Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and himself gained a livelihood by working at his father’s profession. But he devoted himself at an early age to the study of philosophy, and by the extreme simplicity and frugality of his habits was enabled to give up a very large portion of his time to that pursuit. In youth he diligently sought instruction, as far as his means permitted, from the best teachers of those branches of education which were in repute. How soon he gained notoriety as a public teacher himself, is not determined: but he must have been known before the ‘Clouds’ of Aristophanes, in which he is a leading character, was acted, B.C. 423. His conduct, however, was very different from that of the professed teachers for pay, who, at the time of which we speak, were numerous, and if successful, wealthy and influential. He gave no regular lectures in stated periods and places, he required no money from those who attended upon him, and indeed accepted no reward, either from those who heard him in public or those with whom he familiarly associated: private instruction, as a paid teacher, he refused to give, though his conversation was habitually directed to the objects of his public teaching. According to Xenophon,[179] he was always in public; in the morning he was found in frequented walks, or in the gymnasia or places of public exercise; he visited the agora, whenever it was likely to be fullest; he was seen in the evening, where–ever he was likely to meet with the greatest number of persons. Instead of saying that he gave no regular lectures, it would be more correct to say that he never lectured at all: his usual course was to entrap the person upon whom he chose to exercise his dialectic powers, into a conversation, in its outset probably of the most commonplace and unalarming description; and then, by a series of skilfully contrived questions, to lead him, if a pretender to knowledge, to expose his presumption, and ignorance of what he professed to know; or he would take a person confessedly ignorant of the things to be discussed, and lead him step by step in a succession of questions, until he obtained out of the respondent’s mouth the result at which he, the interrogator, wished to arrive.
It would be out of place to enter here upon the discussion of the abstruse question, how far and in what respects Socrates ought to be considered as the founder of a new school of philosophy.[180] Indeed to ascertain exactly what he did teach, is not now possible. Our knowledge of him is derived almost exclusively from two of his pupils, Plato and Xenophon; for all his instructions were oral; he wrote nothing. Now the memoirs (Memorabilia) of Xenophon exhibit “not the whole character of Socrates, but only that part of it which belonged to the sphere of the affections and of social life, and which bore upon the charges brought against him.”[181] In respect of the more extensive and abstruse writings of Plato, it is to be said, that though we may be satisfied that his Socrates, as a whole, is a faithful portrait, yet it is hardly possible to determine exactly what belongs to the master, and what has been deduced from, and engrafted on the doctrines of the master by the scholar. For what Plato teaches, he teaches under the name of Socrates: he advances nothing as his own, and on his own authority.[182] It is easy however, and sufficient for our present purpose, to state the grounds upon which Socrates has commanded the undying love and admiration, not of the learned only, but of all good men. There is a well–known passage of Cicero, which says, “that Socrates first drew down philosophy from heaven, and settled it in cities, and even introduced it into our homes, and made it inquire of life, and morals, and good and bad things.”[183] It is to be understood from this, not that Socrates was the first moral teacher, but that whereas earlier philosophers had directed their attention chiefly to physical and theological questions of the most unfathomable kind, such as the nature, form, and essence of divinity, the nature of matter, the origin and constitution of the universe, &c.; his instructions, on the contrary, were chiefly directed towards explaining the duties of life, and the principles on which the conduct of men in their social relations ought to be regulated. Nor is it impossible that Cicero’s phrase may have been suggested, in some degree, by the novel style of language and illustration which Socrates used, of which we shall presently speak more at length. To physical studies, Socrates, like his predecessors, had once been deeply addicted. Failing to arrive at any certain conclusions, he ceased to apply himself to such pursuits, and bent his own and his pupils’ attention to questions more nearly connected with our social and moral duties; holding, probably, not that these abstruse inquiries were pernicious, or unworthy the attention of a philosopher, but that they ought to be postponed until the understanding was enlightened upon things bearing directly upon the duties and business of life.[184] Against those who doubted or denied the existence of a God, he maintained most ably that existence, and the incorporeal and immortal nature of the soul. In his disputes with the sophists[185] and sceptics, he availed himself of a readiness and dexterity in argument superior to their own; and drawing them by an artful series of questions into inconsistencies and absurdities, exposed at once their arrogance and the falseness of their views. He stated and enforced a system of morality and religion purer and loftier than that of the Pythagoreans (the purest sect of antecedent philosophers); but unlike them, he was accessible to all, clear in all his statements, as far as possible, and ready to explain what was not understood. Ever earnest in recommending temperance, benevolence, piety, justice, and showing that man’s happiness and dignity are determined by his mind and not his fortunes, by virtue and wisdom, not by wealth and rank, his own life was the best example of his precepts. His honesty as a public functionary, we have seen tested in the prosecution of the Athenian generals after the battle of Arginusæ: his private conduct was no less exemplary. Barefooted and poorly clad, he associated with the rich and gay as with the needy, in the same spirit of cheerful goodwill: his advice and instructions were given to all without fee or reward, for his spirit was rigidly independent, and if he possessed little, he wanted less.
Such is a sketch of Socrates, as he is commonly drawn in history, and known to those who are not read in the Greek language. We have endeavoured not to exaggerate his merits; nor must it be attributed to a desire to detract from them, if we proceed to describe the social Socrates in a light which may surprise, and probably startle, many.[186] The portrait of the philosopher is, indeed, too generally known to permit them to ascribe to him that elevated cast of countenance which we associate in our minds with a character such as that just drawn: but they have most likely regarded him as sedate, dignified, and decorous in his manners and conduct. The picture, as we have it from his contemporaries, does not exactly accord with such a notion. A full conviction that what is good is in its nature unalterable, and therefore cannot consist in anything perishable, had led him to esteem what are commonly thought the advantages of life, such as health, riches, pleasure, power, unfit to be the chief objects of our desires, or motives of our actions; and he showed this in his own person by an extreme neglect of the usual luxuries, and even comforts of life. And he was fortunate, inasmuch as his self–denying principles were backed by a robust constitution; so that he was enabled, when serving as a soldier at the siege of Potidæa, to bear an unusual severity of cold with an indifference which his fellow–soldiers attributed to the desire of displaying his own hardihood at their expense. He went barefoot, even in winter; he used the same clothing, winter and summer; he eschewed the favourite Athenian luxury of unguents, and seldom indulged in that other favourite luxury, the bath.
The same eccentricity displayed itself in other parts of his conduct. While serving in the camp before Potidæa, he is said to have stood motionless for a day, from sunrise to sunrise, engaged in meditation. The peculiarity of his personal appearance[187] was well qualified to attract notice, and set off his singular habits: and some of his habits seem better suited to his personal appearance than to his real character; for in his conversation (as it is reported by Plato), he assumed a licence which has given birth to imputations against him, at variance with the purity of morals which he inculcated, and which the concurrent testimony of his followers and biographers asserts that he practised. His favourite associates were the young, among whom he was most likely to gain converts to his own opinions, and accordingly he mixed without scruple in their festivities, and even in their intemperance; though wine was never seen to affect him, and that not from abstinence in his potations. The banquet of Plato, in which Socrates, Alcibiades, Aristophanes, and others are the speakers, ends with a description of the festivities being broken up late at night, by the irruption of a party of drunken revellers, “after which things were no longer carried on regularly, but everybody was compelled to drink a great quantity of wine. On this (said Aristodemus, the relater) several of the party went away, but he himself fell asleep, and slept very abundantly, for the nights were then long. But on awaking towards daybreak, the cocks then crowing, he saw that the other guests were either gone or asleep, and that Agathon, Socrates, and Aristophanes were the only persons awake, and were drinking to the right hand out of a great bowl. Now Socrates was lecturing them: and the rest of his discourse, Aristodemus said he did not remember, for being asleep, he had not been present at the beginning. But the sum of it was, that Socrates compelled them to confess that it was the province of the same man to know how to compose comedy and tragedy, and that he who was by art a tragic poet was a comic poet also. And having been forced to assent to these things, and that without very clearly understanding them, Aristodemus said they fell asleep; and first Aristophanes went to sleep, and then, as the day broke, Agathon. And Socrates, having sent them to sleep, got up and departed; and going to the Lyceum, washed himself, as at other times, and spent the whole day there, and so in the evening went home to rest.”[188]
This is not exactly the sort of scene in which the great teacher of moral philosophy would be expected to figure; but according to the best notions we can form it is a characteristic one, whether drawn literally from the life, or freely coloured by Plato, who, it may be safely concluded, would not have invented such manners for a master whom he loved and venerated. This freedom of speech and life, combined with his personal peculiarities and uncouth and eccentric habits, led Alcibiades to compare him to the Sileni, in the workshops of statuaries, rude figures which, on being opened, showed that they contained inside precious images of the gods.[189] Such a man lay open to a large share of ridicule, and in the earlier part of his vocation as a public instructor, a plentiful share of ridicule was bestowed on him by Aristophanes in his celebrated comedy of the Clouds. At the same time he was not a person to be rashly attacked; and those who were most hostile to him, and to whom he was most hostile, especially the sophists, were for the most part roughly handled, when they ventured to engage with him in a contest of wits. Few of his followers seem to have been really attached to him; but those, to their honour and his, remained faithful and attached both to his person and memory in no common degree. But many frequented his society for a time with eagerness, to enjoy his subtlety of discourse, to be amused by the eminent discomfiture which he usually inflicted on those who ventured publicly to oppose him, and to profit by the novel style of reasoning introduced by him, which, if a powerful instrument of truth when used honestly, was not less adapted, when used skilfully and unscrupulously, to throw all the notions of a commonplace understanding into inextricable confusion. It was probably the latter motive which induced many men eminent in after–life to rank themselves, as we are told, among his pupils; especially three who are recorded to have frequented his society, Alcibiades, Theramenes, and Critias; for we can hardly suppose, from their known characters, that these men, none of them of fair political fame, however attracted by the talents, and studious to derive intellectual benefit from the society of Socrates, were in any degree influenced by the true philosophy which, under this singular coat of eccentricity, he sought to recommend. And as Socrates does not seem to have been beloved in general, even by those who sought his company, so among the citizens at large he obtained none of that gratitude which a life devoted without reward to the public service should seem likely to inspire, except that those who volunteer their services notoriously get small thanks for their pains; especially when those services are directed to enlighten ignorance, or remove prejudice. Nor were his habits calculated to conciliate favour. His self–denial and frugality of life seemed like a tacit reproach to the idle and luxurious, numerous everywhere, and more than commonly numerous at Athens. Again, the dedication of his life to gratuitous teaching, as he conducted it, was one of the most unpopular things about him. If he had given lectures at stated periods to those who chose to hear him, he might have been endured, but his life seems to have been a never–ending lecture, which is wearisome to all people. Even at the banquet he would interrupt the song and dance, the favourite amusements of the Athenians,[190] in favour of the argumentative conversations which he loved above all things: and whether at the banquet or elsewhere, stranger or acquaintance, every person who came across him was liable to be made subject to his moral dissecting knife, in a way which few would very patiently submit to. “You seem to me, O Lysimachus,” says Nicias, in Plato’s Laches, “not to be aware that whosoever may be closely connected with Socrates in argument, as if by birth, and may be attracted to him in disputation, is compelled, though the conversation may begin concerning something quite different, not to leave off, being led round and round by him in discourse, before he falls into giving an account of himself, both how he now lives, and how he has lived in past time; and that when he is thus engaged, Socrates will not let him go before he has scrutinized all these things well and fairly. Now I am used to him, and know that I must go through all this at his hands; and that I shall do so on this occasion. For I rejoice, O Lysimachus, in the company of this man, and think it no bad thing to be reminded of what we have done, or are doing, amiss.”[191]
Not less remarkable than his appearance, and well suited to it, was the language in which these familiar inquiries of Socrates were usually clothed. Constant intercourse with all classes, high and low, had given him a store of familiar illustrations, often more forcible than elegant, derived from the habits and experience of artificers, whose peculiar terms of art he loved to introduce in a style which must have contrasted oddly with the pompous language of the sophists. Alcibiades thus characterizes his style in the banquet of Plato: “A man so unlike all others as Socrates, both for himself and for his manner of conversation, one could hardly find by inquiry, either of those now living nor of old times; unless one were to liken him, as I have said, to no man indeed, but to the Silenuses and Satyrs, both him and his speech. And, in truth, I omitted this in what I said before, that his speech is very like to the figures of Silenus when opened. For if a person should wish to hear the speeches of Socrates, they would appear at first quite ridiculous; in such terms and words are they clothed outwardly, as if it were in the hide of a saucy satyr. For he talks of asses and their burdens, and of braziers, and leather–cutters, and tanners, and always seems to say the same things through the same medium; so that an unwise or unexperienced man would laugh at his words. But he who sees them open, and gets at their inside, will find, first, that they alone, of all discourses, have meaning within them; then that they are most divine, and contain most images of virtue in themselves; and reach to the greatest extent, or rather to everything, which he who wishes to be good and honourable ought to regard.”[192] Now the bulk of those who came into contact with Socrates were unwise or inexperienced; therefore they laughed at him, as Alcibiades said they would; but it is quite as probable that a large portion, especially of those who were entrapped into the sort of cross–examination above described, became angry, or, to use a familiar expression, were bored. We may fairly conjecture that Socrates had the reputation of being the greatest bore of his day;[193] and this in the laughter–loving town of Athens, would have been quite enough to neutralize all notion of gratitude for his persevering attempts to teach his countrymen that they knew little or nothing, instead of everything, as they flattered themselves, or at least everything worth knowing.
Against this man, after he had continued in this singular mode of life at least twenty–four years (for the date of the Clouds informs us that he had obtained some notoriety before the year B.C. 423, in which that comedy was acted), a criminal accusation was brought, B.C. 399, to the following effect:—“Socrates does amiss, not recognizing the gods which the state recognizes, and introducing other new divine natures, and he does amiss in that he corrupts the young.” The originator of the charge was an obscure person named Melitus, (Schleiermacher reads Meletus,) a poet, and a bad one; but he was joined by Lycon, an orator,[194] and Anytus, a man of wealth and consideration in Athens. The cause of that enmity which led to this prosecution is nowhere clearly explained. Mr. Mitford and Mr. Mitchell, who both entertain a sort of horror for democracy, attribute his condemnation to his known dislike of that form of government. With this statement, as a matter of belief, we have no ground of quarrel; if stated as a matter of fact, we know of no direct authority to support it.[195] In the apology of Plato, Socrates says, that his three accusers attacked him, “Melitus being my enemy on account of the poets, but Anytus on account of the artificers and politicians, and Lycon on account of the orators.”[196] This passage would rather suggest the notion of private enmity, which is in some degree confirmed by another passage in the apology of Xenophon, where Socrates refers the dislike of Anytus, to a comment made on his style of bringing up his son.[197] The causes of hatred ascribed to Melitus and Lycon must be explained,—the one by Socrates’ avowed contempt for the fictions of poets; the other to his equally avowed abhorrence of that system of instruction practised by the sophists; of which one, and that the most popular branch, was the teaching oratory as an art, by which any person could be enabled to speak on any subject, however ignorant concerning the real merits of it. This desire to remove Socrates existing, whatever its origin, it could not be gratified without finding some plausible ground to go upon. Nothing could be objected to his actions; as a soldier he had distinguished himself for bravery; as a public officer he had shown inflexible integrity, when the infamous vote was passed for putting to death the generals who won the battle of Arginusæ;[198] and on another occasion, as a citizen, he had refused, when ordered to apprehend Leon of Salamis,[199] at the hazard of life, to perform an act contrary to the laws. The real or alleged character of his philosophy and teaching then was the only handle against him. Of this, we have already said enough in the beginning of this chapter to show that it was difficult to find just ground of complaint against it. But to invent false charges is never difficult; and those which came readiest to hand were the same, to a certain extent, as Aristophanes, in ignorance or wantonness, had long before brought against him. “What,” he says in the Apology, “do my accusers say? It is this, ‘Socrates acts wickedly, and with criminal curiosity investigates things under the earth, and in the heavens. He also makes the worse to be the better argument, and he teaches these things to others.’ Such is the accusation; for things of this kind you also have yourselves seen in the comedy of Aristophanes: for there one Socrates is carried about, who affirms that he walks upon the air, and idly asserts many other trifles of this nature; of which things however I neither know much nor little.”[200] If we are to take this literally, it involves the charge of not believing in any gods at all, for such is the character of Socrates as given in the Clouds; a charge the falsity of which is amply proved both by Xenophon and Plato in their respective apologies. The charge of introducing new deities refers to the dæmon, or divine nature, by which Socrates professed to be guided in his conduct from a child, and which manifested itself by an internal voice, which never suggested anything, but very frequently warned him from that which he was about to do. False, however, as the charge against him was in all respects, Socrates appears to have felt that his condemnation was certain, and to have taken no pains either to avert it or to escape. The orator Lysias is said to have composed a laboured speech which he offered to the philosopher to be used as his defence, but he declined it. His trial came on before the court of Heliæa, the most numerous tribunal in Athens, in which a body of judges sat, fluctuating in number, but usually consisting of several hundreds, chosen by lot from among the body of the citizens. It was not therefore to a bench of judges such as we are used to see them, bred to the law, and presumed at least to be dispassionate and unprejudiced, but to a popular assembly, that he had to plead. Nevertheless, he abstained studiously from every means of working on the passions, even to the usual method of supplication and moving pity by the introduction of his weeping family. Such appeals he thought unbecoming his own character, or the gravity of a court of justice, in which the question of the guilt or innocence of a prisoner ought alone to be regarded. Judgment, as he expected, was pronounced against him, though only by a majority of three. By the Athenian law, the guilt of an accused person being affirmed by the judges, a second question arose concerning the amount of his punishment. The accuser, in his charge, stated the penalty which he proposed to inflict; the prisoner had the privilege of speaking in mitigation of judgment, and naming that which he considered adequate to the offence. Socrates, at this stage of his trial, still preserved the same high tone.[201] If, he said, I am to estimate my own punishment, it must be according to my merits; and as these are great, I deserve that reward which is suited to a poor man who has been your benefactor, namely, a public maintenance in the Prytaneium.[202] Death, he said, he did not fear, not knowing whether it were a change for the better or the worse. Imprisonment and exile he esteemed worse than death, and being persuaded of his own innocence, he would never be party to a sentence of evil on himself. To a fine, if he had money to pay it, he had no objection, since the loss of the money would leave him no worse off than before; and he was able to pay a mina of silver (about 4l. English), he would assess his punishment at that sum: or rather, at thirty minæ, as Plato and three other of his disciples expressed a wish to become his sureties to that amount.
This was not a line of conduct likely to excite pity, and sentence of death was passed by a larger majority than before. He again addressed a short speech to his judges, in which he tells them, that for the sake of cutting off a little from his life, already verging on the grave, they had incurred and brought on the city a lasting reproach, and that he might have escaped, if he would have condescended to use supplications and lamentations. Of his mode of defence, however, he repented not, seeing that he had rather die, having so spoken, than live by the use of unworthy methods; and that to escape death was far less difficult than to avoid baseness. He concluded by an address to the judges, who had voted for his acquittal, stating the grounds of his hopes that death would be a change for the better; the first of which is, that the dæmon had never opposed or checked his intended line of conduct during the whole of these proceedings, nor in his speeches had it ever stopped him from saying anything that he meant to say, as it was used often to do in conversation: from which he inferred, that his invisible guide had approved of all that he did, and that therefore a good thing was about to happen to him. Death, he said, was either insensibility, or a migration of the soul: in the former case, as compared with life, he esteemed it a change for the better; in the latter, if the general belief was true, what greater good could there be than to meet and enjoy the society of the great men of antiquity? Urging, therefore, these just judges to look confidently towards death, and to believe that to a good man, dead or alive, no real harm can happen; he concludes, “It is time that we should depart, I to die, you to live; but which of us to the better thing, is known to the Divinity alone.”
Death usually followed close upon condemnation: but the death of Socrates was delayed by an Athenian usage of great antiquity, said to have been instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of Attica by Theseus from the tyranny of Minos. Every year the sacred ship in which Theseus had sailed to Crete, was despatched with offerings to the sacred island of Delos; and in the interim between its departure and return no criminals were ever put to death. Socrates was condemned the evening before its departure, and consequently he was respited until its return—a period of thirty days. During this time his friends had access to him; and the dialogues of Plato, entitled Criton and Phædon, purport to be the substance of conversations held by him towards the close of this time. If he had been willing to escape, the gaoler was bribed and the means of escape prepared; but this was a breach of the laws which he refused to countenance, and he still thought, as he had said in his speech, exile to be worse than death. On the last day of his life, when his friends were admitted at sunrise, they found him with his wife and one child. These where soon dismissed, lest their lamentations should disturb his last interview with his friends and pupils: and he commenced a conversation which speedily turned on the immortality of the soul, the arguments for which, as they could best be developed by one of the acutest of human intellects, without the assistance of revelation, are summed up in that celebrated dialogue, the Phædon, which professes to relate all the events of this last day of the philosopher’s life. It concludes as follows:—