It was not till the superior talents of Pericles had quieted the storms
of war and faction that science, which had in the interval received
great improvement among the Asian Greeks, revived at Athens with new
vigour. Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, the preceptor and friend of Pericles,
bred in all the learning of the Ionian school, is said first to have
introduced what might properly be called philosophy there. To him is
attributed the first introduction in European Greece of the idea of
one eternal, almighty, and all-good Being, or, as he is said, after
Thales, to have expressed himself, a perfect mind, independent of body,
as the cause or creator of all things. The gods received in Greece, of
course, were low in his estimation; the sun and moon, commonly reputed
divinities, he held to be mere material substances, the sun a globe
of stone, the moon an earth, nearly similar to ours. A doctrine so
repugnant to the system on which depended the estimation of all the
festivals, processions, sacrifices, and oracles, which so fascinated the
vulgar mind, was not likely to be propagated without reprehension. Even
the science which enabled men to calculate an eclipse was offensive,
inasmuch as it lowered the importance, and interfered with the profits,
of priests, augurs, interpreters, and seers. An accusation of impiety was
therefore instituted against Anaxagoras; the general voice went with the
prosecutors; and all that the power and influence of Pericles could do
for his valued friend, was to procure him means of escape from Attica.
But while physical and metaphysical speculation engaged men of leisure,
other learning had more attraction for the ambitious and needy. Athens
always was the great field for acquiring fame and profit in this line;
yet those who first attained eminence in it were foreigners there,
Gorgias of Leontini in Sicily, Prodicus of the little island of Ceos,
and Hippias of Elis. All these are said to have acquired considerable
riches by their profession. Their success invited numbers to follow
their example; and Greece, but far more especially Athens, shortly
abounded with those who, under the name of sophists, professors of
wisdom, undertook to teach every science. The scarcity and dearness of
books gave high value to that learning which a man with a well-stored
mind, and a ready and clear elocution could communicate. None, without
eloquence, could undertake to be instructors; so that the sophists,
in giving lessons of eloquence, were themselves the example. They
frequented all places of public resort, the agora, the public walks, the
gymnasia, and the porticoes; where they recommended themselves to notice
by an ostentatious display of their abilities, in disputation among one
another, or with whoever would converse with them.
The profession of sophist had not long flourished, and no Athenian had
acquired fame in any branch of philosophy, when the singular talents,
and singular manners and pursuits, of Socrates, son of Sophroniscus,
engaged public attention. The father was a statuary, and is not mentioned
as very eminent in his profession; but, as a man, he seems to have
been respected among the most eminent of the commonwealth: he lived
in particular intimacy with Lysimachus, son of the great Aristides.
Socrates, inheriting a very scanty fortune, had a mind wholly intent upon
the acquisition and communication of knowledge. The sublime principles of
theology, taught by Anaxagoras, made an early impression upon his mind.
They led him to consider what should be the duty owed by man to such a
Being as Anaxagoras described his Creator; and it struck him that, if the
providence of God interfered in the government of this world, the duty of
man to man, little considered by poets or priests as any way connected
with religion, and hitherto almost totally neglected by philosophers,
must be a principal branch of the duty of man to God. It struck him
further that, with the gross defects which he saw in the religion, the
morality, and the governments of Greece, though the favourite inquiries
of the philosophers, concerning the nature of the Deity, the formation
of the world, the laws of the heavenly bodies, might, while they amused,
perhaps also enlarge and improve the minds of a few speculative men, yet
the investigation of the social duties was infinitely more important,
and might be infinitely more useful, to mankind in general. Endowed by
nature with a most discriminating mind, and a singularly ready eloquence,
he directed his utmost attention to that investigation; and when, by
reflection, assisted and proved by conversation among the sophists and
other able men, he had decided an opinion, he communicated it, not in the
way of precept, which the fate of Anaxagoras had shown hazardous, but
by proposing a question, and, in the course of interrogatory argument,
leading his hearers to the just conclusion.
We are informed by his disciple Xenophon how he passed his time. He was
always in public. Early in the morning he went to the walks and the
gymnasia: when the agora filled, he was there; and, in the afternoon,
wherever he could find most company. Generally he was the principal
speaker. The liveliness of his manner made his conversation amusing
as well as instructive, and he denied its advantages to nobody. But
he was nevertheless a most patient hearer; and preferred being the
hearer whenever others were present able and disposed to give valuable
information to the company. He did not commonly refuse invitations,
frequently received, to private entertainments; but he would undertake no
private instruction, nor could any solicitation induce him to relieve his
poverty by accepting, like the sophists and rhetoricians, a reward for
what he gave in public.
In the variety of his communication on social duties he could not easily,
and perhaps he did not desire entirely, to avoid either religious or
political subjects; hazardous, both of them, under the jealous tyranny of
democracy. It remains a question how far he was subject to superstition;
but his honesty is so authenticated that it seems fairer to impute to
him some weakness in credulity than any intention to deceive. If we may
believe his own account, reported by his two principal disciples, he
believed himself divinely impelled to the employment to which he devoted
his life, inquiring and teaching the duty of man to man. A divine
spirit, in his idea, constantly attended him; whose voice, distinctly
heard, never expressly commanded what he was indisposed to do, but
frequently forbade what he had intended. To unveil the nature of Deity
was not among his pretensions. He only insisted on the perfect goodness
and perfect wisdom of the Supreme God, the creator of all things, and
the constant superintendence of his providence over the affairs of men.
As included in these, he held that everything done, said, or merely
wished by men, was known to the Deity, and that it was impossible he
could be pleased with evil. The unity of God, though implied in many of
his reported discourses, he would not in direct terms assert; rather
carefully avoiding to dispute the existence of the multifarious gods
acknowledged in Greece; but he strongly denied the weaknesses, vices, and
crimes commonly imputed to them. Far however from proposing to innovate
in forms of worship and religious ceremonies, so various in the different
Grecian states, and sources of more doubt and contention than any other
circumstances of the heathen religion, he held that men could not, in
these matters, do wrong if they followed the laws of their own country
and the institutions of their forefathers. He was therefore regular in
sacrifice, both upon the public altars and in his family. He seems to
have been persuaded that the Deity, by various signs, revealed the future
to men; in oracles, dreams, and all the various ways usually acknowledged
by those conversant in the reputed science of augury. “Where the wisdom
of men cannot avail,” he said, “we should endeavour to gain information
from the gods; who will not refuse intelligible signs to those to whom
they are propitious.” Accordingly he consulted oracles himself, and he
recommended the same practice to others, in every doubt on important
concerns.
The circumstances of the Athenian government, in his time, could
not invite a man of his disposition to offer himself for political
situations. He thought he might be infinitely more useful to his country
in the singular line, it might indeed be called a public line, which he
had chosen for himself. Not only he would not solicit office, but he
would take no part in political contest. In the several revolutions which
occurred he was perfectly passive. But he would refuse nothing: on the
contrary, he would be active in everything that he thought decidedly the
duty of a citizen. When called upon to serve among the heavy-armed, he
was exemplary in the duties of a private soldier; and as such he fought
at Potidæa, Amphipolis, and Delium. We find him mentioned in civil
office; at one time president of the general assembly, and at another a
member of the council of Five Hundred. In each situation he distinguished
himself by his unbending uprightness. When president, he resisted the
violence of the assembled people, who voted a decree, in substance or
in manner, contrary to the constitution. Neither entreaties nor threats
could move him to give it the necessary sanction of his office. As
a member of the council we have already seen him, in the office of
prytanis, at the trial of the six generals, persevering in resistance
to the injustice of popular tyranny, rendered useless through the want
of equal constancy in his colleagues, who yielded to the storm. Under
the Thirty again we have seen him, not in office indeed, but daring to
refuse office, unworthy and illegal office, which the tyranny of the
all-powerful Critias would have put upon him.
We are not informed when Socrates first became distinguished as a
sophist; for in that description of men he was in his own day reckoned.
When the wit of Aristophanes was directed against him in the theatre
he was already among the most eminent, but his eminence seems to have
been then recent. It was about the tenth or eleventh year of the
Peloponnesian War, when he was six or seven and forty years of age,
that, after the manner of the old comedy, he was offered to public
derision upon the stage, by his own name, as one of the persons of the
drama, in the comedy of Aristophanes, called the _Clouds_, which is yet
extant. The audience, accustomed to look on defamation with carelessness,
and to hold as lawful and proper whatever might amuse the multitude,
applauded the wit, and even gave general approbation to the composition;
but the high estimation of the character of Socrates sufficed to prevent
that complete success which the poet had looked for. The crown, which
rewarded him whose drama most earned the public favour, and which
Aristophanes had so often won, was on this occasion refused him.
Two or three and twenty years had elapsed since the first representation
of the _Clouds_; the storms of conquest suffered from a foreign enemy and
from four revolutions in the civil government of the country, had passed;
nearly three years had followed of that quiet which the revolution under
Thrasybulus produced, and the act of amnesty should have confirmed,
when a young man, named Meletus, went to the king-archon, delivered, in
the usual form, an information against Socrates, and bound himself to
prosecute. The information ran thus: “Meletus, son of Meletus, of the
borough of Pitthos, declares these upon oath against Socrates, son of
Sophroniscus, of the borough of Alopece: Socrates is guilty of reviling
the gods whom the city acknowledges, and of preaching other new gods:
moreover he is guilty of corrupting the youth. Penalty, death.”
[Illustration: GRECIAN TERRA-COTTA
(In the British Museum)]
THE PROSECUTION OF SOCRATES
[Sidenote: [399 B.C.]]
Xenophon begins his _Memorabilia_ of his revered master with declaring
his wonder how the Athenians could have been persuaded to condemn to
death a man of such uncommonly clear innocence and exalted worth.
Ælianus, though for authority not to be compared with Xenophon, has
nevertheless, we think, given the solution. “Socrates,” he says,
“disliked the Athenian constitution. For he saw that democracy is
tyrannical, and abounds with all the evils of absolute monarchy.” But
though the political circumstances of the times made it necessary for
contemporary writers to speak with caution, yet both Xenophon and
Plato have declared enough to show that the assertion of Ælianus was
well founded; and further proof, were it wanted, may be derived from
another early writer, nearly contemporary, and deeply versed in the
politics of his age, the orator Æschines. Indeed, though not stated in
the indictment, yet it was urged against Socrates by his prosecutors
before the court, that he was disaffected to the democracy; and in
proof they affirmed it to be notorious that he had ridiculed what the
Athenian constitution prescribed, the appointment to magistracy by lot.
“Thus,” they said, “he taught his numerous followers, youths of the
principal families of the city, to despise the established government,
and to be turbulent and seditious; and his success had been seen in
the conduct of two, the most eminent, Alcibiades and Critias. Even the
best things he converted to these ill purposes: from the most esteemed
poets, and particularly from Homer, he selected passages to enforce his
anti-democratical principles.”
Socrates, it appears indeed, was not inclined to deny his disapprobation
of the Athenian constitution. His defence itself, as it is reported
by Plato, contains matter on which to found an accusation against him
of disaffection to the sovereignty of the people, such as, under the
jealous tyranny of the Athenian democracy, would sometimes subject a man
to the penalties of high treason. “You well know,” he says, “Athenians,
that, had I engaged in public business, I should long ago have perished,
without procuring any advantage either to you or to myself. Let not
the truth offend you: it is no peculiarity of your democracy, or of
your national character; but wherever the people is sovereign, no man
who shall dare honestly to oppose injustice, frequent and extravagant
injustice, can avoid destruction.”
Without this proof indeed we might reasonably believe that, though
Socrates was a good and faithful subject of the Athenian government,
and would promote no sedition, no political violence, yet he could not
like the Athenian constitution. He wished for wholesome changes by
gentle means; and it seems even to have been a principal object of the
labours to which he dedicated himself, to infuse principles into the
rising generation that might bring about the desirable change insensibly.
His scholars were chiefly sons of the wealthiest citizens, whose easy
circumstances afforded leisure to attend him; and some of these,
zealously adopting his tenets, others merely pleased with the ingenuity
of his arguments and the liveliness of his manner, and desirous to
emulate his triumphs over his opponents, were forward, after his example,
to engage in disputation upon all the subjects on which he was accustomed
to discourse. Thus employed and thus followed, though himself avoiding
office and public business, those who governed or desired to govern the
commonwealth through their influence among the many, might perhaps not
unreasonably consider him as one who was, or might become, a formidable
adversary; nor might it be difficult to excite popular jealousy against
him.
Meletus, who stood forward as his principal accuser, was, according to
Plato, not a man of any great consideration. He was soon joined by Lycon,
one of the most powerful speakers of his time, and the avowed patron
of the rhetoricians, who, as well as the poets, thought their interest
injured by the moral philosopher’s doctrine. But Anytus, a man scarcely
second to any in the commonwealth in rank and general estimation, who had
held high command with reputation in the Peloponnesian War, and had been
the principal associate of Thrasybulus in the war against the Thirty and
the restoration of the democracy, declared himself a supporter of the
prosecution. Nothing in the accusation could, by any known law of Athens,
affect the life of the accused. In England no man would be put upon trial
on so vague a charge: no grand jury would listen to it. But in Athens, if
the party was strong enough, it signified little what was the law. When
Lycon and Anytus came forward, Socrates saw that his condemnation was
already decided.
By the course of his life, however, and by the turn of his thoughts
for many years, he had so prepared himself for all events, that the
probability of his condemnation, far from being alarming, was to him
rather matter for rejoicing, as, at his age, a fortunate occurrence.
Xenophon says that, by condescending to a little supplication, Socrates
might easily have obtained his acquittal. It was usual for accused
persons, when brought before the court, to bewail their apprehended lot,
with tears to supplicate favour, and by exhibiting their children upon
the bema, to endeavour to excite pity. No admonition or entreaty of his
friends however could persuade him to such an unworthiness. He thought
it, he said, more respectful to the court, as well as more becoming
himself, to omit all this; however aware that their sentiments were
likely so far to differ from his that judgment would be given in anger
for it. Accordingly, when put upon his defence, he told the people that
he did not plead for his own sake, but for theirs, wishing them to avoid
the guilt of an unjust sentence.
Condemnation pronounced wrought no change upon him. He again addressed
the court, declared his innocence of the matters laid against him, and
observed that, even if every charge had been completely proved, still
altogether did not, according to any known law, amount to a capital
crime. “But,” in conclusion he said, “it is time to depart: I to die, you
to live: but which for the greater good, God only knows.”
[Illustration: SOCRATES IN PRISON]
It was usual at Athens for execution very soon to follow condemnation;
commonly on the morrow. But it happened that the condemnation of Socrates
took place on the eve of the day appointed for the sacred ceremony of
crowning the galley which carried the annual offerings to the gods
worshipped at Delos: and immemorial tradition forbade all executions
till the sacred vessel’s return. Thus the death of Socrates was respited
thirty days, while his friends had free access to him in the prison.
During all that time he admirably supported his constancy. Means were
concerted for his escape; the jailer was bribed, a vessel prepared, and
a secure retreat in Thessaly provided. No arguments, no prayers could
persuade him to use the opportunity. He had always taught the duty of
obedience to the laws, and he would not furnish an example of the breach
of it. To no purpose it was urged that he had been unjustly condemned: he
had always held that wrong did not justify wrong. He waited with perfect
composure the return of the sacred vessel, reasoned on the immortality of
the soul, the advantage of virtue, the happiness derived from having made
it through life his pursuit, and, with his friends about him, took the
fatal cup, and died.
Writers who, after Xenophon and Plato, have related the death of
Socrates, appear to have held themselves bound to vie with those who
preceded them in giving pathos to the story. The purpose here has been
rather to render it intelligible: to show its connection with the
political history of Athens; to derive from it illustration of the
political history. The magnanimity of Socrates, the principal factor of
the pathos, surely deserves admiration; yet it is not that in which he
has most outshone other men. The singular merit of Socrates lay in the
purity and the usefulness of his manners and conversation; the clearness
with which he saw, and the steadiness with which he practised, in a blind
and corrupt age, all moral duties; the disinterestedness and the zeal
with which he devoted himself to the benefit of others; and the enlarged
and warm benevolence, whence his supreme and almost only pleasure seems
to have consisted in doing good. The purity of Christian morality, little
enough indeed seen in practice, nevertheless is become so familiar in
theory that it passes almost for obvious, and even congenial to the human
mind. Those only will justly estimate the merit of that near approach
to it which Socrates made, who will take the pains to gather, as they
may from the writings of his contemporaries and predecessors, how little
conception was entertained of it before his time; how dull to a just
moral sense the human mind has really been; how slow the progress in
the investigation of moral duties, even where not only great pains have
been taken, but the greatest abilities zealously employed; and, when
discovered, how difficult it has been to establish them by proofs beyond
controversy, or proofs even that should be generally admitted by the
reason of men.
It is through the light which Socrates diffused by his doctrine enforced
by his practice, with the advantage of having both the doctrine and the
practice exhibited to highest advantage in the incomparable writings of
disciples such as Plato and Xenophon, that his life forms an era in the
history of Athens and of man.[b]
It is our great good fortune to possess a long and sympathetic
description of the closing scenes of his life in the unsurpassed prose of
his disciple Plato. Though told in the form of a dialogue and much too
long for quotation in full, the presentation of Socrates is so vivid and
veracious that a part of it must be given.[a]
PLATO’S ACCOUNT OF THE LAST HOURS OF SOCRATES
When we entered, we found Socrates just freed from his bonds, and
Xantippe, you know her, holding his little boy and sitting by him. As
soon as Xantippe saw us, she wept aloud and said such things as women
usually do on such occasions, as “Socrates, your friends will now
converse with you for the last time and you with them.” But Socrates,
looking towards Crito, said, “Crito, let some one take her home.” Upon
which some of Crito’s attendants led her away, wailing and beating
herself.
But Socrates sitting up in bed, drew up his leg, and rubbed it with
his hand, and as he rubbed it, said: “What an unaccountable thing, my
friends, that seems to be, which men call pleasure; and how wonderfully
is it related towards that which appears to be its contrary, pain, in
that they will not both be present to a man at the same time, yet, if any
one pursues and attains the one, he is almost always compelled to receive
the other, as if they were both united together from one head.
“And it seems to me,” he said, “that if Æsop had observed this he would
have made a fable from it, how the Deity, wishing to reconcile these
warring principles, when he could not do so, united their heads together,
and from hence whomsoever the one visits the other attends immediately
after; as appears to be the case with me, since I suffered pain in my leg
before from the chain, but now pleasure seems to have succeeded.
“‘A bypath, as it were, seems to lead us on in our researches undertaken
by reason,’ because as long as we are encumbered with the body, and our
soul is contaminated with such an evil, we can never fully attain to
what we desire; and this, we say, is truth. For the body subjects us to
innumerable hindrances on account of its necessary support, and moreover
if any diseases befall us, they impede us in our search after that which
is; and it fills us with longings, desires, fears, all kinds of fancies,
and a multitude of absurdities, so that, as it is said in real truth, by
reason of the body it is never possible for us to make any advances in
wisdom.
“For nothing else but the body and its desires occasion wars, seditions,
and contests; for all wars amongst us arise on account of our desire to
acquire wealth; and we are compelled to acquire wealth on account of
the body, being enslaved by its service; and consequently on all these
accounts we are hindered in the pursuit of philosophy. But the worst of
all is, that if it leaves us any leisure, and we apply ourselves to the
consideration of any subject, it constantly obtrudes itself in the midst
of our researches, and occasions trouble and disturbance, and confounds
us so that we are not able by reason of it to discern the truth. It has
then in reality been demonstrated to us, that if we are ever to know
anything purely, we must be separated from the body, and contemplate
the things themselves by the mere soul. And then, as it seems, we shall
obtain that which we desire, and which we profess ourselves to be lovers
of, wisdom, when we are dead, as reason shows, but not while we are
alive. For if it is not possible to know anything purely in conjunction
with the body, one of these two things must follow, either that we can
never acquire knowledge, or only after we are dead; for then the soul
will subsist apart by itself, separate from the body, but not before. And
while we live, we shall thus, as it seems, approach nearest to knowledge,
if we hold no intercourse or communion at all with the body, except
what absolute necessity requires, nor suffer ourselves to be polluted
by its nature, but purify ourselves from it, until God himself shall
release us. And thus being pure, and freed from the folly of the body,
we shall in all likelihood be with others like ourselves, and shall of
ourselves know the whole real essence, and that probably is truth; for
it is not allowable for the impure to attain to the pure. Such things, I
think, Simmias, all true lovers of wisdom must both think and say to one
another. Does it not seem so to you?”
“Most assuredly, Socrates.”
“If this, then,” said Socrates, “is true, my friend, there is great hope
for one who arrives where I am going; there, if anywhere, to acquire that
in perfection for the sake of which we have taken so much pains during
our past life; so that the journey now appointed me is set out upon with
good hope, and will be so by any other man who thinks that his mind has
been as it were purified.”
“Certainly,” said Simmias.
“But does not purification consist in this, as was said in a former part
of our discourse, in separating as much as possible the soul from the
body, and in accustoming it to gather and collect itself by itself on all
sides apart from the body, and to dwell, as far as it can, both now and
hereafter, alone by itself, delivered as it were from the shackles of the
body?”
“Certainly,” he replied.
“Is this then called death, this deliverance and separation of the soul
from the body?”
“Assuredly,” he answered.
“But, as we affirmed, those who pursue philosophy rightly, are especially
and alone desirous to deliver it, and this is the very study of
philosophers, the deliverance and separation of the soul from the body,
is it not?”
“It appears so.”
“Then, as I said at first, would it not be ridiculous for a man who has
endeavoured throughout his life to live as near as possible to death;
then, when death arrives, to grieve? Would not this be ridiculous?”
“How should it not?”
“In reality then, Simmias,” he continued, “those who pursue philosophy
rightly study to die; and to them of all men death is least formidable.
Judge from this. Since they altogether hate the body and desire to keep
the soul by itself, would it not be irrational if, when this comes to
pass, they should be afraid and grieve, and not be glad to go to that
place, where on their arrival they may hope to obtain that which they
longed for throughout life; but they longed for wisdom; and to be freed
from association with that which they hated? How many of their own accord
wished to descend into Hades, on account of human objects of affection,
their wives and sons, induced by this very hope of there seeing and being
with those whom they have loved; and shall one who really loves wisdom,
and firmly cherishes this very hope, that he shall nowhere else obtain it
in a manner worthy of the name, except in Hades, be grieved at dying, and
not gladly go there? We must think that he would gladly go, my friend, if
he be in truth a philosopher; for he will be firmly persuaded of this,
that he will nowhere else but there attain wisdom in its purity; and if
this be so, would it not be very irrational, as I just now said, if such
a man were to be afraid of death?”
“Very much so, by Jupiter,” he replied.
“But it is right, my friends,” he said, “that we should consider this,
that if the soul is immortal, it requires our care not only for the
present time, which we call life, but for all time; and the danger would
now appear to be dreadful, if one should neglect it. For if death were
a deliverance from everything, it would be a great gain for the wicked,
when they die, to be delivered at the same time from the body, and from
their vices together with the soul: but now, since it appears to be
immortal, it can have no other refuge from evils, nor safety, except
by becoming as good and wise as possible. For the soul goes to Hades,
possessing nothing else but its discipline and education, which are said
to be of the greatest advantage or detriment to the dead, on the very
beginning of his journey thither.
“When the dead arrive at the place to which their dæmon leads them
severally, first of all they are judged, as well those who have lived
well and piously, as those who have not. And those who appear to have
passed a middle kind of life, proceeding to Acheron, and embarking in
the vessels they have, on these arrive at the lake, and there dwell, and
when they are purified, and have suffered punishment for the iniquities
they may have committed, they are set free, and each receives the reward
of his good deeds, according to his deserts: but those who appear to
be incurable, through the magnitude of their offences, either from
having committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless
murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny hurls into
Tartarus, whence they never come forth. But those who appear to have been
guilty of curable, yet great offences, such as those who through anger
have committed any violence against father or mother, and have lived
the remainder of their life in a state of penitence, or they who have
become homicides in a similar manner, these must of necessity fall into
Tartarus, but after they have fallen, and have been there for a year, the
wave casts them forth, the homicides into Cocytus, but the parricides
and matricides into Pyriphlegethon: but when, being borne along, they
arrive at the Acherusian lake, there they cry out to and invoke, some
those whom they slew, others those whom they injured, and invoking them,
they entreat and implore them to suffer them to go out into the lake, and
to receive them; and if they persuade them, they go out, and are freed
from their sufferings, but if not, they are borne back to Tartarus, and
thence again to the rivers, and they do not cease from suffering this
until they have persuaded those whom they have injured, for this sentence
was imposed on them by the judges. But those who are found to have lived
an eminently holy life, these are they, who, being freed and set at
large from these regions in the earth, as from a prison, arrive at the
pure abode above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among
these, they who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy shall
live without bodies, throughout all future time, and shall arrive at
habitations yet more beautiful than these.
“On account of these things, then, a man ought to be confident about
his soul, who during this life has disregarded all the pleasures and
ornaments of the body as foreign to his nature, and who, having thought
that they do more harm than good, has zealously applied himself to the
acquirement of knowledge, and who having adorned his soul not with a
foreign but its own proper ornament, temperance, justice, fortitude,
freedom, and truth, thus waits for his passage to Hades, as one who
is ready to depart whenever destiny shall summon him. You then,” he
continued, “Simmias and Cebes, and the rest, will each of you depart at
some future time; but now destiny summons me, as a tragic writer would
say, and it is nearly time for me to betake myself to the bath; for
it appears to me to be better to drink the poison after I have bathed
myself, and not to trouble the women with washing my dead body.”
When he had thus spoken, Crito said, “So be it, Socrates, but what
commands have you to give to these or to me, either respecting your
children, or any other matter, in attending to which we can most oblige
you?”
“What I always say, Crito,” he replied, “nothing new; that by taking
care of yourselves you will oblige both me and mine, and yourselves,
whatever you do, though you should not now promise it; but if you neglect
yourselves, and will not live as it were in the footsteps of what has
been now and formerly said, even though you should promise much at
present, and that earnestly, you will do no good at all.”
“We will endeavour then so to do,” he said; “but how shall we bury you?”
“Just as you please,” he said, “if only you can catch me, and I do not
escape from you.” And at the same time smiling gently, and looking
around on us, he said; “I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that I am
that Socrates who is now conversing with you, and who methodises each
part of the discourse; but he thinks I am he whom he will shortly behold
dead, and asks how he should bury me. But that which I sometime argued
at length, that when I have drunk the poison I shall no longer remain
with you, but shall depart to some happy state of the blessed, this I
seem to have urged to him in vain, though I meant at the same time to
console both you and myself. Be ye then my sureties to Crito,” he said,
“in an obligation contrary to that which he made to the judges; for he
undertook that I should remain; but do you be sureties that, when I die,
I shall not remain, but shall depart, that Crito may more easily bear it,
and when he sees my body either burnt or buried, may not be afflicted
for me, as if I suffered some dreadful thing, nor say at my interment
that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or is buried. For be well
assured,” he said, “most excellent Crito, that to speak improperly is not
only culpable as to the thing itself, but likewise occasions some injury
to our souls. You must have a good courage then, and say that you bury
my body, and bury it in such a manner as is pleasing to you, and as you
think is most agreeable to our laws.”
When he had said thus he rose, and went into a chamber to bathe, and
Crito followed him, but he directed us to wait for him. We waited,
therefore, conversing among ourselves about what had been said, and
considering it again, and sometimes speaking about our calamity, how
severe it would be to us, sincerely thinking that, like those who are
deprived of a father, we should pass the rest of our life as orphans.
When he had bathed, and his children were brought to him, for he had two
little sons and one grown up, and the women belonging to his family were
come, having conversed with them in the presence of Crito, and given them
such injunctions as he wished, he directed the women and children to go
away, and then returned to us.
And it was now near sunset; for he spent a considerable time within. But
when he came from bathing he sat down, and did not speak much afterwards;
then the officer of the Eleven came in, and standing near him, said,
“Socrates, I shall not have to find that fault with you that I do with
others, that they are angry with me, and curse me, when, by order of the
archons, I bid them drink the poison. But you, on all other occasions
during the time you have been here, I have found to be the most noble,
meek, and excellent man of all that ever came into this place; and,
therefore, I am now well convinced that you will not be angry with
me--for you know who are to blame--but with them. Now, then, for you know
what I came to announce to you, farewell, and endeavour to bear what is
inevitable as easily as possible.” And at the same time, bursting into
tears, he turned away and withdrew.
And Socrates, looking after him, said, “And thou, too, farewell; we
will do as you direct.” At the same time turning to us, he said, “How
courteous the man is; during the whole time I have been here he has
visited me, and conversed with me sometimes, and proved the worthiest of
men; and now how generously he weeps for me. But come, Crito, let us obey
him, and let some one bring the poison, if it is ready pounded; but if
not, let the man pound it.”
Then Crito said, “But I think, Socrates, that the sun is still on the
mountains, and has not yet set. Besides, I know that others have drunk
the poison very late, after it had been announced to them, and have
supped and drunk freely, and some even have enjoyed the objects of their
love. Do not hasten then, for there is yet time.”
Upon this Socrates replied, “These men whom you mention, Crito, do these
things with good reason, for they think they shall gain by so doing, and
I too with good reason shall not do so; for I think I shall gain nothing
by drinking a little later, except to become ridiculous to myself, in
being so fond of life, and sparing of it when none any longer remains.
Go, then,” he said, “obey, and do not resist.”
Crito having heard this, nodded to the boy that stood near. And the boy
having gone out, and stayed for some time, came, bringing with him the
man who was to administer the poison, who brought it ready pounded in a
cup.
And Socrates, on seeing the man, said, “Well, my good friend, as you are
skilled in these matters, what must I do?”
“Nothing else,” he replied, “than, when you have drunk it walk about,
until there is a heaviness in your legs, then lie down; thus it will do
its purpose.”
And at the same time he held out the cup to Socrates. And he having
received it very cheerfully, neither trembling, nor changing at all
in colour or countenance, but, as he was wont, looking steadfastly at
the man, said, “What say you of this potion, with respect to making a
libation to any one, is it lawful or not?”
“We only pound so much, Socrates,” he said, “as we think sufficient to
drink.”
“I understand you,” he said, “but it is certainly both lawful and right
to pray to the gods, that my departure hence thither may be happy; which
therefore I pray, and so may it be.” And as he said this, he drank it
off readily and calmly. Thus far, most of us were with difficulty able
to restrain ourselves from weeping, but when we saw him drinking, and
having finished the draught, we could do so no longer; but in spite of
myself the tears came in full torrent, so that, covering my face, I wept
for myself, for I did not weep for him, but for my own fortune, in being
deprived of such a friend. But Crito, even before me, when he could not
restrain his tears, had risen up.
But Apollodorus even before this had not ceased weeping, and then
bursting into an agony of grief, weeping and lamenting, he pierced the
heart of every one present, except Socrates himself. But he said, “What
are you doing, my admirable friends? I, indeed, for this reason chiefly,
sent away the women, that they might not commit any folly of this kind.
For I have heard that it is right to die with good omens. Be quiet,
therefore, and bear up.”
When we heard this we were ashamed, and restrained our tears. But he,
having walked about, when he said that his legs were growing heavy, lay
down on his back; for the man so directed him. And at the same time he
who gave him the poison, taking hold of him, after a short interval
examined his feet and legs; and then having pressed his foot hard, he
asked if he felt it; he said that he did not. And after this he pressed
his thighs; and thus going higher, he showed us that he was growing cold
and stiff. Then Socrates touched himself, and said, that when the poison
reached his heart he should then depart. But now the parts around the
lower belly were almost cold; when, uncovering himself, for he had been
covered over, he said, and they were his last words, “Crito, we owe a
cock to Æsculapius; pay it, therefore, and do not neglect it.”
“It shall be done,” said Crito, “but consider whether you have anything
else to say.”
To this question he gave no reply; but shortly after he gave a convulsive
movement, and the man covered him, and his eyes were fixed; and Crito
perceiving it, closed his mouth and eyes.
This was the end of our friend, a man, as we may say, the best of all of
his time that we have known, and moreover, the most wise and just.[c]
GROTE’S ESTIMATE OF SOCRATES
Thus perished the “_parens philosophiæ_”--the first of ethical
philosophers; a man who opened to science both new matter, alike copious
and valuable, and a new method, memorable not less for its originality
and efficacy, than for the profound philosophical basis on which
it rests. Though Greece produced great poets, orators, speculative
philosophers, historians, etc., yet other countries, having the benefit
of Grecian literature to begin with, have nearly equalled her in all
these lines, and surpassed her in some. But where are we to look for
a parallel to Socrates, either in or out of the Grecian world? The
cross-examining elenchus, which he not only first struck out, but wielded
with such matchless effect, and to such noble purposes, has been mute
ever since his last conversation in the prison; for even his great
successor Plato was a writer and lecturer, not a colloquial dialectician.
No man has ever been found strong enough to bend his bow; much less,
sure enough to use it as he did. His life remains as the only evidence,
but a very satisfactory evidence, how much can be done by this sort of
intelligent interrogation; how powerful is the interest which it can
be made to inspire, how energetic the stimulus which it can apply in
awakening dormant reason and generating new mental power.
[Illustration: GREEK VASE]
It has been often customary to exhibit Socrates as a moral preacher, in
which character probably he has acquired to himself the general reverence
attached to his name. This is, indeed, a true attribute, but not the
characteristic or salient attribute, nor that by which he permanently
worked on mankind. On the other hand, Arcesilaus, and the New Academy, a
century and more afterwards, thought that they were following the example
of Socrates (and Cicero seems to have thought so too) when they reasoned
against everything--and when they laid it down as a system, that against
every affirmative position, an equal force of negative argument might be
brought up as counterpoise. Now this view of Socrates is, in my judgment,
not merely partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such systematic
distrust of the powers of the mind to attain certainty. He laid down a
clear (though erroneous) line of distinction between the knowable and
the unknowable. About physics, he was more than a sceptic; he thought
that man could know nothing: the gods did not intend that man should
acquire any such information, and therefore managed matters in such a way
as to be beyond his ken, for all except the simplest phenomena of daily
wants; moreover, not only man could not acquire such information, but
ought not to labour after it. But respecting the topics which concern
man and society, the views of Socrates were completely the reverse. This
was the field which the gods had expressly assigned, not merely to human
practice, but to human study and acquisition of knowledge; a field,
wherein, with that view, they managed phenomena on principles of constant
and observable sequence, so that every man who took the requisite pains
might know them.
Nay, Socrates went a step further--and this forward step is the
fundamental conviction upon which all his missionary impulse hinges.
He thought that every man not only might know these things, but ought
to know them; that he could not possibly act well, unless he did know
them; and that it was his imperious duty to learn them as he would learn
a profession; otherwise, he was nothing better than a slave, unfit to
be trusted as a free and accountable being. Socrates felt persuaded
that no man could behave as a just, temperate, courageous, pious,
patriotic agent, unless he taught himself to know correctly what justice,
temperance, courage, piety, patriotism, etc., really were. He was
possessed with the truly Baconian idea, that the power of steady moral
action depended upon, and was limited by, the rational comprehension of
moral ends and means. But when he looked at the minds around him, he
perceived that few or none either had any such comprehension, or had ever
studied to acquire it--yet at the same time every man felt persuaded that
he did possess it, and acted confidently upon such persuasion. Here,
then, Socrates found that the first outwork for him to surmount, was,
that universal “conceit of knowledge without the reality,” against which
he declares such emphatic war; and against which, also, though under
another form of words and in reference to other subjects, Bacon declares
war not less emphatically, two thousand years afterwards--“_Opinio copiæ
inter causas inopiæ est_.”
If then the philosophers of the New Academy considered Socrates either as
a sceptic, or as a partisan of systematic negation, they misinterpreted
his character, and mistook the first stage of his process--that which
Plato, Bacon, and Herschel call the purification of the intellect--for
the ultimate goal. The elenchus, as Socrates used it, was animated by the
truest spirit of positive science, and formed an indispensable precursor
to its attainment.
Though negative in his means, Socrates is strictly positive in his ends;
his attack is undertaken only with distinct view to a positive result; in
order to shame them out of the illusion of knowledge, and to spur them
on and arm them for the acquisition of real, assured, comprehensive,
self-explanatory, knowledge--as the condition and guarantee of virtuous
practice. Socrates was indeed the reverse of a sceptic; no man ever
looked upon life with a more positive and practical eye; no man ever
pursued his mark with a clearer perception of the road which he was
travelling; no man ever combined, in like manner, the absorbing
enthusiasm of a missionary, with the acuteness, the originality, the
inventive resource, and the generalising comprehension, of a philosopher.
His method yet survives, as far as such method can survive, in some of
the dialogues of Plato. It is a process of eternal value and of universal
application. That purification of the intellect, which Bacon signalised
as indispensable for rational or scientific progress, the Socratic
_elenchus_ affords the only known instrument for at least partially
accomplishing. However little that instrument may have been applied since
the death of its inventor, the necessity and use of it neither have
disappeared, nor ever can disappear. There are few men whose minds are
not more or less in that state of sham knowledge against which Socrates
made war: there is no man whose notions have not been first got together
by spontaneous, unexamined, unconscious, uncertified association--resting
upon forgotten particulars, blending together _disparates_ or
inconsistencies, and leaving in his mind old and familiar phrases, and
oracular propositions, of which he has never rendered to himself account:
there is no man, who, if he be destined for vigorous and profitable
scientific effort, has not found it a necessary branch of self-education,
to break up, disentangle, analyse, and reconstruct, these ancient mental
compounds--and who has not been driven to it by his own lame and solitary
efforts, since the giant of the colloquial elenchus no longer stands in
the market-place to lend him help and stimulus.
To hear of any man, especially of so illustrious a man, being condemned
to death on such accusations as that of heresy and alleged corruption of
youth, inspires at the present day a sentiment of indignant reprobation,
the force of which I have no desire to enfeeble. The fact stands
eternally recorded as one among the thousand misdeeds of intolerance,
religious and political. But the sentiment now prevalent is founded
upon a conviction that such matters as heresy and heretical teaching of
youth are not proper for judicial cognisance. Even in the modern world,
such a conviction is of recent date; and in the fifth century B.C. it
was unknown. Socrates himself would not have agreed in it; and all
Grecian governments, oligarchical and democratical alike, recognised the
opposite. The testimony furnished by Plato is on this point decisive.
When we examine the two positive communities which he constructs, in the
treatises _De Republica_ and _De Legibus_, we find that there is nothing
about which he is more anxious, than to establish an unresisted orthodoxy
of doctrine, opinion, and education. A dissenting and free-spoken
teacher, such as Socrates was at Athens, would not have been allowed to
pursue his vocation for a week, in the Platonic republic. Plato would not
indeed condemn him to death; but he would put him to silence, and in case
of need, send him away. This, in fact, is the consistent deduction, if
you assume that the state is to determine what is orthodoxy, and orthodox
teaching--and to repress what contradicts its own views. Now all the
Grecian states, including Athens, held this principle of interference
against the dissenting teacher. In any other government of Greece, as
well as in the Platonic republic, Socrates would have been quickly
arrested in his career, even if not severely punished; in Athens, he was
allowed to talk and teach publicly for twenty-five or thirty years, and
then condemned when an old man. Of these two applications of the same
mischievous principle, assuredly the latter is at once the more moderate
and the less noxious.
Secondly, the force of this last consideration, as an extenuating
circumstance in regard to the Athenians, is much increased, when we
reflect upon the number of individual enemies whom Socrates made to
himself in the prosecution of his cross-examining process. Here were a
multitude of individuals, including men personally the most eminent and
effective in the city, prompted by special antipathies, over and above
general convictions, to call into action the dormant state-principle of
intolerance against an obnoxious teacher. If, under such provocation, he
was allowed to reach the age of seventy, and to talk publicly for so many
years, before any real Meletus stood forward--this attests conspicuously
the efficacy of the restraining dispositions among the people, which made
their practical habits more liberal than their professed principles.
Thirdly, whoever has read the account of the trial and defence of
Socrates, will see that he himself contributed quite as much to the
result as all the three accusers united. Not only he omitted to do all
that might have been done without dishonour, to insure acquittal--but he
held positive language very nearly such as Meletus himself would have
sought to put in his mouth. He did this deliberately--having an exalted
opinion both of himself and his own mission--and accounting the cup
of hemlock, at his age, to be no calamity. It was only by such marked
and offensive self-exaltation that he brought on the first vote of the
dicastery, even then the narrowest majority, by which he was found
guilty: it was only by a still more aggravated manifestation of the same
kind, even to the pitch of something like insult, that he brought on
the second vote, which pronounced the capital sentence. Now it would be
uncandid not to allow for the effect of such a proceeding on the minds of
the dicastery. They were not at all disposed, of their own accord, to put
in force the recognised principle of intolerance against him. But when
they found that the man who stood before them charged with this offence,
addressed them in a tone such as dicasts had never heard before and could
hardly hear with calmness, they could not but feel disposed to credit
all the worst inferences which his accusers had suggested, and to regard
Socrates as a dangerous man both religiously and politically, against
whom it was requisite to uphold the majesty of the court and constitution.
In appreciating this memorable incident, therefore, though the
mischievous principle of intolerance cannot be denied, yet all the
circumstances show that that principle was neither irritable nor
predominant in the Athenian bosom; that even a large body of collateral
antipathies did not readily call it forth against any individual; that
the more liberal and generous dispositions, which deadened its malignity,
were of steady efficacy, not easily overborne; and that the condemnation
ought to count as one of the least gloomy items in an essentially gloomy
catalogue.
Let us add, that as Socrates himself did not account his own condemnation
and death, at his age, to be any misfortune, but rather a favourable
dispensation of the gods, who removed him just in time to escape that
painful consciousness of intellectual decline, which induced Democritus
to prepare the poison for himself--so his friend Xenophon goes a step
further, and while protesting against the verdict of guilty, extols
the manner of death as a subject of triumph; as the happiest, most
honourable, and most gracious way, in which the gods could set the seal
upon an useful and exalted life.
It is asserted by Diodorus, and repeated with exaggerations by other
later authors, that after the death of Socrates the Athenians bitterly
repented of the manner in which they had treated him, and that they
even went so far as to put his accusers to death without trial. I know
not upon what authority this statement is made, and I disbelieve it
altogether. From the tone of Xenophon’s _Memorabilia_, there is every
reason to presume that the memory of Socrates still continued to be
unpopular at Athens when that collection was composed. Plato, too, left
Athens immediately after the death of his master, and remained absent for
a long series of years: indirectly, I think, this affords a presumption
that no such reaction took place in Athenian sentiment as that which
Diodorus alleges; and the same presumption is countenanced by the manner
in which the orator Æschines speaks of the condemnation, half a century
afterwards. I see no reason to believe that the Athenian dicasts,
who doubtless felt themselves justified, and more than justified, in
condemning Socrates after his own speech, retracted that sentiment after
his decease.[d]
[Illustration: RUINS OF A TEMPLE OF ZEUS]