So much for the logical element in the Socratic method. But as his

logic was merely the dexterous weapon of a great moral apostleship, we

must look on him also from this aspect, and contrast the method of his

teaching with that of a modern sermon. {63} A sermon is either the

most rousing and effective, or the tamest and most ineffective of all

moral addresses, according to the character and power of the man who

delivers it. If the speaker has a real vocation to address his

fellow-men on moral subjects, and if he does not deal in vague and

trivial generalities, sounding very pious on Sunday, but having no

distinct and recognisable reference to the secular business of Monday,

then a good sermon may be compared to a discharge of moral

electricity, which will arouse many sleepers, or to the setting up of

a sure finger-post, which will direct many wanderers. But if he is

tame, and a mere professional dealer in certain routine articles of

piety, which religious people wear as a sort of amulet rather than use

as a weapon--in this case no species of moral address can be looked on

as less effective; for it neither rouses nor guides, and instead of

ending in any work in the life of the hearer (and all moral teaching

that does not end in a work is vanity), the hearing of it is rather

looked on as a sort of work in itself, which, however short, is

generally considered as having been a little too long when it is

ended. Now, as distinguished from both these styles of pulpit address,

the Socratic sermon was addressed to the individual man, and could not

fail to produce a distinct and tangible effect; for it ended always by

saying to the hearer, as Nathan said to David, THOU ART THE MAN!

There was no escape from the appeal; it might not hover about the ears

with a pious hum for half an hour, and then be forgotten; it must

either be indignantly rejected, or graciously accepted. And herein

precisely lay the great distinction between Socrates and the Sophists,

{64} a distinction which Mr. Grote has so perversely done his best to

obliterate. Socrates was a preacher; the Sophists were not. Socrates

was a patriot fighting and dying earnestly for a great cause; the

Sophists were cunning masters of fence, who had no cause to fight for

except themselves and their own pockets. But Socrates, though in a

very different way, was as earnestly a moral reformer in Athens as

Calvin was in Geneva. When the stern Genevese disciplinarian set

himself with all the resolution of a manly nature to put some checks

and hindrances in the way of the loose practices of the

“Libertines” of Lake Leman, these respectable people protested

strongly against the attempt, saying to the unflinching preacher,

“It is your place to explain the Scriptures; what right have you to

meddle with other things--to talk about morals and find fault?” And

even so in Athens there were certain Libertines who used exactly the

same language to Socrates. Had you been a mere talker like the other

Sophists, you might have been allowed to talk; talking is a very

innocent affair; but your talk is not a mere exhibition of lingual

dexterity; it means something; it means perhaps danger to the

State,--certainly it means danger to us; it means that we may be

called to account for our deeds by any man who assumes to have a more

scrupulous conscience or a more enlightened reason than ourselves; and

this is what we will not tolerate.

One of the oddities of Socrates which seems to have offended the nice

taste of the χαρίεντες, or men of elegant culture in Athens,

was the homeliness of his style and the familiarity of his

illustrations. This is particularly alluded to by Alcibiades in the

{65} humorous speech in Plato’s Banquet; from which an extract has

been already made. In the peroration of that speech Alcibiades is made

to say that not only the personal appearance, but the whole style and

language of Socrates, had a close affinity to the Sileni and Satyrs;

for instead of using elegantly turned sentences and studiously

selected illustrations, like the Sophists, he was always talking about

“smiths and tanners and shoemakers, and asses with pack-saddles,”

and a whole host of such vulgarities, which to the hearer at first

seemed to make him ridiculous; but by and by they discovered that

behind all this rough Satyr’s hide of uncouth expression there

lurked a truly divine meaning, and the faces of gods peeped out

through the holes of the beggar’s coat. And the same language is

used in Xenophon by Critias and Charicles when, in the exercise of a

tyrannical authority, they called upon the philosopher to cease from

his dangerous business of talking sedition to the young men. Now, any

man who considers this matter will perceive that the peculiarity of

style here noted lay partly in the natural character of the man,

partly was the best style which he could possibly have adopted, if he

really wished to do good as a moral missionary, and not merely to

parade himself before men as a clever talker. The dignity of the

pulpit in modern times is one of the great causes of its comparative

inefficiency; it will not condescend to familiar subjects; it rejects

familiar illustrations as bad taste, and the consequence too

frequently is that it is not received into the confidence of every-day

life, and stands apart on too lofty a pedestal to be useful. But as a

sensible and acute ethical writer remarks, {66} “if moral questions

disdain to walk the streets, the philosophy of them must remain in the

clouds;”[66.1] and so Socrates is justified in his method of testing

every lofty principle by a familiar example, and, like Wordsworth, the

thoughtful poet of the Lakes, teaching us that philosophy is then most

profound when it points out what is uncommon in common things, and

that he is a wiser man who plucks a lesson from the daisy at his feet

than he who wanders for it to the stars above his head.

Another notable peculiarity of the Socratic method is, that, while in

the majority of cases the discussion seems to end in unveiling the

ignorance of pretenders to knowledge, and, as we express it, taking

the conceit out of them, in other cases the young examinee, instead of

being convicted of ignorance, is pleasantly surprised at finding that

he knows more than he suspected, and goes home with the comfortable

assurance that he needs not to sink his bucket into any foreign shaft,

but really possesses a well of living waters in his own soul, if he

will only work it faithfully, and be careful to remove obstructions.

The unveiling of this hidden fountain of knowledge to the humble and

thoughtful inquirer is the famous obstetric process of which Socrates

humorously boasted himself a practiser. As his mother’s profession

was to help nature to bring her physical births easily and happily to

the light, so her son’s business was to practise intellectual

obstetrics, and help people to deliver themselves of their

intellectual offspring. In this method of talking there is involved

the whole philosophy of the best art of teaching; even as the word

_education_ by its {67} etymological affinities plainly indicates, in

so far as it signifies to “draw out,” not to “put in.” We see

here again the practical issue of that fine erotic passion for human

beings, that divine rage for humanity, which was the inspiration of

his life, and put into his hands the golden key to the hearts of all

teachable men. While he was the most exact and scientific, he was, at

the same time, the least dogmatic and egotistic of moral teachers. He

did not desire so much that men should placidly submit to receive his

dogmas, as that they should be trained to the grand human function of

shaping out the universal divine idea, or at least some part of it,

each man for himself, according to his capacity. He wished to be no

more than the trencher of the moral soil, not the planter of the seed;

the seed lay already in the clod, which being broken, the outward

influences of sun and air and dew excited, from within the growth of

an essentially divine germ.

Let it be noted under this head, in conclusion, that it was essential

to the reformatory mission of Socrates that he should teach without a

fee. The man who practises a trade or a profession may justly demand

the wages of his labour; but to preach moral truth, to protest against

public sins, and convert sinners, is no profession for which the world

can be expected to pay. Those who practise remunerative trades and

professions supply the immediate wants of the world, and are paid in

the world’s coin; but for this payment they become the slaves of the

masters who employ them, and must give the rightful value for the

stipulated reward. But a prophet, or an apostle, or a teacher of moral

truth in any shape, knows that he is bringing an article to the {68}

market for which there may be no demand; he knows further that, by his

mere attitude as a preacher, he is assuming a superiority over his

brethren which is inconsistent with the equality of position and right

which the act of buying and selling supposes in the parties concerned.

He must, above all things, be free in his function; and to accept

money from no one is the first condition of moral independence. Of

this the father of the faithful, as we read in the Book of Genesis,

gave an illustrious example, when he refused to take any of the booty

offered to him by the king of Sodom, “lest thou shouldest say, I

have made Abram rich.” And for the same reason manifestly, neither

the Hebrew prophets nor the apostle Paul were paid for their

preaching, nor indeed in the nature of things could he. Savonarola was

not paid for publicly preaching against the vicious lives of the

Popes; Luther was not paid for his manly protest against the

prostitution of Divine grace in the sale of pardons for tinkling

silver; and in the same way Socrates was not, and could not be, paid

for his mission of convincing the cleverest persons in Athens of

ignorance, shallowness, and all sorts of inadequacy. In fact he did

not come forward as a professional teacher at all. He issued no

flaming advertisements. He only said that he was a man in search of

wisdom, and would be glad of any honest man’s company and

co-operation in the search. The Sophists in this and in so many other

respects were altogether different. They made large professions and

accepted large fees.

It remains now, in order to complete our sketch, that we give some

indication of the theological {69} opinions and religious life of

Socrates; then that we point shortly to his political opinions and

public life; and lastly, that we attempt a just estimate of the

circumstances and agencies which led to his singularly notable and

noble exit from the brilliant stage where he had for so many years

been the prominent performer. That Socrates because he was a moralist

should have been also a theologian is not absolutely necessary; it is

natural, however; so natural, indeed, that when a great popular

teacher, like Confucius, though not theoretically an atheist,

practically ignores religion, we cannot but accept this as a sign of

some mental idiosyncrasy alike unfortunate for the teacher and the

taught. For to deny a First Cause, or not to assert it decidedly, is

as if a man, professing to be a botanist, should describe only the

character of the flower and the fruit as what appears above ground,

while either from stupidity or cross-grained perversity, he ignores

the root and the seed, without which the whole beauty of the blossom

and the utility of the fruit could not exist; or, to take another

simile, it is as if a man should curiously describe the cylinders and

the pistons and the wheels, the furnaces, the boilers, and the

condensing chambers of a steam-engine, and while doing so studiously

avoid mentioning the name of James Watt. One would say, in such a

case, that, while the describer deserved great praise for the

clearness and consistency with which he had set forth the sequence of

mechanical operations that make up the engine, he had left an

unsatisfactory impression on the mind, by omitting the grand fact

which rendered the existence of such an engine possible, viz., a

creative intellect. We should say that he was a good mechanician and

an {70} eloquent expounder of machinery, but we could not call him a

philosopher; he had stopped short, in fact, at the very point where

philosophy finds its thrill of peculiar delight at the vestibule of

ultimate causes. To the scientific man, in the same way, who is either

a speculative atheist or who studiously avoids any allusion to an

original plastic Intellect as the Ultimate Cause of all things and the

Primary Force of all forces, the universe is merely a vast unexplained

machine, performing a closely concatenated series of unintelligible

operations, tabulated under the name of Laws; and to the moralist, who

is only a moralist, society is a machine of another kind, whose wheels

and pulleys and bands may be curiously described, and must be kept in

nice order, but of whose genesis he can give no intelligible account.

It follows, therefore, that a philosophical moralist must be a theist,

and that not only on speculative grounds, but from this practical

consideration also, that from no source can the Moral Law derive the

unity and the authority which is essential to it, so efficiently as

from the all-controlling and unifying primary fact which we call

GOD. Any other keystone contrived by ingenious wits to give

consistency to the social arch is artificial; this alone is

natural.[70.1] Accordingly we find that from the days of Moses and the

Hebrew prophets, through Solon and Pythagoras to Socrates and Plato;

from Socrates and {71} Plato through the Apostles and Evangelists and

the grand army of Church Fathers, to Luther, Calvin, Knox, and the

other great Reformers of the sixteenth century; from the great

Churchmen of the Reformation through Leibnitz and Spinoza, and Locke

and Butler and Kant, down to the very recent and low platform of Paley

and Austin, the foundation of Morals has been laid in Theology. And of

all great theological moralists there is none who is at once more

theoretically distinct and more practically consistent than Socrates.

To him is to be traced the first scientific expression of the great

argument from design,--an argument, no doubt, which is as old as the

human heart, and exists in all unperverted minds without being

formulated, but which, in a logical age and among a critical people,

not the less demands to be set forth, link by link, and illustrated in

detail as Socrates does in the following dialogue, a dialogue which we

shall translate at length, at once as a notable landmark in

theological literature, and as a good illustration of the

philosopher’s favourite method of bringing out a grave truth from a

familiar colloquy.

“There was one Aristodemus, a little man, well known in Athens, not

only as one who never either sacrificed to the gods or used

divination, but as laughing and jeering at those who did so. This man

Socrates one day happened to meet, and knowing his tendencies

addressed him at once thus. Tell me, Aristodemus, are there any

persons whom you admire particularly for their wisdom? That there are,

he replied. Well, said Socrates, let me hear the names of a few.

Homer, said the other, for epic poetry; Melanippides for dithyrambs;

for tragedy, Sophocles; {72} for sculpture, Polycleitus; for painting,

Zeuxis. Then tell me this, which is worthy of the greater admiration,

the artist who makes figures which have neither life nor intelligence,

or He who makes animals that have both life and intelligence? This

artist, of course, said Aristodemus; for such animals would not be

made by chance, but by calculation. Well then, of two classes of

things, whereof the one has manifestly been constructed for some

useful end, and the other, so far as one can see, for no end at all,

which would you call the product of calculation? Of course the things

made for some useful end. Now answer me this,--He who made men at

first, and gave them senses to bring them into contact with the

outward world, eyes to see and ears to hear, did He furnish them with

these organs for a useful purpose or for no purpose at all? and as for

odours and smells, if we had not nostrils, so far as we are concerned

they might as well not have existed; and how could we have had any

perception of sweet and sour, and all agreeable tastes, had we not

been furnished with a tongue to take, cognisance of such sensations?

Observe further, how the eye, being naturally a tender organ, is

supplied with eyelids as a house with a door, which may be opened to

receive pleasant guests, and closed when danger approaches; the

eye-lashes also manifestly serve as a sort of sieve to prevent the

passage of any injurious particles which the wind might drive against

the pupil, while the eyebrows form a sort of coping or fence which

prevents the sweat from the forehead flowing into the organ of vision.

Not less wonderful is it that the ear is so formed as to be able to

take in an uncounted number of various sounds, and {73} yet is never

filled; and in the mouth we are instantly met with the remarkable fact

in all animals, that, while the front teeth, which take up the food,

are formed for cutting, the back teeth, which receive it from them,

are adapted for the after operation of grinding; observe also the

situation of the great organ of nourishment, close to eyes and the

nostrils, which keep a watch against the approach of unhealthy food;

while on the other hand, that part of the food which is useless for

nutrition, being naturally offensive, is carried off by ducts and

passages placed at as great a distance as possible from the organs of

sensation. All these contrivances, so manifestly proceeding from a

purpose, can we doubt whether we should call works of chance or of

intellect? Looking at the matter in this light, certainly, said the

little man, I can have no hesitation in saying these are the

contrivances of a very wise and benevolent designer. Consider further,

continued Socrates, how there is implanted in all animals a desire of

continuing their species, how the parents have a pleasure in breeding,

and the offspring are above all things distinguished by the love of

life and the fear of death. These also, he said, seem to be the

contrivances of some Being who wished that animals should exist. Then,

continued Socrates, consider yourself--do you believe that there is

something in you which we call Intelligence? and, if in you, whence

came it? is there no intelligence in the world outside of you? Your

body, you perceive, is made up of certain very small portions of solid

and liquid elements, of which vast quantities exist beyond you, and of

which your body is a part; and if your body is taken from such a vast

storehouse of matter, is your mind the only {74} part of you which is

underived from any source, and which you seem to have snapped up

somehow by good luck? and is it possible, or in any way conceivable,

that all this gigantic and beautifully ordered form of things which we

call the world should have jumped into its present consistency from

mere random forces without calculation? Scarcely; but then I do not

see the authors of the world as I do of works which men produce here.

As little do you see your own soul, said Socrates, which yet is the

lord of your body, so that, taking your own logic strictly, you must

conclude that you do all things by chance and nothing by calculation.

Well then, said Aristodemus, the fact is that I do not despise the

Divine Power,[74.1] but I esteem all Divine natures too mighty and too

glorious to require any service from me. For this reason rather they

justly claim our regard, said Socrates, their might and their glory

being the natural measure of the honour which they ought to receive

from us. Well, be assured, Socrates, that if I could only imagine that

the gods had any concern for us, I should not neglect them. And do you

really mean to affirm that they actually have no concern for us? Why,

consider what they have done for you; in the first place giving you an

erect stature, which they gave to no other animal, a stature by virtue

of which you not only see better before you, but can look upwards

also, and defend yourself in many ways which with downcast eyes were

impossible; and in the next place, not content with giving you feet,

like other animals, they have furnished {75} you with hands also, the

organs by which we practise most of those acts which manifest our

superiority to them;[75.1] and, to crown all, while other animals have

a tongue, man alone possesses this organ of such a nature that by

touching the hollow of the mouth with it in various ways he can mould

the emitted voice into articulate speech, significant of what thought

wishes to communicate to thought. Again, the love which is a passion

that stirs other animals only at certain seasons of the year, man is

capable of enjoying at all seasons; and not only do our capacities of

bodily efficiency and enjoyment so far surpass those of other animals,

but God (ὁ Θεός) has implanted in man a soul of the most

transcendent capacity. For what other animal, I ask, has a soul which

enables it to own and to acknowledge the existence of the gods, who

have disposed all this mighty order of things of which we are a part?

What race of animals except man pays any worship to the gods?[75.2]

What animal possesses a soul so fit as that of man to guard against

the inclemencies of the weather, to prevent or cure disease, to train

to bodily strength or to intellectual acuteness? and what animal when

it has learned anything can retain the lesson with equal tenacity? Is

it not rather plain that, compared with other animals, men live really

as gods upon the earth, so strikingly superior {76} are they both in

bodily and intellectual endowments; for neither could a creature with

man’s reason, but with the body of an ox, have been able fully to

execute its purposes; nor, again, could a creature with human hands,

but without human intellect, be able to go beyond the brute stage of

animal life; and after all this, heaped up as you are with bounties

and blessings from all sides, will you still persist in thinking that

you are a creature neglected by the gods? What, I ask, do you expect

them to do for you before they shall have any just claim to your

regard? I shall expect them, replied Aristodemus, to do for me what

you say they do for you, to send me advisers as to what I ought to do

and what I ought not to do. Be it so; and do you think that your case

is not already provided for, when the gods on being consulted through

divination give an answer which concerns all Athenians? or do you

imagine when the Greeks, or the whole human race, are warned of coming

evil by a portent, that you are specially excluded from the benefit of

that divine indication? Do you imagine that the gods would have

implanted in all human breasts the feeling that they are able to do us

good or evil, if they did not possess this power, or that men

constantly being deceived by this notion would not by this time have

discovered the delusion? Have you not observed also that the wisest

nations and the most stable governments are those which are the most

religious, and that individual men are then most piously inclined when

their reason is strongest and their passions most under control?

Believe me, my dear young friend, that as your soul within you moves

and manages the body even as it wills, so we ought {77} to believe

that the Intelligence which indwelleth the whole of things makes and

designs all things according to its good pleasure, and not to imagine

that while our human eye can reach many miles in vision, the Divine

eye should not be able to see all things at a glance, nor that, while

your soul can manage matters not here in Athens only, but in Egypt and

Sicily, the intelligence of the Divine Being (τοῦ Θεοῦ) is

not able to exercise a comprehensive care at once over the whole and

each individual In the same way therefore as by performing acts of

kindness to men you come to learn those who are disposed to show

kindness to you in return, and as by conferring with men on important

matters you know who are able to give sound advice on such matters, if

with this disposition you approach the gods, making trial of them if

belike they are willing to reveal to you any of those things which are

naturally unknown to men, then you will certainly learn by experience

that the Divine nature (τὸ θεῖον) is of such a kind as to be

able to see all things, and to hear all things, and to be everywhere

present, and to have a providential care of all things.”

So concludes this interesting dialogue, and the sympathetic reporter

in winding it up adds, “The tendency of such discourses appears to

me plainly to induce men to abstain from unholy and unjust and foul

deeds, not only when they are seen of men, but also in a lonely

wilderness, living constantly under the conviction that whatever men

do, and in whatever place, they can in nowise escape the eye of the

Omniscient.”

Let us now make a few remarks on the theological argument, or the

argument from design, here sketched {78} in such broad and masterly

lines. It is an argument, when taken in the gross, and in its grand

outline, so striking and so convincing, that it is only by confining

the eye to a few minute and unessential points that certain precise

and puzzling minds have conceited themselves that they were able to

blunt the edge of its force. One class of objectors, unfortunately not

at all uncommon in recent times, have imagined that they have refuted

Paley’s famous argument from the watch found on a waste heath, by

saying that there is no analogy between a piece of human manufacture

like a watch, and a living growth like a plant or an animal. Very

true, so far; a growth is a growth, and a manufacture is a

manufacture; the one possesses inherent divine vitality, the other no

vitality at all; but what follows? Not that an animal and a plant have

nothing in common, but only that they have not the principle of

vitality in common; not that the animal may not be constructed on the

same principles of design and adaptation on which the watch is

constructed, but that the animal to the curious machinery has

something superadded which we call life. The fact of the matter is,

that Dr. Paley’s argument would hold equally good if the designing

soul that made the supposed watch, instead of being outside in the

shape of a watch-maker, had been inside, as the principle of vitality

is in a plant; then we should have called the watch a plant or an

animal, and the design would have spoken out from its structure as

manifestly as before. There is therefore no difference, so far as

design and calculation are concerned, between a cunningly constituted

growth and a curiously compacted machine. Another class of objectors

are fond to tell us that things are not {79} what they are by virtue

of any inherent calculated type, but by a combination of complex

conditions and circumstances, which in the course of millions of

millions of ages work themselves happily into a consistent organism.

This is just Epicurus back again in his naked absurdity, almost indeed

in the same senseless phraseology; as we may see, for instance, in the

following passage from the _Westminster Review_, on which in the

course of my reading I accidentally stumbled:--“The positive method

makes very little account of marks of intelligence; in its wider view

of phenomena it sees that these incidents are a minority, and _may

rank as happy coincidences_; it absorbs them in the singular

conception of LAW.” Let us attempt to analyse this utterance. It

is the boast of the Comtian philosophy to find intelligence in the

works of Auguste Comte, but not in the works of the Architect of the

universe. Let that pass. In the next place it is indicated that it is

a narrow view of things which discovers DESIGN in creation; a larger

view reveals LAW; and the few incidents that may seem to indicate

design are perhaps better explained by the old Epicurean method of the

“fortuitous concourse of atoms.” Never was a greater amount of

incoherence crammed into a short sentence. The inference which Dr.

Paley drew from his watch is not in the least affected by the

narrowness of the view which the inspection of a watch necessitates;

nor would the striking evidence of a design in the structure of that

little telescope the human eye, be diminished in the least by

extending the view to the largest telescope ever made, or to the

largest human body in the watch-tower of which a human eye was ever

placed. The only legitimate consequence of {80} mounting from the

contemplation of an eye, merely as an eye, to its consideration as

part of a large organism called the human body, would be to increase

admiration by the discovery that the little design of the instrument

was subservient to the large design of the body, as if, after admiring

a small chamber in a vast building, and praising the cunning of the

architect, we should walk through the whole suite of rooms and then

discover some new beauty in the chamber having reference to the great

whole of which it was a part. But instead of this our author informs

us that this wider view “absorbs the original feeling of design into

the singular conception of LAW.” Applied to the supposed case of

the small chamber in the large palace, this is flat nonsense. For the

“singular conception of LAW,” in this case, is just the large

plan of the whole building, which, along with the small plan of each

part, proceeded from the comprehensive intellect of the architect.

What is LAW? The reasoning in the above passage implies that it is

something contrary to design, something that absorbs it, nay more,

something that reduces it to the category of a “happy coincidence.”

But Law is only a steady self-consistent method of operation, which

explains nothing; it is only a fact; and if in this method of

operation there be manifest order and purpose of producing a reasoned

and consistent result, the law then becomes a manifestation of design,

as in the original application of the word to the work of a lawgiver,

a Solon or a Lycurgus whose laws certainly implied a calculated

purpose of reform and re-organization; or, to take again the watch,

the law by which this tiny worker goes, is only the single word which,

describes that {81} ordered complex of calculated movements which the

design of the maker puts into play, for the purpose of marking the

regular lapse of time. The discovery of a great law, therefore, in an

ordered and calculated system of things, such as the world, may

enlarge the field in which design is exhibited, but, so far from

absorbing, can only tend to make that design more prominent. So much

for Comte. But what shall we say of Darwin? If that original and

ingenious investigator of nature really does mean to say that there

are no original types of things in the Divine mind (I use Platonic

language purposely, because it is the only language that satisfies the

demands of the case), and that a rose became a lily, or a lily a rose,

by some external power called “natural selection,”--I reply that I

shall believe this when I see it; that a modifying influence is one

thing, and a plastic force another; and that, as an able Hegelian

philosopher remarks,[81.1] a selection producing not a random but a

reasonable result always implies some principle of selection, and a

selecting agency--that is, the Socratic designing Intellect.

But there are greater names than those of Comte and Darwin, who have

been quoted as oracular denouncers of all teleology--two of the

greatest indeed of all modern names. Bacon and Goethe. The dictum of

the great father of modern physical science, that teleology is a

barren virgin, has been often repeated. Now, as Bacon was a pious man,

at least a religious philosopher, he certainly cannot have meant

Atheism by this; what then did he mean? {82} This question will be

best answered by considering what Bacon’s attitude as a philosopher

was. He was not, like Aristotle, a calm judicial speculator, making a

tabulated register of all knowledge; he was rather like Martin Luther,

a man of war; and as the ecclesiastical reformer’s life and doctrine

derive all their significance from the abuses of the Papacy which they

overthrew, so Bacon’s position as a polemical thinker is to be

interpreted only with reference to the school of thinking which he

attacked. That school was a school fruitful in theories, discussions,

and sounding generalities of all kinds, which afforded ample exercise

to intellectual athletes, but produced no practical result. To put an

end to this vague and unprofitable talk, the British Bacon, with the

same practical instinct which guided the Attic Socrates, though in an

opposite direction, set himself to establish a scientific method, a

method specially calculated by the interrogation of nature to

ascertain facts, and from the careful comparison of facts to educe

laws. With these investigations into elementary scientific facts the

general philosophical principle of final causes had nothing directly

to do; nay, it might even act perniciously in an age which had not yet

learned the art of careful experiment by accustoming men in an

indolent sort of way to spin ingenious theories about the final causes

of certain arrangements in the universe, before they had taken pains

to ascertain what these arrangements actually were. And when we

consider how vast a machine the Cosmos is, and how great the ignorance

of us curious emmets who set ourselves to interpret its hieroglyphics,

and to spell its scripture, it will be obvious that a warning against

the ready luxury of speculating on final {83} causes was one of the

most necessary utterances that might come from the mouth of a reformer

of scientific method. However far men may rise through the long

gradation of secondary causes up to the First Cause, and by the slow

steps of progress which we call means to a final result, the

preliminary question of course always is, _What are the facts?_ and

till these be accurately ascertained Bacon was fully justified in

saying that speculation about final causes is a barren virgin and

produces no offspring. But this wise abstinence from assigning final

causes at any particular stage of physical research is a quite

different thing from saying absolutely that there are no marks of

design in the universe, and that those most obvious things which from

Socrates downwards have been generally esteemed such, may in the

phraseology of a higher philosophy “rank as happy coincidences.”

The humble admiration of final causes in the world by the intelligent

worshipper is one thing, the hasty interpretation of them by every

forward religionist is another thing. The works of God are not to be

expounded, nor His ends and aims descanted on by every talker who may

discourse with fluent propriety on the works of a human toy-maker like

himself. Such we may feel confidently was Bacon’s point of view in

reference to teleological questions. As for Goethe, who was a

scientific investigator of scarcely less note than a poet, his remark

to Eckermann on this subject shows that his point of view was exactly

the same. Not WHY, or FOR WHAT PURPOSE, or WITH WHAT OBJECT, he

says, is the way of putting the question by which science may be

profited; the true scientific question is always HOW. Of this there

can be no doubt, “_Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere {84}

causas!_” the physical inquirer is primarily concerned to know--_how

did this come about?_ by what curiously concatenated series of

operations, starting from a certain point beyond which we cannot rise,

are certain results produced? Answer this and science is satisfied;

but in being so satisfied it proves itself to be a thing of secondary

and ancillary significance, resting, like the mathematician’s

demonstrations, on principles which it belongs to a superior science

to evolve. The whole doctrine of causes, efficient as well as final,

belongs to philosophy, to that grand doctrine of fundamental realities

which dictates to mere science both its starting-point and its goal.

But not even in this view is it altogether correct to say that the

consideration of design has nothing to do with purely scientific

investigations, and by the purely scientific man had better be

ignored. All we can say is, that it is better that it should be

ignored in certain cases than falsely presumed. But in a world where

everything is under the government of Law, which is merely the

expression of reason and the manifestation of design, nothing could be

more Arbitrary and more perverse than the systematic exclusion of

final causes from the philosophy of nature. So far from this, it is

certain there can be no philosophy of nature without them; if indeed

atheism can be called a philosophy, and in this nineteenth century,

Moses and Plato and the Apostle Paul may be cast from their throne to

make way for a resuscitated Greek Epicurus in the person of a

conceited French dogmatist! We shall therefore conclude, in accordance

with the teaching of Socrates, that an open eye for final causes not

only belongs to wisdom, but may often advance science, when proceeding

{85} cautiously upon the due observation and connexion of facts;

inasmuch as, in the words of an able metaphysician, “this universe

is not an accidental cavity in which an accidental dust has been

accidentally swept into heaps for the accidental evolution of the

majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic life. That majestic

spectacle is a spectacle as plainly for the eye of reason as any

diagram of the mathematician. That majestic spectacle could have been

constructed, was constructed, only in reason, for reason, and by

reason; and therefore everywhere, from the smallest particle, to the

largest system, moulded and modelled and inhabited by DESIGN.”[85.1]

The theological convictions of Socrates being so strong and so

decided, it followed as a necessary consequence, in a person of so

practical a character, that he should be a pious man, and that he

should practise those rites and services by which the dependent

position of man towards the gods is most naturally and effectively

expressed. If man, as was taught in the above extract, is the only

animal capable of religion, then the worship of the Supreme

Intelligence becomes the peculiar sign, privilege, and glory of his

humanity. An irreligious man, a speculative or practical atheist, is

as a sovereign who voluntarily takes off his crown and declares

himself unworthy to reign. Religious worship, therefore, being an act

which a man is specially bound to perform in virtue of his humanity,

neither Socrates nor any other pious heathen thinker could have any

doubt as to the peculiar forms and ceremonies that ought to constitute

this act. For all the heathens,--certainly {86} all Greeks and

Romans,--held that religion was an essential function of the State,

that Church and State, as we phrase it, are one and inseparable,

consequently that every good subject owed allegiance to the religious

traditions and observances of his countrymen, just as he did to the

civil laws.[86.1] The gods were to be worshipped by every good citizen

in every state,--νόμῳ πόλεως,--or, as we would say, according to the

law of the land; and as the religions of Greece and Rome were not

fenced with bristling dogmas in the shape of what we call a {87} Creed

and Church Articles, but floated quite freely in the region of

reverential tradition, while, at the same time, in those days, no man

ever dreamed of haying a religion for himself any more than of having

a civil government for himself, the conformity even of great thinkers

to the popular faith was not naturally accompanied by any taint of

that species of insincerity which has so often attached to the

subscription of modern articles of belief. The right {88} of private

judgment was exercised by the Greeks only in the domain of

philosophical speculation; for teaching the results of these

speculations they established schools; but the idea of protesting and

dissenting and making a private business of religion, for the

maintenance of certain ceremonies, forms of church-government, or

favourite doctrines, could never have occurred to them. Neither are we

to think it strange if, even as a matter of speculation, minds of

great original power, like that of Socrates, should feel no

intellectual repugnance to the main principles of a polytheistic

faith. There is nothing fundamentally absurd in Polytheism, provided

only a wise superintendent Providence be established somewhere to

overrule the democratic assembly of subordinate gods; and this the

Greeks had prominently in the person of Zeus.[88.1] The other gods,

like the angels in the Christian theology, however much their power

might be exaggerated by the reverence of particular localities, were

in the comprehensive survey of a philosophic mind only the ministers

of his supreme will, working harmoniously along with him in the

sustainment of the divine fabric of the universe. With this view of

Polytheism, pious-minded men such as Socrates, Xenophon, and Plutarch

could be perfectly satisfied; and the extravagant and immoral stories

about the gods, which excited the bile of Xenophanes and Plato, needed

not necessarily to give them any offence. For why? these stories were

{89} matter of popular belief, not of intellectual decision or of

sacerdotal dictation. A great national poet, like Pindar, might

explain, or explain away, in the public assembly of the Greeks, any

legends that appeared to him to contain matter unworthy of his lofty

conception of the gods. So of course might a philosopher like

Socrates. The peasants round Athens believed that the Wind Boreas came

down in human form, and carried off the nymph Oreithyia from the banks

of the Ilissus; this might or might not be true; Socrates certainly

was not bound te believe it; and, as he himself tells us in the

Phædrus, he was too busy with more important matters to trouble

himself with inquiring into the truth or falsehood of sacred legends

in a country where every fountain had its peculiar worship, and every

river its divine genealogy. This easy dealing with questions about

legends, however, did not in the least imply any want of sincerity in

the attitude of doubting thinkers towards the main articles of the

Polytheistic creed; on the contrary, the more pliable the legend the

less danger was there of its standing in the way of an honest

acceptance of the broad fundamental points of the general creed; and

it is an altogether gratuitous supposition in a late distinguished

writer[89.1] to suppose that when Socrates at his death gave as a

dying injunction to his friends to sacrifice a cock, which he had

vowed, to Æsculapius, he did this merely from the effect of habit,

and that he really did not believe in the existence of the god whom

the injunction immediately concerned. While the general evidence of

the adherence of Socrates both {90} in theory and practice to the

popular creed is so strong, we have no right in any particular

instance to set him down as insincere. Of his general sincerity on

these matters there certainly can be no doubt. It is set forth

distinctly in more than one dialogue of Xenophon, and harmonizes

exactly with all that we read in Plato. The philosopher used the

common kinds of divination practised by his countrymen, and gave

special directions as to the subjects on which a wise man should

consult the gods, and on which he should seek for direction from them

rather than from his own reason. We have special testimony to the fact

that on one occasion (see above, page 11) he, after a long period

of pious meditation, offered up a prayer to the Sun; and one of the

Platonic dialogues concludes with a prayer of Socrates in the

following curt and significant style:--

“O dear Pan, and ye other gods who frequent this spot, grant me, in

the first place, to be good within; and as for outward circumstances,

may they be such as harmonize well with my inward capacities. Grant me

ever to esteem the wise man as the alone wealthy man; and as for gold,

may I possess as much of it as a man of moderate desires may know to

use wisely.”

So much for the theological belief and unaffected piety of this great

man. How intimately he held Religion and Morality to be bound together

will best appear from the following dialogue with the Sophist Hippias,

on the foundation of natural right and positive law. We give it at

length, as it has a direct bearing on some fundamental principles of

general jurisprudence which have been largely debated in this country,

from Locke down to Bentham and Mill.

“Is it not strange, Hippias, said Socrates, that {91} when a man

wishes to have his son taught shoemaking or carpentry or any trade, he

has no difficulty in finding a master to whom he may send him for

instruction? nay, I have even heard that there are training masters

who will teach a horse or an ox to do what they ought to do. But if I

wish for myself or my son or my servant, to know the principles of

what is right and just, I look in vain for any source whence I might

get instruction in these important matters. There you are, said

Hippias (who had just returned to Athens after a long absence)--there

you are saying exactly the same things that you were saying when I

left you! Very true, said Socrates, and not only do I say the same

things always, but always about the same things, while you, I presume,

on account of your multiform knowledge, on no occasion require to

repeat any old truths. Well, I readily confess that I always prefer,

when I can, to bring out something new. Do you then mean to say that

even when you know a thing thoroughly, and have occasion to speak

about it frequently, you can always continue to say something new? as,

for example, if any one were to ask you with how many letters to spell

Socrates, would you give one reply to-day and another to-morrow? or

again, if he should ask if twice five are ten, or any other question

of arithmetic, would you give different answers at different times?

With regard to matters of that kind, O Socrates, there can be no

variation; but with regard to what is JUST and RIGHT a man may

constantly make new discoveries, as I think I am in a condition to say

something on that subject today, to which neither you nor any man in

Athens could put in a demurrer. Now, by Hera! said {92} Socrates, if

you have really discovered anything important in this province, any

charm that might save a jury from the pain of giving a divided

verdict, or good citizens from the necessity of brawling and wrangling

with one another, or mighty States from ruining each other by wars,

you have made a discovery indeed for which I envy you--and I really do

not know how I can let you quit me at present till I have drawn from

you the secret of this discovery. That you shall not do, by Jove! said

the Sophist, before you first tell me what your own views are on the

subject of RIGHT; for this is an old trick of yours, by captious

questions to worm answers out of other people, and laugh at them when

they are made to contradict themselves, while you refuse to stand

question, or pronounce a definite opinion on any point. How can you

say this, O Hippias, when you perceive that I am continually employed

in doing nothing but bringing to light my notions on right and wrong?

In what discourse did you bring this to light, O Socrates? If not in a

set discourse, replied the philosopher, certainly by actions; or do

you not think that a deed is a much more effective way of declaring a

man’s moral principles than a word? More effective unquestionably;

for of those who say what is just many do what is unjust; but if a

man’s actions are just there is no injustice in him. Well then,

Hippias, I ask you, did you ever know me either bearing false witness

or playing the informer, or exciting discontent among the people; or

doing any other wrong action? Certainly not. But is not abstaining

from what is wrong the definition of what is right? There you are

again! said Hippias; I catch you in the act; you are {93} wriggling

cunningly out of the position, and instead of telling me what just men

do, you tell me what they don’t do. I did so because I honestly

thought that to abstain from all unjust deeds was a sufficient proof

of the existence of justice in the breast of the actor. But if a

negative answer does not satisfy you, then take this--I say that Right

is conformity to the laws (τὸ νόμιμον δίκαιον εἶναι). Do you then

literally mean to say that Right and Law are identical? I do. Well,

then, I must tell you, in the first place, that I do not understand

what you mean by Law and Right. You know the laws of the State, I

presume? Of course. What then are the laws of the State? The laws of

the State, said he, are all the enactments which the people have made

when they have agreed among themselves as to what things ought to be

done and what things ought not to be done. Then, said Socrates, that

person would act according to law who obeyed those enactments, and he

would be a lawless person who transgressed them? Unquestionably. Then

I presume the man who did according to law would act according to

rights while the man who transgressed the law would do wrong? Of

course. Then you admit that the man who observes law, and the just

man, or the man who acts according to right, are identical, and the

transgressor of law and the unjust man in the same way? This sounds

very well, said Hippias; but how can rectitude, or right, be measured

by the standard of laws which the very persons who make them are often

the first to repudiate,--enacting the exact contrary? That is not so

very strange, said Socrates, for the same parties who declare war

to-day may {94} make peace to-morrow. Of course they may, he replied.

Well, then, I do not comprehend with what distinction you maintain

that, whereas persons who observe the rights of war to-day and the

rights of peace to-morrow are not charged with inconsistency, persons

obeying any other laws to-day which may be reversed to-morrow are

chargeable with unsettling the principles of right; or do you really

mean to stand up as a universal peacemonger, and to say that those who

serve their country well in war are guilty of a crime? Far from it,

said he. Right, said Socrates; for obedience to the laws is really in

every good citizen the one thing needful; and Lycurgus, the famous

Spartan, would have been not a whit better than other legislators had

he not by his institutions worked into the very blood of the people a

habit of obedience to the laws; and is it not plain that in all States

those governors are universally esteemed the best who know how best to

make their laws obeyed, and that the State where the habit of

obedience is most confirmed is always the most prosperous in peace and

the most invincible in war? Nay more, is not concord universally

praised as the greatest good of States, and do not our venerable

senators and our best leaders of the people continually exhort men to

this virtue? and is it not a fact that in every Greek State there is a

special oath taken by the citizens that they will cultivate concord,

and above all things shun strife and sedition among themselves? Now I

do not conceive that in the prominence thus given to concord it was

held forth as desirable that all the citizens should be of the same

mind with regard to choruses or flute-players or poets and their

performances, but what was intended is that the citizens {95} should

above all things obey the laws: for so long as these are generally

acknowledged, States will be strong and prosperous, but without

concord neither house nor family can stand. Each individual also of a

community can thrive only in this way; the man who obeys the laws will

always incur less loss and gain more honour than the lawless man; and

in the courts, having the law on his side, he will more readily gain

his case. And to whom, I ask, would you intrust your property, or your

son, or your wife, preferably to the man who fears to violate the

laws? in whom will the public authorities more readily confide? From

whom more than from the observer of the laws may parents or relations,

or friends or citizens or guests, reasonably expect to receive their

due? to whom would enemies rather commit the negotiation of truces and

treaties? with whom preferably would any State wish to form an

alliance? to whom would his allies with greater security intrust the

defence of any position, or the command of any detachment? from whom

would a benefactor sooner expect to receive a grateful return for the

benefit conferred? whom would a man sooner choose for his friend, and

more wisely shun as an enemy? In every situation of life the man who

respects law is the person whom one would be most benefited by having

for his friend, and most damaged by having for his enemy; and, on

these grounds, I consider myself justified in concluding generally, O

Hippias, that the man who obeys the law, and the just man, or the man

who does the right, is one and the same character; and if you have any

objections to this doctrine, I should like much to hear them. By Jove!

said Hippias, I think I am not able to {96} state any valid objections

to what you have said! Tell me, O Hippias, did you ever hear of what

we might call UNWRITTEN LAWS? Yes; those laws I presume you mean

which are the same in all countries. Can we say, then, do you imagine,

that men made such laws? How could that be? men could neither come

together for such a purpose, nor, if they did, could they ever agree.

Who, then, do you think laid down these laws? In my opinion, the gods;

for amongst all men the universal instinct is to acknowledge the gods.

Reverence to parents, I presume, falls under the same category--for

this is a universal practice. I agree. Then shall we say that the gods

are also the authors of the law forbidding sexual intercourse between

parents and their offspring? No; I cannot call this a law coming

directly from the gods. Why not? Because I see certain, men

transgressing this law; it is not universal. But the transgression of

a law does not make it less a law; men break many laws; but in the

case of the divine laws a penalty waits on the transgressor which it

is impossible to escape, as men may, and not seldom do, escape the

consequences of violated human laws, whether by persistently

undermining or violently overriding them. But what penalty, Socrates,

I should like to know, do parents and children incur who practise

incestuous intercourse? The greatest of all penalties, the begetting

of children in a bad way. But how bad? for being good themselves, that

is in good health and of a good stock, what comes from good must of

necessity be good. But you forget, rejoined Socrates, that in the

procreation of children we must consider not only the original

goodness of the stock, but also {97} that the bodies of both

individuals concerned in the act should be in their prime; or do you

perhaps imagine that from unripe bodies, or bodies sinking into decay,

an equally vigorous and healthy seed can flow, as from those which are

in their best condition? Certainly not, said Hippias. Then it is

plain, said Socrates, that the offspring of such intercourse would not

be procreated under favourable natural conditions, and according to

the unwritten law of nature are for this reason bad and wrong. Take

now another instance: ingratitude, I presume, you will grant is always

and everywhere wrong, while to repay kindness by kindness is

everywhere an act in harmony with law. Certainly; but this law also is

frequently transgressed. Yes; and the transgression brings with it its

own punishment, in that the violators of this law are at once deprived

of good friends, and forced to cultivate the goodwill of those who

they know must hate them;--for are not those who confer benefits on

their friends good friends, and do not those who never return

obligations to such friends, make themselves hated by them, while, at

the same time, on account of the benefits which may accrue from such

connexion, they are obliged to go on courting those very persons by

whom they are hated? Now, by Jove, said Hippias, I must confess that

here I do see plain traces of a divine law; for that laws should bring

along with them their own penalty when broken, is a most rare device,

to which no mere human legislator has ever yet been able to attain.

Well then, Hippias, do you think that the gods, when they make laws,

make them in accordance with right, or with what is contrary to right?

Not with what is contrary, assuredly; {98} for if laws are to be made

in accordance with absolute right, the gods are the only powers that

can make them perfectly. And so, Hippias, to finish our long

discourse, we conclude that WITH THE GODS LAW AND RIGHT ARE

IDENTICAL.”

Now, without maintaining the perfect propriety or sufficiency of all

the examples put forward in this argument, the general principles of

it state the fundamental axioms of moral philosophy in a way which

might have saved a certain modern school of ethical writers volumes of

ingenious sophistry, if they had but possessed the natural amount of

reverence and knowledge which would have enabled them to appreciate

what was good and true in the discourses of the great fathers of their

own science. For the unwritten laws whose authority the Athenian

evangelist here so eloquently asserts, in goodly harmony with the

noble Hebrew prophet (Jeremiah xxxi. 33) before him, and the heroic

apostle of the Gentiles (Romans ii. 15) four centuries and a half

later, are just the natural and necessary fruit of those innate human

actions and divinely implanted instincts in the region of emotion and

volition, which Locke, in an evil day for British philosophy, thought

it incumbent on him to deny, and by the denial of which a whole school

of meagre moralists, from Hume to John Stuart Mill, have either

dragged themselves ingloriously in the mire, or entangled themselves

in a tissue of the sorriest sophistries. In this dialogue also we see

how ably the common sense of the great logical missionary of Greece

fought its way through that most inconclusive argument against the

immutability of moral distinctions derived from the strange and

abnormal habits of certain savage tribes. {99} A law is not the less a

law, replied Socrates to the sophistical Hippias, because it may be

sometimes or frequently transgressed; and a divine instinct is not the

less divine because there are found false instincts and morbid

sensibilities in individual men, or even in whole tribes. The type of

any race of animals is not to be taken from monsters, nor is the law

of the variations of the magnetic needle near ferruginous rocks or in

an iron vessel to be paraded as a proof that there is no such thing as

magnetic polarity. According to the argument of Socrates, as Aristotle

also teaches, the aberrations from the norm of human morality in

certain persons or tribes, which so confounded Locke, are no more to

be held as arguments against the eternity of innate moral distinctions

than the existence of sporadic disease or degenerated types of body

can be considered as disproving the fact of health, or the braying of

an incidental ass, or even a troop of asses, can be taken as a

refutation of one of Beethoven’s symphonies.

On the political opinions and conduct of Socrates a very few words

will suffice. We have seen above (p. 14) that, like the apostle

Paul, and the preachers of the gospel generally, he kept himself out

of all political entanglement; nevertheless as a notable and prominent

citizen in what, notwithstanding its great celebrity, we cannot but

call a small democratic State, he could not avoid occasionally talking

on subjects of public interest, and giving his opinion freely on the

conduct of public men. To have done otherwise indeed would have been

to have imposed silence on himself in regard to not a few matters

which belonged as much to his moral mission as anything that concerned

the conduct of private {100} individuals; it would have been also to

incur the charge of apathy, indifference and cowardice, than which

nothing could have been more hurtful to his influence as a moral

teacher. Accordingly, in the book of Xenophon there are not wanting

indications of his political tendencies, which we shall here attempt

summarily to state.

His fundamental position in regard to all political duties was, as we

may have gathered from the conversation with Hippias, the supreme

obligation on every good citizen to obey the existing laws. In this

sacred, and sometimes, one might feel inclined to think, over

scrupulous reverence for law, he agrees with the apostle Paul, but

runs directly counter to the received maxims of all democracy, both

ancient and modern; for reverence is not an emotion which democracy

cherishes; and an impassioned majority is apt to consider every law a

usurpation, which applies a drag to its impetuousness or a bridle to

its wilfulness.

Whether he was in heart a republican after the Attic type,

like Aristotle, or, like his illustrious disciples Plato and

Xenophon, cherished a reactionary partiality for the Spartan or

monarchico-aristocratic form of government, is difficult to say.

Certainly in the _Memorabilia_ there is nothing that savours of an

admiration of absolutism, or a blind reverence for Sparta; and though

there was in his time a current notion--arising out of recent

political misfortunes--that the Athenian character had degenerated, we

find him, in a remarkable conversation with young Pericles, rather

disposed to vindicate than to exaggerate the faults of his democratic

fellow-citizens. At the same time, it is quite certain that as a

philosopher, and a man free to look at {101} public affairs from an

impartial position, he did not approve of certain principles fondly

cherished in the practice of the democracy of which he was a member.

If therefore in his heart he wished a democracy at all, he must have

wished it, as Aristotle also did, under those checks, and with that

tempering admixture of the aristocratic element which would constitute

it what Aristotle calls a πολιτεία, and what we should call a

moderate republic, or a popular government not founded on mere liberty

and equality, and not subject to the overbearing sway of a mere

numerical majority. For in the existing democracy of Athens we find

him attributing the military mishaps of his countrymen to the

circumstance that their officers had no professional training, and the

generals of the army were in fact for the most part extemporized.[101.1]

This was no doubt a very vulnerable point of the democracy; for we

find Philip of Macedon in the next century telling the Athenians

sarcastically that they were surely a very wonderful people, inasmuch

as they found ten generals to elect every year, whereas he in his

whole life had been able to find only one, Parmenio. And in the same

spirit the pungent father of the Cynics had told them, after a general

election, that they had better go and vote publicly that asses were

horses, which would certainly be more reasonable than to vote that

certain persons whom they had just stamped with the title of generals

were soldiers. As little could Socrates, as a thinking man, and a man

of lofty self-reliance, with a more than common amount {102} of moral

courage, approve either of the democratic device of choosing important

public officers by the blind chance of the ballot, or of that

unreasoned usage of all democracies, that a mixed multitude, huddled

into the vote, under the influence of sudden passion or subtle

intrigue, shall, by a mere numerical majority, decide on the most

critical questions, which require comprehensive survey, cool decision,

and impartial judgment. Again, as a man of truth, he had a special

objection to the method of governing in democracies by pandering to

the prejudices of the people rather than by opposing them; and above

all things he hated, and was constantly denouncing and exposing, that

meretricious and essentially hollow oratory which the man of the

people always must practise when the electors, on whose favour he is

dependent, have their opinions dictated by local interests and

personal passions, rather than by large considerations of public right

and the general good. Lastly, as a moralist, he knew that there is no

bait more seductive to the human mind than the love of power; to this

strong passion democracy applies a constant and potent stimulus; and

thus acts directly in bringing the worst and not the best men into

situations of public influence and trust; for good men are modest, and

more apt to feel the responsibilities than to covet the advantages of

political power. Thus far Socrates was decidedly, if not

anti-republican, at least anti-democratic; but we must bear in mind

also that he and, we may add, all the wise Greeks were equally or even

more opposed to the cold selfishness of a narrow oligarchy governing

for their own aggrandizement; and that, like every man with Hellenic

blood in his veins, he had an instinctive hatred of {103} tyranny and

oppression in every shape; and proved this, as Xenophon informs us, in

the most decided way, by publicly bearding two of the thirty tyrants,

and pursuing quietly his labours of love in their despite.

The prosecution and death of Socrates, which we must now sketch, is

one of the most interesting events in history,--useful also in a

special degree as a warning to that large class of persons who are

inclined to follow the multitude in all things, with unlimited faith

in the motto VOX POPULI VOX DEI. Never did a people, in this case a

particularly shrewd and intelligent people, cased in the hard panoply

of unreasoned tradition, under the distorting influence of prejudice,

the exaggerations of personal spite, and the smooth seductions of

popular oratory, commit an act of more daring defiance to every

principle of truth and justice. Happily we possess evidence of the

most distinct and indubitable description with regard both to the

nature of the charges brought against the philosopher and the

delusions which blinded his judges. In reference to the first point,

we have the very words of the indictment, given in the same terms by

both Plato and Xenophon. With regard to the second point, wherein the

real key to his condemnation lies, we have an ancient comedy--the

Clouds of Aristophanes--in which the state of public feeling and

popular prejudice in Athens in reference to the philosopher is brought

as vividly before us as if it had been a matter of yesterday. In this

play--one of the wisest certainly, and one of the most humorous, that

ever was written--Socrates is put forward as representing the

Sophists; and a picture is drawn of that class of persons, calculated

to stir up a whole host {104} of indignant feelings, patriotic and

personal, against the philosopher. No doubt the whole affair, so far

as Socrates was concerned, was a tissue of the grossest lies; but

neither those whose business it is to make jokes for the public, nor

the public, who find their pleasure in these jokes, have ever

displayed any very scrupulous care in sifting the materials of their

mirth. A popular comedy on any event of the day is popular, not

because it is true, but because it cleverly tricks out that view of

the matter which the multitude delights to think is true; it is the

proper pabulum of popular prejudice; and as such there can be no doubt

that the gross caricature of Socrates represented in Athens 423 B.C.

with great applause, was one of the principal feeders of those local

feelings and prejudices by which, twenty-three years afterwards, the

great preacher of righteousness was condemned. For we must bear in

mind that Socrates was not condemned by a bench of cool lawyers, such

as decide cases of heresy in the English Church, but by a jury or

popular assembly, most of whom had already prejudged the case; and

trial by jury, as large experience in this country has shown, may as

readily be made the willing instrument of popular passion, as the

strong bulwark against autocratic or oligarchic oppression. And all

these sources of evidence bring us to a conclusion which agrees

exactly with what might _a priori_ have been predicated from what we

know both of the special proclivities of the Athenian people and the

general tendencies of human beings, when acting in masses, under the

spur of great political or religious excitement.

To state the matter more articulately, the view of the philosopher’s

guilt taken by his accusers and the {105} majority of the jury who

condemned him, may be comprised under the following five points:--

(1.) Socrates was one of the Sophists; and to the superficial

undistinguishing eye of the general public of Athens, like any other

public, constitutionally impatient of distinctions, it was as natural

to confound the philosopher with his antagonists as it was to Tacitus

and other intelligent Romans to confound the first Christians with

their greatest enemies, the Jews. Whatever odium therefore in public

estimation attached to the profession and principles of a Sophist,

necessarily attached to Socrates, as one of the most prominent of the

class. He was accordingly assumed to be guilty under the following

heads of offence, all of which were truly applicable to the majority

of the class of men with whom he was identified.

(2.) The Sophists generally did not believe in the gods of their

country, and, more than that, they were sceptical, and even

atheistical, in their whole tone and attitude.

(3.) They did not believe in the immutability of moral distinctions,

teaching that all morality is based on positive law, custom, fashion,

association, or habit.

(4.) And their profession of these principles was the more dangerous,

that it was supported by a specious and plausible art of logic and

rhetoric, of which the professed object was, with an utter disregard

of truth, to make the worse appear the better reason.

(5.) The natural and actual effect of this teaching was to corrupt the

youth and undermine both domestic and civic morality.

{106}

This is the full view of the case, as one may gather it from the whole

pleadings; but more definitely and succinctly the actual indictment is

given by Xenophon in this single sentence:--“SOCRATES BEHAVES

WRONGFULLY IN NOT ACKNOWLEDGING THOSE AS GODS WHOM THE STATE HOLDS TO

BE GODS, AND IN INTRODUCING NEW GODS OF HIS OWN; HE ACTS WRONGFULLY

ALSO IN CORRUPTING THE YOUTH.”

Now the first question which arises on this charge is, whether such a

prosecution, according to the law of Athens, was justifiable at all;

and on this head we are happy to agree with the view of the case so

ably stated by Professor Zeller in his excellent work on the

Philosophy of the Greeks. The prosecution, we think, was not

justifiable; that is, even though the points had been proven, there

was no indictable offence. For though unquestionably both by Hellenic

and Roman law a public action lay in theory against all who did not

acknowledge the gods of the country, and no man was entitled to

entertain private gods without State authority; and though as a matter

of fact several eminent persons, such as Anaxagoras and Diagoras, had

even in the lifetime of Socrates been tried and banished for the

offence of impiety, yet the spirit of toleration was now so large, and

the license everywhere assumed had been so great, that to condemn an

honest thinker to death for simple heterodoxy, in the year 399 B.C.,

in Athens, was altogether inexcusable, and could be attributed only to

intense personal spite on the part of his prosecutors, and to the

crassest prejudice on the part of the jury who tried him.

But the case assumes a much more serious aspect, {107} when it stands

proven in the most distinct terms that, even had the prosecution in

point of legal practice been justifiable, the defendant as a matter of

fact was entirely innocent of all the charges in the indictment. Of

this ample evidence shines out in almost every page of the above

sketch; and more may be found by whoso cares to seek in almost every

chapter of Xenophon. There is no philosopher of antiquity in whom a

cheerful piety, according to the traditions of his country, and a

reasonable morality, were so happily combined. In this view he stands

out in remarkable completeness when compared whether with Confucius in

the far east, or with Aristotle in his own country. He stands also as

a representative man in this respect above Plato, and incarnates fully

both the piety and the philosophy of Athens, just as Chalmers was the

incarnation of the religion, the science, the fervour and the

practical sagacity of Scotland. Plato, on the other hand, though a man

of profound piety, as a transcendental speculator was too lofty in his

point of view to be able to reconcile himself to the familiar and

sensuous theology of Homer; while Aristotle was defective altogether

in the emotional part of his nature, and, like a true encyclopædist,

was content to register the gods whom he had not the heart to worship.

As to the new gods whom Socrates was said to have introduced, this

charge could only have arisen from some gross popular blunder about

the δαίμων or genius by whom he used to assert his conduct was

often guided. What this δαίμων really was we shall see by and

by; but even had it been a real familiar spirit, as was crudely

supposed, there was nothing in the idea of such spiritual intercourse

contrary to the {108} orthodox conceptions of heathen piety. The third

charge against him of corrupting the youth, was merely an application

of the charge of irreligion, with the obvious intention of rousing the

tender apprehensions of Athenian fathers who believed in the stout old

Marathonian sturdiness, and hated the subtle glibness of the rising

generation; for in fact, like the late distinguished Baron Bunsen,

Socrates was peculiarly the friend of young men, and specially zealous

for their good. The answer to such a charge was plain, and was similar

to that which might have been made by the Methodists of the last

century, when they were charged with leading away the people from the

Established Church: If you, the Churchmen, had taken care of the

people in the remote corners of Cornwall and Wales, we certainly

should never have interfered. So Socrates might well ask his accusers,

as we find in Plato’s Apology he did: “_If I corrupt the young

men, who improves them?_ It was simply because there was no person who

cared to instruct them in the principles of right that there was room

for me to come forward as a teacher at all. Your accusation of me is a

proof that you neglected your own work.” Why then, we are now

prepared to ask, was he condemned? The answer to this is unfortunately

only too obvious. The causes of his condemnation were five:--

(1.) Because his freedom of speech as a preacher of righteousness had

made him not a few enemies in influential quarters. Though entirely

free from every taint of bitterness or ill-will, and even playfully

tolerant to human weaknesses, the very reverse, as we have seen, of a

modern Calvin, the moment an argument was started he spared no party,

who, by {109} the application of the searching logical test, was found

to be a dealer in hollow superficialities or pretentious shams; poets,

orators, and politicians equally were made to feel the keen edge of

his reproof. Against all and each of these he had spoken more truth

than they could easily bear; and of that dangerous seed he was now to

reap the natural fruit. Truth, which was a jewel of great price to

him, was a nauseous drug to many; and the man who administered it

could not be looked on with friendly eyes. “_Am I become your enemy

because I tell you the truth?_” was the question directed more than

four hundred years afterwards by the great apostle of the Gentiles to

some of his perverted churches. So it was also in the days of

Socrates, and so it must ever be. Men are by nature not lovers of

truth, in the first place, but lovers of themselves, of their own

wishes, of their own fancies, of their own belongings. To become

lovers of the pure truth they must undergo a process of moral and

intellectual regeneration--the new birth of oriental philosophy and of

evangelical doctrine.

(2.) Because the religious antipathies of an orthodox public (and the

Athenians prided themselves specially on their religiousness) towards

a person accused of heterodoxy, scepticism, and atheism are so strong

as readily to overbear any evidence that may be adduced to prove the

personal piety, and even the literal orthodoxy, of the accused party.

(3.) Because in a democracy, where the judges, or, as we would say,

the jury, are a mixed multitude of ignorant and prejudiced people,

such motives are apt to be particularly strong.

(4.) Because Socrates, as a man of high principle, {110} and of a

perhaps over-strained sense of honour, would not condescend to use any

of those intrigues, tricks, and supple artifices which are often

applied successfully to overcome the prejudices of an adverse jury.

Nay, his attitude seemed more that of a man willing to find in death a

noble opportunity for putting a seal upon the great work of his life.

He pleaded his own case, which no prudent man does who is anxious

merely to gain his case; and his speech is rather a proud assertion of

himself against his judges than a politic deprecation of their

displeasure.

(5.) Because, no doubt, a certain excitement of the public mind

arising out of the troubles of the recent revolutionary government

established by the Spartans, and the restoration of the democracy by

Thrasybulus, was favourable to the bringing of a charge against a

person belonging to a class generally suspected by the people, and one

who had unquestionably at times spoken his mind freely enough on the

defects, absurdities, and blunders of the local democracy. This

political element may certainly have helped; but the charge against

the philosopher was not mainly--formally indeed not at all--political,

as the pleadings both in Xenophon and Plato sufficiently show.

Taking all these things together, remembering how many follies and

ferocities have everywhere been perpetrated in the name of religion,

and impressed with the full force of what the poet says of the reward

wont to be paid by the world to persistent speakers of truth--

“Die wenigen die von der Wahrheit was erkannt

Und thöricht genug ihr volles Herz nicht wahrten

Dem Pöbel ihr Gefühl, ihr Schauen offenbarten

Hat man von je gekreuzigt und verbrannt,”--

{111}

some persons may perhaps feel inclined to think with Mr. Grote that

“the wonder rather is that the wise man was not prosecuted sooner.

It was only the extraordinary toleration of the Greek people that

prevented this.” There is a great amount of truth in this remark;

but the exercise of polytheistic toleration in the case of Socrates

was rendered more easy by the undoubted innocency of the accused, and

the host of friends whom his wisdom and goodness had created for him

as his champions. Had Socrates really been as heterodox in Athenian

theology as Michael Servetus was in the theology of the Christian

world at the period when, in harmony with universal European law, he

was burnt by the Genevese Calvinists, we might then have drawn a

contrast between monotheistic intolerance and polytheistic toleration

in two perfectly similar cases; but as matters really stand, while the

execution of Servetus was only a great legal and theological mistake,

the death of Socrates must be stamped by the impartial historian as a

great social crime. It was equally against local law and human right,

a rude invasion of blind prejudice, overbearing insolence, and paltry

spite against the holiest sanctities of human life.

The details of the death of Socrates, sketched with such graceful

power and kindly simplicity by Plato in the concluding chapters of the

_Phædo_, are well known; but the present paper would seem imperfect

without some glimpse of that last and most beautiful scene of the

philosopher’s career. We shall therefore conclude with that extract;

and to make the picture of his last days as complete as possible,

introduce it by an extract from Plato’s _Apology_, in which the

dignified self-reliance and serene courage of the sage {112} is

described with all that rich fulness and easy grace of which the

writer was so consummate a master:--

“I should have done what was decidedly wrong, O Athenians, if, when

the archons whom you elected ordered me, at Potidæa, at Amphipolis,

and at Delium, to accept the post given me in the war, and stand where

I was ordered to stand at the risk of death,--if then, I say, I had

not obeyed the command, and exposed my life willingly for the good of

my country; but when the order comes from a god--as I had the best

reason to believe that a god did order me to spend my life in

philosophizing, and in proving myself and others, whether we were

living according to right reason,--if in such circumstances I should

now, from fear of death, or from any other motive, leave my post, and

become a deserter, this were indeed a sin; and for such an offence any

one might justly bring me before this court on a charge of impiety,

saying that I had disobeyed the voice of the god by flinching from

death, and conceiting myself to be wise when I was not wise. For to be

afraid of death, O Athenians, is in fact nothing else than to seem to

be wise when a man is not wise: for it is to seem to have a knowledge

of things which a man does not know. For no man really knows whether

death may not be to mortal men of all blessings perhaps the greatest;

and yet they do fear it, as if they knew that it is the greatest of

evils. And how, I ask, can this be other than the most shameful folly

to imagine that a man knows what he does not know? or perhaps do I

differ from most other men in this, and if I am wiser at all than any

one, am I wiser in this, that, while not possessing any exact

knowledge of the state of matters in Hades, I do not {113} imagine

that I possess such knowledge; but as to right and wrong, I know for

certain, that to disobey a better than myself whether man or god, is

both bad and base. On no account therefore will I ever fear and seek

to avoid what may or may not be an evil, rather than that which I most

certainly know to be bad; in so much that if, on the present occasion,

you should be willing to acquit me, and refuse to listen to Anytus,

who maintained that I either should never have been brought before you

at all, or you could not do otherwise than condemn me to death,

because your sons, putting in practice the lessons of Socrates, must

needs go on without redemption to their ruin--if, notwithstanding this

declaration of my prosecutor, you should still be unconvinced, and

say--O Socrates, for the present we discharge you, but on this

condition, that for the future you shall not go on philosophizing and

proving, as you have hitherto done; and, if you are caught doing so,

then you shall die--if on these conditions you were now willing to

acquit me, I should say to you, O Athenians, that, while I cherish all

loyal respect and love for you, I choose to obey the gods rather than

men, and so long as I live and breathe I will never cease

philosophizing: and exhorting any of you with whom I may happen to

converse, and addressing him as I have been wont, thus,--O my

excellent fellow-citizen, the citizen of a State the most famous for

wisdom and for resources, is it seemly in you to feel no shame if,

while you are spending your strength in the accumulation of money, and

in the acquisition of civic reputation, you bestow not the slightest

pains to have your soul as well furnished with intelligence as your

life is with prosperity? And if any man to {114} this question should

reply, that, so far as he is concerned, he really does bestow as much

care on wisdom as on wealth, then I will not forthwith let him go, but

will proceed, as I was wont, to interrogate, and to prove, and to

argue; and if, as the result of the discussion, he shall appear to me

not to possess virtue, but merely to say that he possesses it, I will

then go on to reprove him in that by his deeds he prefers what is base

to what is noble, and foolishly sets the highest value upon that which

has the least worth. And in this wise I will speak to every man whom I

shall converse with, be he citizen, or be he stranger, and the rather

if he be a fellow-citizen to whom I am bound by nearer and more

indissoluble ties. For this is precisely what I am commanded to do by

the god; and if the god did indeed give forth this command, then must

I distinctly declare that no greater blessing could be to this city

than that, so long as I do live, I should live to execute the divine

command. For what I do day after day treading your streets is simply

this, that, speaking to both young and old, I exhort them not to seek

in the first place money or anything material, but to stretch every

nerve that their soul may be as excellent as possible; for that virtue

and all excellence grow not from gold, but rather that gold and all

things truly good, both in private and public life, grow to men from

the possession of virtue as the root of all good. If by preaching this

doctrine I corrupt the youth, let such teaching be declared corrupt:

but if any one asserts that I teach other doctrine than this, he is

talking unreason. Therefore, O Athenians, do as seemeth you good;

listen to Anytus, or listen to him not; acquit me or acquit me not, I

can do no otherwise than {115} I have done, though I should die a

hundred times.

(_At these words murmurs of dissent and disapprobation are heard from

the jury_.)

“Be not surprised, O Athenians, nor express displeasure at what I

have said; listen rather and hear, for you will be the better and not

the worse for anything that I have said, and I have some other things

to say also of a nature to bring out similar expressions of your

dissent; but hear me, I beseech you, with patience. This I must

plainly tell you, that if you put me to death, being such an one as I

have described, and doing such things as I do, you will not hurt me so

much as you will hurt yourselves; or, more properly speaking, no man

can hurt me, neither Anytus nor Meletus nor any one else; for it is

not in the nature of things that a better man should receive essential

harm from a worse. No doubt a worse man may kill me, or banish me, or

brand me with statutable infamy--evils these the greatest possible in

the estimation of some, but not certainly in my conviction, who hold

the greatest infamy to be even that which this man has brought upon

himself, in that wrongfully he endeavours to take away the life of his

fellow. I am not therefore, in making this present defence, pleading

my own cause so much as speaking in your behalf, O Athenians, lest ye

should be found sinning against the god in condemning a just man

unjustly. For if you put me aside you will not easily find another

(though it may excite a smile when I say so) who may be able or

willing to perform the same service for the public good; for even as a

large and mettlesome, though from the size of its body somewhat slow,

horse requires {116} a goad to make it run, even so the god seems to

have attached me to you, that by spurring and goading, and exhorting

and reproving you day after day with a pious persistency, I should

rouse you to the performance of what your dignity requires. Such an

honest counsellor, and one who shall as faithfully apply when

necessary the profitable pain that belongs to the successful treatment

of your malady, you may not so readily find again; for which reason I

say, fellow-citizens, hear me and spare my life; but if, as is natural

enough, you take offence, and, like other sleepers, begin to kick and

to butt at the man who rouses you from your lethargy, nothing is

easier than killing me; and then when I am gone you will be allowed to

sleep on in uninterrupted sloth, unless indeed the god shall be

pleased to send some other messenger of grace to pluck you from

destruction. And that I truly am such a person as I here profess to

be, a real messenger of the gods to you, you may gather from hence

that no mere human motive could have induced me now for so many years

to have neglected my own affairs, and devoted myself to your good,

looking upon every man as my father or my brother, and exhorting him

by every possible suasion to seek for virtue as the only good. And

this also I may say, that if in the exercise of this my vocation I had

exacted any payment or received any pecuniary reward my accusers might

have had some ground for their charge; but as the case stands you

perceive plainly that, while my enemies have brought forward every

possible charge against me with the most shameless effrontery, to

substantiate which they might imagine themselves in possession of some

{117} shadow of proof, none of them has produced a single witness to

the effect that I ever either received or sought a wage of any kind

for the instructions which I imparted. But there is one witness which

I can produce to rebut such a charge if it were made, a witness which

will not fail to silence even the bitterest of my accusers,--even that

poverty in which I have lived and in which I shall die.

“So much for the character of my teaching. But perhaps it may seem

strange to some one, that, while I go about the city giving counsel to

every man in this busy fashion, with all my fondness for business I

have not found my way into public life, nor come forward on this stage

to advise you on public affairs. Now the cause of this is none other

than that which you have frequently heard me mention, namely, THAT

SOMETHING DIVINE AND SUPERHUMAN to which Meletus in his address

scoffingly alluded; for this is the sober truth, O ye judges, that

from my boyhood I have on all important occasions been wont to hear a

voice which, whenever it speaks in reference to what I am about to do,

always warns me to refrain, but never urges me to perform.[117.1] This

voice it is, {118} and nothing else, which forbade me to meddle with

public affairs, and forbade me very wisely, as I can now clearly

perceive, and with a most excellent result; for of this, O Athenians,

be assured, if I had essayed at an early period of my life to manage

your public business, I should without doubt have perished long ago,

and done no good either to you or to {119} myself. And be not wroth

with me if in this I tell you the truth; the man does not exist who

shall be able to save his life anywhere, if he shall set himself

honestly and persistently to oppose you or any other multitude of

people when you are violently bent on doing things unjust and

unlawful; whosoever therefore would live on this earth as the champion

of right and justice, if only for a little while, amongst men, must

make up his mind to do good as a private person, and forego all

ambition to serve the public in a political capacity.”

This is not the tone certainly which any accused person anxious to

save his life in pleading before a democratic jury would have adopted,

whether at Athens or New York. By the majority of his judges, who came

predisposed to condemn him, such language could only be interpreted as

adding insult to injury. If he thinks himself too good to live amongst

us, why, then, let him die! And in accordance with this sentiment a

verdict was brought in--only by a small majority however--that he was

guilty of the charge. This verdict, according to Athenian law, did not

necessarily determine the punishment; the accuser asked for death; but

from the smallness of the majority there was every reason to believe

that a less punishment would have satisfied the jury, if only the

accused had shown any willingness to accept it. But in the short

address which he made after the verdict of guilty had been given in,

though he professed himself willing to pay a fine of thirty minæ,

which his friends had guaranteed, for himself was too poor, yet he

made this declaration with such an air of calm superiority, and

accompanied it with such a proud claim of reward {120} for great

public services as his proper civic due, instead of punishment for any

public offence, that his judges, being, as they were, made of the

common human stuff, under the feelings of the moment could scarcely do

otherwise than take it as an insult, and so they passed sentence of

death upon the philosopher for contumacy towards themselves, not less

than for blasphemy against the gods.

The fate of Socrates was now fixed; nor did he show any desire to have

it altered. To such a strict observer of the laws, and a person to

whom his moral position before men was of infinitely more consequence

than his life, any attempt to escape from prison could have been

suggested only to provoke refusal; so he remained in ward thirty days,

till the sacred ship should return from the Delian festival, during

the absence of which Attic usage forbade the infliction of capital

punishment on any citizen. Through all this period he is represented

as preserving the same tone of cheerful seriousness and playful

dignity which characterized him in his defence before the judges. He

discoursed with his friends on the immortality of the soul; and the

record of this conversation, no doubt, in the argumentative part

largely Platonized, but in the fundamental scheme substantially true,

has been preserved to the world in the well-known dialogue of the

_Phædo_; the closing chapters of which, exhibiting with a graceful

and graphic simplicity, never surpassed, the last moments of the

revered teacher’s mortal career, supply all that is further required

to complete the present sketch:--“Well, friends, we have been

discoursing for this last hour on the immortality of the soul, and

there are many points about that matter {121} on which he were a bold

man who should readily dogmatize; but one thing I seem to know full

certainly, that whosoever during his earthly life has flung sensual

pleasures behind him, and been studious to adorn his soul, not with

conventional and adventitious trappings, but with its own proper

decoration, temperance and justice, and courage and freedom and

truth,--the person so prepared waits cheerfully to perform the journey

to the unseen world at whatever period Fate may choose to call him.

You, Simmias, and Cebes, and the rest of you, my dear friends, will go

that road some day, when your hour comes: as for me, to use the phrase

of the tragic poets, ‘Destiny even now calls me,’ and it is about

the hour that I should be going to the bath; for I think it better to

take a bath first before I drink the drug, so that the women may not

have the trouble to wash my body when I am gone.

“Here Crito interposed and said, Be it so! but have you no last

commands to give to these your friends or to me, in relation to your

children, or any matter by attending to which we might do you a

pleasure? Nothing but what I am always saying, O Crito: if you will

seriously attend to your own lives and characters, you will do what is

most pleasurable to me and mine, and to yourselves, even though you

should not be able to agree with me in all that we have been

discoursing; but if you live at random, and neglect yourselves, and do

not strive to follow in the traces of a virtuous life, such as we have

marked out now, and in many former conversations, you will do no good

either to me or to yourselves. Well then, said Crito, we will apply

ourselves with all our hearts to this matter; but in {122} what way do

you wish that we should bury you? Any way you like, said he, if you

can only get hold of me! then with a quiet smile, and looking round

upon us, he said: I cannot persuade this good Crito that I who am now

talking to him, and marshalling the heads of my argument, am the

veritable Socrates; but he persists in thinking Socrates is that body

which he will see by and by stretched out on the floor, and he asks

how he is to bury me? but as to what I have been asserting with many

words, that after I have drunk the hemlock I shall be with you no

longer, but shall depart to some blessedness of the blest, this I seem

to have spoken all in vain, so far as he is concerned. Only, for a

little comfort to you, and to myself, I beseech you, dear friends,

give Crito security for me, and pledge yourself to the opposite effect

of the pledge he gave in my behalf before the jury. For he stood

guarantee that I should remain and wait the result of the trial; but

from you I request that you give him security that, after I die, I

shall not remain, but forthwith depart, that, in this way, my

excellent friend may suffer less grief, and when he sees my body

either burnt or inhumated, may not grieve for me, as if I were

suffering maltreatment, nor say in reference to my body, that they are

either laying out Socrates on a bier, or carrying him forth to the

place of the dead, or laying him in the ground. For be assured of

this, most excellent Crito, that to use words in an improper sense is

not only a bad thing in itself, but it generates a bad habit in the

soul. Be of good cheer therefore, and talk about burying my body, not

burying me; and as to the manner, manage this business as it shall

seem best to you, or as may be most in accordance with law and custom.

{123}

“With these words he rose and went into a side chamber for the bath,

with Crito following; but the rest of us he requested to remain.

Accordingly we remained, conversing with one another on the subject of

the recent discourse, and considering sorrowfully our unhappy

condition, destined as we were to spend the rest of our days as

orphans deprived of a beloved father. Then after he had bathed, and

his children were brought to him--for he had two sons, one

full-grown,--and the women also came in--he spoke to them for some

time in the presence of Crito, and gave his last commands, and having

sent them home, came back to us. And now it was near sunset, for he

had been a considerable time within; and he came and sat down, and

after that did not speak much; and then the officer of the Eleven came

in and said to him, O Socrates, I shall not have to blame you as I am

in the way of blaming others, because they reproach me for giving them

the draught--me, who have nothing to do with the offence, but who only

execute what I am commanded to do by the Archons. But you, as during

the whole time that you have been here, you showed a nobility and

gentleness of disposition which I never knew in another, so now I am

convinced that you will accuse not me but those who are the real

authors of your death. Now therefore, for you know my message,

farewell! and endeavour to bear what must be borne with a light heart.

And with this he wept, and turned and went out. And Socrates, looking

after him, said, Fare thou, too, well; and we will do even as you say.

Then turning to us. What a kind-hearted fellow this is! During the

whole period of my abode here he would often come {124} up to me, like

the best of men, and now he weeps for me with such generous tears. But

come, let us do his bidding, and let some one bring in the drug, if it

is rubbed down; if not, let the man grate it. But I think, said Crito,

that the sun is yet on the mountains, and is not set; and I have known

others in your condition who delayed the drinking of the draught till

the latest moment, and, even after the officer had made his

intimation, continued eating and drinking and talking with their

friends, whom they desired to have beside them. Be not therefore in a

hurry; there is abundance of time. Likely enough, said Socrates; and

they did wisely what they did, thinking that they would gain something

thereby; but it were not seemly in me to follow their example, for I

should gain nothing by delaying the draught for a few moments except

to laugh at myself for having clung so eagerly to the remnant of a

life that had already run its course. But come, do as I bid you, and

not otherwise.

“On this Crito gave a nod to the boy who was standing near; and the

boy went out, and after spending some time in grating down the herb,

returned, bringing with him the man whose duty it was to administer

the drug mingled in a bowl. Well, said Socrates, my good fellow, do

you understand this affair, so as to give directions how we are to

proceed? You have nothing to do, said the man, but to drink the

draught, and to walk about till you feel a heaviness about your limbs,

and then lie down; after that the drink will work for itself. And with

this he gave the bowl to Socrates; and he, taking it very graciously,

and without trembling or changing colour, but in his usual way looking

the man broadly {125} in the face, said to him, What do you say as to

this draught, may one make a libation of a part of it, or not? We

grate down just what we think is a proper measure to drink, and

nothing more. I understand, said he; but at all events it is lawful to

pray to the gods, that our migration hence may take place with good

omens, even as I pray now; and so be it. And with these words,

bringing the bowl to his lips, he quaffed the draught lightly and

pleasantly to the dregs. Whereupon we, who had hitherto been able to

repress our sorrow, now that we saw him drinking the poison, and not a

drop remaining in the bowl, in spite of every effort burst into tears;

and I, covering my head with my mantle, began to bewail my fate--my

fate, not his, considering of what a man and what a friend I was now

deprived. But Crito, even before me, not being able to restrain his

tears, rose up; and as for Apollodorus, who had been weeping all

along, he now broke out into such a piteous wail as to rend the hearts

of all present and crush them with sorrow, except only Socrates

himself, who quietly remarked--What is this you are about, my good

sirs? Did I not send the women away expressly for this purpose, that

there might be no extravagant lamentings at my exit, for I have always

heard that in a sacrifice it is a good omen when the victim receives

the blow peacefully. Be quiet, therefore, and possess your souls in

patience. Whereat we, being ashamed, made an effort to restrain our

tears. Then he walked up and down, till, feeling his legs become

heavy, he came, according to the direction, and laid himself down on

his back; whereupon the man who gave the bowl came up to him and

touched him, and at short intervals examined his feet, and {126} his

legs, and then, pressing his foot closely, inquired if he felt

anything, to which he replied, No; then the man gradually brought his

hand further and further up, first to his shins and then along the

leg, asking always if he had any sensation; and when he gave no sign

we saw that his limbs were cold and stiff. Then he himself likewise

touched his body with his hand and said, _When the numbness comes up

to my heart then I shall depart_. And after that, when the numbness

had reached the lower part of the belly, he suddenly uncovered

himself--for when he lay down he had thrown his mantle over his

face--and said,--which were the last words he uttered--_O Crito, we

owe a cock to Æsculapius; pay the vow and do not forget_; and with

that drew the mantle again over his face. It shall be done, said

Crito; have you nothing else to say? But now there was no reply; and,

after a short interval, a convulsive motion shook the body, and the

man going up uncovered his face, and we saw that his eyes were fixed.

Then Crito going up closed his mouth and his eyes. And this, O

Echecrates, was the end of our beloved companion and friend, a man of

whom we may truly say, OF ALL MEN WHOM WE HAVE KNOWN, HE WAS THE

BEST, THE WISEST, AND THE MOST JUST.”