40 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



guide of his life. Other philosophers called this " opinion ;" Socrates 

 chose to speak of it as his attendant genius. At the same time, it 

 must be confessed, we are told by some authors that this daipoviov 

 made itself heard only in those questions which were not determinable 

 by human prudence. It is evident that most of those who have men- 

 tioned the genius of Socrates, including his immediate scholars, have 

 understood it literally to have been a being of a superior nature ; a 

 very natural opinion for those who were acquainted with the doctrines 

 of the older philosophers, who maintained the existence of a race of 

 spiritual beings, intermediate between the gods and men. Socrates, 

 who had full confidence in the conclusions of that judgment which he 

 had cultivated with so much care, and was convinced that it would 

 not mislead him in matters cognisable by human reason yet studious 

 at the same time to avoid an appearance of laying down the conclu- 

 sions of his own reason, as the sophists used to do, for infallible truths 

 chose to speak of them as the suggestions of this invisible friend ; being 

 at all times very careful not to exalt too highly the powers of the 

 human mind ; and being aware, that even the dictates of right reason 

 might, without impropriety, be referred to the inspiration of a superior 

 power. It is even possible, that, convinced as he was of the existence 

 of a supreme intelligence, and accustomed to find, that when he acted 

 upon the suggestions of his reason, without having sought for them by 

 laborious induction, he was always in the right it is possible, we say, 

 that he might have referred them to the immediate influence of a 

 spiritual adviser, as the enthusiasts of modern days are too apt to do, 

 oftentimes with less reason. But it is truly surprising that any Chris- 

 tian writer should have been found to adduce the genius of Socrates, 

 in order to prove the truth of the Scripture doctrine of angels. It 

 appears, that the great master himself would never vouchsafe to his 

 most intimate friends any explanation touching this ctau/zoVtov. And 

 it is very probable, that the few instances which they record, where 

 Socrates appeared to have determined rightly rather from divination 

 than from the inductions of reason, are not related agreeably to the real 

 facts. Every explanation which has hitherto been given of this curious 

 subject has its difficulties. It appears to us, that the most probable 

 solution of the knot is that which we have proposed in the last place. 

 We cannot, at any rate, coincide in opinion with Brucker, who thinks 

 that Socrates enjoyed " a certain faculty or presentiment, approaching 

 to divination." But, on the other hand, it will not be enough to con- 

 clude, with Plutarch, P. Simon, and others, that this genius was no 

 other than common sense ; unless at the same time we suppose that 

 Socrates himself, struck by the justice and promptitude of his own 

 conclusions in emergencies, which gave no scope to deliberation, did 

 actually refer to the inspiration of a divine monitor, what were in fact 

 the dictates of his own singular natural good sense. For many years 

 he had been an attentive observer of human nature, and had narrowly 

 scrutinised the motives and watched the consequences of actions ; the 



