern science, he found nothing duly ascertained in the field of philosophy; hypotheses assumed without examination, truth obscured and confounded under the plausible cover of general terms and vague analogies. Yet every one was fully satisfied with the state of knowledge; every one presumed that he was in possession of the truth. So, too, at this period, as at the time when Bacon proposed his new method, there was a dialectical science in use, available only for disputation and victory, and not reaching the truth of things, or imparting any real knowledge. And, in like manner, in the time of Socrates, as in that of Bacon, this imperfect dialectical science was regarded as the key to every kind of knowledge; and he who could discourse fluently on any given subject, was esteemed the accomplished philosopher. “Of nothing,” as Bacon himself pointedly observes, “were men so scrupulous as lest they should seem to doubt on any subject.”

This state of things formed a strong barrier against any attempt to effect a moral reformation. The way to the heart had to be cleared through a mass of outworks thrown out by the intellect. It only remained, then, for him who would be the moral reformer of his countrymen, to work by means of that very dialectical science which opposed its ramparts and its arms to his progress.

But to have simply used the same method which his contemporaries employed, would have been to revolve in the same perpetual circle. Socrates, indeed, might, by a more skilful use of the same dialectical artifices, have confuted the sophists and others with whom he reasoned. He might have gained the victory in argument, by demonstrating the fallacy of their deductions, or proving the contradictory of their conclusions. But no advance would have been made by such a proceeding towards a detection of the source of the popular errors, the wrong principles themselves, on which men argued and acted. To accomplish this object, then,—to expose the fallacy of wrong principles,—he had to exalt the art of the dialectician to a higher function than that of merely eliciting consequences from given principles.

This attempt accordingly he made. Without instituting any formal method, or teaching any art of discourse,—without, it seems, having any such design in his thoughts,—he yet so far gave a new direction and impulse to dialectical science, as to render it in some measure at least subservient to the investigation of truth. In his hands, it served, if it did nothing more, to raise doubts as to the truth of erroneous principles which before had passed without question, and which the very practice of reasoning from them as axioms, had tended to confirm as fixed and indisputable standards of all other truths.

We must not suppose, that definition and induction were unknown as parts of dialectics before Socrates; or that Socrates was absolutely the first to discover and propound their nature and use. The expressions of Aristotle might suggest this supposition. For he says particularly, that there were two things which one might ascribe to Socrates, Definition, and Inductive Reasoning. What Aristotle probably intends to say, is, that Socrates was the first to improve the existing method of dialectics, by employing definition and induction as the principal engines of discussion, and illustrating their nature and use more than ever had been. Socrates done before him. He gave them, in fact, a body and a vitality, by applying them to the realities with which men had to do in their daily life. Instead of employing them for the purpose of verbal distinction, or for the expression of some abstract and barren generality, he applied them to limit the vague notions entertained about matters of practical concern, and to bring opinions into harmony with ordinary experience. To the dialecticians before him, Definition and Induction were the commencement of their discussions. They unsuspectingly presumed on the logical processes involved in these instruments of discourse, as already sufficiently accomplished. They attempted, indeed, to define; but they took such definitions as they found at hand,—of course the most superficial. General principles they scarcely thought of establishing; but they assumed such as were the current maxims of the day. And the rest of their discourse proceeded from these crude and unscientific elements. But Socrates did not profess to give definitions, or to have arrived at any positive certain principles, from which, as data, other truths might be demonstrated.

He disclaimed, as has been already pointed out, the design or the ability to teach. He was only an inquirer, himself knowing nothing. When pressed, as by the sophist Hippias, to give his own account of the particular subject about which he is importunately questioning, he evades the point, and recurs to his established way of proceeding by interrogatories. He is constantly, that is, endeavouring to rise to a correct definition of the subject under discussion. He presents it as the end to be attained by the whole discussion; leading the person questioned from point to point, until he brings him close to the true and exact idea of the subject. So also does he employ Induction. He cites some instance,—commonly some coarse and very familiar one, from the workshop of the smith or the shoemaker, or from the culinary art, and the like,—as opposite to the point under debate; and thus brings the principle itself, on which the dispute turns, to the test of actual experience. This was so much his manner, that it was made a standing jest by those against whom he so triumphantly employed it. They complained of his ever repeating the same thing; ever talking of "carpenters, and smiths, and fullers, and cooks, and such like nonsense." But he was not deterred by the scoff, which in reality proved the point and force of his reasonings. He replied, that about the same things, he must persist in saying the same things; unless it could be shewn, that a person being asked, whether twice five were ten, should answer differently at different times. Thus, he would continually recur to his well-known illustrations from common life, hackneyed as they were in his own use, and low and trifling as they might seem.

From this his constant practice of bringing men to the test of definition and familiar instance, on every subject discussed, he had been regarded by the Thirty as the teacher of an "art of discourse," and as therefore obnoxious to a law which they had made (chiefly with a view to him), forbidding the teaching of such an art. Such a restriction, however, could not apply to Socrates; since, as we have seen, he professed no art; he imparted no method of argument; and, to have silenced him, they must, as he showed them, have absolutely prevented his asking the most simple and familiar question. Here it was the point of an apt illustration that had provoked this sally of resentment from Critias and Charicles, two of the Thirty. It had been reported to them that he had drawn attention to their acts of violence, by asking, what would be thought of the herdsman under whose care an herd should be diminished. On this occasion, Charicles, after vainly remonstrating with him against the practice of his daily conversations, shewed the point of the illustration, by bidding him beware lest he also should make the number of the herd still less.

So far, indeed, was Socrates from instituting any method either of argument or of investigation, that the very definitions and instances which he employed were of a popular character, adapted for refutation of error rather than for conviction of the truth,—such as to place difficulties in the way of a dogmatic opponent, rather than didactic illustrations of any particular subject. He was engaged in repelling dogmatism. And nothing is of more avail for this purpose than analogies; such instances, that is, as test the truth of an assumption in one case, by its application to another of the same kind. Direct instances, shewing experimentally the truth or falsehood of an assumption, may be difficult to be found; and, in their use, they require a particular acquaintance with the subject itself, in order that their application may be seen. For example, if it were desired to expose a false theory of government, some fact of history must be adduced, and its bearing on the theory in question must be distinctly pointed out. But an analogous instance does not require this intimate acquaintance with the subject itself, in illustration of which it is brought. It shews at once that a given hypothesis is either tenable, or not tenable,—that it is verified or not verified in some parallel case, and therefore may be granted or not, in the subject about which the argument is. Only it is necessary, for this purpose, that the analogous instance should be a familiar one,—that the exhibition of the principle in question should be clear and striking in the instances adduced. For example, to set forth the evil of tyranny, it would be quite enough to point out, as Socrates did, the case of a herdsman under whose keeping an herd should be deteriorated; and the inference would be immediate, that a career of confiscation and blood was no evidence of a good government. Again, whether it were wise to choose magistrates by lot, would be a difficult question to be decided by the direct evidence of facts bearing on the point. But when Socrates referred to the absurdity of appointing a steersman by lot, it was at once evident, that there were cases in which this mode of appointing important officers of the state would be mischievous. Such then was the kind of evidence which Socrates was constantly adducing from analogous instances to the point in question;—an evidence, not conveying any positive instruction in the theories of the subjects to which it was applied; but removing false impressions respecting them, and opening the mind to the reception of the truth. It was an admirable method of unteaching prejudices or vain assumptions, and of silencing the dogmatist,—a method, powerful at once for the refutation of error, and the conviction of ordinary minds incapable of being instructed by a more direct and positive evidence. Such, accordingly, was the method practised by Socrates. In pursuing any argument, "he would proceed," as Xenophon observes, "by the most admitted principles; considering this to be the sound basis of discussion. And therefore," adds Xenophon, "he, far beyond all I ever knew, when he spoke, carried conviction to his hearers;" and he would say, "that Homer had ascribed to Ulysses the merit of being a sound orator, on account of his ability to conduct a discussion, by reasoning from such principles as men acknowledged."

It was seldom, however, if ever, that Socrates avowedly argued a point. Professing to know nothing himself, he constantly challenged others as to what they professed to know. He put his questions to each person with whom he conversed, very much as the skillful experimenter in these days does to nature, so as to lead to the affirmative or negative of a particular hypothesis whose truth he would investigate. Having obtained an answer, he proceeds analytically, to found on that another question, studiously directed, in like manner, to elicit the answer which might serve for further inquiry, and so on, until he has reduced the first proposition to some simple elements, clearly shewing the truth or falsehood of the original assumption. It was as truly an experimental process on men's minds, as that which the modern investigator performs on the subject which he examines. Those analogical instances in which he so much delighted, served the purpose of this analysis, no less than direct and proper instances, such as belong to him who investigates experimentally the nature of a particular subject.

For analogies detect the state of the mind to which they are addressed. They at once call forth and illustrate its principles and habits of thought, and enable the experimenter to avail himself of the existing resources in that mind for effecting the desired conviction. They furnish him with a clue to the course which he should follow in carrying on his analysis. This was that midwifery of the mind which Socrates used sportively to describe as his peculiar occupation.

In his conversation, for example, with Euthydemus, who prided himself in having cultivated his mind by his own independent study of books, of which he had formed a large collection,—he first drew attention to the singularity of the young man's conceit, by representing him as coming before the public, with high professions of being self-taught, and putting the parallel case of a candidate for some medical office, who should announce that he had studiously avoided even the appearance of having learned the art of medicine, and ask for the office on the promise of endeavouring to learn the art by his future practice. Interest being excited by this illustration of the absurdity, he next led his hearers to see the absurdity of entering on political affairs without preparation, by referring to the fact of the severe application and discipline undergone by persons who seek reputation in such accomplishments as flute-playing or riding. Then, having gained over Euthydemus as a more willing listener, he proceeds to question him as to the use for which he had collected so many books. He throws out the presumption that they have been collected with a view to enrich the mind with virtue. Supposing this to be granted, he goes on to interrogate Euthydemus as to the particular excellence of which he is in quest. He enumerates several particulars; and these being rejected, he comes at last to excellence in the art of government, which the young man concedes to be the object of his desire. This gives an opening to inquire into the qualifications necessary for such excellence. He discovers, by the answers of Euthydemus, that he conceives himself master of those moral virtues which he is induced to admit are indispensable to the good citizen. By a series of questions, however, relating to particular actions, he forces Euthydemus to admit, that what is just in one case, is unjust in another, and to contradict himself in his successive statements as to the comparative criminality of voluntary and involuntary acts of injustice. What, then, triumphantly asks the philosopher, think you of a person who is so inconsistent with himself? The conclusion is inevitable; and Euthydemus is constrained to own, that "he knew not what he thought he knew." But Socrates, not yet satisfied, presses him further to explain his notion of that ignorance which he had thus displayed; and finds, that notwithstanding his confession of his want of right instruction, he yet presumes on his possession of self-knowledge. Another question forces him to abandon this position. The young man then asks to be put in the way of self-examination. Here at once his false presumptions are exposed to the searching analysis of Socrates. The inquiry turns on a knowledge of the goods and evil of life. Euthydemus enumerates one thing after another as good; and Socrates immediately subjoins some counter evil as attending it; until Euthydemus at last gives up his confidence in his own opinion, and declares that he knows not now what he ought to pray for to the gods.

Again, Socrates presents before him pointedly the evidence he had thus given of having been diverted from consideration of the subject by the strong presumption of his knowledge of it. But that he may leave no room for escape, he calls on him, in conclusion, to state his opinion as to the nature of democracy, which at least, he conceived, Euthydemus, as a candidate for public office in a popular state, must have studied. And in like manner, he extorts from his successive answers a further proof of his ignorance and incompetence to the duties for which he had designed himself.

The effect thus produced is what Plato compares to the numbing touch of the torpedo.1 The mental powers of the individual thus tried were for the moment paralyzed. He found that he only committed himself further by renewed efforts; and "began to think," as Euthydemus says of himself at the close of the conversation to which we have just referred, "whether it were not best for him to be silent, as he ran the hazard of appearing absolutely to know nothing."

From the instance just given, it will appear that a current of irony pervaded these experimental argumentations of Socrates. There was irony mingled with earnest conviction, in that very disclaimer of all knowledge with which he set out. It was a mask, behind which he could hurl his weapons of assault on the boasted knowledge of others, whilst at the same time he expressed his serious view of the real ignorance of man, and the necessity of coming with a simple unprejudiced mind to the acquisition of truth. In the prosecution, however, of his method of analysis by interrogation, irony was indispensable for the success of his inquiry. For his object was to obtain the truth from the mouth of the person interrogated, not to state it himself; and where he did state it accordingly, it was necessary to put it in such a form as to try whether it was the opinion or not of that person,—whether he really thought so, or adopted it on the judgment of his questioner. An ironical statement answers this purpose. It conceals the teacher, and enables him to judge, according as the hearer applies it, what the state of the hearer's mind is, and to argue the point in question, not on premises laid down by himself, but the admissions of the other. The hearer, too, is taken by surprise. The air of seriousness which the ironical manner sets out with, and the absurdity involved, on second thought, in carrying out the supposition of a serious intent, in their united effect, provoke the smile of surprise, and win attention. As Socrates was engaged, too, in presenting unacceptable conclusions,—bringing home to the self-conceited evidences of their real ignorance,—it was necessary for him to disguise, as much as possible, the conclusion to which he was tending. He had to assume, therefore, the principles on which those with whom he conversed were reasoning and acting, and reduce these to an absurdity, by applying them as true to some evident case of ordinary experience. The skilful use made by Socrates of this irony was a powerful enforcement, in itself, of the convictions which he desired to leave on the minds of his hearers. He brought the aid of a delicate ridicule to the support of an argument, and thus exhibited the desired conclusion under a form, which, whilst it pleased the hearers, shamed them into an acknowledgment of its truth.

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1 Plato, Meno., 80 a. t. iv. p. 348. But this irony, and the analogical instances over which it was thrown, were but approaches to that end which Socrates appears always to have had in view in his conversations,—the ascent to accurate general notions of each object of thought. He was always working his way towards an exact definition of the idea on which the discussion turned. Each instance which he adduced was a step in this progress, diminishing by its light some portion of that obscurity and confusion of thought with which he found the subject invested. He did not, indeed, reach the point which he had in view. Dialectical science was in too rude a state at present for the attainment of its perfect end. Socrates rather set an admirable example of the perseverance and energy with which the end should be pursued, than a perfect model of the method of pursuing it. His very method, indeed, confesses its own imperfection, in stopping just at the point where the way seems to be opened, and leaving the subject negatively, rather than positively defined.

This constant pursuit of exact definition is an indication of the antisceptical bent of the mind of Socrates. The foundations of morals and of all science were shaken by the speculations of his sophistical predecessors. Opinion was exalted to the prerogative of knowledge. Socrates accordingly put opinion to the test. He explored it experimentally, as it existed in different minds; and he proved it deficient from the standard to which it had been vainly exalted. He found that it vanished before the light of investigation; and, in fact, that in proportion as the fancies and errors of opinion were cleared away, advances were made towards more stable and certain knowledge. This knowledge, accordingly, he continually sought after. He had probably but an indistinct conception of the realities towards which he directed his pursuit. Still he appears constantly to have assumed and fully believed their existence, by steadily proceeding, as we find him to have done, through the various opinions which he encounters in discussion, until he arrives at some more definite form of thought. What Socrates only indistinctly apprehended, Plato afterwards realized in his philosophical system, and ended with existence in his celebrated theory of Ideas. But in the view of his master—this theory was but dimly seen in shadow. Socrates shaped his course towards it, as he more and more limited the extravagancies of popular opinion on the various subjects which he discussed, and excluded whatever was irrelevant and foreign to the real nature of the thing. He threw doubts on what was doubtful, that there might be the less doubt and uncertainty about what remained when the doubtful was removed from a subject.

What appears to have led Socrates into this sound method of proceeding, was, as Aristotle very justly intimates, the firm moral convictions which were the great elements of his mind and character. He felt that there was a reality in the principles of piety, justice, benevolence, and other moral sentiments, which no sophistry could impugn. He not only felt their reality within himself, but he had observed, that however invisible to the outward eye, they produced real effects in the world; that they were not only evidenced in the constitution of nature, but also recognized in those unwritten laws which were found everywhere the same, independently of positive institution, as well as in the enactments of particular states. He looked for the original of these sentiments to the perfect nature of the Divinity; and he held them accordingly to be invariable and true, as the Divinity is invariable and true. Hence he would allow no proper and adequate power of causation but moral design. Material or mechanical causes were in his view but of instrumental efficacy. It was moral sentiment only, the love and pursuit of good, that possessed real power. This alone, he observed, subsisted unchanged and fixed, whilst every thing else was moved by it, and derived its existence from it. It was the neglect of this primary principle in the detail of the physical theory of Anaxagoras, which had offended him in the system of that philosopher. And agreeably to this, Plato tells us of his accounting for his remaining in his prison, from the simple cause of the moral feeling by which he was actuated.

Fixing his eye accordingly on these stable eternal principles, Socrates pressed forward in every discussion towards their attainment. He would never rest in vague general classifications, which involving also much that belonged not to the subject in question, left its nature as undefined as ever. But he proceeded to a further limitation of the generalities on each subject, obliging his hearer to distinguish the subordinate genera included in the more general idea first thrown out, and thus gradually to circumscribe the subject within its proper boundaries. This was the intimate connexion of his logic and ethics. He was engaged throughout in an endeavour to remove the vain presumptions of mere opinion, and to substitute for these a real knowledge, as far as it was attainable, of the subjects themselves. He conceived that if men went astray in their conduct, acting on what they mistakenly thought right, and good, and true, it was only necessary to make them know the truth, and they would then act on their knowledge, as before they acted on mere opinion, and by thus acting attain their happiness. This was but a short-sighted view of the origin of human misconduct and unhappiness, as it did not go beyond the fact of the erroneous judgment of men, to the moral perversion which was the primary cause of their failure in action. As the practical error of men arises from this perversion, it is evidently vain to think to improve their conduct, by merely substituting more correct notions of truth and duty; since this remedy does not reach the source of the malady. Such, however, was the view of Socrates. And hence he laboured, whatever might be the subject of his conversations, to lead men to contemplate the nature of the thing discussed, and to seek to define it to themselves; thus blending the perception of the right and the good in the intellectual apprehension of the truth. Xenophon accordingly remarks the importance attributed by Socrates to the ability of distributing things into genera, on the ground, that by means of this talent "men would become most virtuous, most formed for command, and most able in discourse."

Though Socrates thus endeavoured to render his hearers accomplished in the art of discussion, by directing their attention to Definition, he, as might be expected, in that early state of logical science, did little more than point out the great importance of Definition, and mark the direction in which it should proceed. Were we to take our estimate of what Socrates accomplished in this way from the "Dialogues" of Plato, we must suppose Socrates to have been much more methodical in his discussions, than we should infer from the specimens given by Xenophon. Something perhaps should be allowed for the practical turn of Xenophon's mind, and his comparative inattention to the more abstract part of the discussions of his master, whilst his fellow-pupil, on the other hand, who had an eagle-eye for... theory, however remote and dazzling, would seize every hint that dropped from the lips of Socrates for the indulgence of his speculative imagination. Still Xenophon may be regarded as having presented the most natural, as well as most exact, specimens of the method of Socrates. In the simplicity of his honest admiration and grateful recollection of the instructor and guide of his youth, he evidently records what had most impressed his own mind, both as to the substance and the manner of the conversations of Socrates, without any attempt either at dramatic or theoretic effect. From Xenophon we learn how Socrates appeared to the young Athenian, who, without any theories of his own, approached him, simply with the desire of hearing him, and applying what he might learn from the philosopher to his own improvement. Plato, on the other hand, whilst he also has given a faithful portrait of Socrates in the general outline, (and the faithfulness is shown by its close correspondence with that given by Xenophon,) studied to give effect, at the same time, to his own philosophic sketches, by placing the figure of Socrates in such a light as to harmonize with his own sublime and beautiful ideal of truth.

Thus we see how Socrates was the founder of the moral and logical science of the schools of Athens. He taught nothing positively in either branch of philosophy, but he taught men to inquire, and set them on the right track of inquiry. He trained men to think for themselves, to accept no opinion which should be contradicted by the moral and intellectual principles of their own nature, and to rest in no opinion until they had traced it up to these principles.

An exact logic, and a sound ethical system, would in time naturally result from such a direction of men's minds.

In giving account to themselves of their opinions, men would be led to examine into the connexions and dependencies of their ideas. Observations would be made on the relations of ideas, and of words as their signs and representatives. And such observations methodically stated, would at length constitute a system of logic, such as that which Aristotle brought to light about half a century after the death of Socrates. In the mean time, however, the value of ideas in themselves, apart from their expression by words, would engage attention; and a metaphysical logic,—a logic having for its object the determination of the true notion or idea of a thing, and for its business the discussion of the probabilities or appearances of truth surrounding the matter in question,—would naturally be the first to succeed. Such was the Dialectic of Plato,—a science of discourse or discussion, as its name imports; not a particular science, like the logic which grew out of it, but as general in its comprehension as the method itself of Socrates, of which it was the formal development, and equivalent, therefore, to philosophy in the highest sense of that term, as being a search after the nature of things, or, according to him, a theory of Ideas.

Again, in giving account to themselves of their opinions, men would be led to trace the connexion of their moral sentiments and actions with an internal standard of right, independent of the variations of opinion. The examination of this relation would suggest, in process of time, a system of rules for bringing the variable—the sentiments and actions of the individual moral agent—into accordance with the invariable principles of his moral nature. The first ethics, identical, like the first logic, with philosophy in general, would be employed in carrying the views of men to those great principles themselves,—discussing and removing obstructions to the pure contemplation of the nature of virtue. But the more mature study of ethics, taking up the subject as a separate branch of philosophy, would develop the application of the doctrine of the fixed standard, by shewing throughout the field of man's moral nature, how every moral sentiment is strictly limited by its reference to such a standard. The former is the chief business of Plato's ethical philosophy; the latter, that of Aristotle's—the first tending to a contemplative morality, to a love of the transcendent beauty and excellence of virtue,—the latter, to a theory of active virtue,—to a regulated state of the affections in all the offices of life,—both natural consequences in their order, of that awakening of the reason of men, of which Socrates had been the living instrument.

Socrates, at the same time, by the method which he pursued, taught men the beginning of an art of criticism. From an examination of existing opinions, the transition was natural to the systems of philosophers, and the records of the opinions of men of former days. And, in this respect, Socrates may be regarded as the father of the history of philosophy. Even had the criticism of the writings of philosophers formed no part of his conversations, still he must have prompted such an inquiry by his method of interrogating, and exacting from every one an account of his opinions. But he did more than this. Though not properly erudite, in that sense in which Plato and Aristotle were, he had yet acquainted himself with the doctrines of former philosophers. The chief part of his life was spent with his eye, not on books, but on men. Still, as we are informed by Xenophon, he had read, and had selected, in the course of his reading, whatever he thought valuable in the writings of those before him. Plato, accordingly, has made great part of the conversation of Socrates consist of criticism of the theories of philosophers. Much of this criticism evidently belongs to the richly-various and elaborate learning of the disciple, rather than to the master from whose lips it proceeds. But that Plato is not gratuitously ascribing this kind of learning to Socrates, we see from the manner in which the less erudite disciple refers to the discussions by Socrates of the doctrines of former philosophers. Not only does Xenophon mention, in common with Plato, the comments of Socrates on the more recent system of Anaxagoras, but he refers also to his examination of the great antagonist theories of the older schools, of Parmenides, Xenophanes, Melissus, and others, on the one hand; Heraclitus, Empedocles, and their followers, on the other; though without formally introducing their names.

That various and discordant schools of philosophy should have arisen out of the excitement produced by the energetic call of Socrates to his countrymen, was in the natural course of things. Powerful minds, shaking off the yoke of sloth and indifference, and now at length roused to self-exertion, would, however generally docile to the guidance of a leader, be tempted to try their own powers, and strike out a path for themselves. We are not to wonder, then, that Aristippus, the advocate of pleasure, and Antisthenes, the austere cynic, should have been among the hearers of Socrates, or that Plato should have founded a contemplative mysticism on the sober homely philosophy of his master. Socrates, as we have all along shewn, did not propose any precise system of doctrine to his followers. His mission was accomplished in making them exert themselves. He did not desire that they should think alike, but that all should think and judge for themselves. It is no wonder, therefore, that some should have gone into extravagancies, and that, whilst general good resulted from the excitement, partial evil also should have accompanied it. An Aristippus, or an Antisthenes, could not have issued from the school of Pythagoras. But how much evil generally may have resulted from the abject submission to the authoritative opinions of Pythagoras, in the neglect of self-examina-

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1 Xenoph. Mem. i. 6. 14. Καὶ τῶν ἑστηκόντων τῶν πάλαι σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι κατελείπον ἐν Ἀθήναις γράφειν, ἀναγνώσ- κουσιν τοὺς φιλοσ. διερχομένους, κ.τ.λ. 2 Xenoph. Mem. iv. 7. 1 3 Ibid. i. 1:1416. But whilst we ascribe to Socrates the merit of having given at once the impulse and the character to Grecian philosophy, we must yet single out for special commendation, his admirable services in reviving the forgotten theory of natural religion among his countrymen. Of religion, indeed, as an external system of positive laws enforced by the state, they had, as we have before observed, more than enough. But religion, as a system of truth, was scarcely thought of. When Aristophanes brings on the stage Demosthenes asking Nicias, well-known as Nicias was for his superstitious feeling; ἐν τῷ ὑπὸ ἀρχῇς; "really, then, do you think there are gods?" the allusion is evidently to the real irreligion, which the most rigid and scrupulous worship of the heathen but ill concealed. Resting their belief of a Divine agency in the world on tradition and authority, men omitted to explore the witness of God in their own nature, and in the world around them. Consequently, they were exposed to every objection which the ingenuity of theory, or the folly and wickedness of the world, might suggest to their uninformed credulity, against the positive truth of their religious systems. As infidelity in these days finds its refuge in the belief of an infallible church, and is itself in its turn the miserable refuge from the despotism of the very infallibility before which it crouches in silence; so among the votaries of heathen superstition, the doubts and misgivings of the thoughtful intellect, and the troubled heart, were left to prey on themselves, shut up in abject submission to an external authority, and unprepared for their own defence and support. Socrates addressed a great portion of that practical information, which, in spite of his disclaimer of the office of a teacher, he was ever imparting to all around him, to the remedy of this distempered state of the religious feelings. He saw plainly enough that the vulgar theology could not be defended on the ground of rational evidence. This, therefore, in his respect for the ancient laws and customs of his country, he was content to lean on the sanction of positive institution. A great reverence, he justly thought, was due to the wisdom embodied in ancient laws; and he would not encourage persons wantonly to abandon the presumptions of truth and right naturally belonging to established institutions. At least, he would not have men rashly set up their own notions against the presumptions in favour of the wisdom of other men and other days, recommended as these were by some experience of their stability and use, whilst each man's private opinions had no such sanction, or no equivalent sanction. But he felt also, that the internal sense of religion wanted other support,—that presumptions of human vanity and corruption were, and ever would be, brought to bear against this; and that such assaults could only be repelled by a well-informed reason prepared for the encounter. He therefore provided his hearer with a solid and impregnable argument in favour of the being and providence and moral government of the Deity. The argument was what is now familiarly known as the argument from final causes, or the evidences of almighty design in the fabric and course of nature. For this purpose, he gave an induction of instances from the world without, and from the intellectual and moral constitution of man himself, of admirable design in the adaptation of means to ends. He called upon men, with such evidences of divine benevolence around them, not to wait for any more palpable proof, such as judging from the analogy of nature they had no ground to expect, but to believe in the existence of invisible things from their effects, and from the good received to reverence the Deity its author. The language, indeed, attributed to him by Xenophon, is in remarkable correspondence with that of St. Paul, declaring, that "the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead;" and the tenor of his argument throughout illustrates the inspired observation of the apostle. More particularly we may advert to his striking inculcation of the doctrine of the moral government of God. He refers to the sense of responsibility as in itself an evidence of the existence of a Divine Power to reward and punish; and he points to the pleasure and pain, advantage and disadvantage, respectively consequent on virtuous and vicious conduct, in the course of things, as instances of a perfection of government beyond the power of human laws. The stock of instances has been enlarged by the researches of modern science, and strength has been added to them by their arrangement and combination. But Socrates, after all, has the distinguished merit of having given the argument from final causes an explicit statement and due importance in the proof of natural religion.

When we think that truths of such high import and interest were sedulously propagated for so many years in the place of concourse of the civilized world, we naturally turn from the contemplation of the living philosopher, to ask, what was the result—what was the amount of beneficial influence on the people to whom his mission was addressed. We cannot doubt, that on the whole the influence was great,—that the serious errors of many in regard to the conduct of life were corrected,—their minds opened to consider the great purposes for which they had been born into the world, and to look for happiness, not from transitory sensual enjoyments, but from the sober and vigorous exertion of their powers of thought and action. In some conspicuous instances, indeed, his endeavours strikingly failed. Critias and Alcibiades were known wherever the name of Athens was heard. And their wild and guilty career presented to the public eye a splendid mirror, from which the most unjust censure was reflected on the philosopher himself. But the many instances which must have occurred in humbler life, of his success in the work of moral reformation, are passed over in silence. That there were such instances Xenophon has given us to understand, when he observes, in his simple manner, that Socrates dismissed those who resorted to him, improved by their intercourse with him. To expect, however, any decisive and permanent public improvement from the teaching of the philosopher, would be to overlook the extent and the malignity of heathen corruption. The men of that day, as of the present, had the voice of God distinctly speaking within them, "their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts accusing or excusing them," according to that just description of them which Scripture has set before us. But if they Socrates shut their ears, and hardened their hearts against this divine instruction, how would they listen to one who was ever upbraiding them with their dulness and inattention to his lessons and admonitions? Rather, they would feel towards him, according to that apposite illustration of Plato, as persons dozing towards one that should wake them up, and, after ridding themselves of his disturbance, think quietly to compose themselves to sleep again. For he did not disguise that his mission to them was one of reproof and exhortation—a mission, in fact, from the Deity; and that his real concern, accordingly, was not for himself, but for the success of his mission, lest they should incur the guilt of rejecting a divine gift.

And truly we may regard that energetic call which he was ever sounding in the ears of his countrymen, as a providential warning to the heathen world of the sin and misery of the natural man, trusting to his own imaginations,—how, "changing the truth of God into a lie," he "gives himself over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." As God sent his prophets to his chosen people, to tell them of their transgressions, and bid them "remember the law of Moses his servant;" so in his dealings with the nations of the world, He appears to have raised up, from time to time, individuals from among themselves, heathens still, yet gifted with a purity of moral vision beyond their contemporaries, to retrace the divine outline of their fallen nature, amidst its ruins, and to declare almost authoritatively the indelible but forgotten law of right. Israel rejected its prophets; but through all the perverseness of the people, those prophets prepared the way of the Lord. The heathen world, in like manner, refused to listen to its monitors, its legislators and philosophers; but in spite of their general obduracy and indifference, we cannot but believe that the call was not utterly fruitless. To the original influence of Socrates especially, brought as this was to bear on the great centre of heathen civilization, it may have been in great measure owing, that the light of religious and moral truth was kept alive, however faintly burning, for successive generations, in many a dark abode of superstition; and that in a later day, the doctrine of grace and truth appealed not without effect to the Areopagite of Athens, the jailor of Philippi, and the Roman proconsul at Paphos. He certainly excited a spirit of eager curiosity on moral subjects; as was evidenced in the rise of the schools of philosophy to meet the demands of that spirit, and in the moral character of the disquisitions pursued in them. But this spirit could not have exhausted itself in mere literary discussion. There were doubtless the wavering of anxious minds beyond the precincts of the schools, to be settled; cravings after more safe direction of personal conduct than such as the world around them presented, to be satisfied. Such a state of things would keep men looking for gospel-truth. Some would feel, as Alcibiades is represented by Plato, after a conversation with Socrates, and Euthydemus by Xenophon, at a loss how to pray. And to such the answer of Socrates, as given by Plato, would very indistinctly perhaps, yet not without earnest hope, suggest the high thought, that they must wait until they could be informed by God himself, as to the proper disposition towards God and men; or until one should come to discipline them—to remove the darkness from their eyes, and enable them to discern both good and evil.

Socrates was also the name of an ecclesiastical historian of the fifth century, born at Constantinople in the beginning of the reign of Theodosius: he professed the law and pleaded at the bar, whence he obtained the name of Scholasticus. He wrote an ecclesiastical history from the year 309, when Eusebius ended, down to the year 440; and wrote with great exactness and judgment. His work is to be found in different editions of Eusebius, Sozomenus, and the other Greek writers on the history of the church.