SOCRATES. 



299 



back to him; and he is to be regarded as the 

 master who gave philosophical investigation, among 

 the Greeks, its highest direction. Among his most 

 distinguished disciples were Alcibiades, Crito, 

 Xenophon, Antisthenes, Aristippus, Phaedon, JEs- 

 chines, Cebes, Euclid, and Plato. From the de- 

 tached accounts given us by Xenophon and Plato, 

 it appears that he instructed them in politics, 

 rhetoric, logic, ethics, arithmetic, and geometry, 

 though not in a systematic manner; he read with 

 them the principal poets, and pointed out their 

 beauties; he laboured to enlighten and correct 

 their opinions on all subjects of practical prudence, 

 and to excite them to the study of whatever is im- 

 portant to man. The circumstances of his being 

 fettered by no school, and of his merely leading 

 men to reflect for themselves, must have been of 

 the best influence. Plato and Aristotle were more 

 systematic; but to Socrates belongs the honour of 

 having awakened the genius of Plato, and given 

 philosophy its practical direction. Hence the 

 ancients recognised a Socratic school; and the 

 name of Socrates was esteemed, by subsequent 

 philosophers, as one of their most venerable authori- 

 ties. But his philosophy, both in form and matter, 

 was peculiarly the fruit of his own researches. To 

 make his instructions attractive, they were delivered, 

 not in long lectures, but in free conversation, ren- 

 dered interesting by question and answer. He did 

 not reason before, but with his disciples, and thus 

 exercised an irresistible power over their minds. He 

 obliged them to think for themselves, and if there 

 was any capacity in a man, it could not fail to be 

 excited by his conversation. This method of 

 question and answer is called the Socratic method. 

 The fragments of his conversations, preserved by 

 Xenophon, often leave us unsatisfied. Plato alone 

 has transmitted to us the genuine spirit of this 

 method; and he was, therefore, viewed by the 

 ancients as the only fountain of the Socratic philo- 

 sophy a fact which has been too much disregarded 

 by modern writers. The versatile genius of So- 

 crates enabled him to adapt his instructions to the 

 character of his hearers. If they were purled up 

 with their imaginary wisdom, he resorted to 

 ingenious irony, and showed them, by their own 

 contradictory answers, that they were destitute of 

 true knowledge. When he entered into conversa- 

 tion with such men, his object often was, merely 

 to show them their own deficiencies. IJence 

 many of these conversations have little interest to 

 a reader seeking after positive truth, particularly as 

 Socrates turned against his opponents their own 

 weapons, and often appeared as a Sophist. He 

 proceeded very differently with persons unused to 

 reflection, or too distrustful to rely on their own 

 investigations. He met them with the utmost 

 kindness, and let himself down to the humblest 

 understandings, accommodating his instructions -to 

 their previous knowledge. He did not converse 

 with them in pompous language, but resorted to 

 images and arguments drawn from familiar objects. 

 He strove to enlighten them by examples and by 

 other means, which the resources of his compre- 

 hensive mind presented; and the more deeply 

 the hearer penetrated into the spirit and meaning 

 of his words, the more powerfully was he awakened 

 and charmed. Like a spiritual midwife, as he 

 playfully styled himself, he used to proceed with 

 the young men, whose powers he wished to excite 

 to action, so as to lead them inevitably to the 

 truth ; and, although he sought to effect" this ob- 



ject by his interrogatory method, he intermingled 

 longer discourses and explanations, into which he 

 infused all the charms of his eloquence. Hence 

 Alcibiades, in Plato's Banquet, bears the following 

 testimony to his teaching : " When I heard Pericles, 

 or any other great orator, I was entertained and 

 delighted, and I felt that he had spoken well. But 

 no mortal speech has ever excited in my mind such 

 emotions as are kindled by this magician. When- 

 ever I hear him, I am, as it were, charmed and 

 fettered. My heart leaps like an inspired Corybant. 

 My inmost soul is stung by his words as by the 

 bite of a serpent; it is indignant at its own rude 

 and ignoble character. I often weep tears of 

 regret, and think how vain and inglorious is the 

 life I lead. Nor am I the only one that weeps like 

 a child, and despairs of himself; many others are 

 affected in the same way." Socrates was, there- 

 fore, mighty in word. It is vain to seek for proofs 

 of his eloquence in Xenophon, for the charm of oral 

 delivery, the lofty inspiration of the moment, cannot 

 be given to silent writing; and Xenophon does not 

 seem to have intended to draw the true ideal of 

 Socrates not to say he was incapable of doing it. 

 But in Plato we hear the genuine strains of the 

 philosopher. 



Socrates abandoned all inquiries concerning the 

 origin of the universe and of the phenomena of 

 nature, because he esteemed religion and practical 

 morality more important. Astronomy and natural 

 philosophy he by no means despised ; hut the want 

 of accurate knowledge on these subjects in his age 

 led him, perhaps, to confine their sphere within too 

 narrow limits. He turned his attention to practical 

 philosophy, which had been previously neglected, 

 and, according to Aristotle, was the first to lay 

 down general precepts of morality. In this view, 

 it may well be said that he brought philosophy 

 down from heaven to the abodes of men. Xeno- 

 phon says, Socrates always conversed upon things 

 relating to man's nature and condition ; showed 

 the difference between religion and impiety; ex- 

 plained in what the noble and ignoble, justice and 

 injustice, reason and folly, courage and cowardice, 

 consist; what constitutes a state, and what a 

 statesman; spoke of the government of men, and 

 what qualities are requisite in a governor, and 

 other subjects, the knowledge of which he regarded 

 important to a good man, and of which none but the 

 mean-spirited are content to remain ignorant. All 

 his inquiries took a practical turn, and he valued 

 speculation and theory only as connected with 

 practice; for the end of all knowledge, he affirmed, 

 is virtue. Socrates was fully convinced of the 

 existence of an all-ruling, almighty, wise, good, 

 omniscient, and invisible being. The system of 

 nature, and especially the admirable structure of 

 the human frame, seemed to him a positive proof 

 of a Creator. And as man is capable of thought, 

 the same power, he argued, must exist in a still 

 higher degree in the author of reason. The exis- 

 tence of the Deity is as little to be doubted, 

 because he is neither visible nor tangible, as the 

 existence of powers concealed from the senses, but 

 known from their effects. He esteemed it rash to 

 speculate upon the substance of this lofty Being, 

 and deemed it sufficient to set in a clear light his 

 spiritual nature. It is evident that he worshipped 

 one God, as the Creator of the world and the 

 Judge of mankind, because Xenophon represents 

 him as speaking expressly, several times, of one 

 God only, although in other places he speaks o. 



