Part 3

But there are greater names than those of Comte and Darwin, who have been quoted as oracular denouncers of all teleology--two of the greatest indeed of all modern names. Bacon and Goethe. The dictum of the great father of modern physical science, that teleology is a barren virgin, has been often repeated. Now, as Bacon was a pious man, at least a religious philosopher, he certainly cannot have meant Atheism by this; what then did he mean? {82} This question will be best answered by considering what Bacon’s attitude as a philosopher was. He was not, like Aristotle, a calm judicial speculator, making a tabulated register of all knowledge; he was rather like Martin Luther, a man of war; and as the ecclesiastical reformer’s life and doctrine derive all their significance from the abuses of the Papacy which they overthrew, so Bacon’s position as a polemical thinker is to be interpreted only with reference to the school of thinking which he attacked. That school was a school fruitful in theories, discussions, and sounding generalities of all kinds, which afforded ample exercise to intellectual athletes, but produced no practical result. To put an end to this vague and unprofitable talk, the British Bacon, with the same practical instinct which guided the Attic Socrates, though in an opposite direction, set himself to establish a scientific method, a method specially calculated by the interrogation of nature to ascertain facts, and from the careful comparison of facts to educe laws. With these investigations into elementary scientific facts the general philosophical principle of final causes had nothing directly to do; nay, it might even act perniciously in an age which had not yet learned the art of careful experiment by accustoming men in an indolent sort of way to spin ingenious theories about the final causes of certain arrangements in the universe, before they had taken pains to ascertain what these arrangements actually were. And when we consider how vast a machine the Cosmos is, and how great the ignorance of us curious emmets who set ourselves to interpret its hieroglyphics, and to spell its scripture, it will be obvious that a warning against the ready luxury of speculating on final {83} causes was one of the most necessary utterances that might come from the mouth of a reformer of scientific method. However far men may rise through the long gradation of secondary causes up to the First Cause, and by the slow steps of progress which we call means to a final result, the preliminary question of course always is, What are the facts? and till these be accurately ascertained Bacon was fully justified in saying that speculation about final causes is a barren virgin and produces no offspring. But this wise abstinence from assigning final causes at any particular stage of physical research is a quite different thing from saying absolutely that there are no marks of design in the universe, and that those most obvious things which from Socrates downwards have been generally esteemed such, may in the phraseology of a higher philosophy “rank as happy coincidences.” The humble admiration of final causes in the world by the intelligent worshipper is one thing, the hasty interpretation of them by every forward religionist is another thing. The works of God are not to be expounded, nor His ends and aims descanted on by every talker who may discourse with fluent propriety on the works of a human toy-maker like himself. Such we may feel confidently was Bacon’s point of view in reference to teleological questions. As for Goethe, who was a scientific investigator of scarcely less note than a poet, his remark to Eckermann on this subject shows that his point of view was exactly the same. Not WHY, or FOR WHAT PURPOSE, or WITH WHAT OBJECT, he says, is the way of putting the question by which science may be profited; the true scientific question is always HOW. Of this there can be no doubt, “Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere {84} causas!” the physical inquirer is primarily concerned to know--how did this come about? by what curiously concatenated series of operations, starting from a certain point beyond which we cannot rise, are certain results produced? Answer this and science is satisfied; but in being so satisfied it proves itself to be a thing of secondary and ancillary significance, resting, like the mathematician’s demonstrations, on principles which it belongs to a superior science to evolve. The whole doctrine of causes, efficient as well as final, belongs to philosophy, to that grand doctrine of fundamental realities which dictates to mere science both its starting-point and its goal. But not even in this view is it altogether correct to say that the consideration of design has nothing to do with purely scientific investigations, and by the purely scientific man had better be ignored. All we can say is, that it is better that it should be ignored in certain cases than falsely presumed. But in a world where everything is under the government of Law, which is merely the expression of reason and the manifestation of design, nothing could be more Arbitrary and more perverse than the systematic exclusion of final causes from the philosophy of nature. So far from this, it is certain there can be no philosophy of nature without them; if indeed atheism can be called a philosophy, and in this nineteenth century, Moses and Plato and the Apostle Paul may be cast from their throne to make way for a resuscitated Greek Epicurus in the person of a conceited French dogmatist! We shall therefore conclude, in accordance with the teaching of Socrates, that an open eye for final causes not only belongs to wisdom, but may often advance science, when proceeding {85} cautiously upon the due observation and connexion of facts; inasmuch as, in the words of an able metaphysician, “this universe is not an accidental cavity in which an accidental dust has been accidentally swept into heaps for the accidental evolution of the majestic spectacle of organic and inorganic life. That majestic spectacle is a spectacle as plainly for the eye of reason as any diagram of the mathematician. That majestic spectacle could have been constructed, was constructed, only in reason, for reason, and by reason; and therefore everywhere, from the smallest particle, to the largest system, moulded and modelled and inhabited by DESIGN.”[85.1]

The theological convictions of Socrates being so strong and so decided, it followed as a necessary consequence, in a person of so practical a character, that he should be a pious man, and that he should practise those rites and services by which the dependent position of man towards the gods is most naturally and effectively expressed. If man, as was taught in the above extract, is the only animal capable of religion, then the worship of the Supreme Intelligence becomes the peculiar sign, privilege, and glory of his humanity. An irreligious man, a speculative or practical atheist, is as a sovereign who voluntarily takes off his crown and declares himself unworthy to reign. Religious worship, therefore, being an act which a man is specially bound to perform in virtue of his humanity, neither Socrates nor any other pious heathen thinker could have any doubt as to the peculiar forms and ceremonies that ought to constitute this act. For all the heathens,--certainly {86} all Greeks and Romans,--held that religion was an essential function of the State, that Church and State, as we phrase it, are one and inseparable, consequently that every good subject owed allegiance to the religious traditions and observances of his countrymen, just as he did to the civil laws.[86.1] The gods were to be worshipped by every good citizen in every state,--νόμῳ πόλεως,--or, as we would say, according to the law of the land; and as the religions of Greece and Rome were not fenced with bristling dogmas in the shape of what we call a {87} Creed and Church Articles, but floated quite freely in the region of reverential tradition, while, at the same time, in those days, no man ever dreamed of haying a religion for himself any more than of having a civil government for himself, the conformity even of great thinkers to the popular faith was not naturally accompanied by any taint of that species of insincerity which has so often attached to the subscription of modern articles of belief. The right {88} of private judgment was exercised by the Greeks only in the domain of philosophical speculation; for teaching the results of these speculations they established schools; but the idea of protesting and dissenting and making a private business of religion, for the maintenance of certain ceremonies, forms of church-government, or favourite doctrines, could never have occurred to them. Neither are we to think it strange if, even as a matter of speculation, minds of great original power, like that of Socrates, should feel no intellectual repugnance to the main principles of a polytheistic faith. There is nothing fundamentally absurd in Polytheism, provided only a wise superintendent Providence be established somewhere to overrule the democratic assembly of subordinate gods; and this the Greeks had prominently in the person of Zeus.[88.1] The other gods, like the angels in the Christian theology, however much their power might be exaggerated by the reverence of particular localities, were in the comprehensive survey of a philosophic mind only the ministers of his supreme will, working harmoniously along with him in the sustainment of the divine fabric of the universe. With this view of Polytheism, pious-minded men such as Socrates, Xenophon, and Plutarch could be perfectly satisfied; and the extravagant and immoral stories about the gods, which excited the bile of Xenophanes and Plato, needed not necessarily to give them any offence. For why? these stories were {89} matter of popular belief, not of intellectual decision or of sacerdotal dictation. A great national poet, like Pindar, might explain, or explain away, in the public assembly of the Greeks, any legends that appeared to him to contain matter unworthy of his lofty conception of the gods. So of course might a philosopher like Socrates. The peasants round Athens believed that the Wind Boreas came down in human form, and carried off the nymph Oreithyia from the banks of the Ilissus; this might or might not be true; Socrates certainly was not bound te believe it; and, as he himself tells us in the Phædrus, he was too busy with more important matters to trouble himself with inquiring into the truth or falsehood of sacred legends in a country where every fountain had its peculiar worship, and every river its divine genealogy. This easy dealing with questions about legends, however, did not in the least imply any want of sincerity in the attitude of doubting thinkers towards the main articles of the Polytheistic creed; on the contrary, the more pliable the legend the less danger was there of its standing in the way of an honest acceptance of the broad fundamental points of the general creed; and it is an altogether gratuitous supposition in a late distinguished writer[89.1] to suppose that when Socrates at his death gave as a dying injunction to his friends to sacrifice a cock, which he had vowed, to Æsculapius, he did this merely from the effect of habit, and that he really did not believe in the existence of the god whom the injunction immediately concerned. While the general evidence of the adherence of Socrates both {90} in theory and practice to the popular creed is so strong, we have no right in any particular instance to set him down as insincere. Of his general sincerity on these matters there certainly can be no doubt. It is set forth distinctly in more than one dialogue of Xenophon, and harmonizes exactly with all that we read in Plato. The philosopher used the common kinds of divination practised by his countrymen, and gave special directions as to the subjects on which a wise man should consult the gods, and on which he should seek for direction from them rather than from his own reason. We have special testimony to the fact that on one occasion (see above, page 11) he, after a long period of pious meditation, offered up a prayer to the Sun; and one of the Platonic dialogues concludes with a prayer of Socrates in the following curt and significant style:--

“O dear Pan, and ye other gods who frequent this spot, grant me, in the first place, to be good within; and as for outward circumstances, may they be such as harmonize well with my inward capacities. Grant me ever to esteem the wise man as the alone wealthy man; and as for gold, may I possess as much of it as a man of moderate desires may know to use wisely.”

So much for the theological belief and unaffected piety of this great man. How intimately he held Religion and Morality to be bound together will best appear from the following dialogue with the Sophist Hippias, on the foundation of natural right and positive law. We give it at length, as it has a direct bearing on some fundamental principles of general jurisprudence which have been largely debated in this country, from Locke down to Bentham and Mill.

“Is it not strange, Hippias, said Socrates, that {91} when a man wishes to have his son taught shoemaking or carpentry or any trade, he has no difficulty in finding a master to whom he may send him for instruction? nay, I have even heard that there are training masters who will teach a horse or an ox to do what they ought to do. But if I wish for myself or my son or my servant, to know the principles of what is right and just, I look in vain for any source whence I might get instruction in these important matters. There you are, said Hippias (who had just returned to Athens after a long absence)--there you are saying exactly the same things that you were saying when I left you! Very true, said Socrates, and not only do I say the same things always, but always about the same things, while you, I presume, on account of your multiform knowledge, on no occasion require to repeat any old truths. Well, I readily confess that I always prefer, when I can, to bring out something new. Do you then mean to say that even when you know a thing thoroughly, and have occasion to speak about it frequently, you can always continue to say something new? as, for example, if any one were to ask you with how many letters to spell Socrates, would you give one reply to-day and another to-morrow? or again, if he should ask if twice five are ten, or any other question of arithmetic, would you give different answers at different times? With regard to matters of that kind, O Socrates, there can be no variation; but with regard to what is JUST and RIGHT a man may constantly make new discoveries, as I think I am in a condition to say something on that subject today, to which neither you nor any man in Athens could put in a demurrer. Now, by Hera! said {92} Socrates, if you have really discovered anything important in this province, any charm that might save a jury from the pain of giving a divided verdict, or good citizens from the necessity of brawling and wrangling with one another, or mighty States from ruining each other by wars, you have made a discovery indeed for which I envy you--and I really do not know how I can let you quit me at present till I have drawn from you the secret of this discovery. That you shall not do, by Jove! said the Sophist, before you first tell me what your own views are on the subject of RIGHT; for this is an old trick of yours, by captious questions to worm answers out of other people, and laugh at them when they are made to contradict themselves, while you refuse to stand question, or pronounce a definite opinion on any point. How can you say this, O Hippias, when you perceive that I am continually employed in doing nothing but bringing to light my notions on right and wrong? In what discourse did you bring this to light, O Socrates? If not in a set discourse, replied the philosopher, certainly by actions; or do you not think that a deed is a much more effective way of declaring a man’s moral principles than a word? More effective unquestionably; for of those who say what is just many do what is unjust; but if a man’s actions are just there is no injustice in him. Well then, Hippias, I ask you, did you ever know me either bearing false witness or playing the informer, or exciting discontent among the people; or doing any other wrong action? Certainly not. But is not abstaining from what is wrong the definition of what is right? There you are again! said Hippias; I catch you in the act; you are {93} wriggling cunningly out of the position, and instead of telling me what just men do, you tell me what they don’t do. I did so because I honestly thought that to abstain from all unjust deeds was a sufficient proof of the existence of justice in the breast of the actor. But if a negative answer does not satisfy you, then take this--I say that Right is conformity to the laws (τὸ νόμιμον δίκαιον εἶναι). Do you then literally mean to say that Right and Law are identical? I do. Well, then, I must tell you, in the first place, that I do not understand what you mean by Law and Right. You know the laws of the State, I presume? Of course. What then are the laws of the State? The laws of the State, said he, are all the enactments which the people have made when they have agreed among themselves as to what things ought to be done and what things ought not to be done. Then, said Socrates, that person would act according to law who obeyed those enactments, and he would be a lawless person who transgressed them? Unquestionably. Then I presume the man who did according to law would act according to rights while the man who transgressed the law would do wrong? Of course. Then you admit that the man who observes law, and the just man, or the man who acts according to right, are identical, and the transgressor of law and the unjust man in the same way? This sounds very well, said Hippias; but how can rectitude, or right, be measured by the standard of laws which the very persons who make them are often the first to repudiate,--enacting the exact contrary? That is not so very strange, said Socrates, for the same parties who declare war to-day may {94} make peace to-morrow. Of course they may, he replied. Well, then, I do not comprehend with what distinction you maintain that, whereas persons who observe the rights of war to-day and the rights of peace to-morrow are not charged with inconsistency, persons obeying any other laws to-day which may be reversed to-morrow are chargeable with unsettling the principles of right; or do you really mean to stand up as a universal peacemonger, and to say that those who serve their country well in war are guilty of a crime? Far from it, said he. Right, said Socrates; for obedience to the laws is really in every good citizen the one thing needful; and Lycurgus, the famous Spartan, would have been not a whit better than other legislators had he not by his institutions worked into the very blood of the people a habit of obedience to the laws; and is it not plain that in all States those governors are universally esteemed the best who know how best to make their laws obeyed, and that the State where the habit of obedience is most confirmed is always the most prosperous in peace and the most invincible in war? Nay more, is not concord universally praised as the greatest good of States, and do not our venerable senators and our best leaders of the people continually exhort men to this virtue? and is it not a fact that in every Greek State there is a special oath taken by the citizens that they will cultivate concord, and above all things shun strife and sedition among themselves? Now I do not conceive that in the prominence thus given to concord it was held forth as desirable that all the citizens should be of the same mind with regard to choruses or flute-players or poets and their performances, but what was intended is that the citizens {95} should above all things obey the laws: for so long as these are generally acknowledged, States will be strong and prosperous, but without concord neither house nor family can stand. Each individual also of a community can thrive only in this way; the man who obeys the laws will always incur less loss and gain more honour than the lawless man; and in the courts, having the law on his side, he will more readily gain his case. And to whom, I ask, would you intrust your property, or your son, or your wife, preferably to the man who fears to violate the laws? in whom will the public authorities more readily confide? From whom more than from the observer of the laws may parents or relations, or friends or citizens or guests, reasonably expect to receive their due? to whom would enemies rather commit the negotiation of truces and treaties? with whom preferably would any State wish to form an alliance? to whom would his allies with greater security intrust the defence of any position, or the command of any detachment? from whom would a benefactor sooner expect to receive a grateful return for the benefit conferred? whom would a man sooner choose for his friend, and more wisely shun as an enemy? In every situation of life the man who respects law is the person whom one would be most benefited by having for his friend, and most damaged by having for his enemy; and, on these grounds, I consider myself justified in concluding generally, O Hippias, that the man who obeys the law, and the just man, or the man who does the right, is one and the same character; and if you have any objections to this doctrine, I should like much to hear them. By Jove! said Hippias, I think I am not able to {96} state any valid objections to what you have said! Tell me, O Hippias, did you ever hear of what we might call UNWRITTEN LAWS? Yes; those laws I presume you mean which are the same in all countries. Can we say, then, do you imagine, that men made such laws? How could that be? men could neither come together for such a purpose, nor, if they did, could they ever agree. Who, then, do you think laid down these laws? In my opinion, the gods; for amongst all men the universal instinct is to acknowledge the gods. Reverence to parents, I presume, falls under the same category--for this is a universal practice. I agree. Then shall we say that the gods are also the authors of the law forbidding sexual intercourse between parents and their offspring? No; I cannot call this a law coming directly from the gods. Why not? Because I see certain, men transgressing this law; it is not universal. But the transgression of a law does not make it less a law; men break many laws; but in the case of the divine laws a penalty waits on the transgressor which it is impossible to escape, as men may, and not seldom do, escape the consequences of violated human laws, whether by persistently undermining or violently overriding them. But what penalty, Socrates, I should like to know, do parents and children incur who practise incestuous intercourse? The greatest of all penalties, the begetting of children in a bad way. But how bad? for being good themselves, that is in good health and of a good stock, what comes from good must of necessity be good. But you forget, rejoined Socrates, that in the procreation of children we must consider not only the original goodness of the stock, but also {97} that the bodies of both individuals concerned in the act should be in their prime; or do you perhaps imagine that from unripe bodies, or bodies sinking into decay, an equally vigorous and healthy seed can flow, as from those which are in their best condition? Certainly not, said Hippias. Then it is plain, said Socrates, that the offspring of such intercourse would not be procreated under favourable natural conditions, and according to the unwritten law of nature are for this reason bad and wrong. Take now another instance: ingratitude, I presume, you will grant is always and everywhere wrong, while to repay kindness by kindness is everywhere an act in harmony with law. Certainly; but this law also is frequently transgressed. Yes; and the transgression brings with it its own punishment, in that the violators of this law are at once deprived of good friends, and forced to cultivate the goodwill of those who they know must hate them;--for are not those who confer benefits on their friends good friends, and do not those who never return obligations to such friends, make themselves hated by them, while, at the same time, on account of the benefits which may accrue from such connexion, they are obliged to go on courting those very persons by whom they are hated? Now, by Jove, said Hippias, I must confess that here I do see plain traces of a divine law; for that laws should bring along with them their own penalty when broken, is a most rare device, to which no mere human legislator has ever yet been able to attain. Well then, Hippias, do you think that the gods, when they make laws, make them in accordance with right, or with what is contrary to right? Not with what is contrary, assuredly; {98} for if laws are to be made in accordance with absolute right, the gods are the only powers that can make them perfectly. And so, Hippias, to finish our long discourse, we conclude that WITH THE GODS LAW AND RIGHT ARE IDENTICAL.”

Now, without maintaining the perfect propriety or sufficiency of all the examples put forward in this argument, the general principles of it state the fundamental axioms of moral philosophy in a way which might have saved a certain modern school of ethical writers volumes of ingenious sophistry, if they had but possessed the natural amount of reverence and knowledge which would have enabled them to appreciate what was good and true in the discourses of the great fathers of their own science. For the unwritten laws whose authority the Athenian evangelist here so eloquently asserts, in goodly harmony with the noble Hebrew prophet (Jeremiah xxxi. 33) before him, and the heroic apostle of the Gentiles (Romans ii. 15) four centuries and a half later, are just the natural and necessary fruit of those innate human actions and divinely implanted instincts in the region of emotion and volition, which Locke, in an evil day for British philosophy, thought it incumbent on him to deny, and by the denial of which a whole school of meagre moralists, from Hume to John Stuart Mill, have either dragged themselves ingloriously in the mire, or entangled themselves in a tissue of the sorriest sophistries. In this dialogue also we see how ably the common sense of the great logical missionary of Greece fought its way through that most inconclusive argument against the immutability of moral distinctions derived from the strange and abnormal habits of certain savage tribes. {99} A law is not the less a law, replied Socrates to the sophistical Hippias, because it may be sometimes or frequently transgressed; and a divine instinct is not the less divine because there are found false instincts and morbid sensibilities in individual men, or even in whole tribes. The type of any race of animals is not to be taken from monsters, nor is the law of the variations of the magnetic needle near ferruginous rocks or in an iron vessel to be paraded as a proof that there is no such thing as magnetic polarity. According to the argument of Socrates, as Aristotle also teaches, the aberrations from the norm of human morality in certain persons or tribes, which so confounded Locke, are no more to be held as arguments against the eternity of innate moral distinctions than the existence of sporadic disease or degenerated types of body can be considered as disproving the fact of health, or the braying of an incidental ass, or even a troop of asses, can be taken as a refutation of one of Beethoven’s symphonies.

On the political opinions and conduct of Socrates a very few words will suffice. We have seen above (p. 14) that, like the apostle Paul, and the preachers of the gospel generally, he kept himself out of all political entanglement; nevertheless as a notable and prominent citizen in what, notwithstanding its great celebrity, we cannot but call a small democratic State, he could not avoid occasionally talking on subjects of public interest, and giving his opinion freely on the conduct of public men. To have done otherwise indeed would have been to have imposed silence on himself in regard to not a few matters which belonged as much to his moral mission as anything that concerned the conduct of private {100} individuals; it would have been also to incur the charge of apathy, indifference and cowardice, than which nothing could have been more hurtful to his influence as a moral teacher. Accordingly, in the book of Xenophon there are not wanting indications of his political tendencies, which we shall here attempt summarily to state.

His fundamental position in regard to all political duties was, as we may have gathered from the conversation with Hippias, the supreme obligation on every good citizen to obey the existing laws. In this sacred, and sometimes, one might feel inclined to think, over scrupulous reverence for law, he agrees with the apostle Paul, but runs directly counter to the received maxims of all democracy, both ancient and modern; for reverence is not an emotion which democracy cherishes; and an impassioned majority is apt to consider every law a usurpation, which applies a drag to its impetuousness or a bridle to its wilfulness.

Whether he was in heart a republican after the Attic type, like Aristotle, or, like his illustrious disciples Plato and Xenophon, cherished a reactionary partiality for the Spartan or monarchico-aristocratic form of government, is difficult to say. Certainly in the Memorabilia there is nothing that savours of an admiration of absolutism, or a blind reverence for Sparta; and though there was in his time a current notion--arising out of recent political misfortunes--that the Athenian character had degenerated, we find him, in a remarkable conversation with young Pericles, rather disposed to vindicate than to exaggerate the faults of his democratic fellow-citizens. At the same time, it is quite certain that as a philosopher, and a man free to look at {101} public affairs from an impartial position, he did not approve of certain principles fondly cherished in the practice of the democracy of which he was a member. If therefore in his heart he wished a democracy at all, he must have wished it, as Aristotle also did, under those checks, and with that tempering admixture of the aristocratic element which would constitute it what Aristotle calls a πολιτεία, and what we should call a moderate republic, or a popular government not founded on mere liberty and equality, and not subject to the overbearing sway of a mere numerical majority. For in the existing democracy of Athens we find him attributing the military mishaps of his countrymen to the circumstance that their officers had no professional training, and the generals of the army were in fact for the most part extemporized.[101.1] This was no doubt a very vulnerable point of the democracy; for we find Philip of Macedon in the next century telling the Athenians sarcastically that they were surely a very wonderful people, inasmuch as they found ten generals to elect every year, whereas he in his whole life had been able to find only one, Parmenio. And in the same spirit the pungent father of the Cynics had told them, after a general election, that they had better go and vote publicly that asses were horses, which would certainly be more reasonable than to vote that certain persons whom they had just stamped with the title of generals were soldiers. As little could Socrates, as a thinking man, and a man of lofty self-reliance, with a more than common amount {102} of moral courage, approve either of the democratic device of choosing important public officers by the blind chance of the ballot, or of that unreasoned usage of all democracies, that a mixed multitude, huddled into the vote, under the influence of sudden passion or subtle intrigue, shall, by a mere numerical majority, decide on the most critical questions, which require comprehensive survey, cool decision, and impartial judgment. Again, as a man of truth, he had a special objection to the method of governing in democracies by pandering to the prejudices of the people rather than by opposing them; and above all things he hated, and was constantly denouncing and exposing, that meretricious and essentially hollow oratory which the man of the people always must practise when the electors, on whose favour he is dependent, have their opinions dictated by local interests and personal passions, rather than by large considerations of public right and the general good. Lastly, as a moralist, he knew that there is no bait more seductive to the human mind than the love of power; to this strong passion democracy applies a constant and potent stimulus; and thus acts directly in bringing the worst and not the best men into situations of public influence and trust; for good men are modest, and more apt to feel the responsibilities than to covet the advantages of political power. Thus far Socrates was decidedly, if not anti-republican, at least anti-democratic; but we must bear in mind also that he and, we may add, all the wise Greeks were equally or even more opposed to the cold selfishness of a narrow oligarchy governing for their own aggrandizement; and that, like every man with Hellenic blood in his veins, he had an instinctive hatred of {103} tyranny and oppression in every shape; and proved this, as Xenophon informs us, in the most decided way, by publicly bearding two of the thirty tyrants, and pursuing quietly his labours of love in their despite.

The prosecution and death of Socrates, which we must now sketch, is one of the most interesting events in history,--useful also in a special degree as a warning to that large class of persons who are inclined to follow the multitude in all things, with unlimited faith in the motto VOX POPULI VOX DEI. Never did a people, in this case a particularly shrewd and intelligent people, cased in the hard panoply of unreasoned tradition, under the distorting influence of prejudice, the exaggerations of personal spite, and the smooth seductions of popular oratory, commit an act of more daring defiance to every principle of truth and justice. Happily we possess evidence of the most distinct and indubitable description with regard both to the nature of the charges brought against the philosopher and the delusions which blinded his judges. In reference to the first point, we have the very words of the indictment, given in the same terms by both Plato and Xenophon. With regard to the second point, wherein the real key to his condemnation lies, we have an ancient comedy--the Clouds of Aristophanes--in which the state of public feeling and popular prejudice in Athens in reference to the philosopher is brought as vividly before us as if it had been a matter of yesterday. In this play--one of the wisest certainly, and one of the most humorous, that ever was written--Socrates is put forward as representing the Sophists; and a picture is drawn of that class of persons, calculated to stir up a whole host {104} of indignant feelings, patriotic and personal, against the philosopher. No doubt the whole affair, so far as Socrates was concerned, was a tissue of the grossest lies; but neither those whose business it is to make jokes for the public, nor the public, who find their pleasure in these jokes, have ever displayed any very scrupulous care in sifting the materials of their mirth. A popular comedy on any event of the day is popular, not because it is true, but because it cleverly tricks out that view of the matter which the multitude delights to think is true; it is the proper pabulum of popular prejudice; and as such there can be no doubt that the gross caricature of Socrates represented in Athens 423 B.C. with great applause, was one of the principal feeders of those local feelings and prejudices by which, twenty-three years afterwards, the great preacher of righteousness was condemned. For we must bear in mind that Socrates was not condemned by a bench of cool lawyers, such as decide cases of heresy in the English Church, but by a jury or popular assembly, most of whom had already prejudged the case; and trial by jury, as large experience in this country has shown, may as readily be made the willing instrument of popular passion, as the strong bulwark against autocratic or oligarchic oppression. And all these sources of evidence bring us to a conclusion which agrees exactly with what might a priori have been predicated from what we know both of the special proclivities of the Athenian people and the general tendencies of human beings, when acting in masses, under the spur of great political or religious excitement.

To state the matter more articulately, the view of the philosopher’s guilt taken by his accusers and the {105} majority of the jury who condemned him, may be comprised under the following five points:--

(1.) Socrates was one of the Sophists; and to the superficial undistinguishing eye of the general public of Athens, like any other public, constitutionally impatient of distinctions, it was as natural to confound the philosopher with his antagonists as it was to Tacitus and other intelligent Romans to confound the first Christians with their greatest enemies, the Jews. Whatever odium therefore in public estimation attached to the profession and principles of a Sophist, necessarily attached to Socrates, as one of the most prominent of the class. He was accordingly assumed to be guilty under the following heads of offence, all of which were truly applicable to the majority of the class of men with whom he was identified.

(2.) The Sophists generally did not believe in the gods of their country, and, more than that, they were sceptical, and even atheistical, in their whole tone and attitude.

(3.) They did not believe in the immutability of moral distinctions, teaching that all morality is based on positive law, custom, fashion, association, or habit.

(4.) And their profession of these principles was the more dangerous, that it was supported by a specious and plausible art of logic and rhetoric, of which the professed object was, with an utter disregard of truth, to make the worse appear the better reason.

(5.) The natural and actual effect of this teaching was to corrupt the youth and undermine both domestic and civic morality.

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This is the full view of the case, as one may gather it from the whole pleadings; but more definitely and succinctly the actual indictment is given by Xenophon in this single sentence:--“SOCRATES BEHAVES WRONGFULLY IN NOT ACKNOWLEDGING THOSE AS GODS WHOM THE STATE HOLDS TO BE GODS, AND IN INTRODUCING NEW GODS OF HIS OWN; HE ACTS WRONGFULLY ALSO IN CORRUPTING THE YOUTH.”

Now the first question which arises on this charge is, whether such a prosecution, according to the law of Athens, was justifiable at all; and on this head we are happy to agree with the view of the case so ably stated by Professor Zeller in his excellent work on the Philosophy of the Greeks. The prosecution, we think, was not justifiable; that is, even though the points had been proven, there was no indictable offence. For though unquestionably both by Hellenic and Roman law a public action lay in theory against all who did not acknowledge the gods of the country, and no man was entitled to entertain private gods without State authority; and though as a matter of fact several eminent persons, such as Anaxagoras and Diagoras, had even in the lifetime of Socrates been tried and banished for the offence of impiety, yet the spirit of toleration was now so large, and the license everywhere assumed had been so great, that to condemn an honest thinker to death for simple heterodoxy, in the year 399 B.C., in Athens, was altogether inexcusable, and could be attributed only to intense personal spite on the part of his prosecutors, and to the crassest prejudice on the part of the jury who tried him.

But the case assumes a much more serious aspect, {107} when it stands proven in the most distinct terms that, even had the prosecution in point of legal practice been justifiable, the defendant as a matter of fact was entirely innocent of all the charges in the indictment. Of this ample evidence shines out in almost every page of the above sketch; and more may be found by whoso cares to seek in almost every chapter of Xenophon. There is no philosopher of antiquity in whom a cheerful piety, according to the traditions of his country, and a reasonable morality, were so happily combined. In this view he stands out in remarkable completeness when compared whether with Confucius in the far east, or with Aristotle in his own country. He stands also as a representative man in this respect above Plato, and incarnates fully both the piety and the philosophy of Athens, just as Chalmers was the incarnation of the religion, the science, the fervour and the practical sagacity of Scotland. Plato, on the other hand, though a man of profound piety, as a transcendental speculator was too lofty in his point of view to be able to reconcile himself to the familiar and sensuous theology of Homer; while Aristotle was defective altogether in the emotional part of his nature, and, like a true encyclopædist, was content to register the gods whom he had not the heart to worship. As to the new gods whom Socrates was said to have introduced, this charge could only have arisen from some gross popular blunder about the δαίμων or genius by whom he used to assert his conduct was often guided. What this δαίμων really was we shall see by and by; but even had it been a real familiar spirit, as was crudely supposed, there was nothing in the idea of such spiritual intercourse contrary to the {108} orthodox conceptions of heathen piety. The third charge against him of corrupting the youth, was merely an application of the charge of irreligion, with the obvious intention of rousing the tender apprehensions of Athenian fathers who believed in the stout old Marathonian sturdiness, and hated the subtle glibness of the rising generation; for in fact, like the late distinguished Baron Bunsen, Socrates was peculiarly the friend of young men, and specially zealous for their good. The answer to such a charge was plain, and was similar to that which might have been made by the Methodists of the last century, when they were charged with leading away the people from the Established Church: If you, the Churchmen, had taken care of the people in the remote corners of Cornwall and Wales, we certainly should never have interfered. So Socrates might well ask his accusers, as we find in Plato’s Apology he did: “If I corrupt the young men, who improves them? It was simply because there was no person who cared to instruct them in the principles of right that there was room for me to come forward as a teacher at all. Your accusation of me is a proof that you neglected your own work.” Why then, we are now prepared to ask, was he condemned? The answer to this is unfortunately only too obvious. The causes of his condemnation were five:--

(1.) Because his freedom of speech as a preacher of righteousness had made him not a few enemies in influential quarters. Though entirely free from every taint of bitterness or ill-will, and even playfully tolerant to human weaknesses, the very reverse, as we have seen, of a modern Calvin, the moment an argument was started he spared no party, who, by {109} the application of the searching logical test, was found to be a dealer in hollow superficialities or pretentious shams; poets, orators, and politicians equally were made to feel the keen edge of his reproof. Against all and each of these he had spoken more truth than they could easily bear; and of that dangerous seed he was now to reap the natural fruit. Truth, which was a jewel of great price to him, was a nauseous drug to many; and the man who administered it could not be looked on with friendly eyes. “Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” was the question directed more than four hundred years afterwards by the great apostle of the Gentiles to some of his perverted churches. So it was also in the days of Socrates, and so it must ever be. Men are by nature not lovers of truth, in the first place, but lovers of themselves, of their own wishes, of their own fancies, of their own belongings. To become lovers of the pure truth they must undergo a process of moral and intellectual regeneration--the new birth of oriental philosophy and of evangelical doctrine.

(2.) Because the religious antipathies of an orthodox public (and the Athenians prided themselves specially on their religiousness) towards a person accused of heterodoxy, scepticism, and atheism are so strong as readily to overbear any evidence that may be adduced to prove the personal piety, and even the literal orthodoxy, of the accused party.

(3.) Because in a democracy, where the judges, or, as we would say, the jury, are a mixed multitude of ignorant and prejudiced people, such motives are apt to be particularly strong.

(4.) Because Socrates, as a man of high principle, {110} and of a perhaps over-strained sense of honour, would not condescend to use any of those intrigues, tricks, and supple artifices which are often applied successfully to overcome the prejudices of an adverse jury. Nay, his attitude seemed more that of a man willing to find in death a noble opportunity for putting a seal upon the great work of his life. He pleaded his own case, which no prudent man does who is anxious merely to gain his case; and his speech is rather a proud assertion of himself against his judges than a politic deprecation of their displeasure.

(5.) Because, no doubt, a certain excitement of the public mind arising out of the troubles of the recent revolutionary government established by the Spartans, and the restoration of the democracy by Thrasybulus, was favourable to the bringing of a charge against a person belonging to a class generally suspected by the people, and one who had unquestionably at times spoken his mind freely enough on the defects, absurdities, and blunders of the local democracy. This political element may certainly have helped; but the charge against the philosopher was not mainly--formally indeed not at all--political, as the pleadings both in Xenophon and Plato sufficiently show.

Taking all these things together, remembering how many follies and ferocities have everywhere been perpetrated in the name of religion, and impressed with the full force of what the poet says of the reward wont to be paid by the world to persistent speakers of truth--

“Die wenigen die von der Wahrheit was erkannt Und thöricht genug ihr volles Herz nicht wahrten Dem Pöbel ihr Gefühl, ihr Schauen offenbarten Hat man von je gekreuzigt und verbrannt,”--

{111} some persons may perhaps feel inclined to think with Mr. Grote that “the wonder rather is that the wise man was not prosecuted sooner. It was only the extraordinary toleration of the Greek people that prevented this.” There is a great amount of truth in this remark; but the exercise of polytheistic toleration in the case of Socrates was rendered more easy by the undoubted innocency of the accused, and the host of friends whom his wisdom and goodness had created for him as his champions. Had Socrates really been as heterodox in Athenian theology as Michael Servetus was in the theology of the Christian world at the period when, in harmony with universal European law, he was burnt by the Genevese Calvinists, we might then have drawn a contrast between monotheistic intolerance and polytheistic toleration in two perfectly similar cases; but as matters really stand, while the execution of Servetus was only a great legal and theological mistake, the death of Socrates must be stamped by the impartial historian as a great social crime. It was equally against local law and human right, a rude invasion of blind prejudice, overbearing insolence, and paltry spite against the holiest sanctities of human life.