to prevent all doubt, Socrates, we require you not to discourse with the young at all." Socrates, nothing daunted, asked to be informed more accurately what they meant by "the young." Up to what age was he to consider a man "young"? They said, "up to thirty." He then asked for a definition of "discourse." Might he not inquire the price of a thing, or any person's residence, from a man under thirty? "Yes," said Critias, "but you must now abstain from talking about those shoemakers, carpenters, and smiths that you used to have always in your mouth." "What!" said Socrates, "must I give up speaking of justice and piety and other subjects, to illustrate which I am in the habit of referring to those trades?" "Ay, by Jupiter! you must," said another of the Thirty; "and you must stop speaking of herdsmen too, else you may chance yourself to make the cattle fewer." This conversation shows the coolness of Socrates under the "reign of terror" at Athens.[1] It shows, too, his unpopularity, and how utterly alienated from him a former pupil had become.
Perhaps the most often quoted conversation of Socrates is that which he held with a young man named Aristodemus, who affected to despise religious observance. Having obtained from him the admission that he reverenced the genius of creative artists, Socrates asked him how he could avoid reverencing the intelligent design so copiously exhibited in the framework of man—in the adaptation of the organs to the different
- ↑ Xenophon tells us in another place that Socrates did not pay the slightest attention to the order of the Tyrants.
