POST-SOCRATIC SCIENCE AT ATHENS 



though here and there a thinker like Anaxagoras had 

 gained an inkling of it. 



For the moment, indeed, there in Attica, which was 

 now, thanks to that outburst of Periclean culture, the 

 centre of the world's civilization, the trend of thought 

 was to take quite another direction. The very year 

 which saw the birth of Democritus at Abdera, and of 

 Hippocrates, marked also the birth, at Athens, of an- 

 other remarkable man, whose influence it would scarce- 

 ly be possible to over-estimate. This man was Socra- 

 tes. The main facts of his history are familiar to every 

 one. It will be recalled that Socrates spent his entire 

 life in Athens, mingling everywhere with the popu- 

 lace ; haranguing, so the tradition goes, every one who 

 would listen; inculcating moral lessons, and finally 

 incurring the disapprobation of at least a voting ma- 

 jority of his fellow-citizens. He gathered about him 

 a company of remarkable men with Plato at their 

 head, but this could not save him from the disappro- 

 bation of the multitudes, at whose hands he suffered 

 death, legally administered after a public trial. The 

 facts at command as to certain customs of the Greeks 

 at this period make it possible to raise a question as to 

 whether the alleged " corruption of youth," with which 

 Socrates was charged, may not have had a different 

 implication from what posterity has preferred to 

 ascribe to it. But this thought, almost shocking to 

 the modern mind and seeming altogether sacrilegious 

 to most students of Greek philosophy, need not here 

 detain us; neither have we much concern in the 

 present connection with any part of the teaching 

 of the martyred philosopher. For the historian of 



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