nearly resembles the Socrates of Plato’s _Apologia_. Instead, however,
of leaving Euthydêmus to the consciousness of his ignorance, as
the latter would have done, he proceeds, in Xenophon’s account, to
direct the young man’s studies according to the simplest and clearest
principles; and we have another conversation where religious truths
are instilled by the same catechetical process.[92] Here the erotetic
method is evidently a mere didactic artifice, and Socrates could easily
have written out his lesson under the form of a regular demonstration.
But there is little doubt that in other cases he used it as a means
for giving increased precision to his own ideas, and also for testing
their validity, that, in a word, the habit of oral communication gave
him a familiarity with logical processes which could not otherwise
have been acquired. The same cross-examination that acted as a spur
on the mind of the respondent, reacted as a bridle on the mind of the
interrogator, obliging him to make sure beforehand of every assertion
that he put forward, to study the mutual bearings of his beliefs, to
analyse them into their component elements, and to examine the relation
in which they collectively stood to the opinions generally accepted.
It has already been stated that Socrates gave the erotetic method two
new applications; we now see in what direction they tended. He made it
a vehicle for positive instruction, and he also made it an instrument
for self-discipline, a help to fulfilling the Delphic precept, ‘Know
thyself.’ The second application was even more important than the
first. With us literary training—that is, the practice of continuous
reading and composition—is so widely diffused, that conversation
has become rather a hindrance than a help to the cultivation of
argumentative ability. The reverse was true when Socrates lived. Long
familiarity with debate was unfavourable to the art of writing; and the
speeches in Thucydides show how difficult it was still found to present
close reasoning under the form of an uninterrupted exposition. The
traditions of conversational thrust and parry survived in rhetorical
prose; and the crossed swords of tongue-fence were represented by the
bristling _chevaux de frise_ of a laboured antithetical arrangement
where every clause received new strength and point from contrast with
its opposing neighbour.
By combining the various considerations here suggested we shall
arrive at a clearer understanding of the sceptical attitude commonly
attributed to Socrates. There is, first of all, the negative and
critical function exercised by him in common with many other
constructive thinkers, and intimately associated with a fundamental
law of Greek thought. Then there is the Attic courtesy and democratic
spirit leading him to avoid any assumption of superiority over those
whose opinions he is examining. And, lastly, there is the profound
feeling that truth is a common possession, which no individual
can appropriate as his peculiar privilege, because it can only be
discovered, tested, and preserved by the united efforts of all.
V.
Thus, then, the Socratic dialogue has a double aspect. It is, like
all philosophy, a perpetual carrying of life into ideas and of ideas
into life. Life is raised to a higher level by thought; thought, when
brought into contact with life, gains movement and growth, assimilative
and reproductive power. If action is to be harmonised, we must regulate
it by universal principles; if our principles are to be efficacious,
they must be adopted; if they are to be adopted, we must demonstrate
them to the satisfaction of our contemporaries. Language, consisting
as it does almost entirely of abstract terms, furnishes the materials
out of which alone such an ideal union can be framed. But men do not
always use the same words, least of all if they are abstract words, in
the same sense, and therefore a preliminary agreement must be arrived
at in this respect; a fact which Socrates was the first to recognise.
Aristotle tells us that he introduced the custom of constructing
general definitions into philosophy. The need of accurate verbal
explanations is more felt in the discussion of ethical problems than
anywhere else, if we take ethics in the only sense that Socrates would
have accepted, as covering the whole field of mental activity. It
is true that definitions are also employed in the mathematical and
physical sciences, but there they are accompanied by illustrations
borrowed from sensible experience, and would be unintelligible without
them. Hence it has been possible for those branches of knowledge to
make enormous progress, while the elementary notions on which they rest
have not yet been satisfactorily analysed. The case is entirely altered
when mental dispositions have to be taken into account. Here, abstract
terms play much the same part as sensible intuitions elsewhere in
steadying our conceptions, but without possessing the same invariable
value; the experiences from which those conceptions are derived
being exceedingly complex, and, what is more, exceedingly liable to
disturbance from unforeseen circumstances. Thus, by neglecting a series
of minute changes the same name may come to denote groups of phenomena
not agreeing in the qualities which alone it originally connoted. More
than one example of such a gradual metamorphosis has already presented
itself in the course of our investigation, and others will occur in
the sequel. Where distinctions of right and wrong are involved, it
is of enormous practical importance that a definite meaning should
be attached to words, and that they should not be allowed, at least
without express agreement, to depart from the recognised acceptation:
for such words, connoting as they do the approval or disapproval
of mankind, exercise a powerful influence on conduct, so that their
misapplication may lead to disastrous consequences. Where government
by written law prevails the importance of defining ethical terms
immediately becomes obvious, for, otherwise, personal rule would
be restored under the disguise of judicial interpretation. Roman
jurisprudence was the first attempt on a great scale to introduce a
rigorous system of definitions into legislation. We have seen, in
the preceding chapter, how it tended to put the conclusions of Greek
naturalistic philosophy into practical shape. We now see how, on the
formal side, its determinations are connected with the principles
of Socrates. And we shall not undervalue this obligation if we bear
in mind that the accurate wording of legal enactments is not less
important than the essential justice of their contents. Similarly,
the development of Catholic theology required that its fundamental
conceptions should be progressively defined. This alone preserved
the intellectual character of Catholicism in ages of ignorance and
superstition, and helped to keep alive the reason by which superstition
was eventually overthrown. Mommsen has called theology the bastard
child of Religion and Science. It is something that, in the absence of
the robuster parent, its features should be recalled and its tradition
maintained even by an illegitimate offspring.
So far, we have spoken as if the Socratic definitions were merely
verbal; they were, however, a great deal more, and their author did not
accurately discriminate between what at that stage of thought could
not well be kept apart—explanations of words, practical reforms, and
scientific generalisations. For example, in defining a ruler to be one
who knew more than other men, he was departing from the common usages
of language, and showing not what was, but what ought to be true.[93]
And in defining virtue as wisdom, he was putting forward a new theory
of his own, instead of formulating the received connotation of a
term. Still, after making every deduction, we cannot fail to perceive
what an immense service was rendered to exact thought by introducing
definitions of every kind into that department of enquiry where they
were chiefly needed. We may observe also that a general law of Greek
intelligence was here realising itself in a new direction. The need
of accurate determination had always been felt, but hitherto it had
worked under the more elementary forms of time, space, and causality,
or, to employ the higher generalisation of modern psychology, under
the form of contiguous association. The earlier cosmologies were all
processes of circumscription; they were attempts to fix the limits
of the universe, and, accordingly, that element which was supposed
to surround the others was also conceived as their producing cause,
or else (in the theory of Heracleitus) as typifying the rationale of
their continuous transformation. For this reason Parmenides, when he
identified existence with extension, found himself obliged to declare
that extension was necessarily limited. Of all the physical thinkers,
Anaxagoras, who immediately precedes Socrates, approaches, on the
objective side, most nearly to his standpoint. For the governing
Nous brings order out of chaos by segregating the confused elements,
by separating the unlike and drawing the like together, which is
precisely what definition does for our conceptions. Meanwhile Greek
literature had been performing the same task in a more restricted
province, first fixing events according to their geographical and
historical positions, then assigning to each its proper cause, then,
as Thucydides does, isolating the most important groups of events from
their external connexions, and analysing the causes of complex changes
into different classes of antecedents. The final revolution effected by
Socrates was to substitute arrangement by difference and resemblance
for arrangement by contiguity in coexistence and succession. To say
that by so doing he created science is inexact, for science requires
to consider nature under every aspect, including those which he
systematically neglected; but we may say that he introduced the method
which is most particularly applicable to mental phenomena, the method
of ideal analysis, classification, and reasoning. For, be it observed
that Socrates did not limit himself to searching for the One in the
Many, he also, and perhaps more habitually, sought for the Many in the
One. He would take hold of a conception and analyse it into its various
notes, laying them, as it were, piecemeal before his interlocutor for
separate acceptance or rejection. If, for example, they could not agree
about the relative merits of two citizens, Socrates would decompose
the character of a good citizen into its component parts and bring the
comparison down to them. A good citizen, he would say, increases the
national resources by his administration of the finances, defeats the
enemy abroad, wins allies by his diplomacy, appeases dissension by
his eloquence at home.[94] When the shy and gifted Charmides shrank
from addressing a public audience on public questions, Socrates strove
to overcome his nervousness by mercilessly subdividing the august
Ecclêsia into its constituent classes. ‘Is it the fullers that you
are afraid of?’ he asked, ‘or the leather-cutters, or the masons, or
the smiths, or the husbandmen, or the traders, or the lowest class
of hucksters?’[95] Here the analytical power of Greek thought is
manifested with still more searching effect than when it was applied to
space and motion by Zeno.
Nor did Socrates only consider the whole conception in relation to its
parts, he also grouped conceptions together according to their genera
and founded logical classification. To appreciate the bearing of this
idea on human interests it will be enough to study the disposition
of a code. We shall then see how much more easy it becomes to bring
individual cases under a general rule, and to retain the whole body
of rules in our memory, when we can pass step by step from the most
universal to the most particular categories. Now, it was by jurists
versed in the Stoic philosophy that Roman law was codified, and it
was by Stoicism that the traditions of Socratic philosophy were most
faithfully preserved.
Logical division is, however, a process not fully represented by any
fixed and formal distribution of topics, nor yet is it equivalent
to the arrangement of genera and species according to their natural
affinities, as in the admirable systems of Jussieu and Cuvier. It
is something much more flexible and subtle, a carrying down into
the minutest detail, of that psychological law which requires, as
a condition of perfect consciousness, that feelings, conceptions,
judgments, and, generally speaking, all mental modes should be
apprehended together with their contradictory opposites. Heracleitus
had a dim perception of this truth when he taught the identity of
antithetical couples, and it is more or less vividly illustrated by
all Greek classic literature after him; but Socrates seems to have
been the first who transformed it from a law of existence into a law
of cognition; with him knowledge and ignorance, reason and passion,
freedom and slavery, virtue, and vice, right and wrong (πολλῶν ὀνομάτων
μορφὴ μία) were apprehended in inseparable connexion, and were employed
for mutual elucidation, not only in broad masses, but also through
their last subdivisions, like the delicate adjustments of light and
shade on a Venetian canvas. This method of classification by graduated
descent and symmetrical contrast, like the whole dialectic system of
which it forms a branch, is only suited to the mental phenomena for
which it was originally devised; and Hegel committed a fatal error
when he applied it to explain the order of external coexistence and
succession. We have already touched on the essentially subjective
character of the Socratic definition, and we shall presently have to
make a similar restriction in dealing with Socratic induction. With
regard to the question last considered, our limits will not permit us,
nor, indeed, does it fall within the scope of our present study, to
pursue a vein of reflection which was never fully worked out either by
the Athenian philosophers or by their modern successors, at least not
in its only legitimate direction.
After definition and division comes reasoning. We arrange objects
in classes, that by knowing one or some we may know all. Aristotle
attributes to Socrates the first systematic employment of induction
as well as of general definitions.[96] Nevertheless, his method was
not solely inductive, nor did it bear more than a distant resemblance
to the induction of modern science. His principles were not gathered
from the particular classes of phenomena which they determined, or
were intended to determine, but from others of an analogous character
which had already been reduced to order. Observing that all handicrafts
were practised according to well-defined intelligible rules, leading,
so far as they went, to satisfactory results, he required that life
in its entirety should be similarly systematised. This was not so
much reasoning as a demand for the more extended application of
reasoning. It was a truly philosophic postulate, for philosophy is
not science, but precedes and underlies it. Belief and action tend to
divide themselves into two provinces, of which the one is more or less
organised, the other more or less chaotic. We philosophise when we try
to bring the one into order, and also when we test the foundations on
which the order of the other reposes, fighting both against incoherent
mysticism and against traditional routine. Such is the purpose that the
most distinguished thinkers of modern times—Francis Bacon, Spinoza,
Hume, Kant, Auguste Comte, and Herbert Spencer—however widely they
may otherwise differ, have, according to their respective lights, all
set themselves to achieve. No doubt, there is this vast difference
between Socrates and his most recent successors, that physical science
is the great type of certainty to the level of which they would raise
all speculation, while with him it was the type of a delusion and an
impossibility. The analogy of artistic production when applied to
Nature led him off on a completely false track, the ascription to
conscious design of that which is, in truth, a result of mechanical
causation.[97] But now that the relations between the known and the
unknown have been completely transformed, there is no excuse for
repeating the fallacies which imposed on his vigorous understanding;
and the genuine spirit of Socrates is best represented by those who,
starting like him from the data of experience, are led to adopt a
diametrically opposite conclusion. We may add, that the Socratic method
of analogical reasoning gave a retrospective justification to early
Greek thought, of which Socrates was not himself aware. Its daring
generalisations were really an inference from the known to the unknown.
To interpret all physical processes in terms of matter and motion, is
only assuming that the changes to which our senses cannot penetrate are
homogeneous with the changes which we can feel and see. When Socrates
argued that, because the human body is animated by a consciousness,
the material universe must be similarly animated, Democritus might
have answered that the world presents no appearance of being organised
like an animal. When he argued that, because statues and pictures are
known to be the work of intelligence, the living models from which they
are copied must be similarly due to design, Aristodêmus should have
answered, that the former are seen to be manufactured, while the others
are seen to grow. It might also have been observed, that if our own
intelligence requires to be accounted for by a cause like itself, so
also does the creative cause, and so on through an infinite regress of
antecedents. Teleology has been destroyed by the Darwinian theory; but
before the _Origin of Species_ appeared, the slightest scrutiny might
have shown that it was a precarious foundation for religious belief.
If many thoughtful men are now turning away from theism, ‘natural
theology’ may be thanked for the desertion. ‘I believe in God,’ says
the German baron in _Thorndale_, ‘until your philosophers demonstrate
His existence.’ ‘And then?’ asks a friend. ‘And then—I do not believe
the demonstration.’
Whatever may have been the errors into which Socrates fell, he did
not commit the fatal mistake of compromising his ethical doctrine by
associating it indissolubly with his metaphysical opinions. Religion,
with him, instead of being the source and sanction of all duty, simply
brought in an additional duty—that of gratitude to the gods for their
goodness. We shall presently see where he sought for the ultimate
foundation of morality, after completing our survey of the dialectic
method with which it was so closely connected. The induction of
Socrates, when it went beyond that kind of analogical reasoning which
we have just been considering, was mainly abstraction, the process by
which he obtained those general conceptions or definitions which played
so great a part in his philosophy. Thus, on comparing the different
virtues, as commonly distinguished, he found that they all agreed in
requiring knowledge, which he accordingly concluded to be the essence
of virtue. So other moralists have been led to conclude that right
actions resemble one another in their felicific quality, and In that
alone. Similarly, political economists find, or formerly found (for we
do not wish to be positive on the matter), that a common characteristic
of all industrial employments is the desire to secure the maximum of
profit with the minimum of trouble. Another comparison shows that value
depends on the relation between supply and demand. Aesthetic enjoyments
of every kind resemble one another by including an element of ideal
emotion. It is a common characteristic of all cognitions that they are
constructed by association out of elementary feelings. All societies
are marked by a more or less developed division of labour. These
are given as typical generalisations which have been reached by the
Socratic method. They are all taken from the philosophic sciences—that
is, the sciences dealing with phenomena which are partly determined by
mind, and the systematic treatment of which is so similar that they are
frequently studied in combination by a single thinker, and invariably
so by the greatest thinkers of any. But were we to examine the history
of the physical sciences, we should find that this method of wide
comparison and rapid abstraction cannot, as Francis Bacon imagined, be
successfully applied to them. The facts with which they deal are not
transparent, not directly penetrable by thought; hence they must be
treated deductively. Instead of a front attack, we must, so to speak,
take them in the rear. Bacon never made a more unfortunate observation
than when he said that the syllogism falls far short of the subtlety of
Nature. Nature is even simpler than the syllogism, for she accomplishes
her results by advancing from equation to equation. That which really
does fall far short of her subtlety is precisely the Baconian induction
with its superficial comparison of instances. No amount of observation
could detect any resemblance between the bursting of a thunderstorm and
the attraction of a loadstone, or between the burning of charcoal and
the rusting a nail.
But while philosophers cannot prescribe a method to physical science,
they may, to a certain extent, bring it under their cognisance, by
disengaging its fundamental conceptions and assumptions, and showing
that they are functions of mind; by arranging the special sciences in
systematic order for purposes of study; and by investigating the law
of their historical evolution. Furthermore, since psychology is the
central science of philosophy, and since it is closely connected with
physiology, which in turn reposes on the inorganic sciences, a certain
knowledge of the objective world is indispensable to any knowledge of
ourselves. Lastly, since the subjective sphere not only rests, once for
all, on the objective, but is also in a continual state of action and
reaction with it, no philosophy can be complete which does not take
into account the constitution of things as they exist independently of
ourselves, in order to ascertain how far they are unalterable, and how
far they may be modified to our advantage. We see, then, that Socrates,
in restricting philosophy to human interests, was guided by a just
tact; that in creating the method of dialectic abstraction, he created
an instrument adequate to this investigation, but to this alone;
and, finally, that human interests, understood in the largest sense,
embrace a number of subsidiary studies which either did not exist when
he taught, or which the inevitable superstitions of his age would not
allow him to pursue.
It remains to glance at another aspect of the dialectic method first
developed on a great scale by Plato, and first fully defined by
Aristotle, but already playing a certain part in the Socratic teaching.
This is the testing of common assumptions by pushing them to their
logical conclusion, and rejecting those which lead to consequences
inconsistent with themselves. So understood, dialectic means the
complete elimination of inconsistency, and has ever since remained the
most powerful weapon of philosophical criticism. To take an instance
near at hand, it is constantly employed by thinkers so radically
different as Mr. Herbert Spencer and Professor T. H. Green; while it
has been generalised into an objective law of Nature and history, with
dazzling though only momentary success, by Hegel and his school.
VI.
Consistency is, indeed, the one word which, better than any other,
expresses the whole character of Socrates, and the whole of philosophy
as well. Here the supreme conception of mind reappears under its most
rigorous, but, at the same time, its most beneficent aspect. It is the
temperance which no allurement can surprise; the fortitude which no
terror can break through; the justice which eliminates all personal
considerations, egoistic and altruistic alike; the truthfulness
which, with exactest harmony, fits words to meanings, meanings to
thoughts, and thoughts to things; the logic which will tolerate no
self-contradiction; the conviction which seeks for no acceptance
unwon by reason; the liberalism which works through free agencies for
freedom; the love which wills another’s good for that other’s sake
alone.[98] It was the intellectual passion for consistency which made
Socrates so great and which fused his life into a flawless whole; but
it was an unconscious motive power, and therefore he attributed to mere
knowledge what knowledge alone could not supply. A clear perception
of right cannot by itself secure the obedience of our will. High
principles are not of any value, except to those in whom a discrepancy
between practice and profession produces the sharpest anguish of which
their nature is capable; a feeling like, though immeasurably stronger
than, that which women of exquisite sensibility experience when they
see a candle set crooked or a table-cover awry. How moral laws have
come to be established, and why they prescribe or prohibit certain
classes of actions, are questions which still divide the schools,
though with an increasing consensus of authority on the utilitarian
side: their ultimate sanction—that which, whatever they are, makes
obedience to them truly moral—can hardly be sought elsewhere than in
the same consciousness of logical stringency that determines, or should
determine, our abstract beliefs.
Be this as it may, we venture to hope that a principle has been here
suggested deep and strong enough to reunite the two halves into which
historians have hitherto divided the Socratic system, or, rather, the
beginning of that universal systematisation called philosophy, which
is not yet, and perhaps never will be, completed; a principle which is
outwardly revealed in the character of the philosopher himself. With
such an one, ethics and dialectics become almost indistinguishable
through the intermixture of their processes and the parallelism of
their aims. Integrity of conviction enters, both as a means and
as an element, into perfect integrity of conduct, nor can it be
maintained where any other element of rectitude is wanting. Clearness,
consecutiveness, and coherence are the morality of belief; while
temperance, justice, and beneficence, taken in their widest sense and
taken together, constitute the supreme logic of life.
It has already been observed that the thoughts of Socrates were thrown
into shape for and by communication, that they only became definite
when brought into vivifying contact with another intelligence. Such was
especially the case with his method of ethical dialectic. Instead of
tendering his advice in the form of a lecture, as other moralists have
at all times been so fond of doing, he sought out some pre-existing
sentiment or opinion inconsistent with the conduct of which he
disapproved, and then gradually worked round from point to point,
until theory and practice were exhibited in immediate contrast. Here,
his reasoning, which is sometimes spoken of as exclusively inductive,
was strictly syllogistic, being the application of a general law to
a particular instance. With the growing emancipation of reason, we
may observe a return to the Socratic method of moralisation. Instead
of rewards and punishments, which encourage selfish calculation, or
examples, which stimulate a mischievous jealousy when they do not
create a spirit of servile imitation, the judicious trainer will
find his motive power in the pupil’s incipient tendency to form
moral judgments, which, when reflected on the individual’s own
actions, become what we call a conscience. It has been mentioned in
the preceding chapter that the celebrated golden rule of justice was
already enunciated by Greek moralists in the fourth century B.C.
Possibly it may have been first formulated by Socrates. In all cases
it occurs in the writings of his disciples, and happily expresses the
drift of his entire philosophy. This generalising tendency was, indeed,
so natural to a noble Greek, that instances of it occur long before
philosophy began. We find it in the famous question of Achilles: ‘Did
not this whole war begin on account of a woman? Are the Atreidae the
only men who love their wives?’[99] and in the now not less famous
apostrophe to Lycaon, reminding him that an early death is the lot of
far worthier men than he[100]—utterances which come on us with the
awful effect of lightning flashes, that illuminate the whole horizon of
existence while they paralyse or destroy an individual victim.
The power which Socrates possessed of rousing other minds to
independent activity and apostolic transmission of spiritual gifts was,
as we have said, the second verification of his doctrine. Even those
who, like Antisthenes and Aristippus, derived their positive theories
from the Sophists rather than from him, preferred to be regarded as his
followers; and Plato, from whom his ideas received their most splendid
development, has acknowledged the debt by making that venerated figure
the centre of his own immortal Dialogues. A third verification is given
by the subjective, practical, dialectic tendency of all subsequent
philosophy properly so called. On this point we will content ourselves
with mentioning one instance out of many, the recent declaration of Mr.
Herbert Spencer that his whole system was constructed for the sake of
its ethical conclusion.[101]
Apart, however, from abstract speculation, the ideal method seems to
have exercised an immediate and powerful influence on Art, an influence
which was anticipated by Socrates himself. In two conversations
reported by Xenophon,[102] he impresses on Parrhasius, the painter,
and Cleito, the sculptor, the importance of so animating the faces and
figures which they represented as to make them express human feelings,
energies, and dispositions, particularly those of the most interesting
and elevated type. And such, in fact, was the direction followed by
imitative art after Pheidias, though not without degenerating into a
sensationalism which Socrates would have severely condemned. Another
and still more remarkable proof of the influence exercised on plastic
representation by ideal philosophy was, perhaps, not foreseen by its
founder. We allude to the substitution of abstract and generic for
historical subjects by Greek sculpture in its later stages, and not by
sculpture only, but by dramatic poetry as well. For early art, whether
it addressed itself to the eye or to the imagination, and whether
its subjects were taken from history or from fiction, had always
been historical in this sense, that it exhibited the performance of
particular actions by particular persons in a given place and at a
given time; the mode of presentment most natural to those whose ideas
are mainly determined by contiguous association. The schools which came
after Socrates let fall the limitations of concrete reality, and found
the unifying principle of their works in association by resemblance,
making their figures the personification of a single attribute or
group of attributes, and bringing together forms distinguished by
the community of their characteristics or the convergence of their
functions. Thus Aphroditê no longer figured as the lover of Arês or
Anchisês, but as the personification of female beauty; while her
statues were grouped together with images of the still more transparent
abstractions, Love, Longing, and Desire. Similarly Apollo became
a personification of musical enthusiasm, and Dionysus of Bacchic
inspiration. So also dramatic art, once completely historical, even
with Aristophanes, now chose for its subjects such constantly-recurring
types as the ardent lover, the stern father, the artful slave, the
boastful soldier, and the fawning parasite.[103]
Nor was this all. Thought, after having, as it would seem, wandered
away from reality in search of empty abstractions, by the help of
those very abstractions regained possession of concrete existence,
and acquired a far fuller intelligence of its complex manifestations.
For, each individual character is an assemblage of qualities, and can
only be understood when those qualities, after having been separately
studied, are finally recombined. Thus, biography is a very late
production of literature, and although biographies are the favourite
reading of those who most despise philosophy, they could never have
been written without its help. Moreover, before characters can be
described they must exist. Now, it is partly philosophy which calls
character into existence by sedulous inculcation of self-knowledge and
self-culture, by consolidating a man’s individuality into something
independent of circumstances, so that it comes to form, not a figure
in bas-relief, but what sculptors call a figure in the round. Such was
Socrates himself, and such were the figures which he taught Xenophon
and Plato to recognise and portray. Character-drawing begins with
them, and the _Memorabilia_ in particular is the earliest attempt at a
biographical analysis that we possess. From this to Plutarch’s _Lives_
there was still a long journey to be accomplished, but the interval
between them is less considerable than that which divides Xenophon
from his immediate predecessor, Thucydides. And when we remember how
intimately the substance of Christian teaching is connected with the
literary form of its first record, we shall still better appreciate the
all-penetrating influence of Hellenic thought, vying, as it does, with
the forces of nature in subtlety and universal diffusion.
Besides transforming art and literature, the dialectic method helped
to revolutionise social life, and the impulse communicated in this
direction is still very far from being exhausted. We allude to its
influence on female education. The intellectual blossoming of Athens
was aided, in its first development, by a complete separation of the
sexes. There were very few of his friends to whom an Athenian gentleman
talked so little as to his wife.[104] Colonel Mure aptly compares
her position to that of an English housekeeper, with considerably
less liberty than is enjoyed by the latter. Yet the union of tender
admiration with the need for intelligent sympathy and the desire to
awaken interest in noble pursuits existed at Athens in full force, and
created a field for its exercise. Wilhelm von Humboldt has observed
that at this time chivalrous love was kept alive by customs which, to
us, are intensely repellent. That so valuable a sentiment should be
preserved and diverted into a more legitimate channel was an object
of the highest importance. The naturalistic method of ethics did
much, but it could not do all, for more was required than a return to
primitive simplicity. Here the method of mind stepped in and supplied
the deficiency. Reciprocity was the soul of dialectic as practised by
Socrates, and the dialectic of love demands a reciprocity of passion
which can only exist between the sexes. But in a society where the free
intercourse of modern Europe was not permitted, the modern sentiment
could not be reached at a single bound; and those who sought for the
conversation of intelligent women had to seek for it among a class of
which Aspasia was the highest representative. Such women played a great
part in later Athenian society; they attended philosophical lectures,
furnished heroines to the New Comedy, and on the whole gave a healthier
tone to literature. Their successors, the Delias and Cynthias of Roman
elegiac poetry, called forth strains of exalted affection which need
nothing but a worthier object to place them on a level with the noblest
expressions of tenderness that have since been heard. Here at least,
to understand is to forgive; and we shall be less scandalised than
certain critics,[105] we shall even refuse to admit that Socrates fell
below the dignity of a moralist, when we hear that he once visited a
celebrated beauty of this class, Theodotê by name;[106] that he engaged
her in a playful conversation; and that he taught her to put more mind
into her profession; to attract by something deeper than personal
charms; to show at least an appearance of interest in the welfare
of her lovers; and to stimulate their ardour by a studied reserve,
granting no favour that had not been repeatedly and passionately sought
after.
Xenophon gives the same interest a more edifying direction when he
enlivens the dry details of his _Cyropaedia_ with touching episodes
of conjugal affection, or presents lessons in domestic economy under
the form of conversations between a newly-married couple.[107] Plato
in some respects transcends, in others falls short of his less gifted
contemporary. For his doctrine of love as an educating process—a true
doctrine, all sneers and perversions notwithstanding—though readily
applicable to the relation of the sexes, is not applied to it by
him; and his project of a common training for men and women, though
suggestive of a great advance on the existing system if rightly carried
out, was, from his point of view, a retrograde step towards savage or
even animal life, an attempt to throw half the burdens incident to a
military organisation of society on those who had become absolutely
incapable of bearing them.
Fortunately, the dialectic method proved stronger than its own
creators, and, once set going, introduced feelings and experiences
of which they had never dreamed, within the horizon of philosophic
consciousness. It was found that if women had much to learn, much
also might be learned from them. Their wishes could not be taken into
account without giving a greatly increased prominence in the guidance
of conduct to such sentiments as fidelity, purity, and pity; and to
that extent the religion which they helped to establish has, at least
in principle, left no room for any further progress. On the other hand,
it is only by reason that the more exclusively feminine impulses can
be freed from their primitive narrowness and elevated into truly human
emotions. Love, when left to itself, causes more pain than pleasure,
for the words of the old idyl still remain true which associate it with
jealousy as cruel as the grave; pity, without prevision, creates more
suffering than it relieves; and blind fidelity is instinctively opposed
even to the most beneficent changes. We are still suffering from the
excessive preponderance which Catholicism gave to the ideas of women;
but we need not listen to those who tell us that the varied experiences
of humanity cannot be organised into a rational, consistent,
self-supporting whole.
A survey of the Socratic philosophy would be incomplete without some
comment on an element in the life of Socrates, which at first sight
seems to lie altogether outside philosophy. There is no fact in his
history more certain than that he believed himself to be constantly
accompanied by a Daemonium, a divine voice often restraining him, even
in trifling matters, but never prompting to positive action. That
it was neither conscience in our sense of the word, nor a supposed
familiar spirit, is now generally admitted. Even those who believe in
the supernatural origin and authority of our moral feelings do not
credit them with a power of divining the accidentally good or evil
consequences which may attend on our most trivial and indifferent
actions; while, on the other hand, those feelings have a positive
no less than a negative function, which is exhibited whenever the
performance of good deeds becomes a duty. That the Daemonium was not
a personal attendant is proved by the invariable use of an indefinite
neuter adjective to designate it. How the phenomenon itself should be
explained is a question for professional pathologists. We have here to
account for the interpretation put upon it by Socrates, and this, in
our judgment, follows quite naturally from his characteristic mode of
thought. That the gods should signify their pleasure by visible signs
and public oracles was an experience familiar to every Greek. Socrates,
conceiving God as a mind diffused through the whole universe, would
look for traces of the Divine presence in his own mind, and would
readily interpret any inward suggestion, not otherwise to be accounted
for, as a manifestation of this all-pervading power. Why it should
invariably appear under the form of a restraint is less obvious. The
only explanation seems to be that, as a matter of fact, such mysterious
feelings, whether the product of unconscious experience or not, do
habitually operate as deterrents rather than as incentives.
VII.
This Daemonium, whatever it may have been, formed one of the ostensible
grounds on which its possessor was prosecuted and condemned to death
for impiety. We might have spared ourselves the trouble of going
over the circumstances connected with that tragical event, had not
various attempts been made in some well-known works to extenuate
the significance of a singularly atrocious crime. The case stands
thus. In the year 399 B.C. Socrates, who was then over seventy, and
had never in his life been brought before a law-court, was indicted
on the threefold charge of introducing new divinities, of denying
those already recognised by the State, and of corrupting young men.
His principal accuser was one Melêtus, a poet, supported by Lycon, a
rhetorician, and by a much more powerful backer, Anytus, a leading
citizen in the restored democracy. The charge was tried before a
large popular tribunal, numbering some five hundred members. Socrates
regarded the whole affair with profound indifference. When urged
to prepare a defence, he replied, with justice, that he had been
preparing it his whole life long. He could not, indeed, have easily
foreseen what line the prosecutors would take. Our own information
on this point is meagre enough, being principally derived from
allusions made by Xenophon, who was not himself present at the trial.
There seems, however, no unfairness in concluding that the charge of
irreligion neither was nor could be substantiated. The evidence of
Xenophon is quite sufficient to establish the unimpeachable orthodoxy
of his friend. If it really was an offence at Athens to believe in
gods unrecognised by the State, Socrates was not guilty of that
offence, for his Daemonium was not a new divinity, but a revelation
from the established divinities, such as individual believers have
at all times been permitted to receive even by the most jealous
religious communities. The imputation of infidelity, commonly and
indiscriminately brought against all philosophers, was a particularly
unhappy one to fling at the great opponent of physical science, who,
besides, was noted for the punctual discharge of his religious duties.
That the first two counts of the indictment should be so frivolous
raises a strong prejudice against the third. The charges of corruption
seem to have come under two heads—alleged encouragement of disrespect
to parents, and of disaffection towards democratic institutions. In
support of the former some innocent expressions let fall by Socrates
seem to have been taken up and cruelly perverted. By way of stimulating
his young friends to improve their minds, he had observed that
relations were only of value when they could help one another, and
that to do so they must be properly educated. This was twisted into
an assertion that ignorant parents might properly be placed under
restraint by their better-informed children. That such an inference
could not have been sanctioned by Socrates himself is obvious from
his insisting on the respect due even to so intolerable a mother as
Xanthippê.[108] The political opinions of the defendant presented a
more vulnerable point for attack. He thought the custom of choosing
magistrates by lot absurd, and did not conceal his contempt for it.
There is, however, no reason for believing that such purely theoretical
criticisms were forbidden by law or usage at Athens. At any rate,
much more revolutionary sentiments were tolerated on the stage. That
Socrates would be no party to a violent subversion of the Constitution,
and would regard it with high disapproval, was abundantly clear both
from his life and from the whole tenor of his teaching. In opposition
to Hippias, he defined justice as obedience to the law of the land.
The chances of the lot had, on one memorable occasion, called him to
preside over the deliberations of the Sovereign Assembly. A proposition
was made, contrary to law, that the generals who were accused of having
abandoned the crews of their sunken ships at Arginusae should be tried
in a single batch. In spite of tremendous popular clamour, Socrates
refused to put the question to the vote on the single day for which
his office lasted. The just and resolute man, who would not yield to
the unrighteous demands of a crowd, had shortly afterwards to face the
threats of a frowning tyrant. When the Thirty were installed in power,
he publicly, and at the risk of his life, expressed disapproval of
their sanguinary proceedings. The oligarchy, wishing to involve as many
respectable citizens as possible in complicity with their crimes, sent
for five persons, of whom Socrates was one, and ordered them to bring
a certain Leo from Salamis, that he might be put to death; the others
obeyed, but Socrates refused to accompany them on their disgraceful
errand. Nevertheless, it told heavily against the philosopher that
Alcibiades, the most mischievous of demagogues, and Critias, the most
savage of aristocrats, passed for having been educated by him. It was
remembered, also, that he was in the habit of quoting a passage from
Homer, where Odysseus is described as appealing to the reason of the
chiefs, while he brings inferior men to their senses with rough words
and rougher chastisement. In reality, Socrates did not mean that the
poor should be treated with brutality by the rich, for he would have
been the first to suffer had such license been permitted, but he
meant that where reason failed harsher methods of coercion must be
applied. Precisely because expressions of opinion let fall in private
conversation are so liable to be misunderstood or purposely perverted,
to adduce them in support of a capital charge where no overt act can
be alleged, is the most mischievous form of encroachment on individual
liberty.
Modern critics, beginning with Hegel,[109] have discovered reasons
for considering Socrates a dangerous character, which apparently did
not occur to Melêtus and his associates. We are told that the whole
system of applying dialectics to morality had an unsettling tendency,
for if men were once taught that the sacredness of duty rested on
their individual conviction they might refuse to be convinced, and act
accordingly. And it is further alleged that Socrates first introduced
this principle of subjectivity into morals. The persecuting spirit
is so insatiable that in default of acts it attacks opinions, and in
default of specific opinions it fastens on general tendencies. We
know that Joseph de Maistre was suspected by his ignorant neighbours
of being a Revolutionist because most of his time was spent in study;
and but the other day a French preacher was sent into exile by his
ecclesiastical superiors for daring to support Catholic morality on
rational grounds.[110] Fortunately Greek society was not subject to
the rules of the Dominican Order. Never anywhere in Greece, certainly
not at Athens, did there exist that solid, all-comprehensive,
unquestionable fabric of traditional obligation assumed by Hegel; and
Zeller is conceding far too much when he defends Socrates, on the sole
ground that the recognised standards of right had fallen into universal
contempt during the Peloponnesian war, while admitting that he might
fairly have been silenced at an earlier period, if indeed his teaching
could have been conceived as possible before it actually began.[111]
For from the first, both in literature and in life, Greek thought
is distinguished by an ardent desire to get to the bottom of every
question, and to discover arguments of universal applicability for
every decision. Even in the youth of Pericles knotty ethical problems
were eagerly discussed without any interference on the part of the
public authorities. Experience had to prove how far-reaching was the
effect of ideas before a systematic attempt could be made to control
them.
In what terms Socrates replied to his accusers cannot be stated with
absolute certainty. Reasons have been already given for believing that
the speech put into his mouth by Plato is not entirely historical;
and here we may mention as a further reason that the specific charges
mentioned by Xenophon are not even alluded to in it. This much,
however, is clear, that the defence was of a thoroughly dignified
character; and that, while the allegations of the prosecution were
successfully rebutted, the defendant stood entirely on his innocence,
and refused to make any of the customary but illegal appeals to the
compassion of the court. We are assured that he was condemned solely on
account of this defiant attitude, and by a very small majority. Melêtus
had demanded the penalty of death, but by Attic law Socrates had the
right of proposing some milder sentence as an alternative. According
to Plato, he began by stating that the justest return for his entire
devotion to the public good would be maintenance at the public expense
during the remainder of his life, an honour usually granted to victors
at the Olympic games. In default of this he proposed a fine of thirty
minae, to be raised by contributions among his friends. According to
another account,[112] he refused, on the ground of his innocence,
to name any alternative penalty. On a second division Socrates was
condemned to death by a much larger majority than that which had found
him guilty, eighty of those who had voted for his acquittal now voting
for his execution.
Such was the transaction which some moderns, Grote among the number,
holding Socrates to be one of the best and wisest of men, have
endeavoured to excuse. Their argument is that the illustrious victim
was jointly responsible for his own fate, and that he was really
condemned, not for his teaching, but for contempt of court. To us it
seems that this is a distinction without a difference. What has been
so finely said of space and time may be said also of the Socratic
life and the Socratic doctrine; each was contained entire in every
point of the other. Such as he appeared to the Dicastery, such also he
appeared everywhere, always, and to all men, offering them the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If conduct like his was
not permissible in a court of law, then it was not permissible at all;
if justice could not be administered without reticences, evasions, and
disguises, where was sincerity ever to be practised? If reason was not
to be the paramount arbitress in questions of public interest, what
issues could ever be entrusted to her decision? Admit every extenuating
circumstance that the utmost ingenuity can devise, and from every point
of view one fact will come out clearly, that Socrates was impeached as
a philosopher, that he defended himself like a philosopher, and that
he was condemned to death because he was a philosopher. Those who
attempt to remove this stain from the character of the Athenian people
will find that, like the blood-stain on Bluebeard’s key, when it is
rubbed out on one side it reappears on the other. To punish Socrates
for his teaching, or for the way in which he defended his teaching, was
equally persecution, and persecution of the worst description, that
which attacks not the results of free thought but free thought itself.
We cannot then agree with Grote when he says that the condemnation
of Socrates ‘ought to count as one of the least gloomy items in an
essentially gloomy catalogue.’ On the contrary, it is the gloomiest of
any, because it reveals a depth of hatred for pure reason in vulgar
minds which might otherwise have remained unsuspected. There is some
excuse for other persecutors, for Caiaphas, and St. Dominic, and
Calvin: for the Inquisition, and for the authors of the dragonnades;
for the judges of Giordano Bruno, and the judges of Vanini: they were
striving to exterminate particular opinions, which they believed to be
both false and pernicious; there is no such excuse for the Athenian
dicasts, least of all for those eighty who, having pronounced Socrates
innocent, sentenced him to death because he reasserted his innocence;
if, indeed, innocence be not too weak a word to describe his life-long
battle against that very irreligion and corruption which were laid to
his charge. Here, in this one cause, the great central issue between
two abstract principles, the principle of authority and the principle
of reason, was cleared from all adventitious circumstances, and
disputed on its own intrinsic merits with the usual weapons of argument
on the one side and brute force on the other. On that issue Socrates
was finally condemned, and on it his judges must be condemned by us.
Neither can we admit Grote’s further contention, that in no Greek
city but Athens would Socrates have been permitted to carry on his
cross-examining activity for so long a period. On the contrary, we
agree with Colonel Mure,[113] that in no other state would he have been
molested. Xenophanes and Parmenides, Heracleitus and Democritus, had
given utterance to far bolder opinions than his, opinions radically
destructive of Greek religion, apparently without running the slightest
personal risk; while Athens had more than once before shown the same
spirit of fanatical intolerance, though without proceeding to such a
fatal extreme, thanks, probably, to the timely escape of her intended
victims. M. Ernest Renan has quite recently contrasted the freedom of
thought accorded by Roman despotism with the narrowness of old Greek
Republicanism, quoting what he calls the Athenian Inquisition as a
sample of the latter. The word inquisition is not too strong, only
the lecturer should not have led his audience to believe that Greek
Republicanism was in this respect fairly represented by its most
brilliant type, for had such been the case very little free thought
would have been left for Rome to tolerate.
During the month’s respite accidentally allowed him, Socrates had one
more opportunity of displaying that stedfast obedience to the law
which had been one of his great guiding principles through life. The
means of escaping from prison were offered to him, but he refused to
avail himself of them, according to Plato, that the implicit contract
of loyalty to which his citizenship had bound him might be preserved
unbroken. Nor was death unwelcome to him although it is not true that
he courted it, any desire to figure as a martyr being quite alien from
the noble simplicity of his character. But he had reached an age when
the daily growth in wisdom which for him alone made life worth living,
seemed likely to be exchanged for a gradual and melancholy decline.
That this past progress was a good in itself he never doubted, whether
it was to be continued in other worlds, or succeeded by the happiness
of an eternal sleep. And we may be sure that he would have held his
own highest good to be equally desirable for the whole human race, even
with the clear prevision that its collective aspirations and efforts
cannot be prolonged for ever.
Two philosophers only can be named who, in modern times, have rivalled
or approached the moral dignity of Socrates. Like him, Spinoza
realised his own ideal of a good and happy life. Like him, Giordano
Bruno, without a hope of future recompense, chose death rather than a
life unfaithful to the highest truth, and death, too, under its most
terrible form, not the painless extinction by hemlock inflicted in a
heathen city, but the agonising dissolution intended by Catholic love
to serve as a foretaste of everlasting fire. Yet with neither can the
parallel be extended further; for Spinoza, wisely perhaps, refused
to face the storms which a public profession and propagation of his
doctrine would have raised; and the wayward career of Giordano Bruno
was not in keeping with its heroic end. The complex and distracting
conditions in which their lot was cast did not permit them to attain
that statuesque completeness which marked the classic age of Greek life
and thought. Those times developed a wilder energy, a more stubborn
endurance, a sweeter purity than any that the ancient world had known.
But until the scattered elements are recombined in a still loftier
harmony, our sleepless thirst for perfection can be satisfied at one
spring alone. Pericles must remain the ideal of statesmanship, Pheidias
of artistic production, and Socrates of philosophic power.
Before the ideas which we have passed in review could go forth on their
world-conquering mission, it was necessary, not only that Socrates
should die, but that his philosophy should die also, by being absorbed
into the more splendid generalisations of Plato’s system. That system
has, for some time past, been made an object of close study in our
most famous seats of learning, and a certain acquaintance with it has
almost become part of a liberal education in England. No better source
of inspiration, combined with discipline, could be found; but we shall
understand and appreciate Plato still better by first extricating
the nucleus round which his speculations have gathered in successive
deposits, and this we can only do with the help of Xenophon, whose
little work also well deserves attention for the sake of its own chaste
and candid beauty. The relation in which it stands to the Platonic
writings may be symbolised by an example familiar to the experience
of every traveller. As sometimes, in visiting a Gothic cathedral, we
are led through the wonders of the more modern edifice—under soaring
arches, over tesselated pavements, and between long rows of clustered
columns, past frescoed walls, storied windows, carven pulpits,
and sepulchral monuments, with their endless wealth of mythologic
imagery—down into the oldest portion of any, the bare stern crypt,
severe with the simplicity of early art, resting on pillars taken from
an ancient temple, and enclosing the tomb of some martyred saint, to
whose glorified spirit an office of perpetual intercession before
the mercy-seat is assigned, and in whose honour all that external
magnificence has been piled up; so also we pass through the manifold
and marvellous constructions of Plato’s imagination to that austere
memorial where Xenophon has enshrined with pious care, under the great
primary divisions of old Hellenic virtue, an authentic reliquary of
one standing foremost among those who, having worked out their own
deliverance from the powers of error and evil, would not be saved
alone, but published the secret of redemption though death were the
penalty of its disclosure; and who, by their transmitted influence,
even more than by their eternal example, are still contributing to the
progressive development of all that is most rational, most consistent,
most social, and therefore most truly human in ourselves.
FOOTNOTES:
[80] Cf. Havet, _Le Christianisme et ses Origines_, I., 167.
[81] _Gesch. d. Phil._, II., 47.
[82] The oracle quoted in the _Apologia Socratis_ attributed to
Xenophon praises Socrates not for wisdom but for independence, justice,
and temperance. Moreover, the work in question is held to be spurious
by nearly every critic.
[83] _Mem._, IV., vi., 1.
[84] _Mem._, IV., iv., 10.
[85] Zeller, _Ph. d. Gr._, II., a, 103, note 3 _sub fin._
[86] It may possibly be asked, Why, if Plato gave only an ideal picture
of Socrates, are we to accept his versions of the Sophistic teaching
as literally exact? The answer is that he was compelled, by the nature
of the case, to create an imaginary Socrates, while he could have no
conceivable object in ascribing views which he did not himself hold
to well-known historical personages. Assuming an unlimited right of
making fictitious statements for the public good, his principles would
surely not have permitted him wantonly to calumniate his innocent
contemporaries by foisting on them odious theories for which they were
not responsible. Had nobody held such opinions as those attributed
to Thrasymachus in the _Republic_ there would have been no object
in attacking them; and if anybody held them, why not Thrasymachus
as well as another? With regard to the veracity of the _Apologia_,
Grote, in his work on Plato (I. 291), quotes a passage from Aristeides
the rhetor, stating that all the companions of Socrates agreed about
the Delphic oracle, and the Socratic disclaimer of knowledge. This,
however, proves too much, for it shows that Aristeides quite overlooked
the absence of any reference to either point in Xenophon, and therefore
cannot be trusted to give an accurate report of the other authorities.
[87] _Ph. d. Gr._, II., a, 93 ff.
[88] In the conversation with Hippias already referred to.
[89] _Mem._, III., ix., 4.
[90] _Mem._, III., vi.
[91] _Mem._, IV., ii.
[92] _Mem._, IV., iii.
[93] _Mem._, III., ix., 10.
[94] _Mem._, IV., vi., 14.
[95] Xenophon, _Mem._, III., vii. We may incidentally notice that this
passage is well worth the attention of those who look on the Athenian
Dêmos as an idle and aristocratic body, supported by slave labour.
[96] _Metaph._, XIII., iv.
[97] _Mem._, I., iv.
[98] ‘Il sait que, dans l’intérêt même du bien, il ne faut pas imposer
le bien d’une manière trop absolue, le jeu libre de la liberté étant
la condition de la vie humaine.... poursuite en toutes choses du bien
public, non des applaudissements.’—Renan, _Marc-Aurèle_, pp. 18, 19.
[99] _Il._, IX., 337.
[100] _Ib._, XXI., 106.
[101] In the preface to the _Data of Ethics_.
[102] _Mem._, III., x.
[103] Curtius, _Griechische Geschichte_, III., 526-30 (3rd ed.), where,
however, the revolution in art is attributed to the influence of the
Sophists.
[104] Xenoph., _Oeconom._, iii., 12.
[105] Mure, _History of Grecian Literature_, IV., 451.
[106] _Mem._, III., xi.
[107] _Oeconom._, vii., 4 ff.
[108] _Mem._, II., i.
[109] _Gesch. d. Ph._, II., 100 ff.
[110] Written in the spring of 1880. The allusion is to Father Didon,
who was at that time rusticated in Corsica.
[111] _Ph. d. Gr._, II., a, 192.
[112] In the _Apologia_, attributed to Xenophon.
[113] _Hist. of Gr. Lit._, IV., App. A.