CHAPTER XXXIX. SOCRATES AND THE SOPHISTS

It was not till the superior talents of Pericles had quieted the storms of war and faction that science, which had in the interval received great improvement among the Asian Greeks, revived at Athens with new vigour. Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, the preceptor and friend of Pericles, bred in all the learning of the Ionian school, is said first to have introduced what might properly be called philosophy there. To him is attributed the first introduction in European Greece of the idea of one eternal, almighty, and all-good Being, or, as he is said, after Thales, to have expressed himself, a perfect mind, independent of body, as the cause or creator of all things. The gods received in Greece, of course, were low in his estimation; the sun and moon, commonly reputed divinities, he held to be mere material substances, the sun a globe of stone, the moon an earth, nearly similar to ours. A doctrine so repugnant to the system on which depended the estimation of all the festivals, processions, sacrifices, and oracles, which so fascinated the vulgar mind, was not likely to be propagated without reprehension. Even the science which enabled men to calculate an eclipse was offensive, inasmuch as it lowered the importance, and interfered with the profits, of priests, augurs, interpreters, and seers. An accusation of impiety was therefore instituted against Anaxagoras; the general voice went with the prosecutors; and all that the power and influence of Pericles could do for his valued friend, was to procure him means of escape from Attica.

But while physical and metaphysical speculation engaged men of leisure, other learning had more attraction for the ambitious and needy. Athens always was the great field for acquiring fame and profit in this line; yet those who first attained eminence in it were foreigners there, Gorgias of Leontini in Sicily, Prodicus of the little island of Ceos, and Hippias of Elis. All these are said to have acquired considerable riches by their profession. Their success invited numbers to follow their example; and Greece, but far more especially Athens, shortly abounded with those who, under the name of sophists, professors of wisdom, undertook to teach every science. The scarcity and dearness of books gave high value to that learning which a man with a well-stored mind, and a ready and clear elocution could communicate. None, without eloquence, could undertake to be instructors; so that the sophists, in giving lessons of eloquence, were themselves the example. They frequented all places of public resort, the agora, the public walks, the gymnasia, and the porticoes; where they recommended themselves to notice by an ostentatious display of their abilities, in disputation among one another, or with whoever would converse with them.

The profession of sophist had not long flourished, and no Athenian had acquired fame in any branch of philosophy, when the singular talents, and singular manners and pursuits, of Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, engaged public attention. The father was a statuary, and is not mentioned as very eminent in his profession; but, as a man, he seems to have been respected among the most eminent of the commonwealth: he lived in particular intimacy with Lysimachus, son of the great Aristides. Socrates, inheriting a very scanty fortune, had a mind wholly intent upon the acquisition and communication of knowledge. The sublime principles of theology, taught by Anaxagoras, made an early impression upon his mind. They led him to consider what should be the duty owed by man to such a Being as Anaxagoras described his Creator; and it struck him that, if the providence of God interfered in the government of this world, the duty of man to man, little considered by poets or priests as any way connected with religion, and hitherto almost totally neglected by philosophers, must be a principal branch of the duty of man to God. It struck him further that, with the gross defects which he saw in the religion, the morality, and the governments of Greece, though the favourite inquiries of the philosophers, concerning the nature of the Deity, the formation of the world, the laws of the heavenly bodies, might, while they amused, perhaps also enlarge and improve the minds of a few speculative men, yet the investigation of the social duties was infinitely more important, and might be infinitely more useful, to mankind in general. Endowed by nature with a most discriminating mind, and a singularly ready eloquence, he directed his utmost attention to that investigation; and when, by reflection, assisted and proved by conversation among the sophists and other able men, he had decided an opinion, he communicated it, not in the way of precept, which the fate of Anaxagoras had shown hazardous, but by proposing a question, and, in the course of interrogatory argument, leading his hearers to the just conclusion.

We are informed by his disciple Xenophon how he passed his time. He was always in public. Early in the morning he went to the walks and the gymnasia: when the agora filled, he was there; and, in the afternoon, wherever he could find most company. Generally he was the principal speaker. The liveliness of his manner made his conversation amusing as well as instructive, and he denied its advantages to nobody. But he was nevertheless a most patient hearer; and preferred being the hearer whenever others were present able and disposed to give valuable information to the company. He did not commonly refuse invitations, frequently received, to private entertainments; but he would undertake no private instruction, nor could any solicitation induce him to relieve his poverty by accepting, like the sophists and rhetoricians, a reward for what he gave in public.

In the variety of his communication on social duties he could not easily, and perhaps he did not desire entirely, to avoid either religious or political subjects; hazardous, both of them, under the jealous tyranny of democracy. It remains a question how far he was subject to superstition; but his honesty is so authenticated that it seems fairer to impute to him some weakness in credulity than any intention to deceive. If we may believe his own account, reported by his two principal disciples, he believed himself divinely impelled to the employment to which he devoted his life, inquiring and teaching the duty of man to man. A divine spirit, in his idea, constantly attended him; whose voice, distinctly heard, never expressly commanded what he was indisposed to do, but frequently forbade what he had intended. To unveil the nature of Deity was not among his pretensions. He only insisted on the perfect goodness and perfect wisdom of the Supreme God, the creator of all things, and the constant superintendence of his providence over the affairs of men. As included in these, he held that everything done, said, or merely wished by men, was known to the Deity, and that it was impossible he could be pleased with evil. The unity of God, though implied in many of his reported discourses, he would not in direct terms assert; rather carefully avoiding to dispute the existence of the multifarious gods acknowledged in Greece; but he strongly denied the weaknesses, vices, and crimes commonly imputed to them. Far however from proposing to innovate in forms of worship and religious ceremonies, so various in the different Grecian states, and sources of more doubt and contention than any other circumstances of the heathen religion, he held that men could not, in these matters, do wrong if they followed the laws of their own country and the institutions of their forefathers. He was therefore regular in sacrifice, both upon the public altars and in his family. He seems to have been persuaded that the Deity, by various signs, revealed the future to men; in oracles, dreams, and all the various ways usually acknowledged by those conversant in the reputed science of augury. “Where the wisdom of men cannot avail,” he said, “we should endeavour to gain information from the gods; who will not refuse intelligible signs to those to whom they are propitious.” Accordingly he consulted oracles himself, and he recommended the same practice to others, in every doubt on important concerns.

The circumstances of the Athenian government, in his time, could not invite a man of his disposition to offer himself for political situations. He thought he might be infinitely more useful to his country in the singular line, it might indeed be called a public line, which he had chosen for himself. Not only he would not solicit office, but he would take no part in political contest. In the several revolutions which occurred he was perfectly passive. But he would refuse nothing: on the contrary, he would be active in everything that he thought decidedly the duty of a citizen. When called upon to serve among the heavy-armed, he was exemplary in the duties of a private soldier; and as such he fought at Potidæa, Amphipolis, and Delium. We find him mentioned in civil office; at one time president of the general assembly, and at another a member of the council of Five Hundred. In each situation he distinguished himself by his unbending uprightness. When president, he resisted the violence of the assembled people, who voted a decree, in substance or in manner, contrary to the constitution. Neither entreaties nor threats could move him to give it the necessary sanction of his office. As a member of the council we have already seen him, in the office of prytanis, at the trial of the six generals, persevering in resistance to the injustice of popular tyranny, rendered useless through the want of equal constancy in his colleagues, who yielded to the storm. Under the Thirty again we have seen him, not in office indeed, but daring to refuse office, unworthy and illegal office, which the tyranny of the all-powerful Critias would have put upon him.

We are not informed when Socrates first became distinguished as a sophist; for in that description of men he was in his own day reckoned. When the wit of Aristophanes was directed against him in the theatre he was already among the most eminent, but his eminence seems to have been then recent. It was about the tenth or eleventh year of the Peloponnesian War, when he was six or seven and forty years of age, that, after the manner of the old comedy, he was offered to public derision upon the stage, by his own name, as one of the persons of the drama, in the comedy of Aristophanes, called the _Clouds_, which is yet extant. The audience, accustomed to look on defamation with carelessness, and to hold as lawful and proper whatever might amuse the multitude, applauded the wit, and even gave general approbation to the composition; but the high estimation of the character of Socrates sufficed to prevent that complete success which the poet had looked for. The crown, which rewarded him whose drama most earned the public favour, and which Aristophanes had so often won, was on this occasion refused him.

Two or three and twenty years had elapsed since the first representation of the _Clouds_; the storms of conquest suffered from a foreign enemy and from four revolutions in the civil government of the country, had passed; nearly three years had followed of that quiet which the revolution under Thrasybulus produced, and the act of amnesty should have confirmed, when a young man, named Meletus, went to the king-archon, delivered, in the usual form, an information against Socrates, and bound himself to prosecute. The information ran thus: “Meletus, son of Meletus, of the borough of Pitthos, declares these upon oath against Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of the borough of Alopece: Socrates is guilty of reviling the gods whom the city acknowledges, and of preaching other new gods: moreover he is guilty of corrupting the youth. Penalty, death.”

THE PROSECUTION OF SOCRATES

[Sidenote: [399 B.C.]]

Xenophon begins his _Memorabilia_ of his revered master with declaring his wonder how the Athenians could have been persuaded to condemn to death a man of such uncommonly clear innocence and exalted worth. Ælianus, though for authority not to be compared with Xenophon, has nevertheless, we think, given the solution. “Socrates,” he says, “disliked the Athenian constitution. For he saw that democracy is tyrannical, and abounds with all the evils of absolute monarchy.” But though the political circumstances of the times made it necessary for contemporary writers to speak with caution, yet both Xenophon and Plato have declared enough to show that the assertion of Ælianus was well founded; and further proof, were it wanted, may be derived from another early writer, nearly contemporary, and deeply versed in the politics of his age, the orator Æschines. Indeed, though not stated in the indictment, yet it was urged against Socrates by his prosecutors before the court, that he was disaffected to the democracy; and in proof they affirmed it to be notorious that he had ridiculed what the Athenian constitution prescribed, the appointment to magistracy by lot. “Thus,” they said, “he taught his numerous followers, youths of the principal families of the city, to despise the established government, and to be turbulent and seditious; and his success had been seen in the conduct of two, the most eminent, Alcibiades and Critias. Even the best things he converted to these ill purposes: from the most esteemed poets, and particularly from Homer, he selected passages to enforce his anti-democratical principles.”

Socrates, it appears indeed, was not inclined to deny his disapprobation of the Athenian constitution. His defence itself, as it is reported by Plato, contains matter on which to found an accusation against him of disaffection to the sovereignty of the people, such as, under the jealous tyranny of the Athenian democracy, would sometimes subject a man to the penalties of high treason. “You well know,” he says, “Athenians, that, had I engaged in public business, I should long ago have perished, without procuring any advantage either to you or to myself. Let not the truth offend you: it is no peculiarity of your democracy, or of your national character; but wherever the people is sovereign, no man who shall dare honestly to oppose injustice, frequent and extravagant injustice, can avoid destruction.”

Without this proof indeed we might reasonably believe that, though Socrates was a good and faithful subject of the Athenian government, and would promote no sedition, no political violence, yet he could not like the Athenian constitution. He wished for wholesome changes by gentle means; and it seems even to have been a principal object of the labours to which he dedicated himself, to infuse principles into the rising generation that might bring about the desirable change insensibly. His scholars were chiefly sons of the wealthiest citizens, whose easy circumstances afforded leisure to attend him; and some of these, zealously adopting his tenets, others merely pleased with the ingenuity of his arguments and the liveliness of his manner, and desirous to emulate his triumphs over his opponents, were forward, after his example, to engage in disputation upon all the subjects on which he was accustomed to discourse. Thus employed and thus followed, though himself avoiding office and public business, those who governed or desired to govern the commonwealth through their influence among the many, might perhaps not unreasonably consider him as one who was, or might become, a formidable adversary; nor might it be difficult to excite popular jealousy against him.

Meletus, who stood forward as his principal accuser, was, according to Plato, not a man of any great consideration. He was soon joined by Lycon, one of the most powerful speakers of his time, and the avowed patron of the rhetoricians, who, as well as the poets, thought their interest injured by the moral philosopher’s doctrine. But Anytus, a man scarcely second to any in the commonwealth in rank and general estimation, who had held high command with reputation in the Peloponnesian War, and had been the principal associate of Thrasybulus in the war against the Thirty and the restoration of the democracy, declared himself a supporter of the prosecution. Nothing in the accusation could, by any known law of Athens, affect the life of the accused. In England no man would be put upon trial on so vague a charge: no grand jury would listen to it. But in Athens, if the party was strong enough, it signified little what was the law. When Lycon and Anytus came forward, Socrates saw that his condemnation was already decided.

By the course of his life, however, and by the turn of his thoughts for many years, he had so prepared himself for all events, that the probability of his condemnation, far from being alarming, was to him rather matter for rejoicing, as, at his age, a fortunate occurrence. Xenophon says that, by condescending to a little supplication, Socrates might easily have obtained his acquittal. It was usual for accused persons, when brought before the court, to bewail their apprehended lot, with tears to supplicate favour, and by exhibiting their children upon the bema, to endeavour to excite pity. No admonition or entreaty of his friends however could persuade him to such an unworthiness. He thought it, he said, more respectful to the court, as well as more becoming himself, to omit all this; however aware that their sentiments were likely so far to differ from his that judgment would be given in anger for it. Accordingly, when put upon his defence, he told the people that he did not plead for his own sake, but for theirs, wishing them to avoid the guilt of an unjust sentence.

Condemnation pronounced wrought no change upon him. He again addressed the court, declared his innocence of the matters laid against him, and observed that, even if every charge had been completely proved, still altogether did not, according to any known law, amount to a capital crime. “But,” in conclusion he said, “it is time to depart: I to die, you to live: but which for the greater good, God only knows.”

It was usual at Athens for execution very soon to follow condemnation; commonly on the morrow. But it happened that the condemnation of Socrates took place on the eve of the day appointed for the sacred ceremony of crowning the galley which carried the annual offerings to the gods worshipped at Delos: and immemorial tradition forbade all executions till the sacred vessel’s return. Thus the death of Socrates was respited thirty days, while his friends had free access to him in the prison. During all that time he admirably supported his constancy. Means were concerted for his escape; the jailer was bribed, a vessel prepared, and a secure retreat in Thessaly provided. No arguments, no prayers could persuade him to use the opportunity. He had always taught the duty of obedience to the laws, and he would not furnish an example of the breach of it. To no purpose it was urged that he had been unjustly condemned: he had always held that wrong did not justify wrong. He waited with perfect composure the return of the sacred vessel, reasoned on the immortality of the soul, the advantage of virtue, the happiness derived from having made it through life his pursuit, and, with his friends about him, took the fatal cup, and died.

Writers who, after Xenophon and Plato, have related the death of Socrates, appear to have held themselves bound to vie with those who preceded them in giving pathos to the story. The purpose here has been rather to render it intelligible: to show its connection with the political history of Athens; to derive from it illustration of the political history. The magnanimity of Socrates, the principal factor of the pathos, surely deserves admiration; yet it is not that in which he has most outshone other men. The singular merit of Socrates lay in the purity and the usefulness of his manners and conversation; the clearness with which he saw, and the steadiness with which he practised, in a blind and corrupt age, all moral duties; the disinterestedness and the zeal with which he devoted himself to the benefit of others; and the enlarged and warm benevolence, whence his supreme and almost only pleasure seems to have consisted in doing good. The purity of Christian morality, little enough indeed seen in practice, nevertheless is become so familiar in theory that it passes almost for obvious, and even congenial to the human mind. Those only will justly estimate the merit of that near approach to it which Socrates made, who will take the pains to gather, as they may from the writings of his contemporaries and predecessors, how little conception was entertained of it before his time; how dull to a just moral sense the human mind has really been; how slow the progress in the investigation of moral duties, even where not only great pains have been taken, but the greatest abilities zealously employed; and, when discovered, how difficult it has been to establish them by proofs beyond controversy, or proofs even that should be generally admitted by the reason of men.

It is through the light which Socrates diffused by his doctrine enforced by his practice, with the advantage of having both the doctrine and the practice exhibited to highest advantage in the incomparable writings of disciples such as Plato and Xenophon, that his life forms an era in the history of Athens and of man.[b]

It is our great good fortune to possess a long and sympathetic description of the closing scenes of his life in the unsurpassed prose of his disciple Plato. Though told in the form of a dialogue and much too long for quotation in full, the presentation of Socrates is so vivid and veracious that a part of it must be given.[a]

PLATO’S ACCOUNT OF THE LAST HOURS OF SOCRATES

When we entered, we found Socrates just freed from his bonds, and Xantippe, you know her, holding his little boy and sitting by him. As soon as Xantippe saw us, she wept aloud and said such things as women usually do on such occasions, as “Socrates, your friends will now converse with you for the last time and you with them.” But Socrates, looking towards Crito, said, “Crito, let some one take her home.” Upon which some of Crito’s attendants led her away, wailing and beating herself.

But Socrates sitting up in bed, drew up his leg, and rubbed it with his hand, and as he rubbed it, said: “What an unaccountable thing, my friends, that seems to be, which men call pleasure; and how wonderfully is it related towards that which appears to be its contrary, pain, in that they will not both be present to a man at the same time, yet, if any one pursues and attains the one, he is almost always compelled to receive the other, as if they were both united together from one head.

“And it seems to me,” he said, “that if Æsop had observed this he would have made a fable from it, how the Deity, wishing to reconcile these warring principles, when he could not do so, united their heads together, and from hence whomsoever the one visits the other attends immediately after; as appears to be the case with me, since I suffered pain in my leg before from the chain, but now pleasure seems to have succeeded.

“‘A bypath, as it were, seems to lead us on in our researches undertaken by reason,’ because as long as we are encumbered with the body, and our soul is contaminated with such an evil, we can never fully attain to what we desire; and this, we say, is truth. For the body subjects us to innumerable hindrances on account of its necessary support, and moreover if any diseases befall us, they impede us in our search after that which is; and it fills us with longings, desires, fears, all kinds of fancies, and a multitude of absurdities, so that, as it is said in real truth, by reason of the body it is never possible for us to make any advances in wisdom.

“For nothing else but the body and its desires occasion wars, seditions, and contests; for all wars amongst us arise on account of our desire to acquire wealth; and we are compelled to acquire wealth on account of the body, being enslaved by its service; and consequently on all these accounts we are hindered in the pursuit of philosophy. But the worst of all is, that if it leaves us any leisure, and we apply ourselves to the consideration of any subject, it constantly obtrudes itself in the midst of our researches, and occasions trouble and disturbance, and confounds us so that we are not able by reason of it to discern the truth. It has then in reality been demonstrated to us, that if we are ever to know anything purely, we must be separated from the body, and contemplate the things themselves by the mere soul. And then, as it seems, we shall obtain that which we desire, and which we profess ourselves to be lovers of, wisdom, when we are dead, as reason shows, but not while we are alive. For if it is not possible to know anything purely in conjunction with the body, one of these two things must follow, either that we can never acquire knowledge, or only after we are dead; for then the soul will subsist apart by itself, separate from the body, but not before. And while we live, we shall thus, as it seems, approach nearest to knowledge, if we hold no intercourse or communion at all with the body, except what absolute necessity requires, nor suffer ourselves to be polluted by its nature, but purify ourselves from it, until God himself shall release us. And thus being pure, and freed from the folly of the body, we shall in all likelihood be with others like ourselves, and shall of ourselves know the whole real essence, and that probably is truth; for it is not allowable for the impure to attain to the pure. Such things, I think, Simmias, all true lovers of wisdom must both think and say to one another. Does it not seem so to you?”

“Most assuredly, Socrates.”

“If this, then,” said Socrates, “is true, my friend, there is great hope for one who arrives where I am going; there, if anywhere, to acquire that in perfection for the sake of which we have taken so much pains during our past life; so that the journey now appointed me is set out upon with good hope, and will be so by any other man who thinks that his mind has been as it were purified.”

“Certainly,” said Simmias.

“But does not purification consist in this, as was said in a former part of our discourse, in separating as much as possible the soul from the body, and in accustoming it to gather and collect itself by itself on all sides apart from the body, and to dwell, as far as it can, both now and hereafter, alone by itself, delivered as it were from the shackles of the body?”

“Certainly,” he replied.

“Is this then called death, this deliverance and separation of the soul from the body?”

“Assuredly,” he answered.

“But, as we affirmed, those who pursue philosophy rightly, are especially and alone desirous to deliver it, and this is the very study of philosophers, the deliverance and separation of the soul from the body, is it not?”

“It appears so.”

“Then, as I said at first, would it not be ridiculous for a man who has endeavoured throughout his life to live as near as possible to death; then, when death arrives, to grieve? Would not this be ridiculous?”

“How should it not?”

“In reality then, Simmias,” he continued, “those who pursue philosophy rightly study to die; and to them of all men death is least formidable. Judge from this. Since they altogether hate the body and desire to keep the soul by itself, would it not be irrational if, when this comes to pass, they should be afraid and grieve, and not be glad to go to that place, where on their arrival they may hope to obtain that which they longed for throughout life; but they longed for wisdom; and to be freed from association with that which they hated? How many of their own accord wished to descend into Hades, on account of human objects of affection, their wives and sons, induced by this very hope of there seeing and being with those whom they have loved; and shall one who really loves wisdom, and firmly cherishes this very hope, that he shall nowhere else obtain it in a manner worthy of the name, except in Hades, be grieved at dying, and not gladly go there? We must think that he would gladly go, my friend, if he be in truth a philosopher; for he will be firmly persuaded of this, that he will nowhere else but there attain wisdom in its purity; and if this be so, would it not be very irrational, as I just now said, if such a man were to be afraid of death?”

“Very much so, by Jupiter,” he replied.

“But it is right, my friends,” he said, “that we should consider this, that if the soul is immortal, it requires our care not only for the present time, which we call life, but for all time; and the danger would now appear to be dreadful, if one should neglect it. For if death were a deliverance from everything, it would be a great gain for the wicked, when they die, to be delivered at the same time from the body, and from their vices together with the soul: but now, since it appears to be immortal, it can have no other refuge from evils, nor safety, except by becoming as good and wise as possible. For the soul goes to Hades, possessing nothing else but its discipline and education, which are said to be of the greatest advantage or detriment to the dead, on the very beginning of his journey thither.

“When the dead arrive at the place to which their dæmon leads them severally, first of all they are judged, as well those who have lived well and piously, as those who have not. And those who appear to have passed a middle kind of life, proceeding to Acheron, and embarking in the vessels they have, on these arrive at the lake, and there dwell, and when they are purified, and have suffered punishment for the iniquities they may have committed, they are set free, and each receives the reward of his good deeds, according to his deserts: but those who appear to be incurable, through the magnitude of their offences, either from having committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny hurls into Tartarus, whence they never come forth. But those who appear to have been guilty of curable, yet great offences, such as those who through anger have committed any violence against father or mother, and have lived the remainder of their life in a state of penitence, or they who have become homicides in a similar manner, these must of necessity fall into Tartarus, but after they have fallen, and have been there for a year, the wave casts them forth, the homicides into Cocytus, but the parricides and matricides into Pyriphlegethon: but when, being borne along, they arrive at the Acherusian lake, there they cry out to and invoke, some those whom they slew, others those whom they injured, and invoking them, they entreat and implore them to suffer them to go out into the lake, and to receive them; and if they persuade them, they go out, and are freed from their sufferings, but if not, they are borne back to Tartarus, and thence again to the rivers, and they do not cease from suffering this until they have persuaded those whom they have injured, for this sentence was imposed on them by the judges. But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy life, these are they, who, being freed and set at large from these regions in the earth, as from a prison, arrive at the pure abode above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among these, they who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy shall live without bodies, throughout all future time, and shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these.

“On account of these things, then, a man ought to be confident about his soul, who during this life has disregarded all the pleasures and ornaments of the body as foreign to his nature, and who, having thought that they do more harm than good, has zealously applied himself to the acquirement of knowledge, and who having adorned his soul not with a foreign but its own proper ornament, temperance, justice, fortitude, freedom, and truth, thus waits for his passage to Hades, as one who is ready to depart whenever destiny shall summon him. You then,” he continued, “Simmias and Cebes, and the rest, will each of you depart at some future time; but now destiny summons me, as a tragic writer would say, and it is nearly time for me to betake myself to the bath; for it appears to me to be better to drink the poison after I have bathed myself, and not to trouble the women with washing my dead body.”

When he had thus spoken, Crito said, “So be it, Socrates, but what commands have you to give to these or to me, either respecting your children, or any other matter, in attending to which we can most oblige you?”

“What I always say, Crito,” he replied, “nothing new; that by taking care of yourselves you will oblige both me and mine, and yourselves, whatever you do, though you should not now promise it; but if you neglect yourselves, and will not live as it were in the footsteps of what has been now and formerly said, even though you should promise much at present, and that earnestly, you will do no good at all.”

“We will endeavour then so to do,” he said; “but how shall we bury you?”

“Just as you please,” he said, “if only you can catch me, and I do not escape from you.” And at the same time smiling gently, and looking around on us, he said; “I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that I am that Socrates who is now conversing with you, and who methodises each part of the discourse; but he thinks I am he whom he will shortly behold dead, and asks how he should bury me. But that which I sometime argued at length, that when I have drunk the poison I shall no longer remain with you, but shall depart to some happy state of the blessed, this I seem to have urged to him in vain, though I meant at the same time to console both you and myself. Be ye then my sureties to Crito,” he said, “in an obligation contrary to that which he made to the judges; for he undertook that I should remain; but do you be sureties that, when I die, I shall not remain, but shall depart, that Crito may more easily bear it, and when he sees my body either burnt or buried, may not be afflicted for me, as if I suffered some dreadful thing, nor say at my interment that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or is buried. For be well assured,” he said, “most excellent Crito, that to speak improperly is not only culpable as to the thing itself, but likewise occasions some injury to our souls. You must have a good courage then, and say that you bury my body, and bury it in such a manner as is pleasing to you, and as you think is most agreeable to our laws.”

When he had said thus he rose, and went into a chamber to bathe, and Crito followed him, but he directed us to wait for him. We waited, therefore, conversing among ourselves about what had been said, and considering it again, and sometimes speaking about our calamity, how severe it would be to us, sincerely thinking that, like those who are deprived of a father, we should pass the rest of our life as orphans. When he had bathed, and his children were brought to him, for he had two little sons and one grown up, and the women belonging to his family were come, having conversed with them in the presence of Crito, and given them such injunctions as he wished, he directed the women and children to go away, and then returned to us.

And it was now near sunset; for he spent a considerable time within. But when he came from bathing he sat down, and did not speak much afterwards; then the officer of the Eleven came in, and standing near him, said, “Socrates, I shall not have to find that fault with you that I do with others, that they are angry with me, and curse me, when, by order of the archons, I bid them drink the poison. But you, on all other occasions during the time you have been here, I have found to be the most noble, meek, and excellent man of all that ever came into this place; and, therefore, I am now well convinced that you will not be angry with me--for you know who are to blame--but with them. Now, then, for you know what I came to announce to you, farewell, and endeavour to bear what is inevitable as easily as possible.” And at the same time, bursting into tears, he turned away and withdrew.

And Socrates, looking after him, said, “And thou, too, farewell; we will do as you direct.” At the same time turning to us, he said, “How courteous the man is; during the whole time I have been here he has visited me, and conversed with me sometimes, and proved the worthiest of men; and now how generously he weeps for me. But come, Crito, let us obey him, and let some one bring the poison, if it is ready pounded; but if not, let the man pound it.”

Then Crito said, “But I think, Socrates, that the sun is still on the mountains, and has not yet set. Besides, I know that others have drunk the poison very late, after it had been announced to them, and have supped and drunk freely, and some even have enjoyed the objects of their love. Do not hasten then, for there is yet time.”

Upon this Socrates replied, “These men whom you mention, Crito, do these things with good reason, for they think they shall gain by so doing, and I too with good reason shall not do so; for I think I shall gain nothing by drinking a little later, except to become ridiculous to myself, in being so fond of life, and sparing of it when none any longer remains. Go, then,” he said, “obey, and do not resist.”

Crito having heard this, nodded to the boy that stood near. And the boy having gone out, and stayed for some time, came, bringing with him the man who was to administer the poison, who brought it ready pounded in a cup.

And Socrates, on seeing the man, said, “Well, my good friend, as you are skilled in these matters, what must I do?”

“Nothing else,” he replied, “than, when you have drunk it walk about, until there is a heaviness in your legs, then lie down; thus it will do its purpose.”

And at the same time he held out the cup to Socrates. And he having received it very cheerfully, neither trembling, nor changing at all in colour or countenance, but, as he was wont, looking steadfastly at the man, said, “What say you of this potion, with respect to making a libation to any one, is it lawful or not?”

“We only pound so much, Socrates,” he said, “as we think sufficient to drink.”

“I understand you,” he said, “but it is certainly both lawful and right to pray to the gods, that my departure hence thither may be happy; which therefore I pray, and so may it be.” And as he said this, he drank it off readily and calmly. Thus far, most of us were with difficulty able to restrain ourselves from weeping, but when we saw him drinking, and having finished the draught, we could do so no longer; but in spite of myself the tears came in full torrent, so that, covering my face, I wept for myself, for I did not weep for him, but for my own fortune, in being deprived of such a friend. But Crito, even before me, when he could not restrain his tears, had risen up.

But Apollodorus even before this had not ceased weeping, and then bursting into an agony of grief, weeping and lamenting, he pierced the heart of every one present, except Socrates himself. But he said, “What are you doing, my admirable friends? I, indeed, for this reason chiefly, sent away the women, that they might not commit any folly of this kind. For I have heard that it is right to die with good omens. Be quiet, therefore, and bear up.”

When we heard this we were ashamed, and restrained our tears. But he, having walked about, when he said that his legs were growing heavy, lay down on his back; for the man so directed him. And at the same time he who gave him the poison, taking hold of him, after a short interval examined his feet and legs; and then having pressed his foot hard, he asked if he felt it; he said that he did not. And after this he pressed his thighs; and thus going higher, he showed us that he was growing cold and stiff. Then Socrates touched himself, and said, that when the poison reached his heart he should then depart. But now the parts around the lower belly were almost cold; when, uncovering himself, for he had been covered over, he said, and they were his last words, “Crito, we owe a cock to Æsculapius; pay it, therefore, and do not neglect it.”

“It shall be done,” said Crito, “but consider whether you have anything else to say.”

To this question he gave no reply; but shortly after he gave a convulsive movement, and the man covered him, and his eyes were fixed; and Crito perceiving it, closed his mouth and eyes.

This was the end of our friend, a man, as we may say, the best of all of his time that we have known, and moreover, the most wise and just.[c]

GROTE’S ESTIMATE OF SOCRATES

Thus perished the “_parens philosophiæ_”--the first of ethical philosophers; a man who opened to science both new matter, alike copious and valuable, and a new method, memorable not less for its originality and efficacy, than for the profound philosophical basis on which it rests. Though Greece produced great poets, orators, speculative philosophers, historians, etc., yet other countries, having the benefit of Grecian literature to begin with, have nearly equalled her in all these lines, and surpassed her in some. But where are we to look for a parallel to Socrates, either in or out of the Grecian world? The cross-examining elenchus, which he not only first struck out, but wielded with such matchless effect, and to such noble purposes, has been mute ever since his last conversation in the prison; for even his great successor Plato was a writer and lecturer, not a colloquial dialectician. No man has ever been found strong enough to bend his bow; much less, sure enough to use it as he did. His life remains as the only evidence, but a very satisfactory evidence, how much can be done by this sort of intelligent interrogation; how powerful is the interest which it can be made to inspire, how energetic the stimulus which it can apply in awakening dormant reason and generating new mental power.

It has been often customary to exhibit Socrates as a moral preacher, in which character probably he has acquired to himself the general reverence attached to his name. This is, indeed, a true attribute, but not the characteristic or salient attribute, nor that by which he permanently worked on mankind. On the other hand, Arcesilaus, and the New Academy, a century and more afterwards, thought that they were following the example of Socrates (and Cicero seems to have thought so too) when they reasoned against everything--and when they laid it down as a system, that against every affirmative position, an equal force of negative argument might be brought up as counterpoise. Now this view of Socrates is, in my judgment, not merely partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such systematic distrust of the powers of the mind to attain certainty. He laid down a clear (though erroneous) line of distinction between the knowable and the unknowable. About physics, he was more than a sceptic; he thought that man could know nothing: the gods did not intend that man should acquire any such information, and therefore managed matters in such a way as to be beyond his ken, for all except the simplest phenomena of daily wants; moreover, not only man could not acquire such information, but ought not to labour after it. But respecting the topics which concern man and society, the views of Socrates were completely the reverse. This was the field which the gods had expressly assigned, not merely to human practice, but to human study and acquisition of knowledge; a field, wherein, with that view, they managed phenomena on principles of constant and observable sequence, so that every man who took the requisite pains might know them.

Nay, Socrates went a step further--and this forward step is the fundamental conviction upon which all his missionary impulse hinges. He thought that every man not only might know these things, but ought to know them; that he could not possibly act well, unless he did know them; and that it was his imperious duty to learn them as he would learn a profession; otherwise, he was nothing better than a slave, unfit to be trusted as a free and accountable being. Socrates felt persuaded that no man could behave as a just, temperate, courageous, pious, patriotic agent, unless he taught himself to know correctly what justice, temperance, courage, piety, patriotism, etc., really were. He was possessed with the truly Baconian idea, that the power of steady moral action depended upon, and was limited by, the rational comprehension of moral ends and means. But when he looked at the minds around him, he perceived that few or none either had any such comprehension, or had ever studied to acquire it--yet at the same time every man felt persuaded that he did possess it, and acted confidently upon such persuasion. Here, then, Socrates found that the first outwork for him to surmount, was, that universal “conceit of knowledge without the reality,” against which he declares such emphatic war; and against which, also, though under another form of words and in reference to other subjects, Bacon declares war not less emphatically, two thousand years afterwards--“_Opinio copiæ inter causas inopiæ est_.”

If then the philosophers of the New Academy considered Socrates either as a sceptic, or as a partisan of systematic negation, they misinterpreted his character, and mistook the first stage of his process--that which Plato, Bacon, and Herschel call the purification of the intellect--for the ultimate goal. The elenchus, as Socrates used it, was animated by the truest spirit of positive science, and formed an indispensable precursor to its attainment.

Though negative in his means, Socrates is strictly positive in his ends; his attack is undertaken only with distinct view to a positive result; in order to shame them out of the illusion of knowledge, and to spur them on and arm them for the acquisition of real, assured, comprehensive, self-explanatory, knowledge--as the condition and guarantee of virtuous practice. Socrates was indeed the reverse of a sceptic; no man ever looked upon life with a more positive and practical eye; no man ever pursued his mark with a clearer perception of the road which he was travelling; no man ever combined, in like manner, the absorbing enthusiasm of a missionary, with the acuteness, the originality, the inventive resource, and the generalising comprehension, of a philosopher.

His method yet survives, as far as such method can survive, in some of the dialogues of Plato. It is a process of eternal value and of universal application. That purification of the intellect, which Bacon signalised as indispensable for rational or scientific progress, the Socratic _elenchus_ affords the only known instrument for at least partially accomplishing. However little that instrument may have been applied since the death of its inventor, the necessity and use of it neither have disappeared, nor ever can disappear. There are few men whose minds are not more or less in that state of sham knowledge against which Socrates made war: there is no man whose notions have not been first got together by spontaneous, unexamined, unconscious, uncertified association--resting upon forgotten particulars, blending together _disparates_ or inconsistencies, and leaving in his mind old and familiar phrases, and oracular propositions, of which he has never rendered to himself account: there is no man, who, if he be destined for vigorous and profitable scientific effort, has not found it a necessary branch of self-education, to break up, disentangle, analyse, and reconstruct, these ancient mental compounds--and who has not been driven to it by his own lame and solitary efforts, since the giant of the colloquial elenchus no longer stands in the market-place to lend him help and stimulus.

To hear of any man, especially of so illustrious a man, being condemned to death on such accusations as that of heresy and alleged corruption of youth, inspires at the present day a sentiment of indignant reprobation, the force of which I have no desire to enfeeble. The fact stands eternally recorded as one among the thousand misdeeds of intolerance, religious and political. But the sentiment now prevalent is founded upon a conviction that such matters as heresy and heretical teaching of youth are not proper for judicial cognisance. Even in the modern world, such a conviction is of recent date; and in the fifth century B.C. it was unknown. Socrates himself would not have agreed in it; and all Grecian governments, oligarchical and democratical alike, recognised the opposite. The testimony furnished by Plato is on this point decisive. When we examine the two positive communities which he constructs, in the treatises _De Republica_ and _De Legibus_, we find that there is nothing about which he is more anxious, than to establish an unresisted orthodoxy of doctrine, opinion, and education. A dissenting and free-spoken teacher, such as Socrates was at Athens, would not have been allowed to pursue his vocation for a week, in the Platonic republic. Plato would not indeed condemn him to death; but he would put him to silence, and in case of need, send him away. This, in fact, is the consistent deduction, if you assume that the state is to determine what is orthodoxy, and orthodox teaching--and to repress what contradicts its own views. Now all the Grecian states, including Athens, held this principle of interference against the dissenting teacher. In any other government of Greece, as well as in the Platonic republic, Socrates would have been quickly arrested in his career, even if not severely punished; in Athens, he was allowed to talk and teach publicly for twenty-five or thirty years, and then condemned when an old man. Of these two applications of the same mischievous principle, assuredly the latter is at once the more moderate and the less noxious.

Secondly, the force of this last consideration, as an extenuating circumstance in regard to the Athenians, is much increased, when we reflect upon the number of individual enemies whom Socrates made to himself in the prosecution of his cross-examining process. Here were a multitude of individuals, including men personally the most eminent and effective in the city, prompted by special antipathies, over and above general convictions, to call into action the dormant state-principle of intolerance against an obnoxious teacher. If, under such provocation, he was allowed to reach the age of seventy, and to talk publicly for so many years, before any real Meletus stood forward--this attests conspicuously the efficacy of the restraining dispositions among the people, which made their practical habits more liberal than their professed principles.

Thirdly, whoever has read the account of the trial and defence of Socrates, will see that he himself contributed quite as much to the result as all the three accusers united. Not only he omitted to do all that might have been done without dishonour, to insure acquittal--but he held positive language very nearly such as Meletus himself would have sought to put in his mouth. He did this deliberately--having an exalted opinion both of himself and his own mission--and accounting the cup of hemlock, at his age, to be no calamity. It was only by such marked and offensive self-exaltation that he brought on the first vote of the dicastery, even then the narrowest majority, by which he was found guilty: it was only by a still more aggravated manifestation of the same kind, even to the pitch of something like insult, that he brought on the second vote, which pronounced the capital sentence. Now it would be uncandid not to allow for the effect of such a proceeding on the minds of the dicastery. They were not at all disposed, of their own accord, to put in force the recognised principle of intolerance against him. But when they found that the man who stood before them charged with this offence, addressed them in a tone such as dicasts had never heard before and could hardly hear with calmness, they could not but feel disposed to credit all the worst inferences which his accusers had suggested, and to regard Socrates as a dangerous man both religiously and politically, against whom it was requisite to uphold the majesty of the court and constitution.

In appreciating this memorable incident, therefore, though the mischievous principle of intolerance cannot be denied, yet all the circumstances show that that principle was neither irritable nor predominant in the Athenian bosom; that even a large body of collateral antipathies did not readily call it forth against any individual; that the more liberal and generous dispositions, which deadened its malignity, were of steady efficacy, not easily overborne; and that the condemnation ought to count as one of the least gloomy items in an essentially gloomy catalogue.

Let us add, that as Socrates himself did not account his own condemnation and death, at his age, to be any misfortune, but rather a favourable dispensation of the gods, who removed him just in time to escape that painful consciousness of intellectual decline, which induced Democritus to prepare the poison for himself--so his friend Xenophon goes a step further, and while protesting against the verdict of guilty, extols the manner of death as a subject of triumph; as the happiest, most honourable, and most gracious way, in which the gods could set the seal upon an useful and exalted life.

It is asserted by Diodorus, and repeated with exaggerations by other later authors, that after the death of Socrates the Athenians bitterly repented of the manner in which they had treated him, and that they even went so far as to put his accusers to death without trial. I know not upon what authority this statement is made, and I disbelieve it altogether. From the tone of Xenophon’s _Memorabilia_, there is every reason to presume that the memory of Socrates still continued to be unpopular at Athens when that collection was composed. Plato, too, left Athens immediately after the death of his master, and remained absent for a long series of years: indirectly, I think, this affords a presumption that no such reaction took place in Athenian sentiment as that which Diodorus alleges; and the same presumption is countenanced by the manner in which the orator Æschines speaks of the condemnation, half a century afterwards. I see no reason to believe that the Athenian dicasts, who doubtless felt themselves justified, and more than justified, in condemning Socrates after his own speech, retracted that sentiment after his decease.[d]