50 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



enaer thinks it probable that Euripides might intend to shadow out, 

 in the story of * Palamedes,' the ingratitude and injustice of the citizens 

 of Athens towards their illustrious teacher, and to point to the pro- 

 bable result of the popular outcry against him. As to the story of the 

 commiseration expressed by the audience at the lamentation of the 

 chorus, if it ever took place at all, it was, perhaps, at a second repre- 

 sentation of the ' Palamedes,' after the death of Socrates. 



Left no Socrates never committed any of his speculations to writing : those 



writings. wn ieh have been attributed to him have been abundantly proved not 

 to have been his productions ; especially the epistles, which go by his 

 name, but which Bishop Pearson and Dr. Bentley have shown to be 

 the forgery of a sophist of later times. He is reported to have assisted 

 Euripides in writing some of his tragedies, for which rumour there 

 was, probably, no foundation but the intimacy which subsisted between 

 them. 



Person of The person of Socrates is so well known to our readers, that it need 



Socrates. hardly be described. Its resemblance to the representation usually 



given of Silenus, in the works of ancient art, is so strong, that he was 



called, with an allusion to the convivial excesses of his friend, the 



Silenus of Alcibiades. 



As Socrates, instead of addicting himself to any set of philosophical 

 principles as a system, with which every moral and political pheno- 

 menon must be made to square, passed his life in the investigation of 

 truth, and delivered, in plain and unaffected language, the result of 

 patient observations and inquiry, it is not to be wondered at, if some 

 of his followers, who were not superior to the ambition of system- 

 making, instead of treading in the footsteps of their master, struck off 

 Sect8 in different directions, and became the founders of different sects in 



founded by philosophy. Such were Plato, the father of the Academic sect, Aris- 

 rs * tippus of the Cyrenaic, Phsedo of the Eliac, Euclid of the Megaric, and 

 Antisthenes of the Cynic ; all of whom, widely as they differed from 

 one another, pretended to ground their notions upon the authority of 

 their master. 



In the foregoing account of Socrates, we have endeavoured to ob- 

 serve a just impartiality. It is not to be denied, that in some parts of 

 his conduct there was an affectation of singularity, unworthy of so 

 wise a man ; and that he sometimes bestowed much unnecessary 

 labour upon the elucidation of a very common and obvious truth ; but 

 he was undoubtedly the author of a far more genuine and practical 

 philosophy than the Greeks had before been masters of; and taught a 

 system of morality, which, with a very few exceptions, was defective 

 only in its motives. And it is a strong argument of the necessity 

 which existed, before the time of our Saviour, of a divine revelation, 

 that a philosophy, so pure and rational as that of Socrates, enforced as 

 it was by the ablest and most eloquent writers of antiquity, had but 

 little effect in improving the religious or moral character of the most 

 acute and ingenious people of the heathen world. 



