M8 



SOCOTHA 



HOCRATKS 



Sorotrn, an island in the Indian Ocean, 150 

 miles E. l>y N from Cape Guardafiii, and 220 from 

 tin 1 southern coast of Ariihin. Seventy miles long 

 by twenty broad, it has an area of 1380 sq. in. The 

 interior embrace* numerous barren plateaus ( 1500 

 to 2000 feet), with several well wooded mountains, 

 rising to 4500 feet j there are fertile valleys lietween 

 the ranges and belts of rich soil along the coasts. 

 The climate is moUt and warm, but he.-ilt hv . Aloes 

 and drain's blood are the chief commercial pro- 

 ducts. The inhabitants, about 10,000 in all, live on 

 dates and the produce of their sheep, goats, and 

 cows. They belong to two distinct types one 

 with a comparatively light-coloured akin and 

 straight hair, the otlier darker with curly hair. 

 But all alike speak the same peculiar language, 

 which has certain affinities with the South 

 Arabian dialect of Mahra. The people show 

 traces of intermixture with Negro, Arab, and 

 Indian tribes ; and in ancient times the inhabitants 

 of Socotra were believed to have been acquainted 

 with Greek civilisation and later to have been 

 Nestorian Christians. Prom the 16th century 

 at least they owed some sort of allegiance to the 

 sultan of Keshin on the Arabian coast. After 

 being occupied by Britain in 1835-39, the island 

 was taken under British protection in 1876 

 and formally annexed in 1886. The chief town is 

 Tamarida on the north coast. The Royal Society 

 and the British Association sent out in 1880 a 

 commission of scientific men to investigate the 

 botany and zoology of the island ; and a German 

 expedition followed them the year after. 



See Yule'* JUarro Polo (vol. ii.). Bent in Nineteenth 

 Century (June 1897), and the Royal Scott ith Geo- 

 graphical Magazine for December 1898. 



Norrati's. the Athenian philosopher, was the 

 son of SophronUcus, a sculptor, and Ph;enarete, a 

 midwife. As he was at least seventy years old at 

 his ,i.-;itii. he cannot have been Ixrni later than 

 469 B.C. He is said, though only by late writers, 

 to have followed his father's profession for a time ; 

 and, in the days of the traveller Pausanias (about 

 160 A.D.), a statue of the Graces, standing at the 

 entrance to the Acropolis, was ascribed to him 

 with what amount of truth it is impossible to say. 

 II received the usual education of an Athenian 

 youth, and learned also geometry and astronomy. 

 He was acquainted with the 'philosophy of Anax- 

 agoras (q.v.), probably only through reading his 

 books, and with other speculations about the 

 physical universe. But he came to consider such 

 ini|iiiries fruitless and disappointing. 'To know 

 one's self ' was a more pressing task than to know 

 about nature. The most important influence on 

 his mental development was his intercourse with 

 the various Sophists (q.v.) who frequented Athens. 

 Plato (Meno 96 D) makes him speak as if he had 

 been a pupil of I'rodiens ; but he w;w in no sense a 

 disciple of that sophist. Though in Xenophon's 

 Memorabilia (ii. 1) he reproduces I'rodicus' moral 

 tale of 'The Choice of Hercules' with approval, he 

 MlogiMS, with obvious irony, for not adorning it 

 with the line language employed by the sophist, 

 who, we know from Plato's Protaiforas, was fond 

 of |iedantic verbal distinctions. With the other 

 fatuous sophists of the time ( Protagoras, Gorgias, 

 Ilippins, \c. ) Socrates stood onlv in the relation of 

 a controversial disputant, though it is clear from 

 the caricature of him by Aristojihanex in the Clum!* 

 (423 B.C.) that ordinary Athenian opinion regarded 

 Socrates as a typical sophist. It may lie noted 

 also that Aristophanes, following the vulgar con- 

 caption of a philosopher, represents his sophist 

 Socrates as engaged in physical researches, though 

 many of the sophists, like Socrates himself, 

 occupied themselves not with nature but with 



questions of direct practical human interest. 

 ites, ill bringing down philosophy from heaven 

 to the oom mem life of men (as Cicero puts it), was 

 only eiirrying out in a conspicuous and earnest way 

 one of the new intellectual tendencies of his age. 

 Socrates, we might say, was the greatest of the 

 sophists, and therefore more than a sophist. 

 Kuripides, the poet of the new ideas, is said to 

 have It-en intimate with Socrates ; and the comic 

 poets alleged that Socrates helped him with his 

 tragedies. Whether Socrates really met Par- 

 menides (q.v.), as represented by Plato, we have 

 no means of saying. 



Socrates took part in three campaigns : he served 

 at Potidsea between 432 and 429, at Delimit in -TJI, 

 and at Amphipolis in 422. His l.i.iveiy, his extra- 

 ordinary physical vigour and indifference to fatigue, 

 or cold, or heat, became known to his comrades 

 during these campaigns. He was a good riti/en, 

 obedient on principle to the laws of nis city ; and 

 he did not hesitate- to face the anger of the people 

 or of tyrants when duty required. The only 

 political office he ever held* was when in 406 he was 

 one of the senate of Five Hundred, and then, 

 whilst he was one of the presiding tribe, he alone 

 refused, at great personal risk, to put to the vote 

 the illegal proposal to try in a Imdy (instead of 

 individually) the generals who had deserted the 

 disabled vessels and left the dead unhuried at 

 Arginusa 1 . And, again, during the usurpation of 

 ' The Thirty ' he dared to disobey an illegal order. 

 He held afoof from politics, restrained by what 

 he believed to be a divine warning, and considering 

 that he had received a call to the pursuit of philo- 

 sophy and could serve his country liest in that 

 way. Socrates wrote no books. He set up no 

 regular school of philosophy. He simply lived 

 constantly in public, frequenting the gymnasia and 

 the market-place. He did not care to go outside 

 the city walls ; ' the trees had nothing to teach 

 him' (as he says in Plato's P/urdriis). It was 

 from men and about men, men of all sorts and eon- 

 ditions, that he desired to learn, wiser than others 

 only in being conscious of his own ignorance. It 

 was in this sense that he interpreted the Delphic 

 oracle, which had said that no one v MS \\ i-er than 

 Socrates. Out of his wide circle of acquaintances 

 some came to be attached to him more closely by 

 ties of affection and admiration : yet there was no 

 formal Ixmd of discipleship. A\ e should rather 

 speak of the voting friends or the companions than 

 of the disciples of Socrates. From two of these, 

 Xenophoii and Plato, we learn all we can know 

 with certainty alxiut his strange personality and 

 his way of thinking. Yet there is this difficulty, 

 that, while Plato often makes Socrates the mouth- 

 iiii-ee of ideas that were in all probability not held 

 by him, \enophoii, a soldier and by no means a 

 philosopher, makes Socrates a very much more 

 commonplace person than he must have l>een. 

 And it must be remembered that Xcnophon wrote 

 expressly to justify Socrates to the average 

 Athenian. If we were dependent on Xenophon 

 alone, it would be unintelligible how Socrates 

 could have been the initiator of a great move- 

 ment in philosophy, and how the Athenians could 

 have been suspicious of so safe and conserva- 

 tive a moralist. Though Plato is apparently not 

 bound by any rigid considerations of historical 

 accuracy in his dialogues, we may yet, accept the 

 picture he gives ns of the habile and conversation 

 of Socrates as a true- portrait a portrait painted 

 by a great imaginative artist. Aristotle, though 

 of course he could only know about Socrates 

 through Plato and others, sometimes supplies, us 

 with a valuable test to discriminate the genuinely 

 Soeratic from the purely PJatonic elements in the 

 dialogues. Xenophon becomes a useful authority 



