106

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES.

CHAPTER V.

THE GREEK AGE OF FAITH.

RISE AND DECLINE OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY.

SOCRATES rejects Physical and Mathematical Speculations, and asserts the Importance of Virtue and Morality, thereby inaugurating an Age of Faith. — His Life and Death. The Schools originating from his Movement teach the Pursuit of Pleasure and Gratification of Self. PLATO founds the Academy.—His three primal Principles.—The Existence of a personal God. -Nature of the World and the Soul.-The ideal Theory, Generals or Types.-Reminiscence. — Transmigration. — Plato's political Institutions. His Republic. His Proofs of the Immortality of the Soul.-Criticism on his Doctrines.

RISE OF THE SKEPTICS, who conduct the higher Analysis of Ethical Philosophy.—Pyrrho demonstrates the Uncertainty of Knowledge.— Inevitable Passage into tranquil Indifference, Quietude, and Irreligion, as recommended by Epicurus. — Decomposition of the Socratic and Platonic Systems in the later Academies.-Their Errors and Duplicities.-End of the Greek Age of Faith.

on the basis of

ethics.

THE Sophists had brought on an intellectual anarchy. It is not in Greek philosophy the nature of humanity to be contented with such a state. Thwarted in its expectations from physics, the Greek mind turned its attention to morals. In the progress of life, it is but a step from the age of Inquiry to the age of Faith.

Socrates: his mode of teaching.

Socrates, who led the way in this movement, was born B.C. 469. He has exercised an influence in some respects felt to our times. Having experienced the unprofitable results arising from physical speculation, he set in contrast therewith the solid advantages to be enjoyed from the cultivation of virtue and morality. His life was one perpetual combat with the Sophists. His manner of instruction was by conversation, in which, according to the uniform testimony of all who heard him, he singularly excelled. He resorted to definitions, and therefrom drew deductions, conveying his argument under the form of a dialogue. Unlike his predecessors, who sought for truth in the investigation of outward things, he turned his attention inward, asserting the supremacy of virtue and its identity with knowledge, and the necessity of an adherence to the strict principles of justice. Considering the depraved condition to which the Sophists had reduced society, he insisted on a change in the manner of education of youth, so as to bring it in accordance with the principle that happiness is only to be found in the pursuit of virtue and goodness. Thus, therefore, he completely substituted the moral for the physical, and in this essentially consists the philosophical revolution he effected. He had no school, properly speaking,

nor did he elaborate any special ethical system; for to those who inquired how they should know good from evil and right from wrong, he recommended the decisions of the laws of their country. It does not appear that he ever entered on any inquiry respecting the na- The doctrines ture of God, simply viewing his existence as a fact of which of Socrates. there was abundant and incontrovertible proof. Though rejecting the crude religious ideas of his nation, and totally opposed to anthropomorphism, he carefully avoided the giving of public offense by improper allusions to the prevailing superstition; nay, even as a good citizen, he set an example of conforming to its requirements. In his judgment, the fault of the Sophists consisted in this, that they had subverted useless speculation, but had substituted no scientific convictions for it. Nevertheless, if man did not know, he might believe, and demonstration might be profitably supplanted by faith. He therefore insisted on the great doctrines of the immortality of the soul and the government of the world by Providence; but it is not to be denied that there are plain indications, in some of his sentiments, that the Supreme Being is the soul of the world. He professed that his own chief wisdom consisted in the knowledge of his own ignorance, and dissuaded his friends from the cultivation of mathematics and physics, since he affirmed opposes mathemat that the former lead to vain conclusions, the latter to ics and physics. atheism. In his system every thing turns on the explanation of terms; but his processes of reasoning are often imperfect, his conclusions, therefore, liable to be incorrect. In this way, he maintained that no one would knowingly commit a wrong act, because he that knew a thing to be good would do it; that it is only involuntarily that the bad are bad; that he who knowingly tells a lie is a better man than he who tells a lie in ignorance; and that it is right to injure one's enemies.

From such a statement of the philosophy of Socrates, we can not fail to remark how superficial it must have been; it perpetually Superficiality mistakes differences of words for distinctions of things; it of his views. also possessed little novelty. The enforcement of morality can not be regarded as any thing new, since probably there has never been an age in which good men were not to be found, who observed, as their rule of life, the maxims taught by Socrates; and hence we may reasonably inquire what it was that has spread over the name of this great man such an unfading lustre, and why he stands out in such extraordinary prominence among the benefactors of his race.

Socrates was happy in two things: happy in those who recorded his life, and happy in the circumstances of his death. It is Causes of the celebnot given to every great man to have Xenophon and rity of Socrates. Plato for his biographers; it is not given to every one who has overpassed the limit of life, and, in the natural course of events, has but a little longer to continue, to attain the crown of martyrdom in behalf of

108

THE DEATH OF SOCRATES.

virtue and morality. In an evil hour for the glory of Athens, his countrymen put him to death. It was too late when they awoke and saw that they could give no answer to the voice of posterity, demanding why they had perpetrated this crime. With truth Socrates said, at the close of his noble speech to the judges who had condemned him, "It is now time that we depart-I to die, you to live; but which has the better destiny is unknown to all except God." The future has resolved that doubt. For Socrates there was reserved the happier lot.

accusations

No little obscurity still remains upon the true nature of this dark transaction. The articles of accusation were three: he rejects the gods The ostensible of his country; he introduces new ones; he perverts the edagainst him. ucation of youth. With truth might his friends say that it was wonderful that he should be accused of impiety, the whole tenor of whose life was reverence for God-a recognition not only of the divine existence, but of the divine superintendence. "It is only a madman," he would say, "who imputes success in life to human prudence;" and as to the necessity of a right education for the young, "It is only the wise who are fit to govern men." We must conclude that the accusations were only ostensible or fictitious, and that beneath them lay some reality which could reconcile the Athenians to the perpetration of so great a crime.

Shall we find in his private life any explanation of this mystery? Unfortunately, the fragments which have descended to us are few. To the investigations of classical criticism we can scarcely look with any hope, for classical criticism has hitherto been in a state of singular innocence, so far as the actual affairs of life are concerned. It regards Athenians and Romans not as men and women like ourselves, but as the personages presented by fictitious literature, whose lives are exceptions to the common laws of human nature; who live in the midst of scenes of endless surprises and occurrences ever bordering on the marvelous.

of Socrates in

If we examine the case according to every-day principles, we can not The character fail to remark that the Socrates of our imagination is a very Athens. different man from the Socrates of contemporaneous Athenians. To us he appears a transcendent genius, to whom the great names of antiquity render their profound homage; a martyr in behalf of principles, of which, if society is devoid, life itself is scarcely of any worth, and for the defense of which it is the highest glory that a man should be called upon to die. To them Socrates was no more than an idle lounger in the public places and corners of the streets; grotesque, and even repulsive in his person; affecting in the oddities of his walking and in his appearance many of the manners of the mountebank. Neglecting the pursuit of an honest calling, for his trade seems to have been that of a stone-cutter, he wasted his time in discoursing with such youths as his lecherous countenance and satyr-like person could gather

HIS CHARACTER.

109 around him, leading them astray from the gods of his country, the flimsy veil of his hypocrisy being too transparent to conceal his infidelity. Nevertheless, he was a very brave soldier, as those who served with him testify. It does not appear that he was observant of those cares which by most men are properly considered as paramount, giving himself but little concern for the support of his children and wife. The good woman Xantippe is, to all appearance, one of those charac- Xantippe ters who are unfairly judged of by the world. Socrates married his wife. her because of her singular conversational powers; and though he himself, according to universal testimony, possessed extraordinary merits in that respect, he found to his cost, when too late, that so commanding were her excellencies that he was altogether her inferior. Among the amusing instances related of his domestic difficulties were the consequences of his invitations to persons to dine with him when there was nothing in the house wherewith to entertain them, a proceeding severely trying to the temper of Xantippe, whose cause would unquestionably be defended by the matrons of any nation. It was nothing but the mortification of a high-spirited woman at the acts of a man who was too shiftless to have any concern for his domestic honor. He would not gratify her urgent entreaties by accepting from those upon whom he lavished his time the money that was so greatly needed at home. After his condemnation, she carried her children with her to his prison, and was dismissed by him, as he told his friends, from his apprehension of her deep distress. To the last we see her bearing herself in a manner honorable to a woman and a wife. There is surely something wrong in a man's life when the mother of his children is protesting against his conduct, and her complaints are countenanced by the community. In view of all the incidents of the history of Socrates, we can come to no other conclusion than that the Athenians regarded him as an unworthy, and perhaps troublesome member of society. There can be no doubt that his trial and condemnation were connected with political measures. He himself said that he should have suffered death previously, He is really the in the affair of Leon of Salamis, had not the government cal animosity. been broken up. His bias was toward aristocracy, not toward democracy. In common with his party, he had been engaged in undertakings that could not do otherwise than entail mortal animosities; and it is not to be overlooked that his indictment was brought forward by Anytus, who was conspicuous in restoring the old order of things. The mistake made by the Athenians was in applying a punishment altogether beyond the real offense, and in adding thereto the persecution of those who had embraced the tenets of Socrates by driving them into exile. Not alone admiration for the memory of their master, but a recollection of their own wrongs, made these men eloquent eulogists. Had Socrates appeared to the Athenians as he appears to us, it is not consistent with

victim of politi

110

THE MEGARIC, CYRENAIC, AND CYNICAL SCHOOLS.

human proceedings that they should have acted in so barbarous and totally indefensible a manner.

ened

If by the Dæmon to whose suggestions Socrates is said to have listThe Dæmon any thing more was meant than conscience, we must inof Socrates. fer that he labored under that mental malady to which those are liable who, either through penury or designedly, submit to extreme abstinence, and, thereby injuring the brain, fall into hallucination. Such cases are by no means of infrequent occurrence. Mohammed was affected in that manner.

The wise should be

After the death of Socrates there arose several schools professing to be founded upon his principles. The divergences they exhibited when compared with one another prove how little there was of precision in The Megaric school. those principles. Among these imitators is numbered insensible to pain. Euclid of Megara, who had been in the habit of incurring considerable personal risk for the sake of listening to the great teacher, it being a capital offense for a native of Megara to be found in Athens. Upon their persecution, Plato and other disciples of Socrates fled to Euclid, and were well received by him. His system was a mixture of the Eleatic and Socratic, the ethical preponderating in his doctrine. He maintained the existence of one Being, the Good, having various aspects-Wisdom, God, Reason, and showed an inclination to the tendency afterward fully developed by the Cynical school in his dogma that the wise man should be insensible to pain.

school. Pleas

With the Megaric school is usually classified the Cyrenaic, founded The Cyrenaic by Aristippus. Like Socrates, he held in disdain physical ure is the ob- speculations, and directed his attention to the moral. In his ject of life. opinion, happiness consists in pleasure; and, indeed, he recognized in pleasure and pain the criteria of external things. He denied that we can know any thing with certainty, our senses being so liable to deceive us; but, though we may not perceive things truly, it is true that we perceive. With the Cyrenaic school, pleasure is the great end and object of life.

ers and gratification

of self.

To these may be added the Cynical school, founded by Antisthenes, The Cynical school: Whose system is personal and ferocious: it is a battle of a contempt for oth- the mind against the body; it is a pursuit of pleasure of a mental kind, corporeal enjoyment being utterly unworthy of a man. Its nature is very well shown in the character of its founder, who abandoned all the conveniences and comforts of life, voluntarily encountering poverty and exposure to the inclemency of the seasons. His garments were of the meanest kind, his beard neglected, his person filthy, his diet bordering on starvation. To the passers-by this ragged misanthrope indulged in contemptuous language, and offended them with the indecency of his gestures. Abandoned at last by every one except Diogenes of Sinope, he expired in the extreme of