Part 10

This is not the tone certainly which any accused person anxious to save his life in pleading before a democratic jury would have adopted, whether at Athens or New York. By the majority of his judges, who came predisposed to condemn him, such language could only be interpreted as adding insult to injury. If he thinks himself too good to live amongst us, why, then, let him die! And in accordance with this sentiment a verdict was brought in--only by a small majority however--that he was guilty of the charge. This verdict, according to Athenian law, did not necessarily determine the punishment; the accuser asked for death; but from the smallness of the majority there was every reason to believe that a less punishment would have satisfied the jury, if only the accused had shown any willingness to accept it. But in the short address which he made after the verdict of guilty had been given in, though he professed himself willing to pay a fine of thirty minæ, which his friends had guaranteed, for himself was too poor, yet he made this declaration with such an air of calm superiority, and accompanied it with such a proud claim of reward {120} for great public services as his proper civic due, instead of punishment for any public offence, that his judges, being, as they were, made of the common human stuff, under the feelings of the moment could scarcely do otherwise than take it as an insult, and so they passed sentence of death upon the philosopher for contumacy towards themselves, not less than for blasphemy against the gods.

The fate of Socrates was now fixed; nor did he show any desire to have it altered. To such a strict observer of the laws, and a person to whom his moral position before men was of infinitely more consequence than his life, any attempt to escape from prison could have been suggested only to provoke refusal; so he remained in ward thirty days, till the sacred ship should return from the Delian festival, during the absence of which Attic usage forbade the infliction of capital punishment on any citizen. Through all this period he is represented as preserving the same tone of cheerful seriousness and playful dignity which characterized him in his defence before the judges. He discoursed with his friends on the immortality of the soul; and the record of this conversation, no doubt, in the argumentative part largely Platonized, but in the fundamental scheme substantially true, has been preserved to the world in the well-known dialogue of the _Phædo_; the closing chapters of which, exhibiting with a graceful and graphic simplicity, never surpassed, the last moments of the revered teacher’s mortal career, supply all that is further required to complete the present sketch:--“Well, friends, we have been discoursing for this last hour on the immortality of the soul, and there are many points about that matter {121} on which he were a bold man who should readily dogmatize; but one thing I seem to know full certainly, that whosoever during his earthly life has flung sensual pleasures behind him, and been studious to adorn his soul, not with conventional and adventitious trappings, but with its own proper decoration, temperance and justice, and courage and freedom and truth,--the person so prepared waits cheerfully to perform the journey to the unseen world at whatever period Fate may choose to call him. You, Simmias, and Cebes, and the rest of you, my dear friends, will go that road some day, when your hour comes: as for me, to use the phrase of the tragic poets, ‘Destiny even now calls me,’ and it is about the hour that I should be going to the bath; for I think it better to take a bath first before I drink the drug, so that the women may not have the trouble to wash my body when I am gone.

“Here Crito interposed and said, Be it so! but have you no last commands to give to these your friends or to me, in relation to your children, or any matter by attending to which we might do you a pleasure? Nothing but what I am always saying, O Crito: if you will seriously attend to your own lives and characters, you will do what is most pleasurable to me and mine, and to yourselves, even though you should not be able to agree with me in all that we have been discoursing; but if you live at random, and neglect yourselves, and do not strive to follow in the traces of a virtuous life, such as we have marked out now, and in many former conversations, you will do no good either to me or to yourselves. Well then, said Crito, we will apply ourselves with all our hearts to this matter; but in {122} what way do you wish that we should bury you? Any way you like, said he, if you can only get hold of me! then with a quiet smile, and looking round upon us, he said: I cannot persuade this good Crito that I who am now talking to him, and marshalling the heads of my argument, am the veritable Socrates; but he persists in thinking Socrates is that body which he will see by and by stretched out on the floor, and he asks how he is to bury me? but as to what I have been asserting with many words, that after I have drunk the hemlock I shall be with you no longer, but shall depart to some blessedness of the blest, this I seem to have spoken all in vain, so far as he is concerned. Only, for a little comfort to you, and to myself, I beseech you, dear friends, give Crito security for me, and pledge yourself to the opposite effect of the pledge he gave in my behalf before the jury. For he stood guarantee that I should remain and wait the result of the trial; but from you I request that you give him security that, after I die, I shall not remain, but forthwith depart, that, in this way, my excellent friend may suffer less grief, and when he sees my body either burnt or inhumated, may not grieve for me, as if I were suffering maltreatment, nor say in reference to my body, that they are either laying out Socrates on a bier, or carrying him forth to the place of the dead, or laying him in the ground. For be assured of this, most excellent Crito, that to use words in an improper sense is not only a bad thing in itself, but it generates a bad habit in the soul. Be of good cheer therefore, and talk about burying my body, not burying me; and as to the manner, manage this business as it shall seem best to you, or as may be most in accordance with law and custom.

{123}

“With these words he rose and went into a side chamber for the bath, with Crito following; but the rest of us he requested to remain. Accordingly we remained, conversing with one another on the subject of the recent discourse, and considering sorrowfully our unhappy condition, destined as we were to spend the rest of our days as orphans deprived of a beloved father. Then after he had bathed, and his children were brought to him--for he had two sons, one full-grown,--and the women also came in--he spoke to them for some time in the presence of Crito, and gave his last commands, and having sent them home, came back to us. And now it was near sunset, for he had been a considerable time within; and he came and sat down, and after that did not speak much; and then the officer of the Eleven came in and said to him, O Socrates, I shall not have to blame you as I am in the way of blaming others, because they reproach me for giving them the draught--me, who have nothing to do with the offence, but who only execute what I am commanded to do by the Archons. But you, as during the whole time that you have been here, you showed a nobility and gentleness of disposition which I never knew in another, so now I am convinced that you will accuse not me but those who are the real authors of your death. Now therefore, for you know my message, farewell! and endeavour to bear what must be borne with a light heart. And with this he wept, and turned and went out. And Socrates, looking after him, said, Fare thou, too, well; and we will do even as you say. Then turning to us. What a kind-hearted fellow this is! During the whole period of my abode here he would often come {124} up to me, like the best of men, and now he weeps for me with such generous tears. But come, let us do his bidding, and let some one bring in the drug, if it is rubbed down; if not, let the man grate it. But I think, said Crito, that the sun is yet on the mountains, and is not set; and I have known others in your condition who delayed the drinking of the draught till the latest moment, and, even after the officer had made his intimation, continued eating and drinking and talking with their friends, whom they desired to have beside them. Be not therefore in a hurry; there is abundance of time. Likely enough, said Socrates; and they did wisely what they did, thinking that they would gain something thereby; but it were not seemly in me to follow their example, for I should gain nothing by delaying the draught for a few moments except to laugh at myself for having clung so eagerly to the remnant of a life that had already run its course. But come, do as I bid you, and not otherwise.

“On this Crito gave a nod to the boy who was standing near; and the boy went out, and after spending some time in grating down the herb, returned, bringing with him the man whose duty it was to administer the drug mingled in a bowl. Well, said Socrates, my good fellow, do you understand this affair, so as to give directions how we are to proceed? You have nothing to do, said the man, but to drink the draught, and to walk about till you feel a heaviness about your limbs, and then lie down; after that the drink will work for itself. And with this he gave the bowl to Socrates; and he, taking it very graciously, and without trembling or changing colour, but in his usual way looking the man broadly {125} in the face, said to him, What do you say as to this draught, may one make a libation of a part of it, or not? We grate down just what we think is a proper measure to drink, and nothing more. I understand, said he; but at all events it is lawful to pray to the gods, that our migration hence may take place with good omens, even as I pray now; and so be it. And with these words, bringing the bowl to his lips, he quaffed the draught lightly and pleasantly to the dregs. Whereupon we, who had hitherto been able to repress our sorrow, now that we saw him drinking the poison, and not a drop remaining in the bowl, in spite of every effort burst into tears; and I, covering my head with my mantle, began to bewail my fate--my fate, not his, considering of what a man and what a friend I was now deprived. But Crito, even before me, not being able to restrain his tears, rose up; and as for Apollodorus, who had been weeping all along, he now broke out into such a piteous wail as to rend the hearts of all present and crush them with sorrow, except only Socrates himself, who quietly remarked--What is this you are about, my good sirs? Did I not send the women away expressly for this purpose, that there might be no extravagant lamentings at my exit, for I have always heard that in a sacrifice it is a good omen when the victim receives the blow peacefully. Be quiet, therefore, and possess your souls in patience. Whereat we, being ashamed, made an effort to restrain our tears. Then he walked up and down, till, feeling his legs become heavy, he came, according to the direction, and laid himself down on his back; whereupon the man who gave the bowl came up to him and touched him, and at short intervals examined his feet, and {126} his legs, and then, pressing his foot closely, inquired if he felt anything, to which he replied, No; then the man gradually brought his hand further and further up, first to his shins and then along the leg, asking always if he had any sensation; and when he gave no sign we saw that his limbs were cold and stiff. Then he himself likewise touched his body with his hand and said, _When the numbness comes up to my heart then I shall depart_. And after that, when the numbness had reached the lower part of the belly, he suddenly uncovered himself--for when he lay down he had thrown his mantle over his face--and said,--which were the last words he uttered--_O Crito, we owe a cock to Æsculapius; pay the vow and do not forget_; and with that drew the mantle again over his face. It shall be done, said Crito; have you nothing else to say? But now there was no reply; and, after a short interval, a convulsive motion shook the body, and the man going up uncovered his face, and we saw that his eyes were fixed. Then Crito going up closed his mouth and his eyes. And this, O Echecrates, was the end of our beloved companion and friend, a man of whom we may truly say, OF ALL MEN WHOM WE HAVE KNOWN, HE WAS THE BEST, THE WISEST, AND THE MOST JUST.”

ARISTOTLE.

{127}

THERE is a natural sequence in the processes of social culture which is well illustrated by the history of Moral Philosophy among the Greeks. The man of action comes before the man of literature, the man of literature before the man of science. In Greek ethics Socrates was the man of action, Plato the man of literature, and Aristotle the man of science. Not, of course, that Plato was merely the literary man, in the trivial modern sense of that word; he was eminently the philosopher--not merely φιλόλογος but φιλόσοφος--but he put forth his philosophy in a popular form; he addressed himself to the imagination as well as the reason; he appealed, as we would say, to the general public; and speaking to men in a human way, on the most interesting of human topics, through the medium of language artistically handled, he falls manifestly under the broad category of the literary as opposed to the scientific man, who works on a special subject, and with a special faculty. But Aristotle was pre-eminently, and with very marked features, the man of knowledge; he came with the dissecting knife in hand and addressed himself to those who were willing to make special dissections with him for the mere purpose of knowing, and drew a broad line of {128} demarcation between the speculative and the practical world. Nevertheless the Stagirite was something more than a knowing machine; he was a man, and by virtue of his Hellenic birth also a citizen. He could not therefore avoid occupying to a certain extent the province of the practical man; and so it has come to pass that in three great works, the _Ethics_, the _Politics_, and the _Rhetoric_, he has transported himself from the teacher’s chair, and entered into competition with Socrates and Plato as a preacher of social morals and a guide to civic conduct. This was well both for him and for us: well for him, because mere knowing can never exhaust the riches of a nature so essentially practical as that of man: well for us, because otherwise we could scarcely have imagined the phenomenon of an intellect at once so complete in all the categories of scientific cognition, and so strongly marked with all the sagacity that belongs to the so-called practical man, the man of society, the man of business, the accomplished citizen. And it is to this walking out into the realm of common life, instead of confining himself like so many erudite Germans within the limits of a library or a laboratory, that Aristotle owes no small part of the influence which he has so long exercised, not only in the schools but among intelligent men of all classes. In ancient times, when Moral Philosophy was justly regarded as the principal part of that wisdom which it concerns all men to possess, the Philosopher of the Lyceum never would have been able to assert his place as a public teacher alongside of Socrates and Plato had he bestowed only a secondary consideration on the grand arts of living and governing. As it was, the poet-philosopher of the Academy could not but remain {129} the more popular and the more effective moral teacher of the two; but if Plato was more attractive and more interesting, and by these qualities commanded a wider audience, it was a great consolation to the lesser circle of the Stagirite’s disciples that, though in his discourses on moral matters he was more angular and more severe, he was at the same time more shrewd, more sagacious, and more practical. The reputation which Aristotle thus maintained among ancient Greeks and Romans, both as a speculator and as a wise guide in the conduct of life, was increased rather than diminished when brought into contact with the new moral force of Christianity. No doubt Plato at first was the natural vestibule through which the cultivated Greeks of Alexandria entered the temple of Christian faith; but after that faith, partly in league with Plato, and partly in spite of Plato, had achieved its natural triumph, Aristotle, the clear, cold, and keen, but by no means devout master of all knowledge, by a sort of reaction, as it should seem, in the middle ages began to assert an exclusive dominance in the schools, both of Christian Europe and, through the Arabians, in the East. To all who were anxious for clear and exact knowledge in matters visible and tangible, the Stagirite was the only guide. As the high priest of science he acted in those days of sacerdotal direction as the natural complement of faith, not as its antagonist; and for this reason he is praised by Dante among the solemn forms of the mighty dead that pace through the dim halls of the unseen world, as

“Il gran maestro di color chi sanno.”

The dethronement which he afterwards suffered at {130} the hands of those twin innovators Luther and Lord Bacon was again a mere matter of reaction, and could in its nature be only temporary. Honest Martin raged in his own way very furiously against the great dictator of the schools, almost as if he had been the Pope:--“Aristotle, that histrionic mountebank, who from behind a Greek mask has so long bewitched the Church of Christ, that most cunning juggler of souls, whom, if he had not been accredited as of human blood and bone, we should have been justified in maintaining to be the veritable devil.”[130.1] But this we plainly see to be the language of a man not with the balance of truth in his hand, but with the sword of sacred wrath in his tongue; and, indeed, the sword was at that time very needful, and wielded with a wise hostility, not against the true. Aristotle whom we now read and admire, but against the so-called Aristotelian fence of the schools, used oftener for subtle and shadowy exercitation and in defence of the grossest abuses than in the honest search after truth. Of the real Aristotle Luther knew as little in those days as not a few Christians at the present hour know of true Christianity, coming as it does to them through the strangely distorting media of scholastic subtleties, sacerdotal usurpations, and pure human stupidities of all kinds. As for Lord Bacon, he was no doubt equally right in stoutly protesting against the then Aristotelian logic as a hindrance rather than a help to the true knowledge of nature; while, at the same time, he was no less certainly in the wrong if he imagined, or led men to imagine, either that induction was the only method which leads to the discovery of important truth, or that {131} Aristotle’s writings lent any countenance to those baseless and unfruitful methods of speculation which were presented under the authority of his name. It was necessary, however, that the human mind should be thoroughly emancipated from the dictatorial oppression of the false Aristotle before the true Aristotle could be reinstated on his throne; and this required time. Accordingly we find that some of the most original thinkers and ingenious scholars of the last century seem to have imagined that Aristotle and the Pope were two great usurpers, the one in the intellectual, the other in the religious world, whom the great Protestant movement of the sixteenth century, in the interest both of learning and religion, had rightfully dethroned. “Mr. Harris, for example,” says his biographer, “had imbibed a prejudice, very common at that time even among scholars, that Aristotle was an obscure and unprofitable author, whose philosophy had deservedly been superseded by that of Mr. Locke.”[131.1] And in perfect harmony with this, Mr. Burton, in his life of Hume, remarks that “the name of Aristotle is not once mentioned in Hume’s treatise of human nature.”[131.2] Strange revolution of thought in a country where, in the days of John Knox, it had been customary for famous academical teachers to say--“_Stultum est dicere Aristotelem errasse!_” And, indeed, not only Hume, but Bentham, James Mill, and all the thinkers of that century, manifested a strange lust of spinning knowledge out of their own bowels, so to speak, with a careless or insolent neglect of the great truths handed down for the use of all ages by the master {132} thinkers of ancient times. But not even in Scotland, never famous for Greek, could such ignorance last for ever. The French Revolution of 1789 shook all men violently out of their old complacencies, and blew their dainty conceits of all kinds to the winds; things were now to be built up from the foundations, not in the political world only, but in the intellectual and religious world no less; torpid Churches were suddenly fevered with hot activity; in literature the forgotten language of a natural and passionate poetry was to be restored; and in philosophy the ancient foundations of stable knowledge were to be laid bare. Under such a violent volcanic action it could not be but that both Plato and Aristotle should be made to stand out before lesser names in their true dimensions. Aristotle especially revealed himself to many thoughtful Germans, and a few thoughtful Englishmen, as the precursor of Bacon in the use of the great organon of induction; and the hard and cautious genius of the Scotch, under the guidance of a polyhistoric Hamilton, found in the Stagirite a more dignified corner-stone than in Reid for the erection of a philosophical edifice which rather sought safety in narrowing than glory in extending the bounds of human speculation. In Oxford, the stiff conservatism of the College tutors, men trained to the exact knowledge of a few traditional books, more certainly than any profound philosophical insight, preserved the Ethics, along with the Logic, of Aristotle as one of the general instruments of juvenile drill; while, outside the academic precincts, liberal statesmen like Cornewall Lewis and democratic historians like Grote continued to quote the Stagirite as the wisest at once and the most cautious of all {133} ancient political speculators. Thus the natural balance of judgment was restored; and Aristotle, redeemed at once from the ignorant idolatry of pseudo disciples and the local conceit of men who spurned to learn from any but themselves, took his place for ever as an intellectual dictator of the first rank, with whom if a man did not happen to agree, it was always more likely that the dissentient had wandered into error than that the authority from whom he dissented had failed to fasten his glance upon the truth.