A strange melancholy used to fall over me in my youth when, reading the Dialogues, I tried to picture to myself that circle of eager and anxious disciples surrounding him. I used to admire the handsome ones, those dressed in the richest garments, and on whom his round and prominent eyes—those new eyes of his, in which there was a look peculiar to himself—rested oftenest. My imagination prolonged the adventures of the strangers who came to him from afar, like the Thracian Antisthenes, who travelled forty stadia a day to hear him, and like Euclides, who—the Athenians having forbidden the citizens of Megara to enter Athens, and decreed the worst of punishments for the transgressors—dressed himself in woman’s clothes, and thus clothed and veiled, left his own city towards evening, and made a long journey in order to be present at the discourses of the Sage; then at dawn went on his way again in the same disguise, his breast filled with unquenchable enthusiasm. And I felt touched by the fate of the beautiful Elian youth Phaedo, who, after having been made a prisoner of war in his own country, and sold to the keeper of a house of ill-fame, escaped to Socrates, and by his means obtained redemption and admission to the feasts of pure thought.
It seemed to me, indeed, that this genial master surpassed the Nazarene in generosity. Perhaps the Hebrew, if his enemies had not slain him in the flower of his years, would at last have shaken off the weight of his sadness, found new savour in the ripe fruits of his Galilee, and pointed out a different ideal of good to his followers. The Greek philosopher had always loved life; he loved it, and taught men to love it. Nearly infallible as a prophet and seer, he welcomed all souls in which his penetrating glance had discovered any force, and in each one he developed and elevated that natural force, so that all those inspired by his fire revealed themselves in the power of their diversity. The highest value of his method was that very result of which his enemies accused him: that from his school—where met honest Crito and Plato, the follower of Urania, and the raving Apollodorus, and the kindly Theætetus, who is like a noiseless river of oil—there went forth also the luxurious Cyrenian, Aristippus, and Critias, the most violent of the Thirty Tyrants, and the other tyrant Charicles, and that marvellous breaker of laws, Alcibiades, who put no limit to his premeditated violence. “My heart leaps when I hear his discourses far more than at the sound of the Corybantes,” said the son of Clinia, like a graceful wild animal crowned with ivy and violets, at the close of a banquet where the guests had received from Silenus’ mouth the grand initiation of Diotima. No fairer wreath of praise was ever woven to deify any man upon earth.
Now, what were the energies stimulated in me by this master? What harmonies did he lead me to find?
At first he captivated me by his singular faculty of feeling the fascination even of evanescent beauty, of making, with a certain restraint, distinctions among ordinary pleasures, and of recognising the value which the idea of death confers upon the grace of earthly things.
Pure and austere as he was in the act of speculation, he yet possessed such exquisitely fine senses that they might almost be called the skilled artists of his sensations.
No guest at any of the banquets—according to Alcibiades, an excellent judge—knew so well how to enjoy them as he. At the beginning of the banquet of Xenophon, he, with the others, contemplates the perfect beauty of Autolycus in long silence, almost as if he recognised in it some superhuman presence. Afterwards he discourses, with subtle taste, of perfumes, dancing, and drinking, not without vivid images to adorn his discourse, as becomes a sage and a poet.
Thus, while contending with Critobulus in jest for the palm of beauty, he uttered these words: “Since my lips are thicker, thinkest thou not that my kiss must be softer than thine?” He advised the Syracusan, who gave a performance there of dancing, in which a flute-player, a marvellous dancing-girl, and a boy harpist took part, not to force the three young bodies to unnatural efforts and into dangerous postures, which give no pleasure to the spectator, but to leave it to their youthful freshness, accompanied by the sound of the flute, to fall into such attitudes as belong to the Nymphs, the Graces, or the Hours as they are commonly painted. And so to the disorder which only amazes he opposes the order which pleases, and stands revealed once again as a cultivator of music and a master of style.
That which in days gone by touched me more than anything else were his last words to a beautiful frail creature whom he loved. They touch me still, for my soul loves now and then to slacken its tension in the voluptuous sadness and passionate perplexity which the sense of continual change, continual passing away, continual decay, is apt to produce in a life adorned by the noblest culture.
In the dialogue of the last evening I am not so much moved by the scene where Crito, charged by him who was to administer the hemlock, interrupts the condemned man’s discourse, and admonishes him not to heat himself if he wishes the poison to take rapid effect, and the brave man smiles and goes on with his inquiry; nor is the musical simile of the swan magicians and their harmonious joy so dear to me; nor am I so amazed by those last moments, when in brief actions and brief sayings this man fulfils his ideal of perfection so clearly, and, like an artist who has given the finishing touch to his work, gazes contentedly at his own image—a miracle of style—destined for ever to remain immortal upon earth; I am not touched by any of these as I am by that unexpected pause which follows the doubts opposed by Cebes and Simmias to the certainty displayed by the eloquent master.