IX. Then Galaxidorus spoke: ‘Hercules! how hard it is to find a man quite free from vanity and superstition! Some are caught by these weaknesses against their will, owing to want of experience or of strength. Others, in order to appear singular and to be taken for friends of the Gods, bring the divine into all they do, making dreams and portents and such stuff a pretext for anything that enters their head. Now, to men in public |580| stations, who are compelled to adapt their lives to a self-willed and petulant multitude, this may have its advantage; superstition is a bit wherewith to check a populace, and direct it to what is expedient. But to Philosophy such posturing is unbecoming in itself, and, moreover, it contradicts her professions; she undertakes to teach all that is good and expedient by the reason, and then, as though in despite of reason, goes back upon the Gods and away from the first principles of action; and, dishonouring demonstration, in which her own excellence is supposed to lie, turns to prophecies and visions seen in dreams, |B| things in which the weakest often have as great success as the strongest. This, I think, Simmias, is why your Socrates embraced a system of intellectual training which bore a more philosophical stamp, choosing that simple artless type as being liberal and most friendly to truth; and casting to the winds for the sophists, as a mere smoke from Philosophy, all pretentious nonsense.’ Theocritus broke in: ‘What, Galaxidorus, and has Meletus persuaded even you too that Socrates despised |C| what was divine, for that was the charge which he actually brought before the Athenians?’ ‘What was divine—no;’ he said, ‘but he received Philosophy from Pythagoras and Empedocles full of visions and myths and superstitions, and deeply dipped in mysteries; and trained her to look at facts, and be sensible, and pursue truth in soberness of reason.’
X. ‘Granted;’ said Theocritus, ‘but as to the Divine Sign of Socrates, good friend, are we to call it a falsity or what? To me, nothing recorded about Pythagoras seems to go so far towards the prophetic and divine. For, in plain words, as Homer has drawn Athena to Odysseus
In all his toils a presence and a stay,[[30]]
even so, apparently, did the spirit attach to Socrates, from the first, a sort of vision to go before and guide his steps in life, which alone
Passing before him shed a light around[[31]]
|D| in matters of uncertainty, too hard for the wit of man to solve; upon these the spirit used often to converse with him, adding a divine touch to his own resolutions. For more, and more important, instances you must ask Simmias and the other companions of Socrates. But I was myself present, having come to stay with Euthyphron the prophet, when Socrates, as you remember, Simmias, was going up to the Symbolum and the house of Andocides, asking some question as he walked and playfully cross-examining Euthyphron. Suddenly he stopped and closed his lips tightly[[32]] and was wrapt in thought for some time. Then he turned back and took the way through the |E| Trunkmakers’ Street, and tried to recall those of our friends who were already in advance, saying that the Sign was upon him. Most of them turned in a body, amongst whom was I, keeping close to Euthyphron. But some young members of the party, no doubt to put the Sign of Socrates to the test, held on, and drew into their number Charillus the flute-player, who had come to Athens with myself, staying with Cebes. Now as they were going through the street of the Statuaries near the Law Courts, they were met by a whole herd of swine loaded with mud and hustling one another by press of numbers. There was no |F| getting out of the way; on they charged, upsetting some, bespattering others. At any rate, Charillus came home with his clothes full of mud and his legs too, so that we always laugh when we remember Socrates and his Sign, and wonder that this divine presence of his should never fail him or forget.’
XI. Then Galaxidorus said: ‘Do you think then, Theocritus, that the Sign of Socrates possessed a special and extraordinary power, not that some fragment of the ready wit which we all share determined him by an empiric process, turning the scale of his reasoning in cases which were uncertain and incalculable? For as a single weight does not by itself incline the balance, but, if added to one scale when the weights are even, sinks the whole of that one on its own side, so |581| a cry, or any such feather-weight sign, will fit[[33]] a mind already weighted, and draw it into action; and when two trains of thought are in conflict, it reinforces one, and solves the difficulty by removing the equality, so that there is a movement and an inclination.’ My father broke in: ‘Well, but I have myself heard, Galaxidorus, from a certain Megarian, who had it from Terpsion, that the Sign of Socrates was a sneeze, proceeding either from himself or from other persons; if some one else sneezed on his |B| right, whether behind or in front, it encouraged him to the action; if on the left, it warned him off it. Of his own sneezings there was one kind which confirmed his purpose when he was still intending to act; another stopped him when he was already acting and checked his impulse. The wonder to me is that if he made use of a sneeze he did not so call it to his companions, but was in the habit of saying that what checked or commanded him was a Divine Sign. For that would be like vanity and idle boasting, not like truth and simplicity, in which lay, as we suppose, his greatness and his superiority to men in general, to be disturbed by a sound from outside or a casual sneeze, and so be diverted from acting, and give up what he had resolved. |C| Now the impulses of Socrates, on the other hand, show firmness and intensity in every direction, as though issuing from a right and powerful judgement and principle. Thus for a man to remain in voluntary poverty all his life, when he might have had plenty, and the givers would have been pleased and thankful, and never to swerve from Philosophy in the face of all those hindrances; and at last, when the zeal and ingenuity of his friends had made his way easy to safety and retreat, not to be bent by their entreaties, nor yield to the near approach of |D| death—all this is not like a man whose judgement might be changed by random voices or sneezings; it is like one led to what is noble by some greater and more sovereign authority. I hear also that he foretold to some of his friends the disaster which befell the power of Athens in Sicily. At a still earlier time, Pyrilampes, the son of Antiphon, when taken prisoner in the pursuit near Delium, after having received from us a javelin wound, as soon as he had heard from those who had arrived from Athens to arrange the truce that Socrates had returned home in safety by The Gullies[[34]] with Alcibiades and Laches, often called upon him by name, and often on friends and comrades of |E| his own who had fled with him by way of Parnes, and been slain by our cavalry; they had disobeyed the Sign of Socrates, he said, in turning from the battle by a different way instead of following his lead. This, I think, Simmias too must have heard.’ ‘Often,’ said Simmias, ‘and from many persons. For there was no little noise at Athens about the Sign of Socrates in consequence.’
XII. ‘Well, then, Simmias,’ said Pheidolaus, ‘are we to allow Galaxidorus in his jesting way to bring down this great fact of divination to sneezings and cries, which plenty of common |F| ignorant persons apply to trifles in mere sport, whereas, when grave dangers overtake them, or more serious business, we may quote Euripides:[[35]]
These follies have a truce when steel is near‘?
Galaxidorus said: ‘I am quite ready to listen to Simmias on this subject, Pheidolaus, if he has himself heard Socrates speak about it, and to join you in believing; but as for all that you and Polymnis have mentioned, it is not hard to refute it. For as in medicine a throb or a pimple is a small matter, but is the indication of what is not small; and as to a pilot the cry of a bird from the open sea, or the scudding of a thin film of cloud, |582| signifies wind and rougher seas, so to a prophetic soul a sneeze or a voice is nothing great in itself, but is the sign of a great conjuncture. There is no art in which it is thought contemptible to forecast great things by small, many things through few. Suppose a man ignorant of the meaning of letters were to see a few insignificant-looking characters, and to refuse to believe that one who knew grammar could, by their help, repeat the story of great wars between old-world peoples, and foundings of cities, and what kings did or suffered, and then were to say |B| that a voice, or something like a voice, revealed and repeated each of these things to that historian, a pleasant laugh would come over your face, my friend, at the ignorance of that man. Now, consider, may it not be so with us? In our ignorance of the meaning of different things by which the prophetic art hits the coming event, are we simple enough to rebel if a man of intellect uses them to reveal something not yet evident, and says, moreover, that a Divine Sign, not a sneeze or a voice, directs him to the facts? For now I turn to you, Polymnis, who wonder that Socrates, a man who did so very much to make Philosophy human by simplicity and absence of cant, should |C| have named his Sign, not a sneeze or a voice, but, in full tragic phrase, his Divine Sign. I, on the contrary, should be surprised if a man so excellent in Dialectic and mastery of terms had said that the sneeze and not the Divine Sign gave him the intimation. As if a man were to say that he had been wounded “by the javelin”, not “by the thrower with his javelin”, or, again, that the weight had been measured “by the balance”, not “by the weigher with his balance”. For the work is not the work of the tool but of the owner of the tool which he uses for the work; and the Sign is a kind of tool used by the signifying power. But, as I said, if Simmias should have anything to tell us we must listen, for his knowledge is more exact.’