556 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tion is due in no small degree to the fact that his style is ponderous 

 enough to prevent popularization of his works and to conceal defects in 

 his system of social morals; he will continue to be read by only a few 

 and the verdict of four centuries ago is likely to remain unchallenged. 

 But his enduring reputation is due quite as much to his influence on 

 Christian theology as to his profundity of thought. 



Socrates, as described by his disciples, was a picturesque but by no 

 means a wholly inviting personality. A careless sloven, of unattractive 

 face and figure, a lounger at street corners, neglectful of obligations to 

 his family, casting slurs publicly on his burdened wife, he was able, in 

 spite of all, to hold the admiration of a thoughtful dreamer like Plato, 

 of a young rake like Alcibiades, of brilliant young men about town like 

 Xenophon and Critias. His range of thought was wide and his versa- 

 tility remarkable; he could discuss lofty and commonplace topics with 

 equal ease; he was able to speak with authority respecting the immor- 

 tality of the soul and with equal authority he could advise the fashion- 

 able prostitute, Theodote, as to the best methods of coaxing and of 

 retaining her lovers. Socrates was unquestionably a man of great intel- 

 lect and through his disciples he has exerted great influence on the 

 world ; in his personal morals, he was far superior to his surroundings ; 

 but he was very far from being the ideal sage. 



The essays by Cicero and Seneca are so lofty in tone that the reader 

 is puzzled to determine whether they were written under the influence 

 of a stinging conscience or simply to prove that high thinking may 

 survive low living. Too many moralists then, as in later days, were 

 like guide posts on a wagon — pointing in one direction while traveling 

 in another. It is absurd to look to Greece and Eome for models of 

 purity and devotion. The condition of Greece, literary Greece, was 

 gross beyond conception; it was utter foulness. The lyric poets were 

 dainty indeed, but their daintiness too often was exhausted in admira- 

 tion of the basest vices. Epictetus, in praising the virtue of Socrates, 

 tells incidentally the whole story of Greek morals ; while the high esteem 

 in which the Homeric poems were held shows that, beneath the veneer 

 of civilization, there still existed the savage, even among the scholars. 

 And this was evidenced equally by the glorification of physical perfec- 

 tion; they could not plead the excuse of American college presidents, 

 that it gave them free advertising. In Eome, gross immorality had 

 gained full sway even during the golden age of literature; while, in 

 later times, the moral conditions were so bad that men and women, who 

 would be ordinary mortals in our day, became by contrast with those 

 about them the immortal models of purity and devotion; the dreary 

 platitudes of a Marcus Aurelius shine amid the moral darkness as 

 diamonds in a pile of rubbish. 



The models of honor to be found among Grecian statesmen are such 



