Such were the moral precepts of Epictetus, in which we see the nearest
approach to Christianity that had been made in the ancient world,
although there is no proof or probability that he knew anything of
Christ or the Christians. And these sublime truths had a great
influence, especially on the mind of the most lofty and pure of all the
Roman emperors, Marcus Aurelius, who _lived_ the principles he had
learned from the slave, and whose "Thoughts" are still held in
admiration.
Thus did the philosophic speculations about the beginning of things
lead to elaborate systems of thought, and end in practical rules of
life, until in spirit they had, with Epictetus, harmonized with many of
the revealed truths which Christ and his Apostles laid down for the
regeneration of the world. Who cannot see in the inquiries of the old
Philosopher,--whether into Nature, or the operations of mind, or the
existence of God, or the immortality of the soul, or the way to
happiness and virtue,--a magnificent triumph of human genius, such as
has been exhibited in no other department of human science? Nay, who
does not rejoice to see in this slow but ever-advancing development of
man's comprehension of the truth the inspiration of that Divine Teacher,
that Holy Spirit, which shall at last lead man into all truth?
We regret that our limits preclude a more extended view of the various
systems which the old sages propounded,--systems full of errors yet also
marked by important gains, but, whether false or true, showing a
marvellous reach of the human understanding. Modern researches have
discarded many opinions that were highly valued in their day, yet
philosophy in its methods of reasoning is scarcely advanced since the
time of Aristotle, while the subjects which agitated the Grecian schools
have been from time to time revived and rediscussed, and are still
unsettled. If any intellectual pursuit has gone round in perpetual
circles, incapable apparently of progression or rest, it is that
glorious study of philosophy which has tasked more than any other the
mightiest intellects of this world, and which, progressive or not, will
never be relinquished without the loss of what is most valuable in
human culture.
* * * * *
AUTHORITIES.
For original authorities in reference to the matter of this chapter,
read Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers; the Writings of
Plato and Aristotle; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, De Oratore, De Officiis,
De Divinatione, De Finibus, Tusculanae Disputationes; Xenophon,
Memorabilia; Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae; Lucretius.
The great modern authorities are the Germans, and these are very
numerous. Among the most famous writers on the history of philosophy are
Brucker, Hegel, Brandis, I.G. Buhle, Tennemann, Hitter, Plessing,
Schwegler, Hermann, Meiners, Stallbaum, and Spiegel. The History of
Ritter is well translated, and is always learned and suggestive.
Tennemann, translated by Morell, is a good manual, brief but clear. In
connection with the writings of the Germans, the great work of the
French Cousin should be consulted.
The English historians of ancient philosophy are not so numerous as the
Germans. The work of Enfield is based on Brucker, or is rather an
abridgment. Archer Butler's Lectures are suggestive and able, but
discursive and vague. Grote has written learnedly on Socrates and the
other great lights. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy has the
merit of clearness, and is very interesting, but rather superficial. See
also Thomas Stanley's History of Philosophy, and the articles in Smith's
Dictionary on the leading ancient philosophers. J. W. Donaldson's
continuation of K. O. Muller's History of the Literature of Ancient
Greece is learned, and should be consulted with Thompson's Notes on
Archer Butler. Schleiermacher, on Socrates, translated by Bishop
Thirlwall, is well worth attention. There are also fine articles in the
Encyclopaedias Britannica and Metropolitana.
SOCRATES.
470-399 B.C.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
To Socrates the world owes a new method in philosophy and a great
example in morals; and it would be difficult to settle whether his
influence has been greater as a sage or as a moralist. In either light
he is one of the august names of history. He has been venerated for more
than two thousand years as a teacher of wisdom, and as a martyr for the
truths he taught. He did not commit his precious thoughts to writing;
that work was done by his disciples, even as his exalted worth has been
published by them, especially by Plato and Xenophon. And if the Greek
philosophy did not culminate in him, yet he laid down those principles
by which only it could be advanced. As a system-maker, both Plato and
Aristotle were greater than he; yet for original genius he was probably
their superior, and in important respects he was their master. As a good
man, battling with infirmities and temptations and coming off
triumphantly, the ancient world has furnished no prouder example.
He was born about 470 or 469 years B.C., and therefore may be said to
belong to that brilliant age of Grecian literature and art when Prodicus
was teaching rhetoric, and Democritus was speculating about the doctrine
of atoms, and Phidias was ornamenting temples, and Alcibiades was giving
banquets, and Aristophanes was writing comedies, and Euripides was
composing tragedies, and Aspasia was setting fashions, and Cimon was
fighting battles, and Pericles was making Athens the centre of Grecian
civilization. But he died thirty years after Pericles; so that what is
most interesting in his great career took place during and after the
Peloponnesian war,--an age still interesting, but not so brilliant as
the one which immediately preceded it. It was the age of the
Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the
most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished,
but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on
popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective
truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought
pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being
Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus; men who travelled from city
to city, exciting great admiration for their rhetorical skill, and
really improving the public speaking of popular orators. They also
taught science to a limited extent, and it was through them that
Athenian youth mainly acquired what little knowledge they had of
arithmetic and geometry. In loftiness of character they were not equal
to those Ionian philosophers, who, prior to Socrates, in the fifth
century B.C., speculated on the great problems of the material
universe,--the origin of the world, the nature of matter, and the source
of power,--and who, if they did not make discoveries, yet evinced great
intellectual force.
It was in this sceptical and irreligious age, when all classes were
devoted to pleasure and money-making, but when there was great
cultivation, especially in arts, that Socrates arose, whose
"appearance," says Grote, "was a moral phenomenon."
He was the son of a poor sculptor, and his mother was a midwife. His
family was unimportant, although it belonged to an ancient Attic _gens_.
Socrates was rescued from his father's workshop by a wealthy citizen who
perceived his genius, and who educated him at his own expense. He was
twenty when he conversed with Parmenides and Zeno; he was twenty-eight
when Phidias adorned the Parthenon; he was forty when he fought at
Potidaea and rescued Alcibiades. At this period he was most
distinguished for his physical strength and endurance,--a brave and
patriotic soldier, insensible to heat and cold, and, though temperate in
his habits, capable of drinking more wine, without becoming
intoxicated, than anybody in Athens. His powerful physique and sensual
nature inclined him to self-indulgence, but he early learned to restrain
both appetites and passions. His physiognomy was ugly and his person
repulsive; he was awkward, obese, and ungainly; his nose was flat, his
lips were thick, and his neck large; he rolled his eyes, went
barefooted, and wore a dirty old cloak. He spent his time chiefly in the
market-place, talking with everybody, old or young, rich or
poor,--soldiers, politicians, artisans, or students; visiting even
Aspasia, the cultivated, wealthy courtesan, with whom he formed a
friendship; so that, although he was very poor,--his whole property
being only five minae (about fifty dollars) a year,--it would seem he
lived in "good society."
The ancient Pagans were not so exclusive and aristocratic as the
Christians of our day, who are ambitious of social position. Socrates
never seemed to think about his social position at all, and uniformly
acted as if he were well known and prominent. He was listened to because
he was eloquent. His conversation is said to have been charming, and
even fascinating. He was an original and ingenious man, different from
everybody else, and was therefore what we call "a character."
But there was nothing austere or gloomy about him. Though lofty in his
inquiries, and serious in his mind, he resembled neither a Jewish
prophet nor a mediaeval sage in his appearance. He looked rather like a
Silenus,--very witty, cheerful, good-natured, jocose, and disposed to
make people laugh. He enjoined no austerities or penances. He was very
attractive to the young, and tolerant of human infirmities, even when he
gave the best advice. He was the most human of teachers. Alcibiades was
completely fascinated by his talk, and made good resolutions.
His great peculiarity in conversation was to ask questions,--sometimes
to gain information, but oftener to puzzle and raise a laugh. He sought
to expose ignorance, when it was pretentious; he made all the quacks and
shams appear ridiculous. His irony was tremendous; nobody could stand
before his searching and unexpected questions, and he made nearly every
one with whom he conversed appear either as a fool or an ignoramus. He
asked his questions with great apparent modesty, and thus drew a mesh
over his opponents from which they could not extricate themselves. His
process was the _reductio ad absurdum_. Hence he drew upon himself the
wrath of the Sophists. He had no intellectual arrogance, since he
professed to know nothing himself, although he was conscious of his own
intellectual superiority. He was contented to show that others knew no
more than he. He had no passion for admiration, no political ambition,
no desire for social distinction; and he associated with men not for
what they could do for him, but for what he could do for them. Although
poor, he charged nothing for his teachings. He seemed to despise riches,
since riches could only adorn or pamper the body. He did not live in a
cell or a cave or a tub, but among the people, as an apostle. He must
have accepted gifts, since his means of living were exceedingly small,
even for Athens.
He was very practical, even while he lived above the world, absorbed in
lofty contemplations. He was always talking with such as the
skin-dressers and leather-dealers, using homely language for his
illustrations, and uttering plain truths. Yet he was equally at home
with poets and philosophers and statesmen. He did not take much interest
in that knowledge which was applied merely to rising in the world.
Though plain, practical, and even homely in his conversation, he was not
utilitarian. Science had no charm to him, since it was directed to
utilitarian ends and was uncertain. His sayings had such a lofty, hidden
wisdom that very few people understood him: his utterances seemed either
paradoxical, or unintelligible, or sophistical. "To the mentally proud
and mentally feeble he was equally a bore." Most people probably thought
him a nuisance, since he was always about with his questions, puzzling
some, confuting others, and reproving all,--careless of love or hatred,
and contemptuous of all conventionalities. So severely dialectical was
he that he seemed to be a hair-splitter. The very Sophists, whose
ignorance and pretension he exposed, looked upon him as a quibbler;
although there were some--so severely trained was the Grecian mind--who
saw the drift of his questions, and admired his skill. Probably there
are few educated people in these times who could have understood him any
more easily than a modern audience, even of scholars, could take in one
of the orations of Demosthenes, although they might laugh at the jokes
of the sage, and be impressed with the invectives of the orator.
And yet there were defects in Socrates. He was most provokingly
sarcastic; he turned everything to ridicule; he remorselessly punctured
every gas-bag he met; he heaped contempt on every snob; he threw stones
at every glass house,--and everybody lived in one. He was not quite just
to the Sophists, for they did not pretend to teach the higher life, but
chiefly rhetoric, which is useful in its way. And if they loved applause
and riches, and attached themselves to those whom they could utilize,
they were not different from most fashionable teachers in any age. And
then Socrates was not very delicate in his tastes. He was too much
carried away by the fascinations of Aspasia, when he knew that she was
not virtuous,--although it was doubtless her remarkable intellect which
most attracted him, not her physical beauty; since in the "Menexenus"
(by many ascribed to Plato) he is made to recite at length one of her
long orations, and in the "Symposium" he is made to appear absolutely
indelicate in his conduct with Alcibiades, and to make what would be
abhorrent to us a matter of irony, although there was the severest
control of the passions.
To me it has always seemed a strange thing that such an ugly, satirical,
provoking man could have won and retained the love of Xanthippe,
especially since he was so careless of his dress, and did so little to
provide for the wants of the household. I do not wonder that she scolded
him, or became very violent in her temper; since, in her worst tirades,
he only provokingly laughed at her. A modern Christian woman of society
would have left him. But perhaps in Pagan Athens she could not have got
a divorce. It is only in these enlightened and progressive times that
women desert their husbands when they are tantalizing, or when they do
not properly support the family, or spend their time at the clubs or in
society,--into which it would seem that Socrates was received, even the
best, barefooted and dirty as he was, and for his intellectual gifts
alone. Think of such a man being the oracle of a modern salon, either in
Paris, London, or New York, with his repulsive appearance, and
tantalizing and provoking irony. But in artistic Athens, at one time, he
was all the fashion. Everybody liked to hear him talk. Everybody was
both amused and instructed. He provoked no envy, since he affected
modesty and ignorance, apparently asking his questions for information,
and was so meanly clad, and lived in such a poor way. Though he provoked
animosities, he had many friends. If his language was sarcastic, his
affections were kind. He was always surrounded by the most gifted men of
his time. The wealthy Crito constantly attended him; Plato and Xenophon
were enthusiastic pupils; even Alcibiades was charmed by his
conversation; Apollodorus and Antisthenes rarely quitted his side; Cebes
and Simonides came from Thebes to hear him; Isocrates and Aristippus
followed in his train; Euclid of Megara sought his society, at the risk
of his life; the tyrant Critias, and even the Sophist Protagoras,
acknowledged his marvellous power.
But I cannot linger longer on the man, with his gifts and peculiarities.
More important things demand our attention. I propose briefly to show
his contributions to philosophy and ethics.
In regard to the first, I will not dwell on his method, which is both
subtle and dialectical. We are not Greeks. Yet it was his method which
revolutionized philosophy. That was original. He saw this,--that the
theories of his day were mere opinions; even the lofty speculations of
the Ionian philosophers were dreams, and the teachings of the Sophists
were mere words. He despised both dreams and words. Speculations ended
in the indefinite and insoluble; words ended in rhetoric. Neither dreams
nor words revealed the true, the beautiful, and the good,--which, to his
mind, were the only realities, the only sure foundation for a
philosophical system.
So he propounded certain questions, which, when answered, produced
glaring contradictions, from which disputants shrank. Their conclusions
broke down their assumptions. They stood convicted of ignorance, to
which all his artful and subtle questions tended, and which it was his
aim to prove. He showed that they did not know what they affirmed. He
proved that their definitions were wrong or incomplete, since they
logically led to contradictions; and he showed that for purposes of
disputation the same meaning must always attach to the same word, since
in ordinary language terms have different meanings, partly true and
partly false, which produce confusion in argument. He would be precise
and definite, and use the utmost rigor of language, without which
inquirers and disputants would not understand each other. Every
definition should include the whole thing, and nothing else; otherwise,
people would not know what they were talking about, and would be forced
into absurdities.
Thus arose the celebrated "definitions,"--the first step in Greek
philosophy,--intending to show what _is_, and what _is not_. After
demonstrating what is not, Socrates advanced to the demonstration of
what is, and thus laid a foundation for certain knowledge: thus he
arrived at clear conceptions of justice, friendship, patriotism,
courage, and other certitudes, on which truth is based. He wanted only
positive truth,--something to build upon,--like Bacon and all great
inquirers. Having reached the certain, he would apply it to all the
relations of life, and to all kinds of knowledge. Unless knowledge is
certain, it is worthless,--there is no foundation to build upon.
Uncertain or indefinite knowledge is no knowledge at all; it may be very
pretty, or amusing, or ingenious, but no more valuable for philosophical
research than poetry or dreams or speculations.
How far the "definitions" of Socrates led to the solution of the great
problems of philosophy, in the hands of such dialecticians as Plato and
Aristotle, I will not attempt to enter upon here; but this I think I am
warranted in saying, that the main object and aim of Socrates, as a
teacher of philosophy, were to establish certain elemental truths,
concerning which there could be no dispute, and then to reason from
them,--since they were not mere assumptions, but certitudes, and
certitudes also which appealed to human consciousness, and therefore
could not be overthrown. If I were teaching metaphysics, it would be
necessary for me to make clear this method,--the questions and
definitions by which Socrates is thought to have laid the foundation of
true knowledge, and therefore of all healthful advance in philosophy.
But for my present purpose I do not care so much what his _method_ was
as what his _aim_ was.
The aim of Socrates, then, being to find out and teach what is definite
and certain, as a foundation of knowledge,--having cleared away the
rubbish of ignorance,--he attached very little importance to what is
called physical science. And no wonder, since science in his day was
very imperfect. There were not facts enough known on which to base sound
inductions: better, deductions from established principles. What is
deemed most certain in this age was the most uncertain of all knowledge
in his day. Scientific knowledge, truly speaking, there was none. It was
all speculation. Democritus might resolve the material universe--the
earth, the sun, and the stars--into combinations produced by the motion
of atoms. But whence the original atoms, and what force gave to them
motion? The proudest philosopher, speculating on the origin of the
universe, is convicted of ignorance.
Much, has been said in praise of the Ionian philosophers; and justly,
so far as their genius and loftiness of character are considered. But
what did they discover? What truths did they arrive at to serve as
foundation-stones of science? They were among the greatest intellects of
antiquity. But their method was a wrong one. Their philosophy was based
on assumptions and speculations, and therefore was worthless, since they
settled nothing. Their science was based on inductions which were not
reliable, because of a lack of facts. They drew conclusions as to the
origin of the universe from material phenomena. Thales, seeing that
plants are sustained by dew and rain, concluded that water was the first
beginning of things. Anaximenes, seeing that animals die without air,
thought that air was the great primal cause. Then Diogenes of Crete,
making a fanciful speculation, imparted to air an intellectual energy.
Heraclitus of Ephesus substituted fire for air. None of the illustrious
Ionians reached anything higher, than that the first cause of all things
must be intelligent. The speculations of succeeding philosophers, living
in a more material age, all pertained to the world of matter which they
could see with their eyes. And in close connection with speculations
about matter, the cause of which they could not settle, was indifference
to the spiritual nature of man, which they could not see, and all the
wants of the soul, and the existence of the future state, where the
soul alone was of any account. So atheism, and the disbelief of the
existence of the soul after death, characterized that materialism.
Without God and without a future, there was no stimulus to virtue and no
foundation for anything. They said, "Let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die,"--the essence and spirit of all paganism.
Socrates, seeing how unsatisfactory were all physical inquiries, and
what evils materialism introduced into society, making the body
everything and the soul nothing, turned his attention to the world
within, and "for physics substituted morals." He knew the uncertainty of
physical speculation, but believed in the certainty of moral truths. He
knew that there was a reality in justice, in friendship, in courage.
Like Job, he reposed on consciousness. He turned his attention to what
afterwards gave immortality to Descartes. To the scepticism of the
Sophists he opposed self-evident truths. He proclaimed the sovereignty
of virtue, the universality of moral obligation. "Moral certitude was
the platform from which he would survey the universe." It was the ladder
by which he would ascend to the loftiest regions of knowledge and of
happiness. "Though he was negative in his means, he was positive in his
ends." He was the first who had glimpses of the true mission of
philosophy,--even to sit in judgment on all knowledge, whether it
pertains to art, or politics, or science; eliminating the false and
retaining the true. It was his mission to separate truth from error. He
taught the world how to weigh evidence. He would discard any doctrine
which, logically carried out, led to absurdity. Instead of turning his
attention to outward phenomena, he dwelt on the truths which either God
or consciousness reveals. Instead of the creation, he dwelt on the
Creator. It was not the body he cared for so much as the soul. Not
wealth, not power, not the appetites were the true source of pleasure,
but the peace and harmony of the soul. The inquiry should be, not what
we shall eat, but how shall we resist temptation; how shall we keep the
soul pure; how shall we arrive at virtue; how shall we best serve our
country; how shall we best educate our children; how shall we expel
worldliness and deceit and lies; how shall we walk with God?--for there
is a God, and there is immortality and eternal justice: these are the
great certitudes of human life, and it is only by these that the soul
will expand and be happy forever.
Thus there was a close connection between his philosophy and his ethics.
But it was as a moral teacher that he won his most enduring fame. The
teacher of wisdom became subordinate to the man who lived it. As a
living Christian is nobler than merely an acute theologian, so he who
practises virtue is greater than the one who preaches it. The dissection
of the passions is not so difficult as the regulation of the passions.
The moral force of the soul is superior to the utmost grasp of the
intellect. The "Thoughts" of Pascal are all the more read because the
religious life of Pascal is known to have been lofty. Augustine was the
oracle of the Middle Ages, from the radiance of his character as much as
from the brilliancy and originality of his intellect. Bernard swayed
society more by his sanctity than by his learning. The useful life of
Socrates was devoted not merely to establish the grounds of moral
obligation, in opposition to the false and worldly teaching of his day,
but to the practice of temperance, disinterestedness, and patriotism. He
found that the ideas of his contemporaries centred in the pleasure of
the body: he would make his body subservient to the welfare of the soul.
No writer of antiquity says so much of the soul as Plato, his chosen
disciple, and no other one placed so much value on pure subjective
knowledge. His longings after love were scarcely exceeded by Augustine
or St. Theresa,--not for a divine Spouse, but for the harmony of the
soul. With longings after love were, united longings after immortality,
when the mind would revel forever in the contemplation of eternal ideas
and the solution of mysteries,--a sort of Dantean heaven. Virtue became
the foundation of happiness, and almost a synonym for knowledge. He
discoursed on knowledge in its connection with virtue, after the
fashion of Solomon in his Proverbs. Happiness, virtue, knowledge: this
was the Socratic trinity, the three indissolubly connected together, and
forming the life of the soul,--the only precious thing a man has, since
it is immortal, and therefore to be guarded beyond all bodily and
mundane interests. But human nature is frail. The soul is fettered and
bewildered; hence the need of some outside influence, some illumination,
to guard, or to restrain, or guide. "This inspiration, he was persuaded,
was imparted to him from time to time, as he had need, by the monitions
of an internal voice which he called [Greek: daimonion], or daemon,--not
a personification, like an angel or devil, but a divine sign or
supernatural voice." From youth he was accustomed to obey this
prohibitory voice, and to speak of it,--a voice "which forbade him to
enter on public life," or to take any thought for a prepared defence on
his trial. The Fathers of the Church regarded this daemon as a devil,
probably from the name; but it is not far, in its real meaning, from the
"divine grace" of St. Augustine and of all men famed for Christian
experience,--that restraining grace which keeps good men from folly
or sin.
Socrates, again, divorced happiness from pleasure,--identical things,
with most pagans. Happiness is the peace and harmony of the soul;
pleasure comes from animal sensations, or the gratification of worldly
and ambitious desires, and therefore is often demoralizing. Happiness
is an elevated joy,--a beatitude, existing with pain and disease, when
the soul is triumphant over the body; while pleasure is transient, and
comes from what is perishable. Hence but little account should be made
of pain and suffering, or even of death. The life is more than meat, and
virtue is its own reward. There is no reward of virtue in mere outward
and worldly prosperity; and, with virtue, there is no evil in adversity.
One must do right because it is right, not because it is expedient: he
must do right, whatever advantages may appear by not doing it. A good
citizen must obey the laws, because they are laws: he may not violate
them because temporal and immediate advantages are promised. A wise man,
and therefore a good man, will be temperate. He must neither eat nor
drink to excess. But temperance is not abstinence. Socrates not only
enjoined temperance as a great virtue, but he practised it. He was a
model of sobriety, and yet he drank wine at feasts,--at those glorious
symposia where he discoursed with his friends on the highest themes.
While he controlled both appetites and passions, in order to promote
true happiness,--that is, the welfare of the soul,--he was not
solicitous, as others were, for outward prosperity, which could not
extend beyond mortal life. He would show, by teaching and example, that
he valued future good beyond any transient joy. Hence he accepted
poverty and physical discomfort as very trifling evils. He did not
lacerate the body, like Brahmans and monks, to make the soul independent
of it. He was a Greek, and a practical man,--anything but
visionary,--and regarded the body as a sacred temple of the soul, to be
kept beautiful; for beauty is as much an eternal idea as friendship or
love. Hence he threw no contempt on art, since art is based on beauty.
He approved of athletic exercises, which strengthened and beautified the
body; but he would not defile the body or weaken it, either by lusts or
austerities. Passions were not to be exterminated but controlled; and
controlled by reason, the light within us,--that which guides to true
knowledge, and hence to virtue, and hence to happiness. The law of
temperance, therefore, is self-control.
Courage was another of his certitudes,--that which animated the soldier
on the battlefield with patriotic glow and lofty self-sacrifice. Life is
subordinate to patriotism. It was of but little consequence whether a
man died or not, in the discharge of duty. To do right was the main
thing, because it was right. "Like George Fox, he would do right if the
world were blotted out."
The weak point, to my mind, in the Socratic philosophy, considered in
its ethical bearings, was the confounding of virtue with knowledge, and
making them identical. Socrates could probably have explained this
difficulty away, for no one more than he appreciated the tyranny of
passion and appetite, which thus fettered the will; according to St.
Paul, "The evil that I would not, that I do." Men often commit sin when
the consequences of it and the nature of it press upon the mind. The
knowledge of good and evil does not always restrain a man from doing
what he knows will end in grief and shame. The restraint comes, not from
knowledge, but from divine aid, which was probably what Socrates meant
by his daemon,--a warning and a constraining power.
"Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo."
But this is not exactly the knowledge which Socrates meant, or Solomon.
Alcibiades was taught to see the loveliness of virtue and to admire it;
but _he_ had not the divine and restraining power, which Socrates called
an "inspiration," and others would call "grace." Yet Socrates himself,
with passions and appetites as great as Alcibiades, restrained
them,--was assisted to do so by that divine Power which he recognized,
and probably adored. How far he felt his personal responsibility to this
Power I do not know. The sense of personal responsibility to God is one
of the highest manifestations of Christian life, and implies a
recognition of God as a personality, as a moral governor whose eye is
everywhere, and whose commands are absolute. Many have a vague idea of
Providence as pervading and ruling the universe, without a sense of
personal responsibility to Him; in other words, without a "fear" of Him,
such as Moses taught, and which is represented by David as "the
beginning of wisdom,"--the fear to do wrong, not only because it is
wrong, but also because it is displeasing to Him who can both punish and
reward. I do not believe that Socrates had this idea of God; but I do
believe that he recognized His existence and providence. Most people in
Greece and Rome had religious instincts, and believed in supernatural
forces, who exercised an influence over their destiny,--although they
called them "gods," or divinities, and not _the_ "God Almighty" whom
Moses taught. The existence of temples, the offices of priests, and the
consultation of oracles and soothsayers, all point to this. And the
people not only believed in the existence of these supernatural powers,
to whom they erected temples and statues, but many of them believed in a
future state of rewards and punishments,--otherwise the names of Minos
and Rhadamanthus and other judges of the dead are unintelligible.
Paganism and mythology did not deny the existence and power of
gods,--yea, the immortal gods; they only multiplied their number,
representing them as avenging deities with human passions and frailties,
and offering to them gross and superstitious rites of worship. They had
imperfect and even degrading ideas of the gods, but acknowledged their
existence and their power. Socrates emancipated himself from these
degrading superstitions, and had a loftier idea of God than the people,
or he would not have been accused of impiety,--that is, a dissent from
the popular belief; although there is one thing which I cannot
understand in his life, and cannot harmonize with his general
teachings,--that in his last hours his last act was to command the
sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius.
But whatever may have been his precise and definite ideas of God and
immortality, it is clear that he soared beyond his contemporaries in his
conceptions of Providence and of duty. He was a reformer and a
missionary, preaching a higher morality and revealing loftier truths
than any other person that we know of in pagan antiquity; although there
lived in India, about two hundred years before his day, a sage whom they
called Buddha, whom some modern scholars think approached nearer to
Christ than did Socrates or Marcus Aurelius. Very possibly. Have we any
reason to adduce that God has ever been without his witnesses on earth,
or ever will be? Why could he not have imparted wisdom both to Buddha
and Socrates, as he did to Abraham, Moses, and Paul? I look upon
Socrates as one of the witnesses and agents of Almighty power on this
earth to proclaim exalted truth and turn people from wickedness. He
himself--not indistinctly--claimed this mission.
Think what a man he was: truly was he a "moral phenomenon." You see a
man of strong animal propensities, but with a lofty soul, appearing in a
wicked and materialistic--and possibly atheistic--age, overturning all
previous systems of philosophy, and inculcating a new and higher law of
morals. You see him spending his whole life,--and a long life,--in
disinterested teachings and labors; teaching without pay, attaching
himself to youth, working in poverty and discomfort, indifferent to
wealth and honor, and even power, inculcating incessantly the worth and
dignity of the soul, and its amazing and incalculable superiority to all
the pleasures of the body and all the rewards of a worldly life. Who
gave to him this wisdom and this almost superhuman virtue? Who gave to
him this insight into the fundamental principles of morality? Who, in
this respect, made him a greater light and a clearer expounder than the
Christian Paley? Who made him, in all spiritual discernment, a wiser man
than the gifted John Stuart Mill, who seems to have been a candid
searcher after truth? In the wisdom of Socrates you see some higher
force than intellectual hardihood or intellectual clearness. How much
this pagan did to emancipate and elevate the soul! How much he did to
present the vanities and pursuits of worldly men in their true light!
What a rebuke were his life and doctrines to the Epicureanism which was
pervading all classes of society, and preparing the way for ruin! Who
cannot see in him a forerunner of that greater Teacher who was the
friend of publicans and sinners; who rejected the leaven of the
Pharisees and the speculations of the Sadducees; who scorned the riches
and glories of the world; who rebuked everything pretentious and
arrogant; who enjoined humility and self-abnegation; who exposed the
ignorance and sophistries of ordinary teachers; and who propounded to
_his_ disciples no such "miserable interrogatory" as "Who shall show us
any good?" but a higher question for their solution and that of all
pleasure-seeking and money-hunting people to the end of time,--"What
shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"
It very rarely happens that a great benefactor escapes persecution,
especially if he is persistent in denouncing false opinions which are
popular, or prevailing follies and sins. As the Scribes and Pharisees,
who had been so severely and openly exposed in all their hypocrisies by
our Lord, took the lead in causing his crucifixion, so the Sophists and
tyrants of Athens headed the fanatical persecution of Socrates because
he exposed their shallowness and worldliness, and stung them to the
quick by his sarcasms and ridicule. His elevated morality and lofty
spiritual life do not alone account for the persecution. If he had let
persons alone, and had not ridiculed their opinions and pretensions,
they would probably have let him alone. Galileo aroused the wrath of
the Inquisition not for his scientific discoveries, but because he
ridiculed the Dominican and Jesuit guardians of the philosophy of the
Middle Ages, and because he seemed to undermine the authority of the
Scriptures and of the Church: his boldness, his sarcasms, and his
mocking spirit were more offensive than his doctrines. The Church did
not persecute Kepler or Pascal. The Athenians may have condemned
Xenophanes and Anaxagoras, yet not the other Ionian philosophers, nor
the lofty speculations of Plato; but they murdered Socrates because they
hated him. It was not pleasant to the gay leaders of Athenian society to
hear the utter vanity of their worldly lives painted with such unsparing
severity, nor was it pleasant to the Sophists and rhetoricians to see
their idols overthrown, and they themselves exposed as false teachers
and shallow pretenders. No one likes to see himself held up to scorn and
mockery; nobody is willing to be shown up as ignorant and conceited. The
people of Athens did not like to see their gods ridiculed, for the
logical sequence of the teachings of Socrates was to undermine the
popular religion. It was very offensive to rich and worldly people to be
told that their riches and pleasures were transient and worthless. It
was impossible that those rhetoricians who gloried in words, those
Sophists who covered up the truth, those pedants who prided themselves
on their technicalities, those politicians who lived by corruption,
those worldly fathers who thought only of pushing the fortunes of their
children, should not see in Socrates their uncompromising foe; and when
he added mockery and ridicule to contempt, and piqued their vanity, and
offended their pride, they bitterly hated him and wished him out of the
way. My wonder is that he should have been tolerated until he was
seventy years of age. Men less offensive than he have been burned alive,
and stoned to death, and tortured on the rack, and devoured by lions in
the amphitheatre. It is the fate of prophets to be exiled, or slandered,
or jeered at, or stigmatized, or banished from society,--to be subjected
to some sort of persecution; but when prophets denounce woes, and utter
invectives, and provoke by stinging sarcasms, they have generally been
killed. No matter how enlightened society is, or tolerant the age, he
who utters offensive truths will be disliked, and in some way punished.
So Socrates must meet the fate of all benefactors who make themselves
disliked and hated. First the great comic poet Aristophanes, in his
comedy called the "Clouds," held him up to ridicule and reproach, and
thus prepared the way for his arraignment and trial. He is made to utter
a thousand impieties and impertinences. He is made to talk like a man
of the greatest vanity and conceit, and to throw contempt and scorn on
everybody else. It is not probable that the poet entered into any formal
conspiracy against him, but found him a good subject of raillery and
mockery, since Socrates was then very unpopular, aside from his moral
teachings, for being declared by the oracle of Delphi the wisest man in
the world, and for having been intimate with the two men whom the
Athenians above all men justly execrated,--Critias, the chief of the
Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed, or at least consented to,
after the Peloponnesian war; and Alcibiades, whose evil counsels had led
to an unfortunate expedition, and who in addition had proved himself a
traitor to his country.
Public opinion being now against him, on various grounds he is brought
to trial before the Dikastery,--a board of some five hundred judges,
leading citizens of Athens. One of his chief accusers was Anytus,--a
rich tradesman, of very narrow mind, personally hostile to Socrates
because of the influence the philosopher had exerted over his son, yet
who then had considerable influence from the active part he had taken in
the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. The more formidable accuser was
Meletus,--a poet and a rhetorician, who had been irritated by Socrates'
terrible cross-examinations. The principal charges against him were,
that he did not admit the gods acknowledged by the republic, and that he
corrupted the youth of Athens.
In regard to the first charge, it could not be technically proved that
he had assailed the gods, for he was exact in his legal worship; but
really and virtually there was some foundation for the accusation, since
Socrates was a religious innovator if ever there was one. His lofty
realism _was_ subversive of popular superstitions, when logically
carried out. As to the second charge, of corrupting youth, this was
utterly groundless; for he had uniformly enjoined courage, and
temperance, and obedience to the laws, and patriotism, and the control
of the passions, and all the higher sentiments of the soul But the
tendency of his teachings was to create in young men contempt for all
institutions based on falsehood or superstition or tyranny, and he
openly disapproved some of the existing laws,--such as choosing
magistrates by lot,--and freely expressed his opinions. In a narrow and
technical sense there was some reason for this charge; for if a young
man came to combat his father's business or habits of life or general
opinions, in consequence of his own superior enlightenment, it might be
made out that he had not sufficient respect for his father, and thus was
failing in the virtues of reverence and filial obedience.
Considering the genius and innocence of the accused, he did not make an
able defence; he might have done better. It appeared as if he did not
wish to be acquitted. He took no thought of what he should say; he made
no preparation for so great an occasion. He made no appeal to the
passions and feelings of his judges. He refused the assistance of
Lysias, the greatest orator of the day. He brought neither his wife nor
children to incline the judges in his favor by their sighs and tears.
His discourse was manly, bold, noble, dignified, but without passion and
without art. His unpremeditated replies seemed to scorn an elaborate
defence. He even seemed to rebuke his judges, rather than to conciliate
them. On the culprit's bench he assumed the manners of a teacher. He
might easily have saved himself, for there was but a small majority
(only five or six at the first vote) for his condemnation. And then he
irritated his judges unnecessarily. According to the laws he had the
privilege of proposing a substitution for his punishment, which would
have been accepted,--exile for instance; but, with a provoking and yet
amusing irony, he asked to be supported at the public expense in the
Prytaneum: that is, he asked for the highest honor of the republic. For
a condemned criminal to ask this was audacity and defiance.
We cannot otherwise suppose than that he did not wish to be acquitted.
He wished to die. The time had come; he had fulfilled his mission; he
was old and poor; his condemnation would bring his truths before the
world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a
martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered
great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an
ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was
perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty
of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no
indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not
have fulfilled his mission. He acted with amazing foresight; he took the
only course which would secure a lasting influence. He knew that his
death would evoke a new spirit of inquiry, which would spread over the
civilized world. It was a public disappointment that he did not defend
himself with more earnestness. But he was not seeking applause for his
genius,--simply the final triumph of his cause, best secured by
martyrdom.
So he received his sentence with evident satisfaction; and in the
interval between it and his execution he spent his time in cheerful but
lofty conversations with his disciples. He unhesitatingly refused to
escape from his prison when the means would have been provided. His last
hours were of immortal beauty. His friends were dissolved in tears, but
he was calm, composed, triumphant; and when he lay down to die he
prayed that his migration to the unknown land might be propitious. He
died without pain, as the hemlock produced only torpor.
His death, as may well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
ever since in the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of
Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
America. "No man has ever been found," says Grote, "strong enough to
bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
thinker of antiquity." His teachings gave an immense impulse to
civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
of evil.
* * * * *
AUTHORITIES.
The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's Aristotle. |
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