SOCRATES 



549 



when read in the light of what we know from Plato. 

 Many sayings of Socrates convey profounder mean- 

 ings to the readers of Plato than they prolmhly did 

 to Xenophon himself. Where Xenophon sees only 

 a prudential maxim, Plato finds the germ of a 

 philosophical principle. 



In personal appearance Socrates was odd and 

 even ugly, conspicuously so among a handsome 

 race. He hod a flat nose, thick lips, prominent 

 eyes. Alcibiades (in Plato's Symposium ) compares 

 him to a figure of Silenus. His robust constitution 

 has already been referred to. He always went bare- 

 footed, even during a Thracian winter, and wore the 

 same homely clothing all the year round. He was 

 indifferent to luxury and even to ordinary comfort ; 

 but he was by no means an ascetic. Habitually 

 abstemious and simple, and possessing perfect con- 

 trol over all his appetites, he could at a banquet 

 drink more than any one else without being over- 

 coma He delighted in the society of youths, 

 especially if they had fair minds in fair bodies. 

 From a modern point of view, he might seem to 

 pay too littlft regard to the duties of family life. 

 But we must remember that, though above his age 

 in many ways, he was still of it, an Athenian 

 living almost entirely in a society of men. The 

 well -Known gossip about his wife Xanthippe comes 

 to us mostly from late sources. Xenophon only 

 tells us that she had a shrewish temper, which 

 Socrates bore patiently, admonishing his eldest son 

 Lamprocles of the duty of gratitude to his mother 

 (Mem. ii. 2). It is easy to believe that a man 

 who had a mission, who was willingly poor, and 

 lived very much in public may have been a trying 

 hus1>and, even to an Athenian wife. 



There has been much discussion about the 

 'divine sign' ( daimonion ) of which Socrates used 

 to speak as a supernatural voice which guided 

 him every now and then, according to Xenophon 

 telling him to act or not to act, according to Plato 

 only restraining him from action, never instigating. 

 Later writers, especially in Christian times, speak 

 of it as a dirnmn, genius, or attendant spirit. For 

 this there is no authority whatever in Plato and 

 Xenophon. On the other hand, we cannot, with 

 some modern writers, identify it with the voice of 

 conscience. Socrates speaks of it as a -peculiarity 

 of hU own, and it had not to do with the moral 

 quality of actions in general : it was an occasional 

 inward oracle about the future. Socrates, not dis- 

 believing in oracles and divinations ( though very 

 likely laying less stress on them than the pious 

 Xenophon would have us suppose), seems to have 

 had certain vivid presentiments which he took for 

 special divine monitions ; and it is possible, as has 

 been suggested, that he was subject to occasional 

 hallucinations of hearing, such as may occur even 

 in quite sane and healthy persons. Socrates was 

 eccentric in some ways, and we know that he occa- 

 sionally lcame so absorbed in meditation as to 

 become insensible of the outer world. Alcibiades 

 ( Plato, fiymp. 220) relates that Socrates once stood 

 still for twenty-four hours continuously, entranced 

 in thought. It has also been suggested that in 

 some of his allusions to the divine sign there is a 

 trace of irony, and that he may be indirectly satir- 

 ising the prevalent belief in divination, claiming to 

 have an oracle of his own. 



In any case the average Athenian thought there 

 was something blasphemous in the attitude of 

 Socrates to religion. He was charged in 399, under 

 the restored democracy, (1) with neglecting the 

 gods of the state and introducing new divinities 

 (daimonia), and (2) with corrupting the morals of 

 the young. These were very much the same 

 charges which had been made against him as the 

 typical sophist by Aristophanes twenty-four years 

 before. They were now made the subject of a 



legal prosecution by Meletus, Anytus, and Lyco. 

 The Athenian people, though generally tolerant, 

 were liable to outbursts of fanaticism ; and it must 

 be remembered that the religion of a Greek state 

 was an integral part of its social and political in- 

 stitutions. Furthermore, among the companions of 

 Socrates had been several of the leading men in the 

 oligarchical faction, such as Critias, Charmides, &c. ; 

 and he had also been associated with Alcibiades, 

 who had done so much injury to Athens. A mix- 

 ture of democratic indignation with that bigoted 

 religious and moral conservatism which is not 

 incompatible with democracy must account for the 

 prosecution and its issues. Plato's Apology probably 



fives the substance of the actual defence made by 

 ocrates a bold vindication of his whole life, and 

 not such as would be likely to conciliate an Athen- 

 ian popular jury. Yet the vote of condemnation 

 was carried only by a very small majority (six out 

 of, probably, 500). The punishment had still to be 

 decided on. Socrates himself declared that, if he 

 were treated as his life deserved, he should be 



maintained at the public expense in the Prytane 



Iding to the pressure of his friends, 



. .neum. 



But at length, yielding t 



who were trying to save him, he agreed to pay a 

 fine of thirty mime (i.e. about 120), for which his 

 friends undertook to be his sureties. Provoked by 

 what doubtless seemed to them obstinacy and 

 insolence in the old man, the judges voted the 

 penalty of 'death,' which Meletus had proposed in 

 the indictment : according to Diogenes Laertius 

 (q.v.), this was carried by eighty more votes than 

 the original condemnation. The execution of 

 the sentence was delayed for thirty days because 

 of a sacred embassy to Delos. His friends, who 

 hail free access to him, planned his escape from 

 prison ; but he refused to break the laws of the 

 state. His last day was spent with his friends, as 

 described in Plato's Phcedo ; and in the evening he 

 drank the hemlock. 'Such was the end,' Plato 

 makes Phaedo say, 'of our friend, whom I may 

 truly call the wisest and justest and best of all the 

 men whom I have ever known.' Later writers tell 

 how the Athenians repented and punished his 

 accusers ; but there is no evidence for this in the 

 writers of the 4th century B.C. 



The life and philosophy of Socrates are insepar- 

 ably connected. Yet he must not be thought of 

 as simply a good man who tried to influence others 

 for good". He sought to base conduct on know- 

 ledge. He went about convincing men not so 

 much of sin as of ignorance. What is called the 

 ' irony ' of Socrates is his manner of affecting ignor- 

 ance in the presence of the seeming wise, in order 

 to draw from them an admission of the confusions 

 and contradictions resulting from their opinions. 

 But his conclusion was not mere scepticism or 

 despair of knowledge. He claimed to follow, in 

 the intellectual sphere, his mother's profession, 

 and to help those in labour with new ideas to 

 bring them to the birth : this is his 'maieutic,' i.e. 

 obstetric art. For this reason he always adopted 

 the method of question and answer the 'dialectic 1 

 method in its literal sense. Aristotle (Met. xiii. 4) 

 says that Socrates introduced the method of induc- 

 tion and the search for general definitions. This 

 is a somewhat technical and formal description of 

 the manner and aim of the conversations of Socrates. 

 The Socratic ' induction ' consists in going to par- 

 ticular instances. Socrates was laughed at for the 

 homeliness of his illustrations : he was always 

 talking about carpenters and weavers and shoe- 

 makers. 



Ethics was the only part of philosophy with 

 which Socrates cared to occupy himself, and in 

 ethics his main doctrine may be summed up in the 

 formula 'Virtue is knowledge; vice is ignorance.' 

 ( Bentham's saying, ' Vice is miscalculation,' is a 



