From the very centre of the disturbance came the new spirit of order and restoration: Socrates, the Athenian, saved Greece. The older philosophers had discussed nature; he turned all his attention to practical human life. Like the Sophists, he trusted human reason; but unlike them, he aimed not at a display of intellectual dexterity but at reaching the actual basis of human morality, society and politics. Human conduct was the sole subject of his thought and his conversation. Hence the definite, practical value of his influence: his teaching stood in the closest possible relation to life and to the problems of the time. On the other hand, he began with introspection; self-knowledge was what he demanded of every disciple. Hence the inexhaustible significance of his work for philosophy. He gave no set lessons to his pupils, delivered no lectures, wrote no books. He spent his whole time in conversation with individuals, proceeding always by question and answer, thus compelling his companion to think for himself. His extraordinary intellectual skill and the loftiness and simplicity of his character drew all the best intellects of Athens around him. But what gives him his unchallenged supremacy in the history of Greek thought is the fact, that in his hands the sceptical thought, which had caused such dismay everywhere, proved to be the very means of revealing the great realities which men had feared for.[[130]]
In 399 B. C., when he was an old man of seventy years of age, a number of his fellow-citizens brought a criminal case against him, charging him with corrupting the youth of Athens and with impiety. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. A month later he drank the hemlock—such was the Athenian mode of execution—surrounded by his friends.[[131]]
How tragic! Athens, “the school of Hellas,”[[132]] kills her greatest teacher! Socrates, the father of ethical philosophy, the founder of the critical method, the ideal instructor, dies as an impious corruptor of the youth of Athens!
But Socrates was not merely the greatest teacher of his day. All subsequent Greek philosophy is filled with his spirit; indeed the leading schools of thought were founded by his pupils.[[133]] Consequently he is the fountain-head of all Western philosophy and science; for in both Greece was the school-mistress of Europe.
Among all the disciples, Plato best represents the master’s spirit. The Megarians, the Cynics, the Cyrenaics, and, at a later date, the Stoics and the Epicureans, certainly carried on the work of Socrates, but they are deflections from the straight line: they are “imperfect schools,” as Zeller calls them.[[134]] Plato is in the direct line of succession.
He was about twenty years of age when he began to listen to Socrates. Eight years later came the death of the great teacher. Plato then left Athens and spent a number of years in travel and in study in different places. About 390 B. C., however, he returned to the city and set up a philosophical school in a garden called Academia. For forty years thereafter he was the acknowledged leader of philosophic thought and teaching in Athens.[[135]] His influence since his death has rested chiefly on his Dialogues, one of the most perfect literary treasures in the Greek language. The form of these beautiful compositions still reflects the question-and-answer method of Plato’s master; and the debt of the pupil is everywhere acknowledged; for in most of the Dialogues Socrates is the chief interlocutor.[[136]] Among the Dialogues the Republic is universally recognized as the most precious; for it shows us not only his literary art at its highest, but the thought of his matured mind: it represents Plato in his strength.[[137]]
The subject of the Republic is “What is Justice?” It is thus the culmination of the ethical teaching of Socrates. Among the preliminary discussions in this book there occurs a very striking conversation between Glaucon and Socrates, in which the former gives two ideal portraits, one of a man consummately unjust, the other of a man altogether just. Here is the passage:—
“But in actually deciding between the lives of the two persons in question, we shall be enabled to arrive at a correct conclusion by contrasting together the thoroughly just and the thoroughly unjust man,—and only by so doing. Well then, how are we to contrast them? In this way. Let us make no deduction either from the injustice of the unjust, or from the justice of the just, but let us suppose each to be perfect in his own line of conduct. First of all then, the unjust man must act as skilful craftsmen do. For a first-rate pilot or physician perceives the difference between what is practicable and what is impracticable in his art, and while he attempts the former, he lets the latter alone; and, moreover, should he happen to make a false step, he is able to recover himself. In the same way, if we are to form a conception of a consummately unjust man, we must suppose that he makes no mistake in the prosecution of his unjust enterprises and that he escapes detection: but if he be found out, we must look upon him as a bungler; for it is the perfection of injustice to seem just without really being so. We must, therefore, grant to the perfectly unjust man, without any deduction, the most perfect injustice: and we must concede to him, that while committing the grossest acts of injustice, he has won himself the highest reputation for justice; and that should he make a false step, he is able to recover himself, partly by a talent for speaking with effect, in case he be called in question for any of his misdeeds, and partly because his courage and strength, and his command of friends and money, enable him to employ force with success, whenever force is required. Such being our unjust man, let us, in pursuance of the argument, place the just man by his side, a man of true simplicity and nobleness, resolved, as Æschylus says, not to seem, but to be, good. We must certainly take away the seeming; for if he be thought to be a just man, he will have honours and gifts on the strength of this reputation, so that it will be uncertain whether it is for justice’s sake, or for the sake of the gifts and honours, that he is what he is. Yes; we must strip him bare of everything but justice, and make his whole case the reverse of the former. Without being guilty of one unjust act, let him have the worst reputation for injustice, so that his virtue may be thoroughly tested, and shewn to be proof against infamy and all its consequences; and let him go on till the day of his death, steadfast in his justice, but with a lifelong reputation for injustice; in order that, having brought both the men to the utmost limits of justice and of injustice respectively, we may then give judgment as to which of the two is the happier.”
“Good heavens! my dear Glaucon,” said I, “how vigorously you work, scouring the two characters clean for our judgment, like a pair of statues.”
“I do it as well as I can,” he said. “And after describing the men as we have done, there will be no further difficulty, I imagine, in proceeding to sketch the kind of life which awaits them respectively. Let me therefore describe it. And if the description be somewhat coarse, do not regard it as mine, Socrates, but as coming from those who commend injustice above justice. They will say that in such a situation the just man will be scourged, racked, fettered, will have his eyes burnt out, and at last, after suffering every kind of torture, will be crucified; and thus learn that it is best to resolve, not to be, but to seem, just.”[[138]]