Two charges were brought against Socrates, one, that he did not believe
in the gods received by the state, the other, that he corrupted the
Athenian youth by teaching them not to believe.
Plato, who was present at the trial, probably gives us the very
arguments employed by the accused on that occasion. Socrates disdained
to have recourse to the usual methods adopted by the popular orators of
the day to secure an acquittal; and, having devoted his whole life to
the search after and the inculcation of religious, philosophical, and
moral truth, resolved to bear himself in this extremity in a manner
consistent with his established character, and to take his stand on his
own integrity and innocence, utterly uninfluenced by that imaginary
evil, death. From this cause it is that his defence is so little
artificial. In his discussions with others, on whatever subject, it was
his constant habit to keep his opponents to the question before them,
and he would never suffer them to evade it, but by a connected series of
the most subtle questions or arguments compelled them to retract any
erroneous opinion they might have advanced: whereas, in defending
himself, he never once fairly grapples with either of the charges
brought against him. With regard to the first accusation, that he did
not believe in the established religion, he neither confesses nor denies
it, but shews that he had in some instances conformed to the religious
customs of his country, and that he did believe in God, so much so
indeed that even if they would acquit him on condition of his abandoning
his practice of teaching others, he could not consent to such terms, but
must persevere in fulfilling the mission on which the Deity had sent
him, for that he feared God rather than man. With reference to the
second charge which he meets first, by his usual method of a brief but
close cross-examination of his accuser Melitus, he brings him to this
dilemma, that he must either charge him with corrupting the youth
designedly, which would be absurd, or with doing so undesignedly, for
which he could not be liable to punishment.
The Defence itself properly ends with the twenty-fourth section. The
second division to the twenty-ninth section relates only to the sentence
which ought to be passed on him. And in the third and concluding part,
with a dignity and fulness of hope worthy even of a Christian, he
expresses his belief that the death to which he is going is only a
passage to a better and a happier life.