SOCRATES. 25 



decrees of human laws : TO SiKawv ttvai m x o alff-^pov ov ^vrrct, His opinions 



a\Xa voiiw, " that justice and turpitude are not such by nature, but m morals - 

 by law." * This sentiment is nearly the same as that which was put 

 by Euripides into the mouth of one of the characters in his ^Eolus : 



What is base, which does not seem so to those who do it? 



For there is nothing either good, or bad, 

 But thinking makes it so. 



Shakspeare Hamlet. 



In opposition to this sentiment, Diogenes the Cynic is related to 

 have said, 



ro y aitrxgv, xov ox *v [W *?. 

 What is base, is base, whether it be thought so or not. 



Possibly, however, Archelaus intended merely to deny the existence 

 of a moral sense ; and consequently of any distinction between right 

 and wrong, independently of the will of the legislation : we cannot 

 pronounce him guilty of impiety, till it can be determined whether by 

 , he meant human laws, or the declared will of the Deity. 



In closing this brief account of the Ionic school, we have one re- 

 mark to make, which will throw light upon some transactions in the 

 life of Socrates. It was a leading principle of the received mytho- 

 logy of those times, that all the different operations of nature were 

 performed by the agency of genii, an inferior class of deities, at whose 

 will the lightning flashed, the earth quaked, the stars withdrew their 

 light. Earth, air, and sea were peopled with these imaginary agents, 

 who were subject to the order and control of the superior gods. All 

 the phenomena of the heavens were referred to their respective powers ; 

 and when any portent alarmed an ignorant people, it was attributed 

 to the anger of some offended deity. 



Now the new philosophy, which pretended to assign 'natural and Effects of 

 material causes for these various phenomena, went to pluck up by SJriTf 

 the roots this superstition (emphatically termed by the Greeks, causes of 

 Seifficat.ij.ovia, "a fear of the genii"). The attributing of a solar p e 

 eclipse to the periodical interposition of the moon between the sun 

 and the earth, instead of considering it as a portent sent by some 

 superior power, for the purpose of announcing some approaching 

 calamity, was, in the eyes of the vulgar, nothing less than depriving 

 their deities of a legitimate privilege. And, besides, there was a 

 numerous tribe of people in Greece, called c^yqrou, or expounders, 

 whose trade it was to explain portents, omens, and presages of every 

 kind ; and it was an art productive of no inconsiderable gains to its 

 professors. He, therefore, who undertook to show that these phe- 

 nomena, which resulted from the established and unerring laws of 

 nature, could never be the prognostics of contingent events (inasmuch 

 as they will certainly happen, whether the events themselves happen 



