SOCRATES. 43 



to the human mind. Those only will justly estimate the merit of that 

 near approach to it which Socrates made, who will take the pains to 

 gather, as they may from the writings of his contemporaries and prede- 

 cessors, how little conception of it was entertained before his time ; 

 how dull to a just moral sense the human mind has really been ; how 

 slow the progress in the investigation of the moral duties, even where 

 not only great pains have been taken, but the greatest abilities zealously 

 employed ; and, when discovered, how difficult it has been to establish 

 them by proofs beyond controversy, or proofs even that should be gene- 

 rally admitted by the reason of men. It is through the light diffused 

 by his doctrine, enforced by his practice, with the advantage of having 

 both the doctrine and practice exhibited to the highest advantage, in 

 the incomparable writings of disciples, such as Xenophon and Plato, 

 that his life forms an era in the history of Athens, and of man." 



Our readers are w r ell aware that one imputation has been cast upon Calumnies 

 the moral character of Socrates, of the most disgraceful kind : but it | 1 e i ^ ecting 

 has been by writers of an age much more recent than that of Socrates, 

 and chiefly by Porphyrv, and some fathers of the Christian church. 

 The authorities upon which it rests have been collected by Mr. Cum- 

 berland in the * Observer,' or rather by Dr. Bentley, whose papers his 

 grandson is now known to have pillaged without scruple. But these 

 authorities may justly be considered as destitute of weight, when put 

 in competition with the total absence of any aspersion of the kind in 

 ' The Clouds ' of Aristophanes, and with the direct and united testi- 

 mony of Plato and Xenophon to the purity and integrity of Socrates. 

 These charges, as Mr. Mitford justly observes, carry every appearance 

 of having originated in the virulence of party-spirit ; and they have 

 been propagated by writers in the profligate ages that followed : a 

 propensity to involve men of the best report, in former times, in the 

 scandal of that gross immorality which disgraced the fall of Greece and 

 Rome, is conspicuous among some of the writers under the Roman 

 empire. There cannot be a stronger negative argument "to rebut the 

 charge of scandalous immorality, than the silence, both of Aristophanes, 

 (who scrupled at no indecency of expression or of representation 1 ) and 

 of the accusers of Socrates, who were not deterred from calumniating 

 the object of their hatred, by any regard for truth. (The reader may 

 see this question discussed more at length in a dissertation by the 

 Abbe Fraguier, * Choix des Memoires de 1' Academic Royale,' t. iii. p. 

 29). The wisdom of Socrates, his benevolence, and the purity of his 

 morals, were so remarkably superior to those of his contemporaries, that 

 some Jewish and Christian writers have maintained, with more zeal 

 than judgment, that he derived his knowledge of divine things from 

 an acquaintance with the Scriptures of the Old Testament; while 

 some of the defenders of natural religion affect to contrast the ethics of 

 Socrates with those which are inculcated in the Gospel. But even if 



1 The classical reader, who calls to mind the representation which the comic poet 

 has given of Euripides, will consider this argument as almost conclusive. 



