In recent times much has been said about the Socratic irony which,

like all dialectic, gives force to what is taken immediately, but only

in order to allow the dissolution inherent in it to come to pass;

and we may call this the universal irony of the world. Yet men have

tried to make this irony of Socrates into something quite different,

for they extended it into a universal principle; it is said to be

the highest attitude of the mind, and has been represented as the

most divine. It was Friedrich von Schlegel who first brought forward

this idea, and Ast repeated it, saying, “The most ardent love of all

beauty in the Idea, as in life, inspires Socrates’ words with inward,

unfathomable life.” This life is now said to be irony! But this irony

issues from the Fichtian philosophy, and is an essential point in the

comprehension of the conceptions of most recent times. It is when

subjective consciousness maintains its independence of everything,

that it says, “It is I who through my educated thoughts can annul all

determinations of right, morality, good, &c., because I am clearly

master of them, and I know that if anything seems good to me I can

easily subvert it, because things are only true to me in so far as they

please me now.” This irony is thus only a trifling with everything, and

it can transform all things into show: to this subjectivity nothing

is any longer serious, for any seriousness which it has, immediately

becomes dissipated again in jokes, and all noble or divine truth

vanishes away or becomes mere triviality. But the Greek gaiety, as it

breathes in Homer’s poems, is ironical, for Eros mocks the power of

Zeus and of Mars; Vulcan, limping along, serves the gods with wine, and

brings upon himself the uncontrollable laughter of the immortal gods.

Juno boxes Diana’s ears. Thus, too, there is irony in the sacrifices

of the ancients, who themselves consumed the best; in the pain that

laughs, in the keenest joy which is moved to tears, in the scornful

laughter of Mephistopheles, and in every transition from one extreme

to another—from what is best to what is worst. Sunday morning may be

passed in deep humility, profoundest contrition and self-abasement,

in striking the breast in penitence, and the evening in eating and

drinking to the full, going the round of pleasures, thus allowing self

to re-assert its independence of any such subjection. Hypocrisy, which

is of the same nature, is the truest irony. Socrates and Plato were

falsely stated to be the originators of this irony, of which it is

said that it is the “inmost and deepest life,” although they possessed

the element of subjectivity; in our time it was not permitted to us

to give effect to this irony. Ast’s “inmost, deepest life” is just

the subjective and arbitrary will, the inward divinity which knows

itself to be exalted above all. The divine is said to be the purely

negative attitude, the perception of the vanity of everything, in which

my vanity alone remains. Making the consciousness of the nullity of

everything ultimate, might indeed indicate depth of life, but it only

is the depth of emptiness, as may be seen from the ancient comedies

of Aristophanes. From this irony of our times, the irony of Socrates

is far removed; as is also the case with Plato, it has a significance

which is limited. Socrates’ premeditated irony may be called a manner

of speech, a pleasant rallying; there is in it no satirical laughter or

pretence, as though the idea were nothing but a joke. But his tragic

irony is his opposition of subjective reflection to morality as it

exists, not a consciousness of the fact that he stands above it, but

the natural aim of leading men, through thought, to the true good and

to the universal Idea.

_b._ Now the second element is what Socrates has called the art of

midwifery—an art which came to him from his mother.[126] It is the

assisting into the world of the thought which is already contained in

the consciousness of the individual—the showing from the concrete,

unreflected consciousness, the universality of the concrete, or

from the universally posited, the opposite which already is within

it. Socrates hence adopts a questioning attitude, and this kind of

questioning and answering has thus been called the Socratic method;

but in this method there is more than can be given in questions and

replies. For the answer seems occasionally to be quite different from

what was intended by the question, while in printed dialogue, answers

are altogether under the author’s control; but to say that in actual

life people are found to answer as they are here made to do, is quite

another thing. To Socrates those who reply may be called pliable

youths, because they reply directly to the questions, which are so

formed that they make the answer very easy, and exclude any originality

in reply. To this plastic manner, which we see in the method of

Socrates, as represented by Plato and Xenophon, it is objected that we

do not answer in the same relation in which the questioner asks; while,

with Socrates, the relation which the questioner adopts is respected

in the reply. The other way, which is to bring forward another point

of view, is undoubtedly the spirit of an animated conversation, but

such emulation is excluded from this Socratic method, in which the

principal matter is to keep to the point. The spirit of dogmatism,

self-assertion, stopping short when we seem to get into difficulties,

and escaping from them by a jest, or by setting them aside—all these

attitudes and methods are here excluded; they do not constitute good

manners, nor do they have a place in Socrates’ dialogues. In these

dialogues, it is hence not to be wondered at that those questioned

answered so precisely to the point, while in the best modern dialogues

there is always an arbitrary element.

This difference concerns only what is external and formal. But the

principal point, and the reason why Socrates set to work with questions

in bringing the good and right into consciousness in universal form,

was that he did not proceed from what is present in our consciousness

in a simple form through setting forth the conception allied to it

in pure necessity, which would be a deduction, a proof or, speaking

generally, a consequence following from the conception. But this

concrete, as it is in natural consciousness without thinking of it,

or universality immersed in matter, he analyzed, so that through

the separation of the concrete, he brought the universal contained

therein to consciousness as universal. We see this method also carried

on to a large extent in Plato’s dialogues, where there is, in this

regard, particular skill displayed. It is the same method which

forms in every man his knowledge of the universal; an education in

self-consciousness, which is the development of reason. The child, the

uncultured man, lives in concrete individual ideas, but to the man who

grows and educates himself, because he thereby goes back into himself

as thinking, reflection becomes reflection on the universal and the

permanent establishment of the same; and a freedom—formerly that of

moving in concrete ideas—is now that of so doing in abstractions and

in thoughts. We see such a development of universal from particular,

where a number of examples are given, treated in a very tedious way.

For us who are trained in presenting to ourselves what is abstract,

who are taught from youth up in universal principles, the Socratic

method of so-called deference, with its eloquence, has often something

tiresome and tedious about it. The universal of the concrete case is

already present to us as universal, because our reflection is already

accustomed to the universal, and we do not require, first of all, to

take the trouble of making a separation; and thus, if Socrates were now

to bring what is abstract before consciousness, we should not require,

in order to establish it as universal, that all these examples should

be adduced, so that through repetition the subjective certainty of

abstraction might arise.

_c._ The next result of this method of procedure may be that

consciousness is surprised that what it never looked for should be

found in consciousness. If we reflect, for example, on the universally

known idea of Becoming, we find that what becomes is not and yet it is;

it is the identity of Being and non-being, and it may surprise us that

in this simple conception so great a distinction should exist.

The result attained was partly the altogether formal and negative one

of bringing home to those who conversed with Socrates, the conviction

that, however well acquainted with the subject they had thought

themselves, they now came to the conclusion, “that what we knew has

refuted itself.” Socrates thus put questions in the intent that the

speaker should be drawn on to make admissions, implying a point of

view opposed to that from which he started. That these contradictions

arise because they bring their ideas together, is the drift of the

greater part of Socrates’ dialogues; their main tendency consequently

was to show the bewilderment and confusion which exist in knowledge.

By this means, he tries to awaken shame, and the perception that what

we consider as true is not the truth, from which the necessity for

earnest effort after knowledge must result. Plato, amongst others,

gives these examples in his Meno (p. 71-80, Steph.; p. 327-346, Bekk.).

Socrates is made to say, “By the gods, tell me what is virtue.” Meno

proceeds to make various distinctions: “Man’s virtue is to be skilful

in managing state affairs, and thereby to help friends and harm foes;

woman’s to rule her household; other virtues are those of boys, of

young men, of old men,” &c. Socrates interrupts him by saying, that

it is not that about which he inquires, but virtue in general, which

comprehends every thing in itself. Meno says “It is to govern and rule

over others.” Socrates brings forward the fact that the virtue of boys

and slaves does not consist in governing. Meno says that he cannot tell

what is common in all virtue. Socrates replies that it is the same as

figure, which is what is common in roundness, squareness, &c. There a

digression occurs. Meno says, “Virtue is the power of securing the good

desired.” Socrates interposes that it is superfluous to say the good,

for from the time that men know that something is an evil, they do not

desire it; and also the good must be acquired in a right way. Socrates

thus confounds Meno, and he sees that these ideas are false. The latter

says, “I used to hear of you, before I knew you, that you were yourself

in doubt (_ἀπορεῖς_), and also brought others into doubt, and now you

cast a spell on me too, so that I am at my wits’ end (_ἀπορίας_). You

seem, if I may venture to jest, to be like the torpedo fish, for it

is said of it that it makes torpid (_ναρκᾷν_) those who come near it

and touch it. You have done this to me, for I am become torpid in body

and soul, and I do not know how to answer you, although I have talked

thousands of times about virtue with many persons, and, as it seemed

to me, talked very well. But now I do not know at all what to say.

Hence you do well not to travel amongst strangers, for you might be

put to death as a magician.” Socrates again wishes to “inquire.” Now

Meno says, “How can you inquire about what you say you do not know?

Can you have a desire for what you do not know? And if you find it out

by chance, how can you know that it is what you looked for, since you

acknowledge that, you do not know it?” A number of dialogues end in the

same manner, both in Xenophon and Plato, leaving us quite unsatisfied

as to the result. It is so in the Lysis, where Plato asks the question

of what love and friendship secures to men; and similarly the Republic

commences by inquiring what justice is. Philosophy must, generally

speaking, begin with a puzzle in order to bring about reflection;

everything must be doubted, all presuppositions given up, to reach the

truth as created through the Notion.

2. _The Principle of the Good._ This, in short, is Socrates’ method.

The affirmative, what Socrates develops in the consciousness,

is nothing but the good in as far as it is brought forth from

consciousness through knowledge—it is the eternal, in and for itself

universal, what is called the Idea, the true, which just in so far

as it is end, is the Good. In this regard Socrates is opposed to the

Sophists, for the proposition that man is the measure of all things, to

them still comprehends particular ends, while to Socrates the universal

brought forth through free thought is thereby expressed in objective

fashion. Nevertheless, we must not blame the Sophists because, in the

aimlessness of their time, they did not discover the principle of the

Good; for every discovery has its time, and that of the Good, which as

end in itself is now always made the starting point, had not yet been

made by Socrates. It now seems as if we had not yet shown forth much

of the Socratic philosophy, for we have merely kept to the principle;

but the main point with Socrates is that his knowledge for the first

time reached this abstraction. The Good is nevertheless no longer

as abstract as the _νοῦς_ of Anaxagoras, but is the universal which

determines itself in itself, realizes itself, and has to be realized

as the end of the world and of the individual. It is a principle,

concrete within itself, which, however, is not yet manifested in its

development, and in this abstract attitude we find what is wanting in

the Socratic standpoint, of which nothing that is affirmative can,

beyond this, be adduced.

_a._ As regards the Socratic principle, the first determination is

the great determination which is, however, still merely formal,

that consciousness creates and has to create out of itself what is

the true. This principle of subjective freedom was present to the

consciousness of Socrates himself so vividly that he despised the

other sciences as being empty learning and useless to mankind; he has

to concern himself with his moral nature only in order to do what is

best—a one-sidedness which is very characteristic of Socrates. This

religion of the Good is to Socrates, not only the essential point to

which men have to direct their thoughts, but it is that exclusively.

We see him showing how from every individual this universal, this

absolute in consciousness may be found as his reality. Here we see

law, the true and good, what was formerly present as an existent,

return into consciousness. But it is not a single chance manifestation

in this individual Socrates, for we have to comprehend Socrates and

his manifestation. In the universal consciousness, in the spirit of

the people to which he belongs, we see natural turn into reflective

morality, and he stands above as the consciousness of this change.

The spirit of the world here begins to change, a change which was

later on carried to its completion. From this higher standpoint,

Socrates, as well as the Athenian people and Socrates in them, have

to be considered. The reflection of consciousness into itself begins

here, the knowledge of the consciousness of self as such, that it is

real existence—or that God is a Spirit, or again, in a cruder and

more sensuous form, that God takes human form. This epoch begins

where essence is given up as Being—even though it be, as hitherto,

abstract Being, Being as thought. But this epoch in a naturally moral

people in the highest state of development, makes its appearance as

the destruction threatening them or breaking in upon them unprevented.

For its morality, as was usually so with the ancients, consisted in

the fact that the Good was present as a universal, without its having

had the form of the conviction of the individual in his individual

consciousness, but simply that of the immediate absolute. It is the

authoritative, present law, without testing investigation, but yet

an ultimate ground on which this moral consciousness rests. It is

the law of the State; it has authority as the law of the gods, and

thus it is universal destiny which has the form of an existent, and

is recognized as such by all. But moral consciousness asks if this

is actually law in itself? This consciousness turned back within

itself from everything that has the form of the existent, requires to

understand, to know, that the above law is posited in truth, _i.e._

it demands that it should find itself therein as consciousness. In

thus returning into themselves the Athenian people are revealed to us:

uncertainty as to existent laws as existent has arisen, and a doubt

about what was held to be right, the greatest freedom respecting all

that is and was respected. This return into itself represents the

highest point reached by the mind of Greece, in so far as it becomes

no longer the mere existence of these moralities, but the living

consciousness of the same, which has a content which is similar, but

which, as spirit, moves freely in it. This is a culture which we never

find the Lacedæmonians reach. This deepest life of morality is so to

speak a free personal consciousness of morality or of God, and a happy

enjoyment of them. Consciousness and Being have here exactly the same

value and rank; what is, is consciousness; neither is powerful above

another. The authority of law is no oppressive bond to consciousness,

and all reality is likewise no obstacle to it, for it is secure in

itself. But this return is just on the point of abandoning the content,

and indeed of positing itself as abstract consciousness, without

the content, and, as existent, opposed to it. From this equilibrium

of consciousness and Being, consciousness takes up its position as

independent. This aspect of separation is an independent conception,

because consciousness, in the perception of its independence, no

longer immediately acknowledges what is put before it, but requires

that this should first justify itself to it, _i.e._ it must comprehend

itself therein. Thus this return is the isolation of the individual

from the universal, care for self at the cost of the State; to us,

for instance, it is the question as to whether I shall be in eternal

bliss or condemnation, whereas philosophic eternity is present now

in time, and is nothing other than the substantial man himself. The

State has lost its power, which consisted in the unbroken continuity

of the universal spirit, as formed of single individuals, so that the

individual consciousness knew no other content and reality than law.

Morals have become shaken, because we have the idea present that man

creates his maxims for himself. The fact that the individual comes to

care for his own morality, means that he becomes reflectively moral;

when public morality disappears, reflective morality is seen to have

arisen. We now see Socrates bringing forward the opinion, that in

these times every one has to look after his own morality, and thus

he looked after his through consciousness and reflection regarding

himself; for he sought the universal spirit which had disappeared from

reality, in his own consciousness. He also helped others to care for

their morality, for he awakened in them this consciousness of having

in their thoughts the good and true, _i.e._ having the potentiality

of action and of knowledge. This is no longer there immediately, but

must be provided, just as a ship must make provision of water when it

goes to places where none is to be found. The immediate has no further

authority but must justify itself to thought. Thus we comprehend the

special qualities of Socrates, and his method in Philosophy, from the

whole; and we also understand his fate from the same.

This direction of consciousness back into itself takes the form—very

markedly in Plato—of asserting that man can learn nothing, virtue

included, and that not because the latter has no relation to science.

For the good does not come from without, Socrates shows; it cannot

be taught, but is implied in the nature of mind. That is to say, man

cannot passively receive anything that is given from without like the

wax that is moulded to a form, for everything is latent in the mind

of man, and he only seems to learn it. Certainly everything begins

from without, but this is only the beginning; the truth is that this

is only an impulse towards the development of spirit. All that has

value to men, the eternal, the self-existent, is contained in man

himself, and has to develop from himself. To learn here only means

to receive knowledge of what is externally determined. This external

comes indeed through experience, but the universal therein belongs to

thought, not to the subjective and bad, but to the objective and true.

The universal in the opposition of subjective and objective, is that

which is as subjective as it is objective; the subjective is only a

particular, the objective is similarly only a particular as regards

the subjective, but the universal is the unity of both. According to

the Socratic principle, nothing has any value to men to which the

spirit does not testify. Man in it is free, is at home with himself,

and that is the subjectivity of spirit. As it is said in the Bible,

“Flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone,” that which is held by me as

truth and right is spirit of my spirit. But what spirit derives from

itself must come from it as from the spirit which acts in a universal

manner, and not from its passions, likings, and arbitrary desires.

These, too, certainly come from something inward which is “implanted

in us by nature,” but which is only in a natural way our own, for it

belongs to the particular; high above it is true thought, the Notion,

the rational. Socrates opposed to the contingent and particular inward,

that universal, true inward of thought. And Socrates awakened this real

conscience, for he not only said that man is the measure of all things,

but man as thinking is the measure of all things. With Plato we shall,

later on, find it formulated that what man seems to receive he only

remembers.

As to the question of what is the Good, Socrates recognized its

determination as being not only a determination in particularity to

the exclusion of the natural side, as determination is understood in

empirical science, but even in relation to the actions of men, he holds

the Good to be still undetermined, and the ultimate determinateness, or

the determining, is what we may call subjectivity generally. That the

Good should be determined, primarily signifies that while, at first, in

opposition to the Being of reality, it was a general maxim only, that

to which the activity of individuality was still wanting, in the second

place it was not permitted to be inert, to be mere thought, but had to

be present as the determining and actual, and thus as the effectual. It

is such only through subjectivity, through the activity of man. That

the Good is a determinate thus further means that individuals know what

the Good is, and we call this standpoint reflective morality, while

natural morality does right unconsciously. Thus to Socrates virtue is

perception. For to the proposition of the Platonic Protagoras that

all other virtues have a relationship to one another, but that it is

not so with valour, since many brave men are to be found who are the

most irreligious, unjust, intemperate and uncultured of people (such

as a band of robbers), Plato makes Socrates answer that valour, like

all virtues, also is a science, that is, it is the knowledge and the

right estimation of what is to be feared.[127] By this the distinctive

qualities of valour are certainly not unfolded. The naturally moral and

upright man is such without his having considered the matter at all; it

is his character, and what is good is securely rooted within him. When,

on the other hand, consciousness is concerned, the question arises as

to whether I directly desire the good or not. Hence this consciousness

of morality easily becomes dangerous, and causes the individual to

be puffed up by a good opinion of himself, which proceeds from the

consciousness of his own power to decide for the good. The ‘I’ is then

the master, he who chooses the Good, and in that there is the conceit

of my knowing that I am an excellent man. With Socrates this opposition

of the good and the subject as choosing is not reached, for what is

dealt with is only the determination of the Good and the connection

therewith of subjectivity; this last, as an individual person who can

choose, decides upon the inward universal. We have here on the one side

the knowledge of the Good, but, on the other, it is implied that the

subject is good, since this is his ordinary character; and the fact

that the subject is such, was by the ancients called virtue.

We understand from this the following criticism which Aristotle makes

(Magna Mor. I. 1) on the quality of virtue as expounded by Socrates.

He says: “Socrates spoke better of virtue than did Pythagoras, but

not quite justly, for he made virtues into a science (_ἐπιστήμας_).

But this is impossible, since, though all knowledge has some basis

(_λόγος_) this basis only exists in thought. Consequently, he

places all the virtues in the thinking (_λογιστικῷ_) side of the

soul. Hence it comes to pass that he does away with the feeling

(_ἄλογον_) part of the soul, that is, the inclination (_πᾶθος_) and

the habits (_ἠθος_),” which, however, also pertain to virtue. “But

Plato rightly distinguished the thinking and the feeling sides of

the soul.” This is a good criticism. We see that what Aristotle

misses in the determination of virtue in Socrates, is the side of

subjective actuality, which we now call the heart. Certainly virtue is

determination in accordance with universal, and not with particular

ends, but perception is not the only element in virtue. For in order

that the good perceived should be virtue, it must come to pass that the

whole man, the heart and mind, should be identical with it, and this

aspect of Being or of realization generally, is what Aristotle calls

_τὸ ἄλογον_. If we understand the reality of the good as universal

morality, substantiality is wanting to the perception; but matter,

when we regard the inclination of the individual subjective will as

this reality. This double want may also be considered as a want of

content and of activity, in so far as to the universal development is

wanting; and in the latter case, determining activity comes before us

as negative only in reference to the universal. Socrates thus omits,

in characterizing virtue, just what we saw had also disappeared in

actuality, that is, first the real spirit of a people, and then reality

as the sympathies of the individual. For it is just when consciousness

is not yet turned back into itself, that the universal good appears

to the individual as the object of his sympathy. To us, on the other

hand, because we are accustomed to put on one side the good or virtue

as practical reason, the other side, which is opposed to a reflective

morality, is an equally abstract sensuousness, inclination, passion,

and hence the bad. But in order that the universal should be reality,

it must be worked out through consciousness as individual, and the

carrying into effect pertains to this individuality. A passion,

as for example, love, ambition, is the universal itself, as it is

self-realizing, not in perception, but in activity; and if we did not

fear being misunderstood, we should say that for the individual the

universal is his own interests. Yet this is not the place in which to

unravel all the false ideas and contradictions present in our culture.

Aristotle (Eth. Nicom. VI. 13), supplementing the one-sidedness of

Socrates, further says of him: “Socrates in one respect worked on right

lines, but not in the other. For to call virtue scientific knowledge is

untrue, but to say that it is not without scientific basis is right.

Socrates made virtues into perceptions (_λόγους_), but we say that

virtue exists with perception.” This is a very true distinction; the

one side in virtue is that the universal of end belongs to thought. But

in virtue, as character, the other side, active individuality, real

soul, must necessarily come forth; and indeed with Socrates the latter

appears in a characteristic form of which we shall speak below (p. 421

et seq.).

_b._ If we consider the universal first, it has within it a positive

and a negative side, which we find both united in Xenophon’s

“Memorabilia,” a work which aims at justifying Socrates. And if we

inquire whether he or Plato depicts Socrates to us most faithfully

in his personality and doctrine, there is no question that in regard

to the personality and method, the externals of his teaching, we

may certainly receive from Plato a satisfactory, and perhaps a more

complete representation of what Socrates was. But in regard to the

content of his teaching and the point reached by him in the development

of thought, we have in the main to look to Xenophon.

The fact that the reality of morality had become shaken in the mind

of the people, came to consciousness in Socrates; he stands so high

because he gave expression to what was present in the times. In this

consciousness he elevated morality into perception, but this action is

just the bringing to consciousness of the fact that it is the power of

the Notion which sublates the determinate existence and the immediate

value of moral laws and the sacredness of their implicitude. When

perception likewise positively acknowledges as law that which was

held to be law (for the positive subsists through having recourse to

laws), this acknowledgment of them always passes through the negative

mode, and no longer has the form of absolute being-in-itself: it is,

however, just as far from being a Platonic Republic. To the Notion

too, because to it the determinateness of laws in the form in which

they have value to unperceiving consciousness has dissolved, only the

purely implicit universal Good is the true. But since this is empty

and without reality, we demand, if we are not satisfied with a dull

monotonous round, that again a movement should be made towards the

extension of the determination of the universal. Now because Socrates

remains at the indeterminateness of the good, its determination

means for him simply the expression of the particular good. Then it

comes to pass that the universal results only from the negation of

the particular good; and since this last is just the existing laws

of Greek morality, we have here the doubtlessly right, but dangerous

element in perception, the showing in all that is particular only its

deficiencies. The inconsistency of making what is limited into an

absolute, certainly becomes unconsciously corrected in the moral man;

this improvement rests partly on the morality of the subject and partly

on the whole of the social life; and unfortunate extremes resulting in

conflict are unusual and unfrequent. But since the dialectic sublates

the particular, the abstract universal also becomes shaken.

_α_. Now as regards the positive side, Xenophon tells us in the fourth

book of the Memorabilia (c. 2, § 40), how Socrates, once having

made the need for perception sensible to the youths, then actually

instructed them, and no longer wandered through mere subtleties in

his talk, but taught them the good in the clearest and most open way.

That is, he showed them the good and true in what is determined, going

back into it because he did not wish to remain in mere abstraction.

Xenophon gives an example of this (Memorab. IV. c. 4, §§ 12-16, 25)

in a dialogue with the Sophist Hippias. Socrates there asserts that

the just man is he who obeys the law, and that these laws are divine.

Xenophon makes Hippias reply by asking how Socrates could declare it to

be an absolute duty to obey the laws, for the people and the governors

themselves often condemn them by changing them, which is allowing that

they are not absolute. But Socrates answers by demanding if those who

conduct war do not again make peace, which is not, any more than in the

other case, to condemn war, for each was just in its turn. Socrates

thus says, in a word, that the best and happiest State is that in which

the citizens are of one mind and obedient to law. Now this is the one

side in which Socrates looks away from the contradiction and makes

laws and justice, as they are accepted by each individually, to be

the affirmative content. But if we here ask what these laws are, they

are, we find, just those which have a value at some one time, as they

happen to be present in the State and in the idea; at another time they

abrogate themselves as determined, and are not held to be absolute.

_β_. We hence see this other negative side in the same connection

when Socrates brings Euthydemus into the conversation, for he asks

him whether he did not strive after the virtue without which neither

the private man nor the citizen could be useful to himself or to his

people or the State. Euthydemus declares that this undoubtedly is

so. But without justice, replies Socrates, this is not possible, and

he further asks whether Euthydemus had thus attained to justice in

himself. Euthydemus answers affirmatively, for he says that he thinks

he is no less just than any other man. Socrates now replies, “Just

as workmen can show their work, the just will be able to say what

their works are.” This he also agrees to, and replies that he could

easily do so. Socrates now proposes if this is so to write, “on the

one hand under _Δ_ the actions of the just, and on the other, under

_Α_, those of the unjust?” With the approbation of Euthydemus, lies,

deceit, robbery, making a slave of a free man, thus fall on the side of

the unjust. Now Socrates asks, “But if a general subdues the enemy’s

State, would this not be justice?” Euthydemus says “Yes.” Socrates

replies, “Likewise if he deceives and robs the enemy and makes slaves?”

Euthydemus has to admit the justice of this. It is thus shown “that

the same qualities come under the determination both of justice and of

injustice.” Here it strikes Euthydemus to add the qualification that

he intended that Socrates should understand the action to be only in

reference to friends; as regards them it is wrong. Socrates accepts

this, but proceeds, “If a general at the decisive moment of the battle

saw his own army in fear, and he deceived them by falsely saying that

help was coming in order to lead them on to victory, could it be

deemed right?” Euthydemus acknowledges that it could. Socrates says,

“If a father gives a sick child a medicine which it does not wish to

take, in its food, and makes it well through deceit, is this right?”

Euthydemus—“Yes.” Socrates—“Or is anyone wrong who takes arms from

his friend secretly or by force, when he sees him in despair, and in

the act of taking his own life?” Euthydemus has to admit that this is

not wrong.[128] Thus it is again shown here, that as regards friends

also, the same determinations have to hold good on both sides, as

justice as well as injustice. Here we see that abstention from lying,

deceit, and robbery, that which we naturally hold to be established,

contradicts itself by being put into connection with something

different, and something which holds equally good. This example further

explains how through thought, which would lay hold of the universal in

the form of the universal only, the particular becomes uncertain.

_γ_. The positive, which Socrates sets in the place of what was

fixed and has now become vacillating, in order to give a content to

the universal, is, on the one hand, and in opposition to this last,

obedience to law (p. 416), that is, the mode of thought and idea which

is inconsistent; and, on the other hand, since such determinations

do not hold good for the Notion, it is perception, in which the

immediately posited has now, in the mediating negation, to justify

itself as a determination proceeding out of the constitution of the

whole. But it is both true that we do not find this perception present

in Socrates, for it remains in its content undetermined, and that

in reality it is a contingent, which is seen in the fact, that the

universal commands, such as “Thou shalt not kill,” are connected with

a particular content which is conditioned. Now whether the universal

maxim in this particular case has value or not, depends first on the

circumstances; and it is the perception which discovers the conditions

and circumstances whereby exceptions to this law of unconditioned

validity arise. However, because through this contingency in the

instances, the fixed nature of the universal principle disappears,

since it, too, appears as a particular only, the consciousness of

Socrates arrives at pure freedom in each particular content. This

freedom, which does not leave the content as it is in its dissipated

determination to the natural consciousness, but makes it to be

penetrated by the universal, is the real mind which, as unity of the

universal content and of freedom, is the veritable truth. Thus if we

here consider further what is the true in this consciousness, we pass

on to the mode in which the realization of the universal appeared to

Socrates himself.

Even the uneducated mind does not follow the content of its

consciousness as this content appears in it; but, as mind, it corrects

that which is wrong in its consciousness, and is thus implicitly,

if not explicitly as consciousness, free. That is, though this

consciousness expresses the universal law, “Thou shalt not kill,” as a

duty, that consciousness—if no cowardly spirit dwells within it—will

still bravely attack and slay the enemy in war. Here, if it is asked

whether there is a command to kill one’s enemies, the reply would be

affirmative, as likewise when a hangman puts to death a criminal. But

when in private life we become involved with adversaries, this command

to kill one’s enemies will not occur to us. We may thus call this the

mind which thinks at the right time, first of the one, and then of

the other; it is spirit, but an unspiritual consciousness. The first

step towards reaching a spiritual consciousness is the negative one

of acquiring freedom for one’s consciousness. For since perception

attempts to prove individual laws, it proceeds from a determination to

which, as a universal basis, particular duty is submitted; but this

basis is itself not absolute, and falls under the same dialectic.

For example, were moderation commanded as a duty on the ground that

intemperance undermined the health, health is the ultimate which is

here considered as absolute; but it is at the same time not absolute,

for there are other duties which ordain that health, and even life

itself, should be risked and sacrificed. The so-called conflict of

duties is nothing but duty, which is expressed as absolute, showing

itself as not absolute; in the constant contradiction morals become

unsettled. For a consciousness which has become consistent, law,

because it has then been brought into contact with its opposite, has

been sublated. For the positive truth has not yet become known in

its determination. But to know the universal in its determination,

_i.e._ the limitation of the universal which comes to us as fixed

and not contingent, is only possible in connection with the whole

system of actuality. Thus if with Socrates the content has become

spiritualized, yet manifold independent grounds have merely taken the

place of manifold laws. For the perception is not yet expressed as the

real perception of these grounds over which it rules; but the truth

of consciousness simply is this very movement of pure perception.

The true ground is, however, spirit, and the spirit of the people—a

perception of the constitution of a people, and the connection of the

individual with this real universal spirit. Laws, morals, the actual

social life, thus have in themselves their own corrective against the

inconsistent, which consists of the expression of a definite content

as absolute. In ordinary life we merely forget this limitation of

universal principles, and these still hold their place with us; but

the other point of view is thus when the limitation comes before our

consciousness.

When we have the perfect consciousness that in actual life fixed duties

and actions do not exist, for each concrete case is really a conflict

of many duties which separate themselves in the moral understanding,

but which mind treats as not absolute, comprehending them in the

unity of its judgment, we call this pure, deciding individuality, the

knowledge of what is right, or conscience, just as we call the pure

universal of consciousness not a particular but an all-comprehensive

one, duty. Now both sides here present, the universal law and the

deciding spirit which is in its abstraction the active individual,

are also necessary to the consciousness of Socrates as the content

and the power over this content. That is, because with Socrates the

particular law has become vacillating, there now comes in the place

of the universal single mind, which, with the Greeks, was unconscious

determination through unreflective morality, individual mind as

individuality deciding for itself. Thus with Socrates the deciding

spirit is transformed into the subjective consciousness of man, since

the power of deciding originates with himself; and the first question

now is, how this subjectivity appears in Socrates himself. Because

the person, the individual, now gives the decision, we come back to

Socrates as person, as subject, and what follows is a development

of his personal relations. But since the moral element is generally

placed in the personality of Socrates, we see the contingent nature

of the instruction and of the culture which was obtained through

Socrates’ character; for it was the actual basis on which men fortified

themselves in associating with Socrates, by actual communication with

him and by their manner of life. Thus it was true that “the intercourse

with his friends was, on the whole, beneficial and instructive to them,

but in many cases they became unfaithful to Socrates,”[129] because

not everyone attains to perception, and he who possesses it may remain

at the negative. The education of the citizens, life in the people,

is quite a fresh force in the individual, and does not mean that he

educates himself through arguments; hence, however truly educative the

intercourse with Socrates was, this contingency still entered into it.

We thus see as an unhappy symptom of disorder, how Socrates’ greatest

favourites, and those endowed with the most genial natures (such as

Alcibiades, that genius of levity, who played with the Athenian people,

and Critias, the most active of the Thirty) afterwards experienced the

fate of being judged in their own country, one as an enemy and traitor

to his fellows, and the other as an oppressor and tyrant of the State.

They lived according to the principle of subjective perception, and

thus cast a bad light on Socrates, for it is shown in this how the

Socratic principle in another form brought about the ruin of Greek

life.[130]

_c._ The characteristic form in which this subjectivity—this implicit

and deciding certainty—appears in Socrates, has still to be mentioned.

That is, since everyone here has this personal mind which appears to

him to be his mind, we see how in connection with this, we have what

is known under the name of the Genius (_δαιμόνιον_) of Socrates; for

it implies that now man decides in accordance with his perception

and by himself. But in this Genius of Socrates—notorious as a much

discussed _bizarrerie_ of his imagination—we are neither to imagine

the existence of protective spirit, angel, and such-like, nor even of

conscience. For conscience is the idea of universal individuality, of

the mind certain of itself, which is at the same time universal truth.

But the Genius of Socrates is rather all the other and necessary sides

of his universality, that is, the individuality of mind which came to

consciousness in him equally with the former. His pure consciousness

stands over both sides. The deficiency in the universal, which

lies in its indeterminateness, is unsatisfactorily supplied in an

individual way, because Socrates’ judgment, as coming from himself,

was characterized by the form of an unconscious impulse. The Genius

of Socrates is not Socrates himself, not his opinions and conviction,

but an oracle which, however, is not external, but is subjective,

his oracle. It bore the form of a knowledge which was directly

associated with a condition of unconsciousness; it was a knowledge

which may also appear under other conditions as a magnetic state. It

may happen that at death, in illness and catalepsy, men know about

circumstances future or present, which, in the understood relations

of things, are altogether unknown. These are facts which are usually

rudely denied. That in Socrates we should discover what comes to pass

through reflection in the form of the unconscious, makes it appear to

be an exceptional matter, revealed to the individual only, and not as

being what it is in truth. Thereby it certainly receives the stamp

of imagination, but there is nothing more of what is visionary or

superstitious to be seen in it, for it is a necessary manifestation,

though Socrates did not recognize the necessity, this element being

only generally before his imagination.

In connection with what follows, we must yet further consider the

relationship of the Genius to the earlier existent form of decision,

and that into which it led Socrates; regarding both Xenophon expresses

himself in his history most distinctly. Because the standpoint of the

Greek mind was natural morality, in which man did not yet determine

himself, and still less was what we call conscience present, since

laws were, in their fundamental principles, regarded as traditional,

these last now presented an appearance of being sanctioned by the gods.

We know that the Greeks undoubtedly had laws on which to form their

judgments, but on the other hand, both in private and public life,

immediate decisions had to be made. But in them the Greeks, with all

their freedom, did not decide from the subjective will. The general

or the people did not take upon themselves to decide as to what was

best in the State, nor did the individual do so in the family. For in

making these decisions, the Greeks took refuge in oracles, sacrificial

animals, soothsayers, or, like the Romans, asked counsel of birds

in flight. The general who had to fight a battle was guided in his

decision by the entrails of animals, as we often find in Xenophon’s

Anabasis. Pausanias tormented himself thus a whole day long before

he gave the command to fight.[131] This element, the fact that the

people had not the power of decision but were determined from without,

was a real factor in Greek consciousness; and oracles were everywhere

essential where man did not yet know himself inwardly as being

sufficiently free and independent to take upon himself to decide as we

do. This subjective freedom, which was not yet present with the Greeks,

is what we mean in the present day when we speak of freedom; in the

Platonic Republic we shall see more of it. Our responsibility for what

we do is a characteristic of modern times; we wish to decide according

to grounds of common sense, and consider this as ultimate. The Greeks

did not possess the knowledge of this infinitude.

In the first book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia (chap. I, §§ 7-9), on the

occasion of the defence by Socrates of his _δαιμόνιον_, Socrates says

at the very beginning: “The gods have reserved to themselves what is

most important in knowledge. Architecture, agriculture, forging, are

human arts, as also government, the science of law, management of the

household and generalship. In all this man can attain to skill, but

for the other, divination is necessary. He who cultivates a field does

not know who will enjoy the fruit, nor does he who builds a house know

who will inhabit it; the general does not know whether the army should

be brought into the field; he who rules a State whether it is good for

him” (the individual) “or bad. Nor does he who marries a wife know

whether he will experience happiness or whether grief and sorrow will

not come through this to him; neither can he who has powerful relations

in the State, know whether, on account of these, he may not be banished

from the State. Because of this uncertainty, men have to take refuge in

divination.” Regarding it Xenophon expresses himself (ibid. §§ 3, 4) to

the effect that it manifests itself in different ways through oracles,

sacrifices, flight of birds, &c., but to Socrates this oracle is his

Genius. To hold the future, or what is foreseen by the somnambulist or

at death to be a higher kind of insight, is a perversion which easily

arises even in our ideas; but looked at more closely, we find in this

the particular interests of individuals merely, and the knowledge of

what is right and moral is something much higher. If anyone wishes

to marry or to build a house, &c., the result is important to the

individual only. The truly divine and universal is the institution of

agriculture, the state, marriage, &c.; compared to this it is a trivial

matter to know whether, when I go to sea, I shall perish or not. The

Genius of Socrates moreover reveals itself in him through nothing

other than the counsel given respecting these particular issues, such

as when and whether his friends ought to travel. To anything true,

existing in and for itself in art and science, he made no reference,

for this pertains to the universal mind, and these dæmonic revelations

are thus much more unimportant than those of his thinking mind. There

is certainly something universal in them, since a wise man can often

foresee whether anything is advisable or not. But what is truly divine

pertains to all, and though talents and genius are also personal

characteristics, they find their first truth in their works which are

universal.

Now because with Socrates judgment from within first begins to break

free from the external oracle, it was requisite that this return into

itself should, in its first commencement, still appear in physiological

guise (_supra_, pp. 390, 391). The Genius of Socrates stands midway

between the externality of the oracle and the pure inwardness of the

mind; it is inward, but it is also presented as a personal genius,

separate from human will, and not yet as the wisdom and free will of

Socrates himself. The further investigation of this Genius consequently

presents to us a form which passes into somnambulism, into this double

of consciousness; and in Socrates there clearly appears to be something

of the kind, or something which is magnetic, for, as we already

mentioned (p. 390), he is said often to have fallen into trances and

catalepsy. In modern times we have seen this in the form of a rigid

eye, an inward knowledge, perception of this thing and that, of what

is gone, of what is best to do, &c.; but magnetism carries science

no further than this. The Genius of Socrates is thus to be taken as

an actual state, and is remarkable because it is not morbid but was

necessarily called up through a special condition of his consciousness.

For the turning point in the whole world-famed change of views

constituting the principle of Socrates, is that in place of the oracle,

the testimony of the mind of the individual has been brought forward

and that the subject has taken upon itself to decide.

3. _The Fate of Socrates._ With this Genius of Socrates as one of the

chief points of his indictment, we now enter upon the subject of his

fate, which ends with his condemnation. We may find this fate out of

harmony with his professed business of instructing his fellow-citizens

in what is good, but taken in connection with what Socrates and his

people were, we shall recognize the necessity of it. The contemporaries

of Socrates, who came forward as his accusers before the Athenian

people, laid hold on him as the man who made known that what was held

as absolute was not absolute. Socrates, with this new principle, and as

one who was an Athenian citizen whose express business was this form

of instruction, came, through this his personality, into relationship

with the whole Athenian people; and this relationship was not merely

with a certain number or with a commanding number, but it was a living

relationship with the spirit of the Athenian people. The spirit of this

people in itself, its constitution, its whole life, rested, however,

on a moral ground, on religion, and could not exist without this

absolutely secure basis. Thus because Socrates makes the truth rest on

the judgment of inward consciousness, he enters upon a struggle with

the Athenian people as to what is right and true. His accusation was

therefore just, and we have to consider this accusation as also the end

of his career. The attacks which Socrates experienced are well known,

and were from two sources; Aristophanes attacked him in the “Clouds,”

and then he was formally accused before the people.

Aristophanes regarded the Socratic philosophy from the negative side,

maintaining that through the cultivation of reflecting consciousness,

the idea of law had been shaken, and we cannot question the justice

of this conception. Aristophanes’ consciousness of the one-sidedness

of Socrates may be regarded as a prelude to his death; the Athenian

people likewise certainly recognized his negative methods in condemning

him. It is known that Aristophanes brought upon the stage along with

Socrates, not only such men as Aeschylus, and more specially Euripides,

but also the Athenians generally and their generals—the personified

Athenian people and the gods themselves—a freedom which we would not

dream of were it not historically authenticated. We have not here to

consider the real nature of the Comedy of Aristophanes, nor the wanton

way in which he was said to have treated Socrates. As to the first, it

should not startle us, nor do we require to justify Aristophanes or to

excuse him. The Comedy of Aristophanes is in itself as real a part of

the Athenian people, and Aristophanes is as essential a figure, as were

the sublime Pericles, the happy Alcibiades, the divine Sophocles, and

the moral Socrates, for he belongs as much as any other to this circle

of luminaries (Vol. I., p. 322). Thus much can alone be said, that it

certainly goes against our German seriousness to see how Aristophanes

brings on the boards men living in the State, by name, in order to make

a jest of them; and we feel this specially in regard to so upright a

man as Socrates.

By chronological considerations, some have tried hard to refute the

fact that Aristophanes’ representations had no influence on the

condemnation of Socrates. It is seen that, on the one hand, Socrates

was treated quite unjustly; but then we must recognize the merit of

Aristophanes, who in his “Clouds” was perfectly right. This poet, who

exposed Socrates to scorn in the most laughable and bitter way, was

thus no ordinary joker and shallow wag who mocked what is highest and

best, and sacrificed all to wit with a view to making the Athenians

laugh. For everything has to him a much deeper basis, and in all his

jokes there lies a depth of seriousness. He did not wish merely to

mock; and moreover to mock what was worthy of honour would be perfectly

bald and flat. It is a pitiful wit which has no substance, and does not

rest on contradictions lying in the matter itself. But Aristophanes

was no bad jester. It is, generally speaking, not possible to joke

in an external way about what does not contain matter for joking or

irony in itself. For what really is comic is to show a man or a thing

as they disclose themselves in their extent; and if the thing is

not itself its contradiction, the comic element is superficial and

groundless. Hence, when Aristophanes makes merry over the Democracy,

there is a deep political earnestness at heart, and from all his works

it appears what a noble, excellent, true Athenian citizen he was.

We thus have a real patriot before us, who, though it involved the

punishment of death, did not fear in one of his works to counsel peace.

In him, as one who had a patriotism of the most enlightened kind, we

find the blissful self-satisfied enjoyment of a people giving free

rein to itself. There is, in what is humorous, a self-security which,

though with all seriousness it strives after some particular thing,

while the opposite of what it aims at always comes to pass, never has

for that reason any doubts nor any reflection about itself, since it

remains perfectly certain of itself and of what concerns it. We enjoy

in Aristophanes this side of the free Athenian spirit, this perfect

enjoyment of itself in loss, this untroubled certainty of itself in

all miscarriage of the result in real life, and this is the height of

humour.

In the “Clouds” we do not indeed see this natural humour, but a

contradiction with definite intention. Aristophanes indeed depicts

Socrates humorously too, for he brings forth in his moral works the

opposite of that from which he starts, and his scholars derive delight

from the far-extending discoveries reached through him, which they

think are made by their own good luck, but which afterwards turn

hateful to them, and become the very opposite of what they intended.

The wonderful perception which the followers of Socrates are here

represented as having attained, is just a perception of the nullity of

the laws of the determinate good as it is to the natural consciousness.

Aristophanes made fun of the fact that Socrates occupied himself with

elementary researches as to how far fleas spring, and of his putting

wax on their feet in order to discover this. This is not historic,

but it is well known that Socrates had in his philosophy the side

which Aristophanes showed up with such acrimony. Shortly, the fable of

the “Clouds” is this: Strepsiades, an honourable Athenian citizen of

the old school, had great trouble with his new-fashioned extravagant

son, who, spoiled by mother and uncle, kept horses and led a life

out of keeping with his position. The father thus got into trouble

with his creditors, and went in distress to Socrates, and became

his disciple. There the old man learned that not this or that, but

another is the right, or rather he learned the stronger (_κρείττων_)

and weaker reasons (_ἕττων λόγος_). He learned the dialectic of laws,

and how, by reasoning, the payment of debts can be disregarded, and

he then required that his son should go to the School of Socrates;

and the latter likewise profited from his wisdom. But we find the

result ensuing from the universal which has now through the Socratic

dialectic become empty, in the private interest or the wrong spirit

of Strepsiades and his son, which spirit is merely the negative

consciousness of the content of laws. Equipped with this new wisdom of

reasons, and the discovery of reasons, Strepsiades is armed against the

chief evil that presses on him, as regards his threatening creditors.

These now come one after another to obtain payment. But Strepsiades

knows how to put them off with excellent reasons, and to argue them

away, for he pacifies them by all sorts of _titulos_, and shows them

that he does not need to pay them; indeed he even mocks them, and is

very glad that he learned all this from Socrates. But soon the scene

changes, and the whole affair alters. The son comes, behaves in a very

unseemly way to his father, and finally beats him. The father cries

to the supreme power, as if this were the last indignity, but the son

shows him, with equally good reasons, obtained by the method derived

by him from Socrates, that he had a perfect right to strike him.

Strepsiades ends the comedy with execrations on the Socratic dialectic,

with a return to his old ways, and with the burning of Socrates’

house. The exaggeration which may be ascribed to Aristophanes, is that

he drove this dialectic to its bitter end, but it cannot be said that

injustice is done to Socrates by this representation. Indeed we must

admire the depth of Aristophanes in having recognized the dialectic

side in Socrates as being a negative, and—though after his own way—in

having presented it so forcibly. For the power of judging in Socrates’

method is always placed in the subject, in conscience, but where this

is bad, the story of Strepsiades must repeat itself.

With regard to the formal public accusation of Socrates, we must not,

like Tennemann (Vol. II., p. 39 seq.), say of Socrates’ treatment,

that “it is revolting to humanity that this excellent man had to

drink the cup of poison as a sacrifice to cabals—so numerous in

democracies. A man like Socrates, who had made right” (right is not

being discussed, but we may ask what right? The right of moral freedom)

“the sole standard of his action, and did not stray from the straight

path, must necessarily make many enemies” (Why? This is foolish; it

is a moral hypocrisy to pretend to be better than others who are

then called enemies) “who are accustomed to act from quite different

motives. When we think of the corruption, and of the rule of the thirty

tyrants, we must simply wonder that he could have worked on to his

sixtieth year unmolested. But since the Thirty did not venture to lay

hands on him themselves, it is the more to be wondered at that in the

reconstituted and just rule and freedom which followed the overthrow

of despotism”—in that very way the danger in which their principle

was, came to be known—“a man like Socrates could be made a sacrifice

to cabals. This phenomenon is probably explained by the fact that the

enemies of Socrates had first of all to gain time in order to obtain

a following, and that under the rule of the Thirty, they played too

insignificant a part,” and so on.

Now, as regards the trial of Socrates, we have to distinguish two

points, the one the matter of the accusation, the judgment of the

court, and the other the relation of Socrates to the sovereign people.

In the course of justice there are thus these two parts—the relation

of the accused to the matter on account of which he is accused, and

his relation to the competency of the people, or the recognition of

their majesty. Socrates was found guilty by the judges in respect of

the content of his accusation, but was condemned to death because

he refused to recognize the competency and majesty of the people as

regards the accused.

a. The accusation consisted of two points: “That Socrates did not

consider as gods those who were held to be such by the Athenian

people, but introduced new ones; and that he also led young men

astray.”[132] The leading away of youth was his casting doubt on what

was held to be immediate truth. The first accusation has in part the

same foundation, for he made it evident that what was usually so

considered, was not acceptable to the gods; and in part it is to be

taken in connection with his Dæmon, not that he called this his god.

But with the Greeks this was the direction which the individuality of

judgment took; they took it to be a contingency of the individual,

and hence, as contingency of circumstances is an external, they also

made the contingency of judgment into something external, _i.e._ they

consulted their oracles—conscious that the individual will is itself

a contingent. But Socrates, who placed the contingency of judgment

in himself, since he had his Dæmon in his own consciousness, thereby

abolished the external universal Dæmon from which the Greeks obtained

their judgments. This accusation, as also Socrates’ defence, we wish

now to examine further; Xenophon represents both to us, and Plato has

also supplied us with an Apology. Meanwhile we may not rest content

with saying that Socrates was an excellent man who suffered innocently,

&c. (p. 430), for in this accusation it was the popular mind of Athens

that rose against the principle which became fatal to him.

_α_. As regards the first point of the accusation, that Socrates did

not honour the national gods, but introduced new ones, Xenophon[133]

makes him answer that he always brought the same sacrifices as others

to the public altars, as all his fellow-citizens could see—his

accusers likewise. But as to the charge that he introduced new Dæmons,

in that he heard the voice of God showing him what he should do, he

appealed to them whether by soothsayers the cry and flight of birds,

the utterances of men (like the voice of Pythia), the position of

the entrails of sacrificial animals, and even thunder and lightning

were not accepted as divine revelations. That God knows the future

beforehand, and, if He wishes, reveals it in these ways, all believe

with him; but God can also reveal the future otherwise. He could show

that he did not lie in maintaining that he heard the voice of God,

from the testimony of his friends, to whom he often announced what was

said; and in its results this was always found to be true. Xenophon

(Memorab. I. c. 1, § 11) adds, “No one ever saw or heard Socrates do

or say anything godless or impious, for he never tried to find out the

nature of the Universe, like most of the others, when they sought to

understand how what the Sophists called the world began.” That is, from

them came the earlier atheists, who, like Anaxagoras, held that the sun

was a stone.[134]

The effect which the defence against this part of the accusation made

on the judges is expressed thus by Xenophon:[135] “One section of

them was displeased because they did not believe what Socrates said,

and the other part because they were envious that he was more highly

honoured of the gods than they.” This effect is very natural. In our

times this also happens in two ways. Either the individual is not

believed when he boasts of special manifestations, and particularly

of manifestations which have to do with individual action and life;

it is neither believed that such manifestations took place at all, or

that they happened to this subject. Or if anyone does have dealings

with such divinations, rightly enough his proceedings are put an end

to, and he is shut up. By this it is not denied in a general way

that God foreknows everything, or that He can make revelations to

individuals; this may be admitted _in abstracto_, but not in actuality,

and it is believed in no individual cases. Men do not believe that to

him, to this individual, there has been a revelation. For why to him

more than to others? And why just this trifle, some quite personal

circumstances—as to whether someone should have a successful journey,

or whether he should converse with another person, or whether or not he

should in a speech properly defend himself? And why not others amongst

the infinitely many things which may occur to the individual? Why not

much more important things, things concerning the welfare of whole

States? Hence it is not believed of an individual, in spite of the fact

that if it is possible, it must be to the individual that it happens.

This unbelief, which thus does not deny the general fact and general

possibility, but believes it in no particular case, really does not

believe in the actuality and truth of the thing. It does not believe

it because the absolute consciousness—and it must be such—certainly

knows nothing of a positive kind of trivialities such as form the

subject of these divinations and also those of Socrates; in spirit such

things immediately vanish away. The absolute consciousness does not

know about the future as such, any more than about the past; it knows

only about the present. But because in its present, in its thought,

the opposition of future and past to present becomes apparent, it

likewise knows about future and past, but of the past as something

which has taken shape. For the past is the preservation of the present

as reality, but the future is the opposite of this, the Becoming of

the present as possibility, and thus the formless. From out of this

formlessness the universal first comes into form in the present; and

hence in the future no form can be perceived. Men have the dim feeling

that when God acts it is not in a particular way, nor for particular

objects. Such things are held to be too paltry to be revealed by

God in a particular case. It is acknowledged that God determines

the individual, but by this the totality of individuality, or all

individualities, is understood; hence it is said that God’s way of

working is found in universal nature.

Now while with the Greeks judgment had the form of a contingency

externally posited through the flight and cries of birds, in our

culture we decide by an inward contingency, because I myself desire to

be this contingency, and the knowledge of individuality is likewise

a consciousness of this contingency. But if the Greeks, for whom

the category of the contingency of consciousness was an existent, a

knowledge of it as an oracle, had this individuality as a universal

knowledge of which everyone could ask counsel, in Socrates—in whom

what was here externally established had become inward consciousness,

as with us, though not yet fully, being still represented as an actual

voice, and conceived of as something which he separated from his

individuality—the decision of the single individual had the form of

personality as a particular, and it was not a universal individuality.

This his judges could not in justice tolerate, whether they believed it

or not. With the Greeks such revelations had to have a certain nature

and method; there were, so to speak, official oracles (not subjective),

such as Pythia, a tree, etc. Hence when this appeared in any particular

person like a common citizen, it was considered incredible and wrong;

the Dæmon of Socrates was a medium of a different kind to any formerly

respected in the Greek Religion. It is so much the more noteworthy,

that nevertheless the oracle of the Delphian Apollo, Pythia, declared

Socrates to be the wisest Greek.[136] Socrates it was who carried

out the command of the God of knowledge, “Know Thyself,” and made

it the motto of the Greeks, calling it the law of the mind, and not

interpreting it as meaning a mere acquaintanceship with the particular

nature of man. Thus Socrates is the hero who established in the place

of the Delphic oracle, the principle that man must look within himself

to know what is Truth. Now seeing that Pythia herself pronounced that

utterance, we find in it a complete revolution in the Greek mind, and

the fact that in place of the oracle, the personal self-consciousness

of every thinking man has come into play. This inward certainty,

however, is undoubtedly another new god, and not the god of the

Athenians existing hitherto, and thus the accusation of Socrates was

quite just.

_β_. If we now consider the second point of the accusation, that

Socrates led youth astray, we find that he first sets against it the

fact that the oracle of Delphi declared that none could be nobler,

juster or wiser than he.[137] And then he sets against this accusation

his whole manner of life, and asks whether by the example that he

gave, particularly to those with whom he went about, he ever led any

into evil.[138] The general accusation had to be further defined

and witnesses came forward. “Melitus said that he knew some whom he

advised to obey him rather than their parents,”[139] This point of the

accusation principally related to Anytus, and since he made it good by

sufficient testimony, the point was undoubtedly proved, in accordance

with law. Socrates explained himself further on this point when he

left the court. For Xenophon tells us (Apol. Socr. §§ 27, 29—31) that

Anytus was inimical to Socrates, because he said to Anytus, a respected

citizen, that he should not bring up his son to the trade of a tanner,

but in manner befitting a free man. Anytus was himself a tanner, and

although his business was mostly conducted by slaves, it was in itself

not ignominious, and Socrates’ expression was hence wrong, although,

as we have seen (p. 366), quite in the spirit of Greek thought.

Socrates added that he had made acquaintance with this son of Anytus

and discovered no evil in him, but he prophesied that he would not

remain at this servile work to which his father kept him. Nevertheless,

because he had no rational person near to look after him, he would come

to have evil desires and be brought into dissolute ways. Xenophon added

that Socrates’ prophecy had come to pass literally, and that the young

man gave himself up to drink, and drank day and night, becoming totally

depraved. This can be easily understood, for a man who feels himself to

be fit for something better (whether truly so or not) and through this

discord in his mind is discontented with the circumstances in which he

lives, yet capable of attaining to no other, is led out of this disgust

into listlessness, and is thus on the way to the evil courses which

so often ruin men. The prediction of Socrates is thus quite natural.

(_Supra_, p. 424.)

To this definite accusation that he led sons into disobedience to

their parents, Socrates replied by asking the question whether in

selecting men for public offices, such as that of general, parents,

or those experienced in war, were selected. Similarly in all cases

those most skilful in an art or science are picked out. He demanded

whether it was not matter of astonishment that he should be brought

before a judge because he was preferred to parents by the sons in

their aspirations after the highest human good which is to be made

a noble man.[140] This reply of Socrates is, on the one hand, quite

just, but we see at the same time that we cannot call it exhaustive,

for the real point of the accusation is not touched. What his judges

found unjust was the intrusion morally of a third into the absolute

relation between parents and children. On the whole not much can be

said on this point, for all depends on the mode of intervention, and

if it is necessary in certain cases, it need not take place generally,

and least of all when some private individual takes that liberty.

Children must have the feeling of unity with their parents; this is

the first immediately moral relationship; every teacher must respect

it, keep it pure, and cultivate the sense of being thus connected.

Hence when a third person is called into this relation between parents

and children, what happens through the new element introduced, is

that the children are for their own good prevented from confiding in

their parents, and made to think that their parents are bad people

who harm them by their intercourse and training; and hence we find

this revolting. The worst thing which can happen to children in regard

to their morality and their mind, is that the bond which must ever

be held in reverence should become loosened or even severed, thereby

causing hatred, disdain, and ill-will. Whoever does this, does injury

to morality in its truest form. This unity, this confidence, is the

mother’s milk of morality on which man is nurtured; the early loss of

parents is therefore a great misfortune. The son, like the daughter,

must indeed come out of his natural unity with the family and become

independent, but the separation must be one which is natural or

unforced, and not defiant and disdainful. When a pain like this has

found a place in the heart, great strength of mind is required to

overcome it and to heal the wound. If we now speak of the example given

us by Socrates, he seems, through his intervention, to have made the

young man dissatisfied with his position. Anytus’ son might, indeed,

have found his work generally speaking uncongenial, but it is another

thing when such dislike is brought into consciousness and established

by the authority of a man such as Socrates. We may very well conjecture

that if Socrates had to do with him, he strengthened and developed in

him the germ of the feeling of incongruity. Socrates remarked on the

subject of his capacities, saying that he was fit for something better,

and thus established a feeling of dissatisfaction in the young man, and

strengthened his dislike to his father, which thus became the reason of

his ruin. Hence this accusation of having destroyed the relationship of

parents and children may be regarded as not unfounded, but as perfectly

well established. It was also thought very bad in Socrates’ case

particularly, and made a matter of reproach that he had such followers

as Critias and Alcibiades, who brought Athens almost to the brink of

ruin (_supra_, p. 421). For when he mixed himself in the education

which others gave their children, men were justified in the demand that

the result should not belie what he professed to do for the education

of youth.

The only question now is, how the people came to take notice of

this, and in how far such matters can be objects of legislation and

be brought into court. In our law, as regards the first part of the

accusation, divination such as Cagliostro’s is illegal, and it would

be forbidden as it formerly was by the Inquisition. Respecting the

second point, such a moral interference is no doubt more recognized

with us, where there is a particular office having this duty laid

upon it; but this interference must keep itself general, and dare

not go so far as to call forth disobedience to parents, which is the

first immoral principle. But should such questions come before the

court? This first of all brings up the question of what is the right

of the State, and here great laxity is now allowed. Nevertheless,

when some professor or preacher attacks a particular religion, the

legislature would certainly take notice of it, and it would have a

complete right to do so, although there would be an outcry when it

did it. There is undoubtedly a limit which in liberty of thought and

speech is difficult to define and rests on tacit agreement; but there

is a point beyond which we find what is not allowed, such as direct

incitement to insurrection. It is indeed said, that “bad principles

destroy themselves by themselves and find no entrance.” But that is

only true in part, for with the populace the eloquence of sophistry

stirs up their passions. It is also said, “This is only theoretic,

no action follows.” But the State really rests on thought, and its

existence depends on the sentiments of men, for it is a spiritual and

not a physical kingdom. Hence it has in so far maxims and principles

which constitute its support, and if these are attacked, the Government

must intervene. Added to this, it was the case that in Athens quite

a different state of things was present than with us; in order to be

able to judge rightly of Socrates’ case we must first consider the

Athenian State and its customs. According to Athenian laws, _i.e._

according to the spirit of the absolute State, both these things done

by Socrates were destructive of this spirit, while in our constitution

the universal of the states is a stronger universal, which last

undoubtedly permits of individuals having freer play, since they cannot

be so dangerous to this universal. Hence it would undoubtedly in the

first place mean the subversion of the Athenian State, if this public

religion on which everything was built and without which the State

could not subsist, went to pieces; with us the State may be called an

absolute and independent power. The Dæmon is now, in fact, a deity

differing from any known, and because it stood in contradiction to the

public religion, it gave to it a subjective arbitrariness. But since

established religion was identified with public life so closely that it

constituted a part of public law, the introduction of a new god who

formed self-consciousness into a principle and occasioned disobedience,

was necessarily a crime. We may dispute with the Athenians about this,

but we must allow that they are consistent. In the second place, the

moral connection between parents and children is stronger, and much

more the moral foundation of life with the Athenians than with us,

where subjective freedom reigns; for family piety is the substantial

key-note of the Athenian State. Socrates thus attacked and destroyed

Athenian life in two fundamental points; the Athenians felt and became

conscious of it. Is it then to be wondered at that Socrates was found

guilty? We might say that it had to be so. Tennemann (Vol. II., p.

41) says: “Though these charges contained the most palpable untruths,

Socrates was condemned to death because his mind was too lofty for

him to descend to the common unworthy means, by which the judgment of

the court was usually perverted.” But all this is false; he was found

guilty of these deeds, but not for that reason condemned to death.

_b._ We here come to the second occurrence in his history. In

accordance with Athenian laws, the accused had, after the Heliasts

(resembling the English jury) pronounced him guilty, the liberty of

suggesting (_ἀντιτιμᾶσθαι_) a penalty different from the punishment

which the accuser proposed; this implied a mitigation of the punishment

without a formal appeal—an excellent provision in Athenian law,

testifying to its humanity. In this penalty the punishment in itself is

not brought into question, but only the kind of punishment; the judges

had decided that Socrates deserved punishment. But when it was left

to the accused to determine what his punishment should be, it might

not be arbitrary, but must be in conformity with the crime, a money

or bodily punishment (_ὄ, τι χρὴ παθεῖν ἢ ἀποτῖθαι_).[141] But it was

implied in the guilty persons constituting himself his own judge, that

he submitted himself to the decision of the court and acknowledged

himself to be guilty. Now Socrates declined to assign a punishment for

himself consisting either of fine or banishment, and he had the choice

between these and death, which his accusers proposed. He declined

to choose the former punishment because he, according to Xenophon’s

account (Apol. Socr. § 23), in the formality of the exchange-penalty

(_τὸ ὐποτιμᾶσθαι_), as he said, would acknowledge guilt; but there was

no longer any question as to the guilt, but only as to the kind of

punishment.

This silence may indeed be considered as moral greatness, but, on the

other hand, it contradicts in some measure what Socrates says later on

in prison, that he did not wish to flee, but remained there, because

it seemed better to the Athenians and better to him to submit to the

laws (Vol. I., p. 342). But the first submission would have meant that

as the Athenians had found him guilty, he respected this decision, and

acknowledged himself as guilty. Consistently he would thus have held

it better to impose his punishment, since thereby he would not only

have submitted himself to the laws, but also to the judgment. We see in

Sophocles (Antig. verses 925, 926), the heavenly Antigone, that noblest

of figures that ever appeared on earth, going to her death, her last

words merely stating—

“If this seems good unto the gods,

Suffering, we may be made to know our error.”

Pericles also submitted himself to the judgment of the people as

sovereign; we saw him (Vol. I., p. 328) going round the citizens

entreating for Aspasia and Anaxagoras. In the Roman Republic we

likewise find the noblest men begging of the citizens. There is nothing

dishonouring to the individual in this, for he must bend before the

general power, and the real and noblest power is the people. This

acknowledgment the people must have direct from those who raise

themselves amongst them. Here, on the contrary, Socrates disclaims the

submission to, and humiliation before the power of the people, for he

did not wish to ask for the remission of his punishment. We admire in

him a moral independence which, conscious of its own right, insists

upon it and does not bend either to act otherwise, or to recognize as

wrong what it itself regards as right. Socrates hence exposed himself

to death, which could not be regarded as the punishment for the fault

of which he was found guilty; for the fact that he would not himself

determine the punishment, and thus disdained the juridical power of

the people, was foremost in leading to his condemnation. In a general

way he certainly recognized the sovereignty of the people, but not in

this individual case; it has, however, to be recognized, not only in

general, but in each separate case. With us the competency of the court

is presupposed, and the criminal judged without further ado; to-day

the whole matter is also open to the light of day and accepted as an

acknowledged fact. But with the Athenians we find the characteristic

request that the prisoner should, through the act of imposing on

himself a penalty, sanction the judge’s sentence of guilt. In England

this is certainly not the case, but there still remains a like form of

asking the accused by what law he wishes to be judged. He then answers,

by the law of the land and by the judges of his country. Here we have

the recognition of legal operations.

Socrates thus set his conscience in opposition to the judges’ sentence,

and acquitted himself before its tribunal. But no people, and least

of all a free people like the Athenians, has by this freedom to

recognize a tribunal of conscience which knows no consciousness of

having fulfilled its duty excepting its own consciousness. To this

government and law, the universal spirit of the people, may reply: “If

you have the consciousness of having done your duty, we must also have

the consciousness that you have so done.” For the first principle of

a State is that there is no reason or conscience or righteousness or

anything else, higher than what the State recognizes as such. Quakers,

Anabaptists, &c., who resist any demands made on them by the State,

such as to defend the Fatherland, cannot be tolerated in a true State.

This miserable freedom of thinking and believing what men will, is not

permitted, nor any such retreat behind personal consciousness of duty.

If this consciousness is no mere hypocrisy, in order that what the

individual does should be recognized as duty, it must be recognized as

such by all. If the people can make mistakes the individual may do so

much more easily, and he must be conscious that he can do this much

more easily than the people. Now law also has a conscience and has to

speak through it; the law-court is the privileged conscience. Now if

the miscarriage of justice in a trial is shown by every conscience

clamouring for something different, the conscience of the court alone

possesses any value as being the universal legalized conscience, which

does not require to recognize the particular conscience of the accused.

Men are too easily convinced of having fulfilled their duty, but the

judge finds out whether duty is in fact fulfilled, even if men have the

consciousness of its being so.

We should expect nothing else of Socrates than that he should go to

meet his death in the most calm and manly fashion. Plato’s account

of the wonderful scene his last hours presented, although containing

nothing very special, forms an elevating picture, and will be to us a

permanent representation of a noble deed. The last dialogue of Plato

is popular philosophy, for the immortality of the soul is here first

brought forward; yet it brings no consolation, for, as Homer makes

Achilles say in the nether world, he would prefer to be a ploughboy on

the earth.

But though the people of Athens asserted through the execution of this

judgment the rights of their law as against the attacks of Socrates,

and had punished the injury caused to their moral life by Socrates,

Socrates was still the hero who possessed for himself the absolute

right of the mind, certain of itself and of the inwardly deciding

consciousness, and thus expressed the higher principle of mind with

consciousness. Now because, as has been said, this new principle by

effecting an entrance into the Greek world, has come into collision

with the substantial spirit and the existing sentiments of the Athenian

people, a reaction had to take place, for the principle of the Greek

world could not yet bear the principle of subjective reflection. The

Athenian people were thus, not only justified, but also bound to react

against it according to their law, for they regarded this principle as

a crime. In general history we find that this is the position of the

heroes through whom a new world commences, and whose principle stands

in contradiction to what has gone before and disintegrates it: they

appear to be violently destroying the laws. Hence individually they

are vanquished, but it is only the individual, and not the principle,

which is negated in punishment, and the spirit of the Athenian people

did not in the removal of the individual, recover its old position.

The false form of individuality is taken away, and that, indeed, in a

violent way, by punishment; but the principle itself will penetrate

later, if in another form, and elevate itself into a form of the

world-spirit. This universal mode in which the principle comes forth

and permeates the present is the true one; what was wrong was the fact

that the principle came forth only as the peculiar possession of one

individual. His own world could not comprehend Socrates, but posterity

can, in as far as it stands above both. It may be conceived that the

life of Socrates had no need to have such an end, for Socrates might

have lived and died a private philosopher, and his teaching might have

been quietly accepted by his disciples, and have spread further still

without receiving any notice from State or people; the accusation thus

would seem to have been contingent. But it must be said that it was

through the manner of that event that this principle became so highly

honoured. The principle is not merely something new and peculiar to

itself, but it is an absolutely essential moment in the self-developing

consciousness of self which is designed to bring to pass as a totality,

a new and higher actuality. The Athenians perceived correctly that this

principle not only meant opinion and doctrine, for its true attitude

was that of a direct and even hostile and destructive relation to

the actuality of the Greek mind; and they proceeded in accordance

with this perception. Hence, what follows in Socrates’ life is not

contingent, but necessarily follows upon his principle. Or the honour

of having recognized that relation, and indeed of having felt that they

themselves were tinged with this principle, is due to the Athenians.

_c._ The Athenians likewise repented of their condemnation of Socrates,

and punished some of his accusers with death itself, and others

with banishment; for according to Athenian laws, the man who made

an accusation, and whose accusation was found to be false, usually

underwent the same punishment that otherwise the criminal would

have borne. This is the last act in this drama. On the one hand the

Athenians recognized through their repentance the individual greatness

of the man; but on the other (and this we find by looking closer)

they also recognized that this principle in Socrates, signifying

the introduction of new gods and disrespect to parents, has—while

destructive and hostile to it—been introduced even into their own

spirit, and that they themselves are in the dilemma of having in

Socrates only condemned their own principle. In that they regretted

the just judgment of Socrates, it seems to be implied that they wished

that it had not occurred. But from the regret it does not follow

that in itself it should not have occurred, but only that it should

not have happened for their consciousness. Both together constitute

the innocence which is guilty and atones for its guilt; it would

only be senseless and despicable if there were no guilt. An innocent

person who comes off badly is a simpleton; hence it is a very flat and

uninteresting matter when tyrants and innocent persons are represented

in tragedies, just because this is an empty contingency. A great man

would be guilty and overcome the great crisis that ensues; Christ thus

gave up his individuality, but what was brought forth by him remained.

The fate of Socrates is hence really tragic, not in the superficial

sense of the word and as every misfortune is called tragic. The death

of an estimable individual must, in such a sense, be specially tragic,

and thus it is said of Socrates, that because he was innocent and

condemned to death, his fate was tragic. But such innocent suffering

would only be sad and not tragic, for it would not be a rational

misfortune. Misfortune is only rational when it is brought about by the

will of the subject, who must be absolutely justified and moral in what

he does, like the power against which he wars—which must therefore not

be a merely natural power, or the power of a tyrannic will. For it is

only in such a case that man himself has any part in his misfortune,

while natural death is only an absolute right which nature exercises

over men. Hence, in what is truly tragic there must be valid moral

powers on both the sides which come into collision; this was so with

Socrates. His is likewise not merely a personal, individually romantic

lot; for we have in it the universally moral and tragic fate, the

tragedy of Athens, the tragedy of Greece. Two opposed rights come into

collision, and the one destroys the other. Thus both suffer loss and

yet both are mutually justified; it is not as though the one alone

were right and the other wrong. The one power is the divine right,

the natural morality whose laws are identical with the will which

dwells therein as in its own essence, freely and nobly; we may call it

abstractly objective freedom. The other principle, on the contrary,

is the right, as really divine, of consciousness or of subjective

freedom; this is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and

evil, _i.e._ of self-creative reason; and it is the universal principle

of Philosophy for all successive times. It is these two principles

which we see coming into opposition in the life and the philosophy of

Socrates.

The Athenian people had come into a period of culture, in which this

individual consciousness made itself independent of the universal

spirit and became for itself. This was perceived by them in Socrates,

but at the same time it was felt that it meant ruin, and thus they

punished an element which was their own. The principle of Socrates is

hence not the transgression of one individual, for all were implicated;

the crime was one that the spirit of the people committed against

itself. Through this perception the condemnation of Socrates was

retracted; Socrates appeared to have committed no crime, for the spirit

of the people has now generally reached the consciousness which turns

back from the universal into itself. This meant the disintegration

of this people, whose mind and spirit consequently soon disappeared

from the world, but yet out of its ashes a higher took its rise,

for the world-spirit had raised itself into a higher consciousness.

The Athenian State, indeed, endured for long, but the bloom of its

character soon faded. It is characteristic of Socrates that he

grasped the principle of the inwardness of knowledge, not practically

merely, as did Critias and Alcibiades (_supra_, pp. 421, 438), but in

thought, making it valid to thought, and this is the higher method.

Knowledge brought about the Fall, but it also contains the principle

of Redemption. Thus what to others was only ruin, to Socrates, because

it was the principle of knowledge, was also a principle of healing.

The development of this principle, which constitutes the content

of all successive history, is explicitly the reason that the later

philosophers withdrew from the affairs of the State, restricted

themselves to cultivating an inner world, separated from themselves

the universal aim of the moral culture of the people, and took up a

position contrary to the spirit of Athens and the Athenians. From this

it came to pass that particularity of ends and interests now became

powerful in Athens. This has, in common with the Socratic principle,

the fact that what seems right and duty, good and useful to the

subject in relation to himself as well as to the State, depends on his

inward determination and choice, and not on the constitution and the

universal. This principle of self-determination for the individual has,

however, become the ruin of the Athenian people, because it was not yet

identified with the constitution of the people; and thus the higher

principle must in every case appear to bring ruin with it where it is

not yet identified with the substantial of the people. The Athenian

life became weak, and the State outwardly powerless, because its

spirit was divided within itself. Hence it was dependent on Lacedæmon,

and we finally see the external subordination of these States to the

Macedonians.

We are done with Socrates. I have been more detailed here because all

the features of the case have been so completely in harmony, and he

constitutes a great historic turning point. Socrates died at sixty-nine

years of age, in Olympiad 95, 1 (399-400 B.C.), an Olympiad after the

end of the Peloponnesian war, twenty-nine years after the death of

Pericles, and forty-four years before the birth of Alexander. He saw

Athens in its greatness and the beginning of its fall; he experienced

the height of its bloom and the beginning of its misfortunes.

C. THE SOCRATICS.

The result of the death of Socrates was, that the little company of

his friends went off from Athens to Megara, where Plato also came.

Euclides had settled there and received them gladly.[142] When

Socrates’ condemnation was retracted and his accusers punished,

certain of the Socratics returned, and all was again brought into

equilibrium. The work of Socrates was far-reaching and effectual in the

kingdom of Thought, and the stimulation of a great amount of interest

is always the principal service of a teacher. Subjectively, Socrates

had the formal effect of bringing about a discord in the individual;

the content was subsequently left to the free-will and liking of each

person, because the principle was subjective consciousness and not

objective thought. Socrates himself only came so far as to express

for consciousness generally the simple existence of one’s own thought

as the Good, but as to whether the particular conceptions of the Good

really properly defined that of which they were intended to express the

essence, he did not inquire. But because Socrates made the Good the

end of the living man, he made the whole world of idea, or objective

existence in general, rest by itself, without seeking to find a

passage from the Good, the real essence of what is known as such, to

the thing, and recognizing real essence as the essence of things. For

when all present speculative philosophy expresses the universal as

essence, this, as it first appears, has the semblance of being a single

determination, beside which there are a number of others. It is the

complete movement of knowledge that first removes this semblance, and

the system of the universe then shows forth its essence as Notion, as a

connected whole.

The most varied schools and principles proceeded from this doctrine of

Socrates, and this was made a reproach against him, but it was really

due to the indefiniteness and abstraction of his principle. And in

this way it is only particular forms of this principle which can at

first be recognized in philosophic systems which we call Socratic.

Under the name of Socratic, I understand, however, those schools

and methods which remained closer to Socrates and in which we find

nothing but the one-sided understanding of Socratic culture. One part

of these kept quite faithfully to the direct methods of Socrates,

without going any further. A number of his friends are mentioned as

being of this description, and these, inasmuch as they were authors,

contented themselves with correctly transcribing dialogues after his

manner, which were partly those he actually had held with them, and

partly those they had heard from others; or else with working out

similar dialogues in his method. But for the rest they abstained from

speculative research, and by directing their attention to what was

practical, adhered firmly and faithfully to the fulfilment of the

duties of their position and circumstances, thereby maintaining calm

and satisfaction. Xenophon is the most celebrated of those mentioned,

but besides him a number of other Socratics wrote dialogues. Æschines,

some of whose dialogues have come down to us, Phædo, Antisthenes and

others are mentioned, and amongst them a shoemaker, Simon, “with whom

Socrates often spoke at his workshop, and who afterwards carefully

wrote out what Socrates said to him.” The title of his dialogues, as

also those of the others which are left to us, are to be found in

Diogenes Laërtius (II. 122, 123; 60, 61; 105; VI. 15-18); they have,

however, only a literary interest, and hence I will pass them by.