[355] Plato, Legg. x. p. 887 A.
[356] Plato, Legg. x. pp. 887 B-E, 888 B, 891 B, 900 B, 907 A-C. καὶ μὴν εἴρηνταί γέ πως σφοδρότερον (οἱ λόγοι) διὰ φιλονεικίαν τῶν κακῶν ἀνθρώπων — προθυμία μὲν δὴ διὰ ταῦτα νεωτέρως εἰπεῖν ἡμῖν γέγονεν.
[357] Plato, Legg. x. pp. 891 D, 885 D.
The third variety of heresy is declared to be the worst — the belief in Gods persuadable by prayer and sacrifice.
Among the three varieties of heresy, Plato considers the third to be the worst. He accounts it a greater crime to believe in indulgent and persuadeable Gods, than not to believe in any Gods at all.[358] Respecting the entire unbelievers, he acknowledges that a certain proportion are so from intellectual, not from moral, default: and that there are, among them, persons of blameless life and disposition.[359] It must be remembered that the foremost of these unbelievers, and the most obnoxious to Plato, were the physical astronomers: those who did not agree with him in recognising the Sun, Moon, and Stars as animated and divine Beings — those who studied their movements as if they were mechanical agents. Plato gives a brief summary of various cosmogonic doctrines professed by these heretics, who did not recognise (he says) either God, or reason, or art, in the cosmogonic process; but ascribed to nature, chance, and necessity, the genesis of celestial and terrestrial substances, which were afterwards modified by human art and reason. Among these matters regulated by human art and reason, were included (these men said) the beliefs of each society respecting the Gods and religion, respecting political and social arrangements, respecting the just and the beautiful: though there were (they admitted) certain things beautiful by nature, yet not those which the lawgiver declared to be such. Lastly, these persons affirmed (Plato tells us) that the course of life naturally right was, for each man to seize all the wealth, and all the power over others, which his strength enabled him to secure, without any regard to the requirements of the law. And by such teaching they corrupted the minds of youth.[360]
[358] Plato, Legg. x. pp. 907 A, 906 B.
[359] Plato, Legg. x. pp. 886 A, 908 B.
[360] Plato, Legg. x. pp. 889-890.
Heretics censured by Plato — Sokrates censured before the Athenian Dikasts.
Who these teachers were, whom Plato groups together as if they taught the same doctrine, we do not know. Having no memorials from themselves, we cannot fully trust the description of their teaching given by an opponent: especially when we reflect, that it coincides substantially with the accusation which Melêtus and Anytus urged against Sokrates before the Athenian Dikastery — viz.: that he was irreligious, and that he corrupted youth by teaching them to despise both the laws and their senior relatives — of which corruption Kritias and Alkibiades were cited as examples. Such allegations, when advanced against Sokrates, are noted both by Plato and Xenophon as the stock-topics, always ready at hand for those who wished to depreciate philosophers.[361]