556 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
tion is due in no small degree to the fact that his style is ponderous 
enough to prevent popularization of his works and to conceal defects in 
his system of social morals; he will continue to be read by only a few 
and the verdict of four centuries ago is likely to remain unchallenged. 
But his enduring reputation is due quite as much to his influence on 
Christian theology as to his profundity of thought. 
Socrates, as described by his disciples, was a picturesque but by no 
means a wholly inviting personality. A careless sloven, of unattractive 
face and figure, a lounger at street corners, neglectful of obligations to 
his family, casting slurs publicly on his burdened wife, he was able, in 
spite of all, to hold the admiration of a thoughtful dreamer like Plato, 
of a young rake like Alcibiades, of brilliant young men about town like 
Xenophon and Critias. His range of thought was wide and his versa- 
tility remarkable; he could discuss lofty and commonplace topics with 
equal ease; he was able to speak with authority respecting the immor- 
tality of the soul and with equal authority he could advise the fashion- 
able prostitute, Theodote, as to the best methods of coaxing and of 
retaining her lovers. Socrates was unquestionably a man of great intel- 
lect and through his disciples he has exerted great influence on the 
world; in his personal morals, he was far superior to his surroundings ; 
but he was very far from being the ideal sage. 
The essays by Cicero and Seneca are so lofty in tone that the reader 
is puzzled to determine whether they were written under the influence 
of a stinging conscience or simply to prove that high thinking may 
survive low living. Too many moralists then, as in later days, were 
like guide posts on a wagon—pointing in one direction while traveling 
in another. It is absurd to look to Greece and Rome for models of 
purity and devotion. The condition of Greece, literary Greece, was 
gross beyond conception; it was utter foulness. ‘I'he lyric poets were 
dainty indeed, but their daintiness too often was exhausted in admira- 
tion of the basest vices. Epictetus, in praising the virtue of Socrates, 
tells incidentally the whole story of Greek morals; while the high esteem 
in which the Homeric poems were held shows that, beneath the veneer 
of civilization, there still existed the savage, even among the scholars. 
And this was evidenced equally by the glorification of physical perfec- 
tion; they could not plead the excuse of American college presidents, 
that it gave them free advertising. In Rome, gross immorality had 
gained full sway even during the golden age of literature; while, in 
later times, the moral conditions were so bad that men and women, who 
would be ordinary mortals in our day, became by contrast with those 
about them the immortal models of purity and devotion; the dreary 
platitudes of a Marcus Aurelius shine amid the moral darkness as 
diamonds in a pile of rubbish. 
The models of honor to be found among Grecian statesmen are such 
