Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/116

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106
HIS CONVERSATION WITH A SOPHIST.

from final causes, just as it is used by Paley; and an analogical representation of God as bearing the same relation to the world which the individual soul does to the body. And the conclusion of the whole matter is made to be a recommendation to practical piety.

Xenophon says that "it is due to Socrates not to omit the conversation which he had with Antiphon," a Sophist or professional lecturer of the day. This man had taunted Socrates on his bare feet and scant clothing—the same in winter as in summer,—on his spare diet, and on the general wretchedness of his mode of life. "If Philosophy," he proceeded, "be your mistress, you get from her a worse maintenance than any slave would put up with from his master. It is all because you will not take money—money that cheers the recipient, and enables him to live in a more pleasant and gentlemanlike way. You really set your pupils a bad example in this; you are teaching them to live as miserably as yourself, and you are acting as if your instructions had no value, else why should you give them for nothing?" To this Socrates replied, that doubtless Antiphon would not relish his mode of life, but that for himself it had the charm of independence; that, as he was paid by no one, he owed no service to any; that his plain diet gave him as much pleasure as their luxuries gave to others; that he was, in bodily condition, always ready for anything; that above all he had the happy consciousness of always growing better himself, and of seeing friends about him who were constantly improved in their moral natures; that to want nothing was to be like