46 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



and with a courage, which nothing but a confidence in his own 

 surpassing abilities, and the justice of the cause which he espoused, 

 could have inspired. Whatever he conceived to be at variance with 

 that free and manly spirit, which had once distinguished his country- 

 men, but which in his time was nearly destroyed by political chica- 

 nery, and the flagitious doctrines of the sophists, he assailed with all 

 the powers of ridicule : and although in many cases, as was to be ex- 

 pected, the innocent suffered with the guilty, and defamation usurped 

 the place of legitimate satire; yet, upon the whole, it is evident, 

 that the object of Aristophanes was, to bring his countrymen to a right 

 way of thinking, and to open their eyes to the artifices, by which they 

 had been so long imposed upon. It is not easy to assign a satisfactory 

 reason for the injurious representation which Aristophanes has given 

 of Socrates, in the comedy before mentioned. But we may probably 

 conjecture, that wishing to attack the sophists in general, of whom 

 Socrates at that time was considered to be one, he took him as a re- 

 presentative of the whole body, and attributed to him that species of 

 philosophy, which it was the constant object of Socrates to decry and 

 discredit. 



The object of the comic poet in * The Clouds,' is to show how the 

 sophistry of the schools may be employed to the perversion of justice 

 and morality. He ridicules, by the way, certain new and fanciful 

 notions touching the relation of children and parents ; and introduces 

 the clouds, as the deities of the new philosophers, who acknowledged 

 no such divinity as Jupiter, or his associate gods. Mr. Cumberland 

 has justly remarked, that although Socrates is exhibited in a very ridi- 

 culous point of view, as hoisted up in a basket, to pursue his astrono- 

 mical studies, and measuring the space over which a flea can skip, yet 

 he lays down no principles of fraud or injustice, as parts of his own 

 system. It is not the teacher who recommends, but his disciples who 

 pervert his instructions to the evil purpose of defrauding their creditors. 

 The son in the play beats his father on the stage, and he quotes in his 

 own justification the maxims of Socrates ; but he does not quote them 

 as positive rules and injunctions for an act so atrocious ; he only shows 

 that sophistry may be turned, to defend that or any other thing 

 equally violent and outrageous. 



It is undoubtedly true, that the schools of the sophists, which the 

 government of Athens thought it necessary to put down by a public 

 decree, were no unfit subjects for dramatic ridicule ; but still the great 

 difficulty recurs, why should Socrates have been selected by the poet, 

 as the representative of that mischievous tribe, rather than Gorgias, or 

 Hippias, or Polus, or some well-known member of the fraternity? 

 Perhaps it was, as some modern critics have supposed, that some of 

 the disciples and friends of Socrates, rather than the philosopher him- 

 self, were the real objects of dislike to Aristophanes ; and that he 

 introduced the teacher himself upon the stage, for the purpose of ridi- 

 culing his school. Three, at least, of the followers of Socrates, were 



