232 Salamis and bring thence their destined victim Leon. Socrates alone disobeyed. But, though he was exception- ally obnoxious to the Thirty, as appears, not only in this incident, but also in their threat of punishment under a special ordinance forbidding " the teaching of the art of argument," it was reserved for the reconstituted demo- cracy to bring him to trial and to put him to death. In 399, four years after the restoration and the amnesty, he was indicted as an offender against public morality. His accusers were Meletus the poet, Anytus the tanner, and Lycon the orator, all of them members of the democratic or patriot party who had returned from Phyle with Thrasy- bulus. The accusation ran thus : " Socrates is guilty, firstly, of denying the gods recognized by the state and introducing new divinities, and secondly, of corrupting the young." In his unpremeditated defence, so far from seek- ing to conciliate his judges, Socrates defied them. He was found guilty by 280 votes, it is supposed, against 220. Meletus having called for capital punishment, it now rested with the accused to make a counter-proposition ; and there can be little doubt that, had Socrates without further re- mark suggested some smaller but yet substantial penalty, the proposal would have been accepted. But, to the amaze- ment of the judges and the distress of his friends, Socrates proudly declared that for the services which he had ren- dered to the city he deserved, not punishment, but the reward of a public benefactor, maintenance in the Pry- taneum at the cost of the state ; and, although at the close of his speech he professed himself willing to pay a fine of one mina, and upon the urgent entreaties of his friends raised the amount of his offer to thirty minas, he made no attempt to disguise his indifference to the result. His attitude exasperated the judges, and the penalty of death was decreed by an increased majority. Then in a short address Socrates declared his contentment with his own conduct and with the sentence. Whether death was a dreamless sleep or a new life in Hades, where he would have opportunities of testing the wisdom of the heroes and the sages of antiquity, in either case he esteemed it a gain to die. In the same spirit he refused to take advantage of a scheme arranged by his friend Crito for an escape from prison. Under ordinary circumstances the condemned criminal drank the cup of hemlock on the day after the trial; but in the case of Socrates the rule that during the absence of the sacred ship sent annually to Delos no one should be put to death caused an exceptional delay. For thirty days he remained in imprisonment, receiving his intimates and conversing with them in his accustomed manner. How in his last conversation he argued that the wise man will regard approaching death with a cheer- ful confidence Plato relates in the Ph&do ; and, while the central argument which rests the doctrine of the soul's immortality upon the theory of ideas must be accounted Platonic, in all other respects the narrative, though not that of an eye-witness, has the air of accuracy and truth. But what were the personal characteristics which won for this man, poor in worldly goods, the affectionate regard of the best of his contemporaries 1 Why was it that the Athenians, forgetting his loyal performance of civic duties, his virtuous life, and his disinterested anxiety for their welfare, brought him to trial, condemned him, put him to death 1 What were the principles upon which his teach- ing rested, and what was the message which, instant in season, out of season, he carried to his countrymen 1 How were his principles interpreted by his followers, and what influence did his teaching exert upon subsequent specula- tion ? These are the questions which demand considera- tion in the present article. Author! Happily, though Socrates left no writings behind him, and indeed, as will hereafter appear, was by his principles ties. precluded from dogmatic exposition, we have in the ' A-n-0/j.vijfj.oveviJ.ara or Memoirs and other works of Xeno- phon records of Socrates's conversation, and in the dialogues of Plato refined applications of his method. Xenophon, having no philosophical views of his own to develop, and no imagination to lead him astray, being, in fact, to Socrates what Boswell was to Johnson, is an excellent witness. The 'ATro/Avr^orei'/zaTa or Memorabilia are in- deed confessedly apologetic, and it is easy to see that nothing is introduced which might embitter those who, hating Socrates, were ready to persecute the Socratics ; but the plain, straightforward narrative of Socrates's talk, on many occasions, with many dissimilar interlocutors, carries with it in its simplicity and congruity the evidence of sub- stantial justice and truth. Plato, though he understood his master better, is a less trustworthy authority, as he makes Socrates the mouthpiece of his own more advanced and even antagonistic doctrine. Yet to all appearance the Apology is a careful and exact account of Socrates's habits and principles of action ; the earlier dialogues, those which are commonly called "Socratic," represent, with such changes only as are necessitated by their form, Socrates's method ; and, if in the later and more important dialogues the doctrine is the doctrine of Plato, echoes of the master's teaching are still discoverable, approving themselves as such by their accord with the Xenophontean testimony. In the face of these two principal witnesses other evidence is of small importance. Personal Characteristics. What, then, were the personal characteristics of the man ? Outwardly his presence was Personal mean and his countenance grotesque. Short of stature, appear- thick-necked, and somewhat corpulent, with prominent auce> eyes, with nose upturned and nostrils outspread, with large mouth and coarse lips, he seemed the embodiment of sensu- ality and even stupidity. Inwardly he was, as his friends Moral knew, "so pious that he did nothing without taking qualities, counsel of the gods, so just that he never did an injury to any man, whilst he was the benefactor of his associates, so temperate that he never preferred pleasure to right, so wise that in judging of good and evil he was never at fault, in a word, the best and the happiest of men." " His self-control was absolute ; his powers of endurance were unfailing ; he had so schooled himself to moderation that his scanty means satisfied all his wants." " To want nothing," he said himself, "is divine; to want as little as possible is the nearest possible approach to the divine life"; and accordingly he practised temperance and self- denial to a degree which some thought ostentatious and affected. Yet the hearty enjoyment of social pleasures was another of his marked characteristics ; for to abstain from innocent gratification from fear of falling into excess would have seemed to him to imply either a pedantic formalism or a lack of real self-control. In short, his strength of will, if by its very perfection it led to his theoretical identification of virtue and knowledge, secured him in practice against the ascetic extravagances of his associate Antisthenes. The intellectual gifts of Socrates were hardly less re-lntel- markable than his moral virtues. Naturally observant, lectual acute, and thoughtful, he developed these qualities by gl Sl constant and systematic use. The exercise of the mental powers was, he conceived, no mere occupation of leisure hours, but rather a sacred and ever-present duty ; because, moral error being intellectual error translated into act, he who would live virtuously must first rid himself of ignor- ance and folly. He had, it may be conjectured, but little turn for philosophical speculation ; yet by the careful study of the ethical problems which met him in himself and in others he acquired a remarkable tact in dealing with questions of practical morality ; and in the course of
