The political opinions of Sokratês were much akin to his ethical,

and deserve especial notice, as having in part contributed to his

condemnation by the dikastery. He thought that the functions of

government belonged legitimately to those who knew best how to

exercise them for the advantage of the governed. “The legitimate king

or governor was not the man who held the sceptre, nor the man elected

by some vulgar persons, nor he who had got the post by lot, nor he

who had thrust himself in by force or by fraud, but he alone who knew

how to govern well.”[743] Just as the pilot governed on shipboard,

the surgeon in a sick man’s house, the trainer in a palæstra; every

one else being eager to obey these professional superiors, and even

thanking and recompensing them for their directions, simply because

their greater knowledge was an admitted fact. It was absurd, Sokratês

used to contend, to choose public officers by lot, when no one would

trust himself on shipboard under the care of a pilot selected by

hazard,[744] nor would any one pick out a carpenter or a musician in

like manner.

[743] Xen. Mem. iii, 9, 10, 11.

[744] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 9.

We do not know what provision Sokratês suggested for applying his

principle to practice, for discovering who was the fittest man in

point of knowledge, or for superseding him in case of his becoming

unfit, or in case another fitter than he should arise. The analogies

of the pilot, the surgeon, and professional men generally, would

naturally conduct him to election by the people, renewable after

temporary periods; since no one of these professional persons,

whatever may be his positive knowledge, is ever trusted or obeyed

except by the free choice of those who confide in him, and who may at

any time make choice of another. But it does not appear that Sokratês

followed out this part of the analogy. His companions remarked to him

that his first-rate intellectual ruler would be a despot, who might,

if he pleased, either refuse to listen to good advice, or even put to

death those who gave it. “He will not act thus,” replied Sokratês,

“for if he does, he will himself be the greatest loser.”[745]

[745] Xen. Mem. iii, 9, 12: compare Plato, Gorgias, c. 56. pp.

469, 470.

We may notice in this doctrine of Sokratês the same imperfection as

that which is involved in the ethical doctrine; a disposition to make

the intellectual conditions of political fitness stand for the whole.

His negative political doctrine is not to be mistaken: he approved

neither of democracy, nor of oligarchy. As he was not attached,

either by sentiment or by conviction, to the constitution of Athens,

so neither had he the least sympathy with oligarchical usurpers, such

as the Four Hundred and the Thirty. His positive ideal state, as far

as we can divine it, would have been something like that which is

worked out in the “Cyropædia” of Xenophon.

In describing the persevering activity of Sokratês, as a religious

and intellectual missionary, we have really described his life; for

he had no other occupation than this continual intercourse with the

Athenian public; his indiscriminate conversation, and invincible

dialectics. Discharging faithfully and bravely his duties as an

hoplite on military service,—but keeping aloof from official duty in

the dikastery, the public assembly, or the senate-house, except in

that one memorable year of the battle of Arginusæ,—he incurred none

of those party animosities which an active public life at Athens

often provoked. His life was legally blameless, nor had he ever been

brought up before the dikastery until his one final trial, when he

was seventy years of age. That he stood conspicuous before the public

eye in 423 B.C., at the time when the “Clouds” of Aristophanês were

brought on the stage, is certain: he may have been, and probably was,

conspicuous even earlier: so that we can hardly allow him less than

thirty years of public, notorious, and efficacious discoursing, down

to his trial in 399 B.C.

It was in that year that Melêtus, seconded by two auxiliaries, Anytus

and Lykon, presented against him, and hung up in the appointed place,

the portico before the office of the second or king-archon, an

indictment against him in the following terms: “Sokratês is guilty of

crime: first, for not worshipping the gods whom the city worships,

but introducing new divinities of his own; next, for corrupting the

youth. The penalty due is—death.”

It is certain that neither the conduct nor the conversation of

Sokratês had undergone any alteration for many years past; since the

sameness of his manner of talking is both derided by his enemies

and confessed by himself. Our first sentiment, therefore, apart

from the question of guilt or innocence, is one of astonishment,

that he should have been prosecuted, at seventy years of age, for

persevering in an occupation which he had publicly followed during

twenty-five or thirty years preceding. Xenophon, full of reverence

for his master, takes up the matter on much higher ground, and

expresses himself in a feeling of indignant amazement that the

Athenians could find anything to condemn in a man every way so

admirable. But whoever attentively considers the picture which I have

presented of the purpose, the working, and the extreme publicity of

Sokratês, will rather be inclined to wonder, not that the indictment

was presented at last, but that some such indictment had not been

presented long before. Such certainly is the impression suggested

by the language of Sokratês himself, in the “Platonic Apology.” He

there proclaims, emphatically, that though his present accusers were

men of consideration, it was neither _their_ enmity, nor _their_

eloquence, which he had now principally to fear; but the accumulated

force of antipathy,—the numerous and important personal enemies, each

with sympathizing partisans,—the long-standing and uncontradicted

calumnies,[746] raised against him throughout his cross-examining

career.

[746] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 2, p. 18, B; c. 16, p. 28, A. Ὃ δὲ καὶ

ἐν τοῖς ἔμπροσθεν ἔλεγον, ὅτι πολλή μοι ἀπέχθεια γέγονεν καὶ πρὸς

πολλοὺς, εὖ ἴστε ὅτι ἀληθές ἐστιν. Καὶ τοῦτ᾽ ἐστὶν ὃ ἐμὲ αἱρήσει,

ἐάνπερ αἱρῇ—οὐ Μέλητος οὐδὲ Ἄνυτος, ἀλλ᾽ ἡ τῶν πολλῶν διαβολὴ καὶ

φθόνος.

The expression τῶν πολλῶν in this last line is not used in its

most common signification, but is equivalent to τούτων τῶν

πολλῶν.

In truth, the mission of Sokratês, as he himself describes it, could

not but prove eminently unpopular and obnoxious. To convince a man

that, of matters which he felt confident of knowing, and had never

thought of questioning or even of studying, he is really profoundly

ignorant, insomuch that he cannot reply to a few pertinent queries

without involving himself in flagrant contradictions, is an operation

highly salutary, often necessary, to his future improvement; but

an operation of painful surgery, in which, indeed, the temporary

pain experienced is one of the conditions almost indispensable to

the future beneficial results. It is one which few men can endure

without hating the operator at the time; although doubtless such

hatred would not only disappear, but be exchanged for esteem and

admiration, if they persevered until the full ulterior consequences

of the operation developed themselves. But we know, from the express

statement of Xenophon, that many, who underwent this first pungent

thrust of his dialectics, never came near him again: he disregarded

them as laggards,[747] but their voices did not the less count in

the hostile chorus. What made that chorus the more formidable, was

the high quality and position of its leaders. For Sokratês himself

tells us, that the men whom he chiefly and expressly sought out to

cross-examine, were the men of celebrity as statesmen, rhetors,

poets, or artisans; those at once most sensitive to such humiliation,

and most capable of making their enmity effective.

[747] Xen. Mem. iv, 2, 40. Πολλοὶ μὲν οὖν τῶν οὕτω διατεθέντων

ὑπὸ Σωκράτους οὐκέτι αὐτῷ προσῄεσαν, οὓς καὶ βλακωτέρους ἐνόμιζεν.

When we reflect upon this great body of antipathy, so terrible both

from number and from constituent items, we shall wonder only that

Sokratês could have gone on so long standing in the market-place to

aggravate it, and that the indictment of Melêtus could have been so

long postponed; since it was just as applicable earlier as later,

and since the sensitive temper of the people, as to charges of

irreligion, was a well-known fact.[748] The truth is, that as history

presents to us only one man who ever devoted his life to prosecute

this duty of an elenchic, or cross-examining missionary, so there was

but one city, in the ancient world at least, wherein he would have

been allowed to prosecute it for twenty-five years with safety and

impunity; and that city was Athens. I have in a previous volume noted

the respect for individual dissent of opinion, taste, and behavior,

among one another, which characterized the Athenian population, and

which Periklês puts in emphatic relief as a part of his funeral

discourse. It was this established liberality of the democratical

sentiment at Athens which so long protected the noble eccentricity

of Sokratês from being disturbed by the numerous enemies which he

provoked: at Sparta, at Thebes, at Argos, Milêtus, or Syracuse,

his blameless life would have been insufficient as a shield, and

his irresistible dialectic power would have caused him to be only

the more speedily silenced. Intolerance is the natural weed of the

human bosom, though its growth or development may be counteracted

by liberalizing causes; of these, at Athens, the most powerful was,

the democratical constitution as there worked, in combination with

diffused intellectual and æsthetical sensibility, and keen relish

for discourse. Liberty of speech was consecrated, in every man’s

estimation, among the first of privileges; every man was accustomed

to hear opinions, opposite to his own, constantly expressed, and to

believe that others had a right to their opinions as well as himself.

And though men would not, as a general principle, have extended

such toleration to religious subjects, yet the established habit

in reference to other matters greatly influenced their practice,

and rendered them more averse to any positive severity against

avowed dissenters from the received religious belief. It is certain

that there was at Athens both a keener intellectual stimulus, and

greater freedom as well of thought as of speech, than in any other

city of Greece. The long toleration of Sokratês is one example of

this general fact, while his trial proves little, and his execution

nothing, against it, as will presently appear.

[748] Plato, Euthyphron, c. 2, p. 3, C. εἰδὼς ὅτι εὐδιάβολα τὰ

τοιαῦτα πρὸς τοὺς πολλούς.

There must doubtless have been particular circumstances, of which we

are scarcely at all informed, which induced his accusers to prefer

their indictment at the actual moment, in spite of the advanced age

of Sokratês.

In the first place, Anytus, one of the accusers of Sokratês, appears

to have become incensed against him on private grounds. The son of

Anytus had manifested interest in his conversation, and Sokratês,

observing in the young man intellectual impulse and promise,

endeavored to dissuade his father from bringing him up to his own

trade of a leather-seller.[749] It was in this general way that a

great proportion of the antipathy against Sokratês was excited, as

he himself tells us in the “Platonic Apology.” The young men were

those to whom he chiefly addressed himself, and who, keenly relishing

his conversation, often carried home new ideas which displeased

their fathers;[750] hence the general charge against Sokratês, of

corrupting the youth. Now this circumstance had recently happened

in the peculiar case of Anytus, a rich tradesman, a leading man in

politics, and just now of peculiar influence in the city, because he

had been one of the leading fellow-laborers with Thrasybulus in the

expulsion of the Thirty, manifesting an energetic and meritorious

patriotism. He, like Thrasybulus and many others, had sustained great

loss of property[751] during the oligarchical dominion; which perhaps

made him the more strenuous in requiring that his son should pursue

trade with assiduity, in order to restore the family fortunes. He

seems, moreover, to have been an enemy of all teaching which went

beyond the narrowest practicality, hating alike Sokratês and the

sophists.[752]

[749] See Xenoph. Apol. Sok. sects. 29, 30. This little piece

bears a very erroneous title, and may possibly not be the

composition of Xenophon, as the commentators generally affirm;

but it has every appearance of being a work of the time.

[750] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 10, p. 23, C; c. 27, p. 37, E.

[751] Isokrat. Or. xviii, cont. Kallimach. s. 30.

[752] See Plato, Menon, c. 27, 28, pp. 90, 91.

While we can thus point out a recent occurrence, which had brought

one of the most ascendent politicians in the city into special

exasperation against Sokratês, another circumstance which weighed

him down was, his past connection with the deceased Kritias and

Alkibiadês. Of these two men, the latter, though he had some great

admirers, was on the whole odious; still more from his private

insolence and enormities than from his public treason as an exile.

But the name of Kritias was detested, and deservedly detested, beyond

that of any other man in Athenian history, as the chief director of

the unmeasured spoliation and atrocities committed by the Thirty.

That Sokratês had educated both Kritias and Alkibiadês, was affirmed

by the accusers, and seemingly believed by the general public, both

at the time and afterwards.[753] That both of them had been among

those who conversed with him, when young men, is an unquestionable

fact; to what extent, or down to what period, the conversation was

carried, we cannot distinctly ascertain. Xenophon affirms that

both of them frequented his society when young, to catch from him

an argumentative facility which might be serviceable to their

political ambition; that he curbed their violent and licentious

propensities, so long as they continued to come to him; that both of

them manifested a respectful obedience to him, which seemed in little

consonance with their natural tempers; but that they soon quitted

him, weary of such restraint, after having acquired as much as they

thought convenient of his peculiar accomplishment. The writings of

Plato, on the contrary, impress us with the idea that the association

of both of them with Sokratês must have been more continued and

intimate; for both of them are made to take great part in the

Platonic dialogues, while the attachment of Sokratês to Alkibiadês

is represented as stronger than that which he ever felt towards

any other man; a fact not difficult to explain, since the latter,

notwithstanding his ungovernable dispositions, was distinguished in

his youth not less for capacity and forward impulse, than for beauty;

and since youthful beauty fired the imagination of the Greeks,

especially that of Sokratês, more than the charms of the other

sex.[754] From the year 420 B.C., in which the activity of Alkibiadês

as a political leader commenced, it seems unlikely that he could

have seen much of Sokratês, and after the year 415 B.C. the fact is

impossible; since in that year he became a permanent exile, with the

exception of three or four months in the year 407 B.C. At the moment

of the trial of Sokratês, therefore, his connection with Alkibiadês

must at least have been a fact long past and gone. Respecting

Kritias, we make out less; and as he was a kinsman of Plato, one

of the well-known companions of Sokratês, and present at his trial,

and himself an accomplished and literary man, his association with

Sokratês may have continued longer; at least a color was given for

so asserting. Though the supposition that any of the vices either

of Kritias or Alkibiadês were encouraged, or even tolerated, by

Sokratês, can have arisen in none but prejudiced or ill-informed

minds, yet it is certain that such a supposition was entertained; and

that it placed him before the public in an altered position after

the enormities of the Thirty. Anytus, incensed with him already on

the subject of his son, would be doubly incensed against him as the

reputed tutor of Kritias.

[753] Æschinês, cont. Timarch. c. 34, p. 74. ὑμεῖς Σωκράτη τὸν

σοφιστὴν ἀπεκτείνατε, ὅτι Κριτίαν ἐφάνη πεπαιδευκὼς, etc. Xenoph.

Mem. i, 2, 12.

[754] See Plato (Charmidês, c. 3, p. 154, C; Lysis, c. 2, p. 201,

B; Protagoras, c. 1, p. 309, A), etc.

Of Melêtus, the primary, though not the most important accuser, we

know only that he was a poet; of Lykon, that he was a rhetor. Both

these classes had been alienated by the cross-examining dialectics

to which many of their number had been exposed by Sokratês. They

were the last men to bear such an exposure with patience, and their

enmity, taken as a class rarely unanimous, was truly formidable when

it bore upon any single individual.

We know nothing of the speeches of either of the accusers before the

dikastery, except what can be picked out from the remarks in Xenophon

and the defence of Plato. Of the three counts of the indictment, the

second was the easiest for them to support, on plausible grounds.

That Sokratês was a religious innovator, would be considered as

proved by the peculiar divine sign, of which he was wont to speak

freely and publicly, and which visited no one except himself.

Accordingly, in the “Platonic Defence,” he never really replies to

this second charge. He questions Melêtus before the dikastery, and

the latter is represented as answering, that he meant to accuse

Sokratês of not believing in the gods at all;[755] to which imputed

disbelief Sokratês answers with an emphatic negative. In support of

the first count, however,—the charge of general disbelief in the

gods recognized by the city,—nothing in his conduct could be cited;

for he was exact in his legal worship like other citizens, and even

more than others, if Xenophon is correct.[756] But it would appear

that the old calumnies of the Aristophanic “Clouds” were revived,

and that the effect of that witty drama, together with similar

efforts of Eupolis and others, perhaps hardly less witty, was still

enduring; a striking proof that these comedians were no impotent

libellers. Sokratês manifests greater apprehension of the effect of

the ancient impressions, than of the speeches which had been just

delivered against him: but these latter speeches would of course

tell, by refreshing the sentiments of the past, and reviving the

Aristophanic picture of Sokratês, as a speculator on physics as well

as a rhetorical teacher for pleading, making the worse appear the

better reason.[757] Sokratês, in the “Platonic Defence,” appeals

to the number of persons who had heard him discourse, whether any

of them had ever heard him say one word on the subject of physical

studies;[758] while Xenophon goes further, and represents him as

having positively discountenanced them, on the ground of impiety.[759]

[755] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 14, p. 26, C.

[756] Xen. Mem. i. 2, 64; i, 3, 1.

[757] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 3, p. 19, B.

[758] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 3, p. 19, C.

[759] Xen. Mem. i. 1, 13.

As there were three distinct accusers to speak against Sokratês, so

we may reasonably suppose that they would concert beforehand on what

topics each should insist; Melêtus undertaking that which related to

religion, while Anytus and Lykon would dwell on the political grounds

of attack. In the “Platonic Apology,” Sokratês comments emphatically

on the allegations of Melêtus, questions him publicly before the

dikasts, and criticizes his replies: he makes little allusion to

Anytus, or to anything except what is formally embodied in the

indictment; and treats the last count, the charge of corrupting

youth, in connection with the first, as if the corruption alleged

consisted in irreligious teaching. But Xenophon intimates that the

accusers, in enforcing this allegation of pernicious teaching, went

into other matters quite distinct from the religious tenets of

Sokratês, and denounced him as having taught them lawlessness and

disrespect, as well towards their parents as towards their country.

We find mention made in Xenophon of accusatory grounds similar to

those in the “Clouds;” similar also to those which modern authors

usually advance against the sophists.

Sokratês, said Anytus and the other accusers, taught young men to

despise the existing political constitution, by remarking that the

Athenian practice of naming archons by lot was silly, and that no

man of sense would ever choose in this way a pilot or a carpenter,

though the mischief arising from bad qualification, was in these

cases far less than in the case of the archons.[760] Such teaching,

it was urged, destroyed in the minds of the hearers respect for the

laws and constitution, and rendered them violent and licentious. As

examples of the way in which it had worked, his two pupils Kritias

and Alkibiadês might be cited, both formed in his school; one, the

most violent and rapacious of the Thirty recent oligarchs; the

other, a disgrace to the democracy, by his outrageous insolence and

licentiousness;[761] both of them authors of ruinous mischief to the

city.

[760] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 9.

[761] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 12.

Moreover, the youth learned from him conceit of their own superior

wisdom, and the habit of insulting their fathers as well as of

slighting their other kinsmen. Sokratês told them, it was urged,

that even their fathers, in case of madness, might be lawfully put

under restraint; and that when a man needed service, those whom he

had to look to, were not his kinsmen, as such, but the persons best

qualified to render it: thus, if he was sick, he must consult a

surgeon; if involved in a lawsuit, those who were most conversant

with such a situation. Between friends also, mere good feeling and

affection was of little use; the important circumstance was, that

they should acquire the capacity of rendering mutual service to each

other. No one was worthy of esteem except the man who knew what was

proper to be done, and could explain it to others: which meant, urged

the accuser, that Sokratês was not only the wisest of men, but the

only person capable of making his pupils wise; other advisers being

worthless compared with him.[762]

[762] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 49-53.

He was in the habit too, the accusation proceeded, of citing the

worst passages out of distinguished poets, and of perverting

them to the mischievous purpose of spoiling the dispositions of

youth, planting in them criminal and despotic tendencies. Thus he

quoted a line of Hesiod: “No work is disgraceful; but indolence

is disgraceful:” explaining it to mean, that a man might without

scruple do any sort of work, base or unjust as it might be, for the

sake of profit. Next, Sokratês was particularly fond of quoting those

lines of Homer, in the second book of the Iliad, wherein Odysseus is

described as bringing back the Greeks, who had just dispersed from

the public agora in compliance with the exhortation of Agamemnôn, and

were hastening to their ships. Odysseus caresses and flatters the

chiefs, while he chides and even strikes the common men; though both

were doing the same thing, and guilty of the same fault; if fault it

was, to obey what the commander-in-chief had himself just suggested.

Sokratês interpreted this passage, the accuser affirmed, as if

Homer praised the application of stripes to poor men and the common

people.[763]

[763] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 56-59.

Nothing could be easier than for an accuser to find matter for

inculpation of Sokratês, by partial citations from his continual

discourses, given without the context or explanations which had

accompanied them; by bold invention, where even this partial basis

was wanting; sometimes also by taking up real error, since no man

who is continually talking, especially extempore, can always talk

correctly. Few teachers would escape, if penal sentences were

permitted to tell against them, founded upon evidence such as this.

Xenophon, in noticing the imputations, comments upon them all,

denies some, and explains others. As to the passages out of Hesiod

and Homer, he affirms that Sokratês drew from them inferences

quite contrary to those alleged;[764] which latter seem, indeed,

altogether unreasonable, invented to call forth the deep-seated

democratical sentiment of the Athenians, after the accuser had laid

his preliminary ground by connecting Sokratês with Kritias and

Alkibiadês. That Sokratês improperly depreciated either filial duty

or the domestic affections, is in like manner highly improbable.

We may much more reasonably believe the assertion of Xenophon, who

represents him to have exhorted the hearer “to make himself as wise,

and as capable of rendering service, as possible; so that, when he

wished to acquire esteem from father or brother or friend, he might

not sit still, in reliance on the simple fact of relationship, but

might earn such feeling by doing them positive good.”[765] To tell

a young man that mere good feeling would be totally insufficient,

unless he were prepared and competent to carry it into action, is

a lesson which few parents would wish to discourage. Nor would any

generous parent make it a crime against the teaching of Sokratês,

that it rendered his son wiser than himself, which probably it would

do. To restrict the range of teaching for a young man, because it

may make him think himself wiser than his father, is only one of the

thousand shapes in which the pleading of ignorance against knowledge

was then, and still continues occasionally to be, presented.

[764] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 59.

[765] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 55. Καὶ παρεκάλει ἐπιμελεῖσθαι τοῦ ὡς

φρονιμώτατον εἶναι καὶ ὠφελιμώτατον, ὅπως, ἐάν τε ὑπὸ πατρὸς ἐάν

τε ὑπὸ ἀδελφοῦ ἐάν τε ὑπ᾽ ἄλλου τινὸς βούληται τιμᾶσθαι, μὴ τῷ

οἰκεῖος εἶναι πιστεύων ἀμελῇ, ἀλλὰ πειρᾶται, ὑφ᾽ ὧν ἂν βούληται

τιμᾶσθαι, τούτοις ὠφέλιμος εἶναι.

Nevertheless, it is not to be denied that these attacks of Anytus

bear upon the vulnerable side of the Sokratic general theory of

ethics, according to which virtue was asserted to depend upon

knowledge. I have already remarked that this is true, but not the

whole truth; a certain state of the affections and dispositions being

not less indispensable, as conditions of virtue, than a certain state

of the intelligence. An enemy, therefore, had some pretence for

making it appear that Sokratês, stating a part of the truth as the

whole, denied or degraded all that remained. But though this would

be a criticism not entirely unfounded against his general theory, it

would not hold against his precepts or practical teaching, as we find

them in Xenophon; for these, as I have remarked, reach much wider

than his general theory, and inculcate the cultivation of habits and

dispositions not less strenuously than the acquisition of knowledge.

The censures affirmed to have been cast by Sokratês against the

choice of archons by lot at Athens, are not denied by Xenophon. The

accuser urged that “by such censures Sokratês excited the young men

to despise the established constitution, and to become lawless and

violent in their conduct.”[766] This is just the same pretence,

of tendency to bring the government into hatred and contempt, on

which in former days prosecutions for public libel were instituted

against writers in England, and on which they still continue to be

abundantly instituted in France, under the first President of the

Republic. There can hardly be a more serious political mischief than

such confusion of the disapproving critic with a conspirator, and

imposition of silence upon dissentient minorities. Nor has there

ever been any case in which such an imputation was more destitute of

color than that of Sokratês, who appealed always to men’s reason and

very little to their feelings; so little, indeed, that modern authors

make his coldness a matter of charge against him; who never omitted

to inculcate rigid observance of the law, and set the example of

such observance himself. Whatever may have been his sentiments about

democracy, he always obeyed the democratical government, nor is there

any pretence for charging him with participation in oligarchical

schemes. It was the Thirty who, for the first time in his long life,

interdicted his teaching altogether, and were on the point almost of

taking his life; while his intimate friend Chærephon was actually in

exile with the democrats.[767]

[766] Xen. Mem. i, 2, 9. τοὺς δὲ τοιούτους λόγους ἐπαίρειν ἔφη

τοὺς νέους καταφρονεῖν τῆς καθεστώσης πολιτείας, καὶ ποιεῖν

βιαίους.

[767] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 5, p. 21. A; c. 20, p. 32, E; Xen.

Mem. 1, 2, 31.

Xenophon lays great emphasis on two points, when defending Sokratês

against his accusers. First, that his own conduct was virtuous,

self-denying, and strict in obedience to the law. Next, that he

accustomed his hearers to hear nothing except appeals to their

reason, and impressed on them obedience only to their rational

convictions. That such a man, with so great a weight of presumption

in his favor, should be tried and found guilty as a corruptor of

youth,—the most undefined of all imaginable charges,—is a grave and

melancholy fact in the history of mankind. Yet when we see upon what

light evidence modern authors are willing to admit the same charge

against the sophists, we have no right to wonder that the Athenians

when addressed, not through that calm reason to which Sokratês

appealed, but through all their antipathies, religious as well as

political, public as well as private—were exasperated into dealing

with him as the type and precursor of Kritias and Alkibiadês.

After all, the exasperation, and the consequent verdict of guilty,

were not wholly the fault of the dikasts, nor wholly brought about

by his accusers and his numerous private enemies. No such verdict

would have been given, unless by what we must call the consent and

concurrence of Sokratês himself. This is one of the most important

facts of the case, in reference both to himself and to the Athenians.

We learn from his own statement in the “Platonic Defence,” that

the verdict of guilty was only pronounced by a majority of five or

six, amidst a body so numerous as an Athenian dikastery; probably

five hundred and fifty-seven in total number,[768] if a confused

statement in Diogenes Laërtius can be trusted. Now any one who

reads that defence, and considers it in conjunction with the

circumstances of the case and the feelings of the dikasts, will see

that its tenor is such as must have turned a much greater number

of votes than six against him. And we are informed by the distinct

testimony of Xenophon,[769] that Sokratês approached his trial with

the feelings of one who hardly wished to be acquitted. He took no

thought whatever for the preparation of his defence; and when his

friend Hermogenês remonstrated with him on the serious consequences

of such an omission, he replied, first, that the just and blameless

life, which he was conscious of having passed, was the best of all

preparations for defence; next, that having once begun to meditate

on what it would be proper for him to say, the divine sign had

interposed to forbid him from proceeding. He went on to say, that it

was no wonder that the gods should deem it better for him to die now,

than to live longer. He had hitherto lived in perfect satisfaction,

with a consciousness of progressive moral improvement, and with

esteem, marked and unabated, from his friends. If his life were

prolonged, old age would soon overpower him; he would lose in part

his sight, his hearing, or his intelligence; and life with such

abated efficacy and dignity would be intolerable to him. Whereas, if

he were condemned now, he should be condemned unjustly, which would

be a great disgrace to his judges, but none to him; nay, it would

even procure for him increase of sympathy and admiration, and a more

willing acknowledgment from every one that he had been both a just

man and an improving preceptor.[770]

[768] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 25, p. 36, A; Diog. Laërt. ii, 41.

Diogenes says that he was condemned by two hundred and eighty-one

ψήφοις πλείοσι τῶν ἀπολυούσων. If he meant to assert that the

verdict was found by a _majority_ of two hundred and eighty-one

above the acquitting votes, this would be contradicted by the

“Platonic Apology,” which assures us beyond any doubt that the

majority was not greater than five or six, so that the turning

of three votes would have altered the verdict. But as the number

two hundred and eighty-one seems precise, and is not in itself

untrustworthy, some commentators construe it, though the words as

they now stand are perplexing, as the aggregate of the majority.

Since the “Platonic Apology” proves that it was a majority of

five or six, the minority would consequently be two hundred and

seventy-six, and the total five hundred and fifty-seven.

[769] Xen. Mem. iv, 8, 4, _seq._ He learned the fact from

Hermogenês, who heard it from Sokratês himself.

[770] Xen. Mem. iv, 8, 9, 10.

These words, spoken before his trial, intimate a state of belief

which explains the tenor of the defence, and formed one essential

condition of the final result. They prove that Sokratês not only

cared little for being acquitted, but even thought that the

approaching trial was marked out by the gods as the term of his

life, and that there were good reasons why he should prefer such a

consummation as best for himself. Nor is it wonderful that he should

entertain that opinion, when we recollect the entire ascendency

within him of strong internal conscience and intelligent reflection,

built upon an originally fearless temperament, and silencing what

Plato[771] calls “the child within us, who trembles before death;”

his great love of colloquial influence, and incapacity of living

without it; his old age, now seventy years, rendering it impossible

that such influence could much longer continue, and the opportunity

afforded to him, by now towering above ordinary men under the like

circumstances, to read an impressive lesson, as well as to leave

behind him a reputation yet more exalted than that which he had

hitherto acquired. It was in this frame of mind that Sokratês came to

his trial, and undertook his unpremeditated defence, the substance

of which we now read in the “Platonic Apology.” His calculations,

alike high-minded and well-balanced, were completely realized. Had

he been acquitted after such a defence, it would have been not only

a triumph over his personal enemies, but would have been a sanction

on the part of the people and the popular dikastery to his teaching,

which, indeed, had been enforced by Anytus,[772] in his accusing

argument, in reference to acquittal generally, even before he heard

the defence: whereas his condemnation, and the feelings with which he

met it, have shed double and triple lustre over his whole life and

character.

[771] Plato, Phædon, c. 60, p. 77, E. ἀλλ᾽ ἴσως ἔνι τις καὶ

ἐν ἡμῖν παῖς, ὅστις τὰ τοιαῦτα φοβεῖται. Τοῦτον οὖν πειρώμεθα

πείθειν μὴ δεδιέναι τὸν θάνατον, ὥσπερ τὰ μορμολύκεια.

[772] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 29, C.

Prefaced by this exposition of the feelings of Sokratês, the

“Platonic Defence” becomes not merely sublime and impressive, but

also the manifestation of a rational and consistent purpose. It

does, indeed, include a vindication of himself against two out

of the three counts of the indictment; against the charge of not

believing in the recognized gods of Athens, and that of corrupting

the youth; respecting the second of the three, whereby he was

charged with religious innovation, he says little or nothing. But

it bears no resemblance to the speech of one standing on his trial,

with the written indictment concluding “Penalty, Death,” hanging

up in open court before him. On the contrary, it is an emphatic

lesson to the hearers, embodied in the frank outpouring of a

fearless and self-confiding conscience. It is undertaken, from the

beginning, because the law commands; with a faint wish, and even

not an unqualified wish, but no hope, that it may succeed.[773]

Sokratês first replies to the standing antipathies against him

without, arising from the number of enemies whom his cross-examining

elenchus had aroused against him, and from those false reports which

the Aristophanic “Clouds” had contributed so much to circulate.

In accounting for the rise of these antipathies, he impresses

upon the dikasts the divine mission under which he was acting,

not without considerable doubts whether they will believe him to

be in earnest;[774] and gives that interesting exposition of his

intellectual campaign, against “the conceit of knowledge without

the reality,” of which I have already spoken. He then goes into

the indictment, questions Melêtus in open court, and dissects his

answers. Having rebutted the charge of irreligion, he reverts again

to the imperative mandate of the gods under which he is acting, “to

spend his life in the search for wisdom, and in examining himself as

well as others;” a mandate, which if he were to disobey, he would

be then justly amenable to the charge of irreligion;[775] and he

announces to the dikasts distinctly, that, even if they were now to

acquit him, he neither could nor would relax in the course which he

had been pursuing.[776] He considers that the mission imposed upon

him is among the greatest blessings ever conferred by the gods upon

Athens.[777] He deprecates those murmurs of surprise or displeasure,

which his discourse evidently called forth more than once,[778]

though not so much on his own account as on that of the dikasts,

who will be benefited by hearing him, and who will hurt themselves

and their city much more than him, if they should now pronounce

condemnation.[779] It was not on his own account that he sought

to defend himself, but on account of the Athenians, lest they by

condemning him should sin against the gracious blessing of the god;

they would not easily find such another, if they should put him to

death.[780] Though his mission had spurred him on to indefatigable

activity in individual colloquy, yet the divine sign had always

forbidden him from taking active part in public proceedings; on the

two exceptional occasions when he had stood publicly forward,—once

under the democracy, once under the oligarchy,—he had shown the

same resolution as at present; not to be deterred by any terrors

from that course which he believed to be just.[781] Young men were

delighted as well as improved by listening to his cross-examinations;

in proof of the charge that he had corrupted them, no evidence had

been produced; neither any of themselves, who, having been once young

when they enjoyed his conversation, had since grown elderly; nor

any of their relatives; while he on his part could produce abundant

testimony to the improving effect of his society, from the relatives

of those who had profited by it.[782]

[773] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 2, p. 19, A. Βουλοίμην μὲν οὖν ἂν

τοῦτο οὕτω γενέσθαι, εἴτι ἄμεινον καὶ ὑμῖν καὶ ἐμοὶ, καὶ πλέον

τί με ποιῆσαι ἀπολογούμενον· οἶμαι δὲ αὐτὸ χαλεπὸν εἶναι, καὶ

οὐ πάνυ με λανθάνει οἷόν ἐστι. Ὅμως δὲ τοῦτο μὲν ἴτω ὅπῃ τῷ θεῷ

φίλον, τῷ δὲ νόμῳ πειστέον καὶ ἀπολογητέον.

[774] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 5, p. 20, D. Καὶ ἴσως μὲν δόξω τισὶν

ὑμῶν παίζειν—εὖ μέντοι ἴστε, πᾶσαν ὑμῖν τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἐρῶ. Again,

c. 28, p. 37, E. Ἐάν τε γὰρ λέγω, ὅτι τῷ θεῷ ἀπειθεῖν τοῦτ᾽

ἐστὶ, καὶ διὰ τοῦτ᾽ ἀδύνατον ἡσυχίαν ἄγειν, οὐ πείσεσθέ μοι ὡς

εἰρωνευομένῳ.

[775] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 20, A.

[776] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 30, B.

[777] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 30, A, B. οἴομαι οὐδέν πω ὑμῖν

μεῖζον ἀγαθὸν γενέσθαι ἐν τῇ πόλει ἢ τὴν ἐμὴν τῷ θεῷ ὑπηρεσίαν.

[778] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 18, p. 30, B.

[779] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 18, p. 30, B. καὶ γὰρ, ὡς ἐγὼ οἶμαι,

ὀνήσεσθε ἀκούοντες—ἐὰν ἐμὲ ἀποκτείνητε τοιοῦτον ὄντα οἷον ἐγὼ

λέγω, οὐκ ἐμὲ μείζω βλάψετε ἢ ὑμᾶς αὐτούς.

[780] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 18, p. 30, E. πολλοῦ δέω ἐγὼ ὑπὲρ

ἐμαυτοῦ ἀπολογεῖσθαι, ὥς τις ἂν οἴοιτο, ἀλλὰ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν μή τι

ἐξαμάρτητε περὶ τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ δόσιν ὑμῖν ἐμοῦ καταψηφισάμενοι· ἐὰν

γὰρ ἐμὲ ἀποκτείνητε, οὐ ῥᾳδίως ἄλλον τοιοῦτον εὑρήσετε, etc.

[781] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 20, 21, p. 33.

[782] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 22.

“No man (says he) knows what death is; yet men fear it as if they

knew well that it was the greatest of all evils, which is just a

case of that worst of all ignorance, the conceit of knowing what you

do not really know. For my part, this is the exact point on which I

differ from most other men, if there be any one thing in which I am

wiser than they; as I know nothing about Hades, so I do not pretend

to any knowledge; but I do know well, that disobedience to a person

better than myself, either god or man, is both an evil and a shame;

nor will I ever embrace evil certain, in order to escape evil which

may for aught I know be a good.[783] Perhaps you may feel indignant

at the resolute tone of my defence; you may have expected that I

should do as most others do in less dangerous trials than mine; that

I should weep, beg and entreat for my life, and bring forward my

children and relatives to do the same. I have relatives like other

men, and three children; but not one of them shall appear before

you for any such purpose. Not from any insolent dispositions on my

part, nor any wish to put a slight upon you, but because I hold such

conduct to be degrading to the reputation which I enjoy; for I _have_

a reputation for superiority among you, deserved or undeserved as

it may be. It is a disgrace to Athens, when her esteemed men lower

themselves, as they do but too often, by such mean and cowardly

supplications; and you dikasts, instead of being prompted thereby to

spare them, ought rather to condemn them the more for so dishonoring

the city.[784] Apart from any reputation of mine, too, I should be

a guilty man, if I sought to bias you by supplications. My duty is

to instruct and persuade you, if I can; but you have sworn to follow

your convictions in judging according to the laws, not to make the

laws bend to your partiality; and it is your duty so to do. Far

be it from me to habituate you to perjury; far be it from you to

contract any such habit. Do not, therefore, require of me proceedings

dishonorable in reference to myself, as well as criminal and impious

in regard to you, especially at a moment when I am myself rebutting

an accusation of impiety advanced by Melêtus. I leave to you and to

the god, to decide as may turn out best both for me and for you.”[785]

[783] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 17, p. 29, B. Contrast this striking

and truly Sokratic sentiment about the fear of death, with the

common-place way in which Sokratês is represented as handling the

same subject in Xenoph. Memor. i, 4, 7.

[784] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 23, pp. 34, 35. I translate the

substance and not the words.

[785] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 24, p. 35.

No one who reads the “Platonic Apology” of Sokratês will ever wish

that he had made any other defence. But it is the speech of one who

deliberately foregoes the immediate purpose of a defence, persuasion

of his judges; who speaks for posterity, without regard to his own

life: “solâ posteritatis curâ, et abruptis vitæ blandimentis.”[786]

The effect produced upon the dikasts was such as Sokratês anticipated

beforehand, and heard afterwards without surprise as without

discomposure, in the verdict of guilty. His only surprise was, at

the extreme smallness of the majority whereby that verdict was

passed.[787] And this is the true matter for astonishment. Never

before had the Athenian dikasts heard such a speech addressed to

them. While all of them, doubtless, knew Sokratês as a very able

and very eccentric man, respecting his purposes and character they

would differ; some regarding him with unqualified hostility, a

few others with respectful admiration, and a still larger number

with simple admiration for ability, without any decisive sentiment

either of antipathy or esteem. But by all these three categories,

hardly excepting even his admirers, the speech would be felt to

carry one sting which never misses its way to the angry feelings of

the judicial bosom, whether the judges in session be one or a few

or many, the sting of “affront to the court.” The Athenian dikasts

were always accustomed to be addressed with deference, often with

subservience: they now heard themselves lectured by a philosopher

who stood before them like a fearless and invulnerable superior,

beyond their power, though awaiting their verdict; one who laid

claim to a divine mission, which probably many of them believed to

be an imposture, and who declared himself the inspired uprooter of

“conceit of knowledge without the reality,” which purpose many would

not understand, and some would not like. To many, his demeanor would

appear to betray an insolence not without analogy to Alkibiadês or

Kritias, with whom his accuser had compared him. I have already

remarked, in reference to his trial, that, considering the number

of personal enemies whom he made, the wonder is, not that he was

tried at all, but that he was not tried until so late in his life:

I now remark in reference to the verdict, that, considering his

speech before the dikastery, we cannot be surprised that he was found

guilty, but only that such verdict passed by so small a majority as

five or six.

[786] These are the striking words of Tacitus (Hist. ii, 54)

respecting the last hours of the emperor Otho, after his suicide

had been fully resolved upon, but before it had been consummated:

an interval spent in the most careful and provident arrangements

for the security and welfare of those around him: “ipsum viventem

quidem relictum, sed solâ posteritatis curâ, et abruptis vitæ

blandimentis.”

[787] Plato. Apol. Sok. c. 25, p. 36, A. Οὐκ ἀνέλπιστόν μοι

γέγονεν τὸ γεγονὸς τοῦτο, ἀλλὰ πολὺ μᾶλλον θαυμάζω ἑκατέρων τῶν

ψήφων τὸν γεγονότα ἀριθμόν. Οὐ γὰρ ᾤμην ἔγωγε οὕτω παρ᾽ ὀλίγον

ἔσεσθαι, ἀλλὰ παρὰ πολὺ, etc.

That the condemnation of Sokratês was brought on distinctly by

the tone and tenor of his defence, is the express testimony of

Xenophon. “Other persons on trial (he says) defended themselves in

such manner as to conciliate the favor of the dikasts, or flatter,

or entreat them, contrary to the laws, and thus obtained acquittal.

But Sokratês would resort to nothing of this customary practice of

the dikastery contrary to the laws. Though _he might easily have

been let off by the dikasts, if he would have done anything of the

kind even moderately_, he preferred rather to adhere to the laws and

die, than to save his life by violating them.”[788] Now no one in

Athens except Sokratês, probably, would have construed the laws as

requiring the tone of oration which he adopted; nor would he himself

have so construed them, if he had been twenty years younger, with

less of acquired dignity, and more years of possible usefulness

open before him. Without debasing himself by unbecoming flattery

or supplication, he would have avoided lecturing them as a master

and superior,[789] or ostentatiously asserting a divine mission for

purposes which they would hardly understand, or an independence of

their verdict which they might construe as defiance. The rhetor

Lysias is said to have sent to him a composed speech for his defence,

which he declined to use, not thinking it suitable to his dignity.

But such a man as Lysias would hardly compose what would lower the

dignity even of the loftiest client, though he would look to the

result also; nor is there any doubt that if Sokratês had pronounced

it,—or even a much less able speech, if inoffensive,—he would have

been acquitted. Quintilian,[790] indeed, expresses his satisfaction

that Sokratês maintained that towering dignity which brought out the

rarest and most exalted of his attributes, but which at the same time

renounced all chance of acquittal. Few persons will dissent from this

criticism: but when we look at the sentence, as we ought in fairness

to do, from the point of view of the dikasts, justice will compel us

to admit that Sokratês deliberately brought it upon himself.

[788] Xenoph. Mem. iv, 4, 4. Ἐκεῖνος οὐδὲν ἠθέλησε τῶν εἰωθότων

ἐν τῷ δικαστηρίῳ παρὰ τοὺς νόμους ποιῆσαι· ἀλλὰ ῥᾳδίως ἂν ἀφεθεὶς

ὑπὸ τῶν δικαστῶν, εἰ καὶ μετρίως τι τούτων ἐποίησε, προείλετο

μᾶλλον τοῖς νόμοις ἐμμένων ἀποθανεῖν, ἢ παρανομῶν ζῇν.

[789] Cicero (de Orat. i, 54, 231): “Socrates ita in judicio

capitis pro se ipse dixit, ut non supplex aut reus, sed _magister

aut dominus videretur esse judicum_.” So Epiktêtus also remarked,

in reference to the defence of Sokratês: “By all means, abstain

from supplication for mercy; but do not put it specially forward,

that you _will_ abstain, unless you intend, like Sokratês,

purposely to provoke the judges.” (Arrian, Epiktêt. Diss. ii, 2,

18.)

[790] Quintilian, Inst. Or. ii, 15, 30; xi, 1, 10; Diog. Laërt.

ii, 40.

If the verdict of guilty was thus brought upon Sokratês by his own

consent and coöperation, much more may the same remark be made

respecting the capital sentence which followed it. In Athenian

procedure, the penalty inflicted was determined by a separate vote of

the dikasts, taken after the verdict of guilty. The accuser having

named the penalty which he thought suitable, the accused party on his

side named some lighter penalty upon himself; and between these two

the dikasts were called on to make their option, no third proposition

being admissible. The prudence of an accused party always induced

him to propose, even against himself, some measure of punishment

which the dikasts might be satisfied to accept, in preference to the

heavier sentence invoked by his antagonist.

Now Melêtus, in his indictment and speech against Sokratês, had

called for the infliction of capital punishment. It was for Sokratês

to make his own counter-proposition, and the very small majority,

by which the verdict had been pronounced, afforded sufficient proof

that the dikasts were no way inclined to sanction the extreme penalty

against him. They doubtless anticipated, according to the uniform

practice before the Athenian courts of justice, that he would suggest

some lesser penalty; fine, imprisonment, exile, disfranchisement,

etc. And had he done this purely and simply, there can be little

doubt that the proposition would have passed. But the language of

Sokratês, after the verdict, was in a strain yet higher than before

it; and his resolution to adhere to his own point of view, disdaining

the smallest abatement or concession, only the more emphatically

pronounced. “What counter proposition shall I make to you (he said)

as a substitute for the penalty of Melêtus? Shall I name to you the

treatment which I think I deserve at your hands? In that case, my

proposition would be that I should be rewarded with a subsistence

at the public expense in the prytaneum; for that is what I really

deserve as a public benefactor; one who has neglected all thought of

his own affairs, and embraced voluntary poverty, in order to devote

himself to your best interests, and to admonish you individually on

the serious necessity of mental and moral improvement. Assuredly, I

cannot admit that I have deserved from you any evil whatever; nor

would it be reasonable in me to propose exile or imprisonment, which

I know to be certain and considerable evils, in place of death, which

may perhaps be not an evil, but a good. I might, indeed, propose to

you a pecuniary fine; for the payment of _that_ would be no evil. But

I am poor, and have no money: all that I could muster might perhaps

amount to a mina: and I therefore propose to you a fine of one mina,

as punishment on myself. Plato, and my other friends near me, desire

me to increase this sum to thirty minæ, and they engage to pay it for

me. A fine of thirty minæ, therefore, is the counter penalty which I

submit for your judgment.”[791]

[791] Plato. Apol. Sok. c. 26, 27, 28, pp. 37, 38. I give, as

well as I can, the substantive propositions, apart from the

emphatic language of the original.

Subsistence in the prytaneum at the public expense, was one of the

greatest honorary distinctions which the citizens of Athens ever

conferred; an emphatic token of public gratitude. That Sokratês,

therefore, should proclaim himself worthy of such an honor, and talk

of assessing it upon himself in lieu of a punishment, before the

very dikasts who had just passed against him a verdict of guilty,

would be received by them as nothing less than a deliberate insult;

a defiance of judicial authority, which it was their duty to prove,

to an opinionated and haughty citizen, that he could not commit

with impunity. The persons who heard his language with the greatest

distress, were doubtless Plato, Krito, and his other friends around

him; who, though sympathizing with him fully, knew well that he was

assuring the success of the proposition of Melêtus,[792] and would

regret that he should thus throw away his life by what they would

think an ill-placed and unnecessary self-exaltation. Had he proposed,

with little or no preface, the substitute-fine of thirty minæ with

which this part of his speech concluded, there is every reason for

believing that the majority of dikasts would have voted for it.

[792] See Plato, Krito, c. 5, p. 45, B.

The sentence of death passed against him, by what majority we do

not know. But Sokratês neither altered his tone, nor manifested

any regret for the language by which he had himself seconded the

purpose of his accusers. On the contrary, he told the dikasts, in

a short address prior to his departure for the prison, that he was

satisfied both with his own conduct and with the result. The divine

sign, he said, which was wont to restrain him, often on very small

occasions, both in deeds and in words, had never manifested itself

once to him throughout the whole day, neither when he came thither at

first, nor at any one point throughout his whole discourse. The tacit

acquiescence of this infallible monitor satisfied him not only that

he had spoken rightly, but that the sentence passed was in reality no

evil to him; that to die now was the best thing which could befall

him.[793] Either death was tantamount to a sound, perpetual, and

dreamless sleep, which in his judgment would be no loss, but rather a

gain, compared with the present life; or else, if the common mythes

were true, death would transfer him to a second life in Hades, where

he would find all the heroes of the Trojan war, and of the past

generally, so as to pursue in conjunction with them the business

of mutual cross-examination, and debate on ethical progress and

perfection.[794]

[793] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 31, p. 40, B; c. 33, p. 41, D.

[794] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 32, p. 40, C; p. 41, B.

There can be no doubt that the sentence really appeared to Sokratês

in this point of view, and to his friends also, after the event had

happened, though doubtless not at the time when they were about

to lose him. He took his line of defence advisedly, and with full

knowledge of the result. It supplied him with the fittest of all

opportunities for manifesting, in an impressive manner, both his

personal ascendency over human fears and weakness, and the dignity

of what he believed to be his divine mission. It took him away

in his full grandeur and glory, like the setting of the tropical

sun, at a moment when senile decay might be looked upon as close

at hand. He calculated that his defence and bearing on the trial

would be the most emphatic lesson which he could possibly read to

the youth of Athens; more emphatic, probably, than the sum total of

those lessons which his remaining life might suffice to give, if he

shaped his defence otherwise. This anticipation of the effect of

the concluding scene of his life, setting the seal on all his prior

discourses, manifests itself in portions of his concluding words to

the dikasts, wherein he tells them that they will not, by putting him

to death, rid themselves of the importunity of the cross-examining

elenchus; that numbers of young men, more restless and obtrusive

than he, already carried within them that impulse, which they would

now proceed to apply; his superiority having hitherto kept them

back.[795] It was thus the persuasion of Sokratês, that his removal

would be the signal for numerous apostles, putting forth with

increased energy that process of interrogatory test and spur to which

he had devoted his life, and which doubtless was to him far dearer

and more sacred than his life. Nothing could be more effective than

his lofty bearing on his trial, for inflaming the enthusiasm of young

men thus predisposed; and the loss of life was to him compensated by

the missionary successors whom he calculated on leaving behind.

[795] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 30, p. 39, C.

Under ordinary circumstances, Sokratês would have drunk the cup of

hemlock in the prison, on the day after his trial. But it so happened

that the day of his sentence was immediately after that on which

the sacred ship started on its yearly ceremonial pilgrimage from

Athens to Delos, for the festival of Apollo. Until the return of this

vessel to Athens, it was accounted unholy to put any person to death

by public authority. Accordingly, Sokratês remained in prison,—and

we are pained to read, actually with chains on his legs,—during

the interval that this ship was absent, thirty days altogether.

His friends and companions had free access to him, passing nearly

all their time with him in the prison; and Krito had even arranged

a scheme for procuring his escape, by a bribe to the jailer. This

scheme was only prevented from taking effect by the decided refusal

of Sokratês to become a party in any breach of the law;[796] a

resolution, which we should expect as a matter of course, after the

line which he had taken in his defence. His days were spent in the

prison, in discourse respecting ethical and human subjects, which had

formed the charm and occupation of his previous life: it is to the

last of these days that his conversation with Simmias, Kebês, and

Phædon, on the immortality of the soul is referred, in the Platonic

dialogue called “Phædon.” Of that conversation the main topics and

doctrines are Platonic rather than Sokratic. But the picture which

the dialogue presents of the temper and state of mind of Sokratês,

during the last hours of his life, is one of immortal beauty and

interest, exhibiting his serene and even playful equanimity, amidst

the uncontrollable emotions of his surrounding friends,—the genuine,

unforced persuasion, governing both his words and his acts, of what

he had pronounced before the dikasts, that the sentence of death was

no calamity to him,[797]—and the unabated maintenance of that earnest

interest in the improvement of man and society, which had for so many

years formed both his paramount motive and his active occupation. The

details of the last scene are given with minute fidelity, even down

to the moment of his dissolution; and it is consoling to remark that

the cup of hemlock—the means employed for executions by public order

at Athens—produced its effect by steps far more exempt from suffering

than any natural death which was likely to befall him. Those who have

read what has been observed above respecting the strong religious

persuasions of Sokratês, will not be surprised to hear that his

last words, addressed to Krito immediately before he passed into a

state of insensibility, were: “Krito, we owe a cock to Æsculapius:

discharge the debt, and by no means omit it.”[798]

[796] Plato, Krito, c. 2, 3, _seq._

[797] Plato, Phædon, c. 77, p. 84, E.

[798] Plato, Phædon, c. 155, p. 118, A.

Thus perished the “parens philosophiæ,” the first of ethical

philosophers; a man who opened to science both new matter, alike

copious and valuable; and a new method, memorable not less for its

originality and efficacy, than for the profound philosophical basis

on which it rests. Though Greece produced great poets, orators,

speculative philosophers, historians, etc., yet other countries

having the benefit of Grecian literature to begin with, have nearly

equalled her in all these lines, and surpassed her in some. But

where are we to look for a parallel to Sokratês, either in or out

of the Grecian world? The cross-examining elenchus, which he not

only first struck out, but wielded with such matchless effect and to

such noble purposes, has been mute ever since his last conversation

in the prison; for even his great successor Plato was a writer and

lecturer, not a colloquial dialectician. No man has ever been found

strong enough to bend his bow; much less, sure enough to use it as he

did. His life remains as the only evidence, but a very satisfactory

evidence, how much can be done by this sort of intelligent

interrogation; how powerful is the interest which it can be made to

inspire; how energetic the stimulus which it can apply in awakening

dormant reason and generating new mental power.

It has been often customary to exhibit Sokratês as a moral preacher,

in which character probably he has acquired to himself the general

reverence attached to his name. This is, indeed, a true attribute,

but not the characteristic or salient attribute, nor that by which

he permanently worked on mankind. On the other hand, Arkesilaus,

and the New Academy,[799] a century and more afterwards, thought

that they were following the example of Sokratês—and Cicero seems

to have thought so too—when they reasoned against everything; and

when they laid it down as a system, that, against every affirmative

position, an equal force of negative argument might be brought up

as counterpoise. Now this view of Sokratês is, in my judgment, not

merely partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such systematic

distrust of the powers of the mind to attain certainty. He laid down

a clear, though erroneous line of distinction between the knowable

and the unknowable. About physics, he was more than a skeptic; he

thought that man could know nothing; the gods did not intend that man

should acquire any such information, and therefore managed matters

in such a way as to be beyond his ken, for all except the simplest

phenomena of daily wants; moreover, not only man could not acquire

such information, but ought not to labor after it. But respecting

the topics which concern man and society, the views of Sokratês

were completely the reverse. This was the field which the gods had

expressly assigned, not merely to human practice, but to human study

and acquisition of knowledge; a field, wherein, with that view, they

managed phenomena on principles of constant and observable sequence,

so that every man who took the requisite pains might know them.

Nay, Sokratês went a step further; and this forward step is the

fundamental conviction upon which all his missionary impulse hinges.

He thought that every man not only might know these things but ought

to know them; that he could not possibly act well, unless he did know

them; and that it was his imperious duty to learn them as he would

learn a profession; otherwise, he was nothing better than a slave,

unfit to be trusted as a free and accountable being. Sokratês felt

persuaded that no man could behave as a just, temperate, courageous,

pious, patriotic agent, unless he taught himself to know correctly

what justice, temperance, courage, piety, and patriotism, etc.,

really were. He was possessed with the truly Baconian idea, that the

power of steady moral action depended upon, and was limited by, the

rational comprehension of moral ends and means. But when he looked

at the minds around him, he perceived that few or none either had

any such comprehension, or had ever studied to acquire it; yet at

the same time every man felt persuaded that he did possess it, and

acted confidently upon such persuasion. Here, then, Sokratês found

that the first outwork for him to surmount, was, that universal

“conceit of knowledge without the reality,” against which he declares

such emphatic war; and against which, also, though under another

form of words and in reference to other subjects, Bacon declares

war not less emphatically, two thousand years afterwards: “Opinio

copiæ inter causas inopiæ est.” Sokratês found that those notions

respecting human and social affairs, on which each man relied and

acted, were nothing but spontaneous products of the “intellectus

sibi permissus,” of the intellect left to itself either without any

guidance, or with only the blind guidance of sympathies, antipathies,

authority, or silent assimilation. They were products got together,

to use Bacon’s language, “from much faith and much chance, and from

the primitive suggestions of boyhood,” not merely without care or

study, but without even consciousness of the process, and without

any subsequent revision. Upon this basis the sophists, or professed

teachers for active life, sought to erect a superstructure of virtue

and ability; but to Sokratês, such an attempt appeared hopeless

and contradictory—not less impracticable than Bacon in his time

pronounced it to be, to carry up the tree of science into majesty

and fruit-bearing, without first clearing away those fundamental

vices which lay unmolested and in poisonous influence round its root.

Sokratês went to work in the Baconian manner and spirit; bringing

his cross-examining process to bear, as the first condition to all

further improvement, upon these rude, self-begotten, incoherent

generalizations, which passed in men’s minds for competent and

directing knowledge. But he, not less than Bacon, performs this

analysis, not with a view to finality in the negative, but as

the first stage towards an ulterior profit; as the preliminary

purification, indispensable to future positive result. In the

physical sciences, to which Bacon’s attention was chiefly turned, no

such result could be obtained without improved experimental research,

bringing to light facts new and yet unknown; but on those topics

which Sokratês discussed, the elementary data of the inquiry were all

within the hearer’s experience, requiring only to be pressed upon

his notice, affirmatively as well as negatively, together with the

appropriate ethical and political end; in such manner as to stimulate

within him the rational effort requisite for combining them anew upon

consistent principles.

[799] Cicero, Academ. Post. i, 12, 44. “Cum Zenone Arcesilas

sibi omne certamen instituit, non pertinaciâ aut studio

vincendi (ut mihi quidem videtur), sed earum rerum obscuritate,

quæ ad confessionem ignorationis adduxerant Socratem, et jam

ante Socratem, Democritum, Anaxagoram, Empedoclem, omnes pene

veteres; qui nihil cognosci, nihil percipi, nihil sciri, posse,

dixerunt.... Itaque Arcesilas negabat, esse quidquam, quod sciri

posset, no illud quidem ipsum, quod Socrates sibi reliquisset:

sic omnia latere in occulto.” Compare Academ. Prior. ii, 23, 74;

de Nat. Deor. i, 5, 11.

In another passage (Academ. Post. i, 4, 17) Cicero speaks (or

rather introduces Varro as speaking) rather confusedly. He talks

of “illam Socraticam dubitationem de omnibus rebus, et nullâ

affirmatione adhibitâ, consuetudinem disserendi;” but a few lines

before, he had said what implies that men might, in the opinion

of Sokratês, come to learn and know what belonged to human

conduct and human duties.

Again (in Tusc. Disp. i, 4, 8), he admits that Sokratês had a

positive ulterior purpose in his negative questioning: “vetus et

Socratica ratio contra alterius opinionem disserendi: nam ita

facillime, quid veri simillimum esset, inveniri posse Socrates

arbitrabatur.”

Tennemann (Gesch. der Philos. ii, 5, vol. ii, pp. 169-175) seeks

to make out considerable analogy between Sokratês and Pyrrho.

But it seems to me that the analogy only goes thus far, that

both agreed in repudiating all speculations not ethical (see the

verses of Timon upon Pyrrho, Diog. Laërt. ix, 65). But in regard

to ethics, the two differed materially. Sokratês maintained that

ethics were matter of science, and the proper subject of study.

Pyrrho, on the other hand, seems to have thought that speculation

was just as useless, and science just as unattainable, upon

ethics as upon physics; that nothing was to be attended to except

feelings, and nothing cultivated except good dispositions.

If, then, the philosophers of the New Academy considered Sokratês

either as a skeptic, or as a partisan of systematic negation, they

misinterpreted his character, and mistook the first stage of his

process—that which Plato, Bacon, and Herschel call the purification

of the intellect—for the ultimate goal. The elenchus, as Sokratês

used it, was animated by the truest spirit of positive science, and

formed an indispensable precursor to its attainment.[800]

[800] Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 7, p. 22, A. δεῖ δὴ ὑμῖν τὴν ἐμὴν

πλάνην ἐπιδεῖξαι, ὥσπερ τινὰς πόνους πονοῦντος, etc.

There are two points, and two points only, in topics concerning man

and society, with regard to which Sokratês is a skeptic; or rather,

which he denies; and on the negation of which, his whole method and

purpose turn. He denies, first, that men can know that on which they

have bestowed no conscious effort, no deliberate pains, no systematic

study, in learning. He denies, next, that men can practise what they

do not know;[801] that they can be just, or temperate, or virtuous

generally, without knowing what justice, or temperance, or virtue is.

To imprint upon the minds of his hearers his own negative conviction,

on these two points is, indeed, his first object, and the primary

purpose of his multiform dialectical manœuvring. But though negative

in his means, Sokratês is strictly positive in his ends; his attack

is undertaken only with distinct view to a positive result; in order

to shame them out of the illusion of knowledge, and to spur them on

and arm them for the acquisition of real, assured, comprehensive,

self-explanatory knowledge, as the condition and guarantee of

virtuous practice. Sokratês was, indeed, the reverse of a skeptic;

no man ever looked upon life with a more positive and practical

eye; no man ever pursued his mark with a clearer perception of the

road which he was travelling; no man ever combined, in like manner,

the absorbing enthusiasm of a missionary,[802] with the acuteness,

the originality, the inventive resource, and the generalizing

comprehension, of a philosopher.

[801] So Demokritus, Fragm. ed. Mullach, p. 185, Fr. 131. οὔτε

τέχνη, οὔτε σοφίη, ἐφιστὸν, ἢν μὴ μάθῃ τις....

[802] Aristotle (Problem. c. 30, p. 953, Bek.) numbers both

Sokratês and Plato (compare Plutarch, Lysand. c. 2) among those

to whom he ascribes φύσιν μελανχολικὴν, the black bile and

ecstatic temperament. I do not know how to reconcile this with

a passage in his Rhetoric (ii, 17), in which he ranks Sokratês

among the _sedate_ persons (στάσιμον). The first of the two

assertions seems countenanced by the anecdotes respecting

Sokratês (in Plato, Symposion, p. 175, B; p. 220, C), that he

stood in the same posture, quite unmoved, even for several hours

continuously, absorbed in meditation upon some idea which had

seized his mind.

His method yet survives, as far as such method can survive, in

some of the dialogues of Plato. It is a process of eternal value

and of universal application. That purification of the intellect,

which Bacon signalized as indispensable for rational or scientific

progress, the Sokratic elenchus affords the only known instrument

for at least partially accomplishing. However little that instrument

may have been applied since the death of its inventor, the

necessity and use of it neither have disappeared, nor ever can

disappear. There are few men whose minds are not more or less in

that state of sham knowledge against which Sokratês made war:

there is no man whose notions have not been first got together by

spontaneous, unexamined, unconscious, uncertified association,

resting upon forgotten particulars, blending together disparates or

inconsistencies, and leaving in his mind old and familiar phrases,

and oracular propositions, of which he has never rendered to himself

account: there is no man, who, if he be destined for vigorous and

profitable scientific effort, has not found it a necessary branch of

self-education, to break up, disentangle, analyze, and reconstruct,

these ancient mental compounds; and who has not been driven to do

it by his own lame and solitary efforts, since the giant of the

colloquial elenchus no longer stands in the market-place to lend him

help and stimulus.

To hear of any man,[803] especially of so illustrious a man, being

condemned to death on such accusations as that of heresy and alleged

corruption of youth, inspires at the present day a sentiment of

indignant reprobation, the force of which I have no desire to

enfeeble. The fact stands eternally recorded as one among the

thousand misdeeds of intolerance, religious and political. But since

amidst this catalogue each item has its own peculiar character,

grave or light, we are bound to consider at what point of the scale

the condemnation of Sokratês is to be placed, and what inferences

it justifies in regard to the character of the Athenians. Now if

we examine the circumstances of the case, we shall find them all

extenuating; and so powerful, indeed, as to reduce such inferences

to their minimum, consistent with the general class to which the

incident belongs.

[803] Dr. Thirlwall has given, in an Appendix to his fourth

volume (Append. vii, p. 526, _seq._), an interesting and

instructive review of the recent sentiments expressed by Hegel,

and by some other eminent German authors, on Sokratês and his

condemnation. It affords me much satisfaction to see that he has

bestowed such just animadversions on the unmeasured bitterness,

as well as upon the untenable views, of M. Forchhammer’s treatise

respecting Sokratês.

I dissent, however, altogether, from the manner in which Dr.

Thirlwall speaks about the sophists, both in this Appendix and

elsewhere. My opinion, respecting the persons so called, has been

given at length in the preceding chapter.

First, the sentiment now prevalent is founded upon a conviction that

such matters as heresy and heretical teaching of youth are not proper

for judicial cognizance. Even in the modern world, such a conviction

is of recent date; and in the fifth century B.C. it was unknown.

Sokratês himself would not have agreed in it; and all Grecian

governments, oligarchical and democratical alike, recognized the

opposite. The testimony furnished by Plato is on this point decisive.

When we examine the two positive communities which he constructs,

in the treatises “De Republicâ” and “De Legibus,” we find that

there is nothing about which he is more anxious, than to establish

an unresisted orthodoxy of doctrine, opinion, and education. A

dissenting and free-spoken teacher, such as Sokratês was at Athens,

would not have been allowed to pursue his vocation for a week, in the

Platonic Republic. Plato would not, indeed, condemn him to death;

but he would put him to silence, and in case of need send him away.

This, in fact, is the consistent deduction, if you assume that the

state is to determine what _is_ orthodoxy and orthodox teaching,

and to repress what contradicts its own views. Now all the Grecian

states, including Athens, held this principle[804] of interference

against the dissenting teacher. But at Athens, though the principle

was recognized, yet the application of it was counteracted by

resisting forces which it did not find elsewhere; by the democratical

constitution, with its liberty of speech and love of speech, by the

more active spring of individual intellect, and by the toleration,

greater there than anywhere else, shown to each man’s peculiarities

of every sort. In any other government of Greece, as well as in the

Platonic Republic, Sokratês would have been quickly arrested in his

career, even if not severely punished; in Athens, he was allowed to

talk and teach publicly for twenty-five or thirty years, and then

condemned when an old man. Of these two applications of the same

mischievous principle, assuredly the latter is at once the more

moderate and the less noxious.

[804] See Plato, Euthyphron, c. 3, p. 3, D.

Secondly, the force of this last consideration, as an extenuating

circumstance in regard to the Athenians, is much increased, when we

reflect upon the number of individual enemies whom Sokratês made to

himself in the prosecution of his cross-examining process. Here

were a multitude of individuals, including men personally the most

eminent and effective in the city, prompted by special antipathies,

over and above general convictions, to call into action the dormant

state-principle of intolerance against an obnoxious teacher. If,

under such provocation, he was allowed to reach the age of seventy,

and to talk publicly for so many years, before any real Melêtus stood

forward, this attests conspicuously the efficacy of the restraining

dispositions among the people, which made their practical habits more

liberal than their professed principles.

Thirdly, whoever has read the account of the trial and defence of

Sokratês, will see that he himself contributed quite as much to

the result as all the three accusers united. Not only he omitted

to do all that might have been done without dishonor, to insure

acquittal, but he held positive language very nearly such as

Melêtus himself would have sought to put in his mouth. He did this

deliberately,—having an exalted opinion both of himself and his own

mission,—and accounting the cup of hemlock, at his age, to be no

calamity. It was only by such marked and offensive self-exaltation

that he brought on the first vote of the dikastery, even then the

narrowest majority, by which he was found guilty: it was only by a

still more aggravated manifestation of the same kind, even to the

pitch of something like insult, that he brought on the second vote,

which pronounced the capital sentence. Now it would be uncandid not

to allow for the effect of such a proceeding on the minds of the

dikastery. They were not at all disposed, of their own accord, to put

in force the recognized principle of intolerance against him. But

when they found that the man who stood before them charged with this

offence, addressed them in a tone such as dikasts had never heard

before and could hardly hear with calmness, they could not but feel

disposed to credit all the worst inferences which his accusers had

suggested, and to regard Sokratês as a dangerous man both religiously

and politically, against whom it was requisite to uphold the majesty

of the court and constitution.

In appreciating this memorable incident, therefore, though the

mischievous principle of intolerance cannot be denied, yet all

the circumstances show that that principle was neither irritable

nor predominant in the Athenian bosom; that even a large body of

collateral antipathies did not readily call it forth against any

individual; that the more liberal and generous dispositions,

which deadened its malignity, were of steady efficacy, not easily

overborne; and that the condemnation ought to count as one of the

least gloomy items in an essentially gloomy catalogue.

Let us add, that as Sokratês himself did not account his own

condemnation and death, at his age, to be any misfortune, but rather

a favorable dispensation of the gods, who removed him just in

time to escape that painful consciousness of intellectual decline

which induced Demokritus to prepare the poison for himself, so his

friend Xenophon goes a step further, and while protesting against

the verdict of guilty, extols the manner of death as a subject of

triumph; as the happiest, most honorable, and most gracious way, in

which the gods could set the seal upon a useful and exalted life.[805]

[805] Xen. Mem. iv, 8, 3:—

“Denique Democritum postquam matura vetustas

Admonuit memores motus languescere mentis,

Sponte suâ letho sese obvius obtulit ipse.”

(Lucretius, iii, 1052.)

It is asserted by Diodorus, and repeated with exaggerations by

other later authors, that after the death of Sokratês the Athenians

bitterly repented of the manner in which they had treated him, and

that they even went so far as to put his accusers to death without

trial.[806] I know not upon what authority this statement is

made, and I disbelieve it altogether. From the tone of Xenophon’s

“Memorabilia,” there is every reason to presume that the memory

of Sokratês still continued to be unpopular at Athens when that

collection was composed. Plato, too, left Athens immediately after

the death of his master, and remained absent for a long series of

years: indirectly, I think, this affords a presumption that no such

reaction took place in Athenian sentiment as that which Diodorus

alleges; and the same presumption is countenanced by the manner in

which the orator Æschinês speaks of the condemnation, half a century

afterwards. I see no reason to believe that the Athenian dikasts,

who doubtless felt themselves justified, and more than justified, in

condemning Sokratês after his own speech, retracted that sentiment

after his decease.

[806] Diodor. xiv. 37, with Wesseling’s note; Diog. Laërt. ii.

43; Argument ad Isokrat. Or. xi, Busiris.

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

* Obvious printer errors have been silently corrected, after

comparison with a later edition of this work. Greek text has

also been corrected after checking with this later edition and

with Perseus, when the reference was found.

* Original spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have been kept,

but variant spellings were made consistent when a predominant

usage was found.

* Some inconsistencies in the use of accents over proper nouns

(like “Euthydemus” and “Euthydêmus”) have been retained.

* At Page 409, note 649, the word “οὐδαμοῦ” has been inserted in

the sentence “οὔτ᾽ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ οὐδαμοῦ μέλλοντί τι ἐρεῖν·”, as

suggested by modern editions of Plato.