Socrates served as a hoplite at Potidaea (432-429), where on one occasion he saved the life of Alcibiades, at Delium (424), and at Amphipolis (422). In these campaigns his bravery and endurance were conspicuous. But, while he thus performed the ordinary duties of a Greek citizen with credit, he neither attained nor sought political position. His “divine voice,” he said, had warned him to refrain from politics, presumably because office would have entailed the sacrifice of his principles and the abandonment of his proper vocation. Yet in 406 he was a member of the senate; and on the first day of the trial of the victors of Arginusae, being president of the prytanes, he resisted— first, in conjunction with his colleagues, afterwards, when they yielded, alone—the illegal and unconstitutional proposal of Callixenus, that the fate of the eight generals should be decided by a single vote of the assembly. Not less courageous than this opposition to the “civium ardor prava jubentium” was his disregard of the “vultus instantis tyranni” two years later. During the reign of terror of 404 the Thirty, anxious to implicate in their crimes men of repute who might otherwise have opposed their plans, ordered five citizens, one of whom was Socrates, to go to Salamis and bring thence their destined victim Leon. Socrates alone disobeyed. But, though he was exceptionally 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 democracy 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 Thrasybulus. 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 seeking 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 remark suggested some smaller but yet substantial penalty, the proposal would have been accepted. But, to the amazement of the judges and the distress of his friends, Socrates proudly declared that for the services which he had rendered to the city he deserved, not punishment, but the reward of a public benefactor,—maintenance in the Prytaneum 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 cheerful confidence Plato relates in the Phaedo; 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? 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? What were the principles upon which his teaching rested, and what was the message which, instant in season, out of season, he carried to his countrymen? How were his principles interpreted by his followers, and what influence did his teaching exert upon subsequent speculation? These are the questions which demand consideration in the present article.

Happily, though Socrates left no writings behind him, and indeed, as will hereafter appear, was by his principles precluded from dogmatic exposition, we have in the ’Απομνημονεύματα or Memoirs and other works of Xenophon 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 ’Απομνημονεύματα or Memorabilia are indeed 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 substantial 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 mean and his countenance grotesque. Short of stature, thick-necked, and somewhat corpulent, with prominent eyes, with nose upturned and nostrils outspread, with large mouth and coarse lips, he seemed the embodiment of sensuality and even stupidity. Inwardly he was, as his friends knew, “so pious that he did nothing without taking 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 selfdenial 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 remarkable than his moral virtues. Naturally observant, acute, and thoughtful, he developed these qualities by 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 ignorance 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 the lifelong war which he waged against vagueness of thought and laxity of speech he made himself a singularly apt and ready reasoner.

While he regarded the improvement, not only of himself but also of others, as a task divinely appointed to him, there was in his demeanour nothing exclusive or pharisaical. On the contrary, deeply conscious of his own limitations and infirmities, he felt and cherished a profound sympathy with erring humanity, and loved with a love passing the love of women fellow-men who had not learnt, as he had done, to overcome human frailties and weaknesses. Nevertheless great wrongs roused in him a righteous indignation which sometimes found expression in fierce and angry rebuke. Indeed it would seem that Plato in his idealized portrait gives his hero credit not only for a deeper philosophical insight but also for a greater urbanity than facts warranted. Hence, whilst those who knew him best met his affection with a regard equal to his own, there were, as will be seen hereafter, some who never forgave his stern reproofs, and many who regarded him as an impertinent busybody.

He was a true patriot. Deeply sensible of his debt to the city in which he had been born and bred, he thought that in giving his life to the spread of sounder views in regard to ethical and political subjects he made no more than an imperfect return; and, when in the exercise of constitutional authority that city brought him to trial and threatened him with death, it was not so much his local attachment, strong though that sentiment was, as rather his sense of duty which forbade him to retire into exile before the trial began, to acquiesce in a sentence of banishment when the verdict had been given against him, and to accept the opportunity of escape which was offered him during his imprisonment. Yet his patriotism had none of the narrowness which was characteristic of the patriotism of his Greek contemporaries. His generous benevolence and unaffected philanthropy taught him to overstep the limits of the Athenian demus and the Hellenic race, and to regard himself as a “citizen of the world.”

He was blest with an all-pervading humour, a subtle but kindly appreciation of the incongruities of human nature and conduct. In a less robust character this quality might have degenerated into sentimentality or cynicism; in Socrates, who had not a trace of either, it showed itself principally in what his contemporaries knew as his “accustomed irony.” Profoundly sensible of the inconsistencies of his own thoughts and words and actions, and shrewdly suspecting that the like inconsistencies were to be found in other men, he was careful always to place himself upon the standpoint of ignorance and to invite others to join him there, in order that, proving all things, he and they might hold fast that which is good. “Intellectually the acutest man of his age,” says W. H. Thompson in a brilliant and instructive appendix to his edition of Plato’s Phaedrus, “he represents himself in all companies as the dullest person present. Morally the purest, he affects to be the slave of passion, and borrows the language of gallantry to describe a benevolence too exalted for the comprehension of his contemporaries. He is by turns an ἐραστής, a πρoαγωγός, a µαστρoπός , a µαιευτικoς , disguising the sanctity of his true vocation by names suggestive of vile or ridiculous images. The same spirit of whimsical paradox leads him, in Xenophon’s Banquet, to argue that bis own satyr-like visage was superior in beauty to that of the handsomest man present. That this irony was to some extent calculated is more than probable; it disarmed ridicule by anticipating it; it allayed jealousy and propitiated envy; and it possibly procured him admission into gay circles from which a more solemn teacher would have been excluded. But it had for its basis a real greatness of soul, a hearty and unaffected disregard of public opinion, a perfect disinterestedness, an entire abnegation of self. He made himself a fool that others by his folly might be made wise; he humbled himself to the level of those among whom his work lay that he might raise some few among them to his own level; he was ‘ all things to all men, if by any means he might win some.’” It would seem that this humorous depreciation of his own great qualities, this pretence of being no better than his neigh bours, led to grave misapprehension amongst his contemporaries. That it was the foundation of the slanders of the Peripatetic Aristoxenus can hardly be doubted.

Socrates was further a man of sincere and fervent piety. “No one,” says Xenophon, “ever knew of his doing or saying anything profane or unholy.” There was indeed in the popular mythology much which he could not accept. It was incredible, he argued, that the gods should have committed acts which would be disgraceful in the worst of men. Such stories, then, must be regarded as the inventions of lying poets. But, when he had thus purified the contemporary polytheism, he was able to reconcile it with his own steadfast belief in a Supreme Being, the intelligent and beneficent Creator of the universe, and to find in the national ritual the means of satisfying his religious aspirations. For proof of the existence of “the divine,” he appealed to the providential arrangement of nature, to the universality of the belief, and to the revelations and warnings which are given to men through signs and oracles. Thinking that the soul of man partook of the divine, he maintained the doctrine of its immortality as an article of faith, but not of knowledge. While he held that, the gods alone knowing what is for man’s benefit, man should pray, not for particular goods, but only for that which is good, he was regular in prayer and punctual in sacrifice. He looked to oracles and signs for guidance in those matters, and in those matters only, which could not be resolved by experience and judgment, and he further supposed himself to receive special warnings of a mantic character through what he called his “divine sign” (δαιµόvιov , δαιμόvιov σηµειov ) .

Socrates’s frequent references to his “divine sign” were, says Xenophon, the origin of the charge of “introducing new divinities” brought against him by his accusers, and in early Christian times, amongst Neoplatonic philosophers and fathers of the church, gave rise to the notion that he supposed himself to be attended by a “genius” or “daemon.” Similarly in our own day spiritualists have attributed to him the belief—which they justify—in “an intelligent spiritual being who accompanied him through life,—in other words, a guardian spirit” (A. R. Wallace). But the very precise testimony of Xenophon and Plato shows plainly that Socrates did not regard his “customary sign” either as a divinity or as a genius. According to Xenophon, the sign was a warning, either to do or not to do which it would be folly to neglect, not superseding ordinary prudence, but dealing with those uncertainties in respect of which other men found guidance in oracles and tokens; Socrates believed in it profoundly, and never disobeyed it. According to Plato, the sign was a “voice” which warned Socrates to refrain from some act which he contemplated; he heard it frequently and on the most trifling occasions; the phenomenon dated from his early years, and was, so far as he knew, peculiar to himself. These statements have been variously interpreted. Thus it has been maintained that, in laying claim to supernatural revelations, Socrates (1) committed a pious fraud, (2) indulged his “accustomed irony,” (3) recognized the voice of conscience, (4) indicated a general belief in a divine mission, (5) described “the inward voice of his individual tact, which in consequence partly of his experience and penetration, partly of his knowledge of himself and exact appreciation of what was in harmony with his individuality, had attained to an unusual accuracy,” (6) was mad (“était fou”), being subject not only to hallucinations of sense but also to aberrations of reason. Xenophon’s testimony that Socrates was plainly sincere in his belief excludes the first and the second of these theories; the character of the warnings given, which are always concerned, not with the moral worth of actions, but with their uncertain results, warrants the rejection of the third and the fourth; the fifth, while it sufficiently accounts for the matter of the warning, leaves unexplained its manner, the vocal utterance; the sixth, while it plausibly ex plains the manner of the warning, goes beyond the facts when it attributes to it irrationality of matter. It remains for us, then, modifying the fifth hypothesis, that of Diderot, Zeller, and others, and the sixth, that of Lélut and Littré, and combining the two, to suppose that Socrates was subject, not indeed to delusions of mind, but to hallucinations of the sense of hearing, so that the rational suggestions of his own brain, exceptionally valuable in consequence of the accuracy and delicacy of his highly cultivated tact, seemed to him to be projected without him, and to be returned to him through the outward ear. It appears that, though in some of the best known instances—for example, those of Cowper and Sidney Walker—hallucinations of the sense of hearing, otherwise closely resembling Socrates’s “divine sign,” have been accompanied by partial derangement of reason, cases are not wanting in which “the thoughts transformed into external sensorial impressions” are perfectly rational.

The eccentricity of Socrates’s life was not less remarkable than the oddity of his appearance and the irony of his conversation. His whole time was spent in public,—in the market-place, the streets, the gymnasia. Thinking with Dr Johnson that “a great city is the school for studying life,” he had no liking for the country, and seldom passed the gates. “Fields and trees,” Plato makes him say,

“won’t teach me anything; the life of the streets will.” He talked to all comers,—to the craftsman and the artist as willingly as to the poet or the politician,—questioning them about their affairs, about the processes of their several occupations, about their notions of morality, in a word, about familiar matters in which they might be expected to take an interest. The ostensible purpose of these interrogatories was to test, and thus either refute or explain, the famous oracle which had pronounced him the wisest of men. Conscious of his own ignorance, he had at first imagined that the God was mistaken. When, however, experience showed that those who esteemed themselves wise were unable to give an account of their knowledge,...