Nor is it at all more true that they were men of mere words, and made their pupils no better,—a charge just as vehemently pressed against Sokratês as against the sophists,—and by the same class of enemies, such as Anytus,[621] Aristophanês, Eupolis, etc. It was mainly from sophists like Hippias that the Athenian youth learned what they knew of geometry, astronomy, and arithmetic: but the range of what is called special science, possessed even by the teacher, was at that time very limited; and the matter of instruction communicated was expressed under the general title of “Words, or Discourses,” which were always taught by the sophists, in connection with thought, and in reference to a practical use. The capacities of thought, speech, and action, are conceived in conjunction by Greeks generally, and by teachers like Isokratês and Quintilian especially; and when young men in Greece, like the Bœotian Proxenus, put themselves under training by Gorgias or any other sophist, it was with a view of qualifying themselves, not merely to speak, but to act.[622]
Most of the pupils of the sophists, as of Sokratês[623] himself, were young men of wealth; a fact, at which Plato sneers, and others copy him, as if it proved that they cared only about high pay. But I do not hesitate to range myself on the side of Isokratês,[624] and to contend that the sophist himself had much to lose by corrupting his pupils,—an argument used by Sokratês in defending himself before the dikastery, and just as valid in defence of Protagoras or Prodikus,[625]—and strong personal interest in sending them forth accomplished and virtuous; that the best-taught youth were decidedly the most free from crime and the most active towards good; that among the valuable ideas and feelings which a young Athenian had in his mind, as well as among the good pursuits which he followed, those which he learned from the sophists counted nearly as the best; that, if the contrary had been the fact, fathers would not have continued so to send their sons, and pay their money. It was not merely that these teachers countervailed in part the temptations to dissipated enjoyment, but also that they were personally unconcerned in the acrimonious slander and warfare of party in his native city; that the topics with which they familiarized him were, the general interests and duties of men and citizens; that they developed the germs of morality in the ancient legends, as in Prodikus’s fable, and amplified in his mind all the undefined cluster of associations connected with the great words of morality; that they vivified in him the sentiment of Pan-Hellenic brotherhood; and that, in teaching him the art of persuasion,[626] they could not but make him feel the dependence in which he stood towards those who were to be persuaded, together with the necessity under which he lay of so conducting himself as to conciliate their good-will.
The intimations given in Plato, of the enthusiastic reception which Protagoras, Prodikus, and other sophists[627] met with in the various cities; the description which we read, in the dialogue called Protagoras, of the impatience of the youthful Hippokratês, on hearing of the arrival of that sophist, insomuch that he awakens Sokratês before daylight, in order to obtain an introduction to the new-comer and profit by his teaching; the readiness of such rich young men to pay money, and to devote time and trouble, for the purpose of acquiring a personal superiority apart from their wealth and station; the ardor with which Kallias is represented as employing his house for the hospitable entertainment, and his fortune for the aid, of the sophists; all this makes upon my mind an impression directly the reverse of that ironical and contemptuous phraseology with which it is set forth by Plato. Such sophists had nothing to recommend them except superior knowledge and intellectual force, combined with an imposing personality, making itself felt in their lectures and conversation. It is to this that the admiration was shown; and the fact that it was so shown, brings to view the best attributes of the Greek, especially the Athenian mind. It exhibits those qualities of which Periklês made emphatic boast in his celebrated funeral oration;[628] conception of public speech as a practical thing, not meant as an excuse for inaction, but combined with energetic action, and turning it to good account by full and open discussion beforehand; profound sensibility to the charm of manifested intellect, without enervating the powers of execution or endurance. Assuredly, a man like Protagoras, arriving in a city with all this train of admiration laid before him, must have known very little of his own interest or position, if he began to preach a low or corrupt morality. If it be true generally, as Voltaire has remarked, that “any man who should come to preach a relaxed morality would be pelted,” much more would it be true of a sophist like Protagoras, arriving in a foreign city with all the prestige of a great intellectual name, and with the imagination of youths on fire to hear and converse with him, that any similar doctrine would destroy his reputation at once. Numbers of teachers have made their reputation by inculcating overstrained asceticism; it will be hard to find an example of success in the opposite vein.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
SOKRATES.
That the professional teachers called sophists, in Greece, were intellectual and moral corruptors, and that much corruption grew up under their teaching in the Athenian mind, are common statements, which I have endeavored to show to be erroneous. Corresponding to these statements is another, which represents Sokratês as one whose special merit it was to have rescued the Athenian mind from such demoralizing influences; a reputation which he neither deserves nor requires. In general, the favorable interpretation of evidence, as exhibited towards Sokratês, has been scarcely less marked than the harshness of presumption against the sophists. Of late, however, some authors have treated his history in an altered spirit, and have manifested a disposition to lower him down to that which they regard as the sophistical level. M. Forchhammer’s treatise: “The Athenians and Sokratês, or Lawful Dealing against Revolution,” goes even further, and maintains confidently that Sokratês was most justly condemned as an heretic, a traitor, and a corrupter of youth. His book, the conclusions of which I altogether reject, is a sort of retribution to the sophists, as extending to their alleged opponent the same bitter and unfair spirit of construction with that under which they have so long unjustly suffered. But when we impartially consider the evidence, it will appear that Sokratês deserves our admiration and esteem; not, indeed, as an anti-sophist, but as combining with the qualities of a good man, a force of character and an originality of speculation as well as of method, and a power of intellectually working on others, generically different from that of any professional teacher, without parallel either among contemporaries or successors.
The life of Sokratês comprises seventy years, from 469 to 399 B.C. His father, Sophroniskus, being a sculptor, the son began by following the same profession, in which he attained sufficient proficiency to have executed various works; especially a draped group of the Charites, or Graces, preserved in the acropolis, and shown as his work down to the time of Pausanias.[629] His mother, Phænaretê, was a midwife, and he had a brother by the mother’s side named Patroklês.[630] Respecting his wife Xanthippê, and his three sons, all that has passed into history is the violent temper of the former, and the patience of her husband in enduring it. The position and family of Sokratês, without being absolutely poor, were humble and unimportant but he was of genuine Attic breed, belonging to the ancient gens Dædalidæ, which took its name from Dædalus, the mythical artist as progenitor.
The personal qualities of Sokratês, on the other hand, were marked and distinguishing, not less in body than in mind. His physical constitution was healthy, robust, and enduring, to an extraordinary degree. He was not merely strong and active as an hoplite on military service, but capable of bearing fatigue or hardship, and indifferent to heat or cold, in a measure which astonished all his companions. He went barefoot in all seasons of the year, even during the winter campaign at Potidæa, under the severe frosts of Thrace; and the same homely clothing sufficed to him for winter as well as for summer. Though his diet was habitually simple as well as abstemious, yet there were occasions, of religious festival or friendly congratulation, on which every Greek considered joviality and indulgence to be becoming. On such occasions, Sokratês could drink more wine than any guest present, yet without being overcome or intoxicated.[631] He abstained, on principle, from all extreme gymnastic training, which required, as necessary condition, extraordinary abundance of food.[632] It was his professed purpose to limit, as much as possible, the number of his wants, as a distant approach to the perfection of the gods, who wanted nothing, to control such as were natural, and prevent the multiplication of any that were artificial.[633] Nor can there be any doubt that his admirable bodily temperament contributed materially to facilitate such a purpose, and assist him in the maintenance of that self-mastery, contented self-sufficiency, and independence of the favor[634] as well as of the enmity of others, which were essential to his plan of intellectual life. His friends, who communicate to us his great bodily strength and endurance, are at the same time full of jests upon his ugly physiognomy; his flat nose, thick lips, and prominent eyes, like a satyr, or silenus.[635] Nor can we implicitly trust the evidence of such very admiring witnesses, as to the philosopher’s exemption from infirmities of temper; for there seems good proof that he was by natural temperament violently irascible; a defect which he generally kept under severe control, but which occasionally betrayed him into great improprieties of language and demeanor.[636]
Of those friends, the best known to us are Xenophon and Plato, though there existed in antiquity various dialogues composed, and memoranda put together, by other hearers of Sokratês, respecting his conversations and teaching, which are all now lost.[637] The “Memorabilia” of Xenophon profess to record actual conversations held by Sokratês, and are prepared with the announced purpose of vindicating him against the accusations of Melêtus and his other accusers on the trial, as well as against unfavorable opinions, seemingly much circulated respecting his character and purposes. We thus have in it a sort of partial biography, subject to such deductions from its evidentiary value as may be requisite for imperfection of memory, intentional decoration, and partiality. On the other hand, the purpose of Plato, in the numerous dialogues wherein he introduces Sokratês, is not so clear, and is explained very differently by different commentators. Plato was a great speculative genius, who came to form opinions of his own distinct from those of Sokratês, and employed the name of the latter as spokesman for these opinions in various dialogues. How much, in the Platonic Sokratês, can be safely accepted either as a picture of the man or as a record of his opinions,—how much, on the other hand, is to be treated as Platonism; or in what proportions the two are intermingled,—is a point not to be decided with certainty or rigor. The “Apology of Sokratês,” the “Kriton,” and the “Phædon,”—in so far as it is a moral picture, and apart from the doctrines advocated in it,—appear to belong to the first category; while the political and social views of the “Republic” and of the treatise “De Legibus,” the cosmic theories in the “Timæus,” and the hypothesis of Ideas, as substantive existences apart from the phenomenal world, in the various dialogues wherever it is stated, certainly belong to the second. Of the ethical dialogues, much may be probably taken to represent Sokratês, more or less Platonized.
But though the opinions put by Plato into the mouth of Sokratês are liable to thus much of uncertainty, we find, to our great satisfaction, that the pictures given by Plato and Xenophon of their common master are in the main accordant; differing only as drawn from the same original by two authors radically different in spirit and character. Xenophon, the man of action, brings out at length those conversations of Sokratês which had a bearing on practical conduct, and were calculated to correct vice or infirmity in particular individuals; such being the matter which served his purpose as an apologist, at the same time that it suited his intellectual taste. But he intimates, nevertheless, very plainly, that the conversation of Sokratês was often, indeed usually, of a more negative, analytical, and generalizing tendency;[638] not destined for the reproof of positive or special defect, but to awaken the inquisitive faculties and lead to the rational comprehension of vice and virtue as referable to determinate general principles. Now this latter side of the master’s physiognomy, which Xenophon records distinctly, though without emphasis or development, acquires almost exclusive prominence in the Platonic picture. Plato leaves out the practical, and consecrates himself to the theoretical, Sokratês; whom he divests in part of his identity, in order to enrol him as chief speaker in certain larger theoretical views of his own. The two pictures, therefore, do not contradict each other, but mutually supply each other’s defects, and admit of being blended into one consistent whole. And respecting the method of Sokratês, a point more characteristic than either his precepts or his theory,—as well as respecting the effect of that method on the minds of hearers,—both Xenophon and Plato are witnesses substantially in unison: though, here again, the latter has made the method his own, worked it out on a scale of enlargement and perfection, and given to it a permanence which it could never have derived from its original author, who only talked and never wrote. It is fortunate that our two main witnesses about him, both speaking from personal knowledge, agree to so great an extent.