Socrates.
by Maxwell Y. Maxwell, LL.B.
Volume 11, 1900, pgs. 205-213
[Read before the Hampstead Branch of the P.N.E.U., December 8th, 1899.]
"To sage Philosophy next lend thine ear,
From Heaven descended to the low-roof't house
Of Socrates; see there his tenement,
Whom well inspired the oracle pronounc'd
Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that water'd all the schools
Of Academics old and new, with those
Surnam'd Peripatetics, and the sect
Epicurean, and the Stoic severe."
These are the words of our great philosophic poet Milton--himself a man of the highest culture and the widest intellectual attainments [from Paradise Regained]. And the opinion which he has so sympathetically adopted and which was first pronounced in the well-know words of the Delphian Oracle, "Socrates is wiser than any other man," has been echoed and re-echoed by every great philosopher and every great historian in ancient and modern times, from Plato and Aristotle to John Stuart Mill, and from Xenophon to Mr. Grote.
On this occasion, however, we are not so much concerned with the wisdom of Socrates as with the man himself. For "wisdom" was only one of the elements of his many-sided character, and it will be perhaps more interesting to consider him, not only as a wise man, but also as a great man, and not only as a great man but also as one of the greatest men that the world has ever produced. It is true indeed, as we have recently been reminded by the published opinions of one who has often been called "the great German Statesman," that a man may accomplish a great work and yet be himself not really great, just as we have often been reminded (though I most strongly dispute the justice of its original application) that it is possible to be classed among the "wisest" and the "brightest" and yet to be the "meanest" of mankind.
Perhaps, therefore, it will be desirable for us, before dealing with Socrates as one of the greatest of men to clearly define what we mean by the term "greatness"; and it also seems desirable that the form of the definition to be adopted should not be that of the a priori method ["from before"] (which is after all only the expression of the personal ideas of the definer), but rather that which is referred to by Lord Bacon as Inductio per enumerationem simplicem. That is to say, let us take the lives of some men whom we all agree to call "great," such as Paul, Luther, Wesley, and let us then make an enumeration of the qualities which, taken together, have constituted their respective characters and dispositions, and have led us to call them great. Of course it will be seen, as indeed Lord Bacon has pointed out, that such a method has the disadvantage of not being exhaustive, but it may perhaps serve as a good working definition which can afterwards be supplemented by further particulars.
From this point of view, I would therefore venture to maintain that there are three elements or factors, the presence of which, in any individual, is absolutely necessary to establish his claim to permanent greatness; and conversely, that the absence of any one of them in any individual is absolutely fatal to such claim on his part. These three essential elements of "greatness" in its highest and its most permanent sense, which we may see fully manifested in the three eminent examples whom I have already indicated, and which I will venture to maintain were also implicitly present, if not fully developed, in the person of Socrates, are these:--
(1) Personal uprightness and goodness;
(2) The fact of having a special mission and a special message for the
benefit of humanity; and,
(3) Absolute and permanent reliance upon a supernatural power.
The truly great man, in the first place, must be pure, for if a man cannot control himself, how can he influence other men? He must be simple, i.e., free from ambition or self-seeking, and utterly indifferent to such accidents as wealth or poverty, as one knowing that a man's life doth not consist in the things that he possesses. He must, moreover, have a high ideal, both of thought and in action. He must be true and just in his dealings and in all the phases of his intercourse with his fellow-men. And finally, he must be heroic, striving, if necessary, unto death, as one that counts his life not dear to him in comparison with the importance of the truth that he teaches.
In the second place, he must have some special message or teaching for men, which he and he alone of his own time, can best deliver. Such message need not necessarily be original in the sense that it is absolutely new, and not a revival of old and forgotten truths. But it must be original in the sense that it is part and parcel of the man himself, and that he is so permeated and endued with it that he needs must proclaim it. It must also be original in the sense that his contemporaries have either not known it, or have forgotten it, or have never perceived its vital value and importance. And finally, it must be such a truth as will appeal to humanity at large; be simple enough to respond to the untutored instincts of the multitude, and, at the same time, wide enough and large enough to satisfy the trained intelligence of the cultured few.
And in the third place, the truly great man must be fully conscious that, both in respect to his life and in respect to his message, he is not self-centered nor self-sustained, but that he is what he is by reason of a Divine call, and that, both in his life and his work, he is altogether dependent upon a supernatural power. It may be that he knows that power to be a Loving and a Willing Person outside himself, or it may be he knows it only as the reason or soul of the universe speaking to him and through him as a "Voice." But, in either case, he must be fully conscious that the roots of his own life are not planted in himself, but in that external and supernatural Power who is the source and supply of all his energies, and before whom his constant attitude and daily aspiration finds its appropriate expression in the cry, "In Thee are the very wells of my life, all my fresh springs are in Thee."
Taking, then, these three ideas as our basis, we proceed to trace out the
greatness of Socrates in its three-fold manifestations, viz.:--
(1) In relation to his public and private life.
(2) In connection with his divine mission.
(3) In respect to his "message" or work, that is to say, his teaching
and its permanent influence upon humanity.
Socrates was born at Athens in the year B.C. 469, and died there in the year 399, so that his life extended throughout that last 70 years of the fifth century before Christ. But what a century! Surely the most wonderful, as well as the most interesting, in the history of the world (if only we except the first century of the Christian Era); inasmuch as it witnessed the rise of the glory and greatness of Athens, its noontide splendour known as the age of Pericles, and, alas, also its decline and fall. First came the period of the Persian wars with their accompaniment of military and naval glory and heroism which are for ever associated with the names of Marathon and Salamis. Next came the period of its material greatness, when the city was much enlarged, entirely rebuilt, and surrounded by a wall about seven miles in circumference and about forty feet in height. This was followed by the building of a new city, which stood on the sea-coast about 5½ miles from Athens and was called Piraeus or "The Harbour," from its including the chief of the three natural harbours that existed there. This new city which became almost as large as Athens itself, was surrounded on its land side by a wall about 6½ miles in circumference, about 40 feet in height, and about 14 feet in thickness, at least at its base; and it contained the docks, magazines, and arsenals for the use of the huge fleet which was also created at the same time, together with a large maritime population; so that it was at once a fortress, a dockyard, and an immense city. But its utility and importance to Athens was still further increased by the later erection of what were termed the "long walls," that is to say, two parallel walls about 5½ miles in length and 60 feet in height, with an interval of about 550 feet between, which connected the two cities; and thus rendered both of them impregnable against any land assault, and, moreover, rendered it impossible for Athens to be reduced by famine so long as she retained her naval supremacy. Next followed the Delian Confederation composed of all the Maritime States with Athens at their head, which secured to her, not only the position of mistress of the seas, but also an abundant supply of ships, men and money in case of any future attack by the Persians or other foreign foes.
And finally, there followed the richest bloom of art that the world has ever seen, the art of the Age of Pericles. It was the Age in which the Acropolis was crowned with the Parthenon or Temple of Athenè the Virgin; with the Erectheum or Temple devoted to Poseidon, joint protector with Athenè of the city; and with the wondrous Propylea or entrance gates that gave access to the whole. It was the Age that gave to the world the marvellous statue of Athenè the Virgin which stood inside her temple, and which was executed in ivory and gold by the hand of Pheidias; and also the colossal statue in bronze also executed by Pheidias which stood in the open air and represented Athenè the Defender as the guardian deity of her favourite city. It was the Age that produced the great tragedians Sophocles and Euripides; the historians Herodotus and Thucydides; the sculptors Pheidias, Myron, and Polycletus; the painters Zeuxis and Parrhasius; Pericles, the great orator and statesmen; and Socrates, the founder of Greek philosophy. It was the Age above all others than has manifested in the highest degree, the beauty, the lucidity, the grace, the self-contained dignity and grandeur, which we are accustomed to associate with the highest genius. And closely intertwined with it, partly as root and partly as stem, there was the perfect freedom of a perfect democracy, freedom of thought, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, with full capability to every free citizen of electing, or of being elected, to every office in the State. And perhaps I may add that, while it is almost impossible to exaggerate the feelings of admiration and astonishment for the many manifestations of individual genius in almost every branch of knowledge and art which this Age produced, it is only right that we should also reserve almost equal admiration and respect for the marvellous people that produced them; and that nourished, developed, and stimulated them by their intelligent and sympathetic appreciation.
I have dwelt at some length upon the characteristics of the Age of Pericles, partly because in order to comprehend the special genius of any great man we must, to some extent at least, take account of the time in which he appeared and of the circumstances by which he was surrounded; for although it is an essential mark of genius to "break its birth's invidious bar," it must also, to some extent, be influenced by the ideas, manners, and social and political conditions of the epoch in which it is manifested. But, furthermore, I have been somewhat obliged to give prominence to the leading characteristics of that period, because, although the first 40 years of Socrates' life were conterminous with it, it is almost the only fact in connection with his early life of which we have any knowledge. All that we really know of him during that period of 40 years is the fact that he followed the occupation of his father, which was that of a statuary; and that he married Xantippe, by whom he had three children, but who does not appear to have had any other claim to notice beyond the fact of her being the proverbial type of the conjugal shrew. We may suppose, likewise, that he was trained in the usual branches of a Greek education, which included gymnastics, reading, writing, the committal to memory and power of recitation of the Homeric poems, together with knowledge of arithmetic and geometry. And we may also suppose that, although poor, as a free citizen of Athens he participated in all the advantages resulting from those elements of culture to which I have previously alluded; and, moreover, he would naturally obtain that higher education which would result from his friendship for, and intercourse with, the most distinguished men of the period.
It was not, however, until about the 40th or 45th year of his life (the exact date is uncertain) that he became conscious of his special mission, and from that period to the date of his death, that is to say, for about 25 or 30 years, he devoted himself to his public work and became thereby the best known personage in Athens. This public work was, he said, forced upon him by God who commanded him to undertake it through the mouth of the oracles, by visions, and in dreams, and in every way by which the Divine Will was ever declared to man, Whereupon he was not disobedient to the heavenly command, but, from that time forward, he devoted to it his whole life, utterly regardless of all else. Everywhere he was seen and heard--in the Agora or market place, and in the public walks; in the Areopagus and the Prytanaeum; in the city and in the Piraeus; in the workshops of the artisans; the assemblies of the professional rhetoricians and poets; the schools of the philosophers; and the gatherings of the politicians; always in pursuit of what he believed to be his special mission--the search after wisdom and the rebuke and confutation of the seeming wisdom which he considered to be more injurious to its professor than a conscious ignorance.
His own concerns he entirely neglected lest he should omit anything in connection with the service of God, and, as his means were extremely scanty, he often suffered great hardships and privations. Indeed, we have not only the direct testimony of Plato and Xenophon, but also the indirect evidence supplied by Aristophanes, who was his bitter enemy and most unscrupulous assailant, as to the extreme simplicity of his daily life, his abstinence from sensual pleasures of all kinds, his scanty clothing, and his uncomplaining endurance of hunger and thirst and the extremes of heat and cold.
Nor must it be forgotten that this life of hardship was entirely self-assumed; and that if he had chosen to neglect the Divine call, and to conform to the custom prevalent amongst the professed teachers of his times, he could easily have passed his life in comfort and even in luxury. For it must be remembered that the position of the professed philosopher, or, as it was then termed, the "Sophist," was one of high dignity and reputation, and that the more eminent of them were accustomed to receive large fees from their respective pupils.
And it must also be remembered that the two arts which they professed to teach, those for which there was a wide-spread and a constant demand, owing to the fact that, not only the legislative but also the judicial and the executive functions of the State, were in the hands of the multitude, who, naturally, were most likely to be influenced by the arts of the orator and the rhetorician. But he always said that his mission was not to teach but to learn, not to convey definite information but to show men how they might gain wisdom for themselves; and the acceptance of a money payment for such service to humanity would have been regarded by him as an act of immorality and impiety. Moreover, the simple life he led was not regarded by him as one of hardship or of pain, but rather as the direct road to happiness and moral perfection. Thus, he says in his discussion with the Sophist, Antiphon, recorded in the "Memorabilia":--"You, Antiphon, seem to think that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance, but I think that to want nothing is to resemble the Gods, and that to want as little as possible is to make the nearest approach to the Gods; that the Divine nature is perfection and that to be nearest to the Divine nature is to be nearest to perfection."
Nor was it only by the exercise of what may be termed the "negative" virtues that the greatness of the personal character of Socrates displays itself. On the contrary, the two writers to whom I have already referred, and who are our best authorities on the subject of his public and private life, invariably speak of him as a perfect man to whom they look up with the most profound affection and the most profound respect, and whom they regard as a great example both in respect to goodness and to morality.
"No one," says Xenophon, "ever heard or saw anything wrong in Socrates; so pious was he that he never did anything without first consulting the Gods; so just that he never injured anyone in the least; so master of himself that he never preferred pleasure to goodness; so wise that he never erred in his choice between what was better and what was worse. In a word, he was of all men the best and the happiest." And Plato's testimony is of a similar character. Thus at the conclusion of the "Phaedo" he thus writes, "Such was the end of our friend, a man, I think, who was the wisest, and the most righteous, and the best man that I have ever known." And throughout the "Dialogues" he is never tired of praising the wisdom of Socrates, his simplicity of life, his moderation and control over the wants and desires of the senses, the deep religious feeling shown in almost all his doings, and the devotion of his life to the service of the Gods, and, finally, his dying a Martyr's death because of his obedience to the Divine Voice.
In Plato's picture also the more solemn side in Socrates' character is lighted up by numerous light touches showing his cheery kindness and geniality, together with an Attic polish and a pleasing humour which often expends into a gentle irony and malice of almost feminine subtlety and delicacy. His moderation, too, is shown to be entirely free from the ascetic element, and it may be said that from almost no form of humanity does he appear to have been an alien. Perfectly abstemious himself, he enjoys good company, and is not even averse to carousals provided they are not noisy and do not lead to the subjugation of the intellect by the sense. Indeed in the "Symposium," Plato represents him, after a whole night spent round the wine-table, as pursuing his daily avocations as if nothing had happened. His moderation was thus of the pure Greek character, that is to say, not consisting in a total abstention from all pleasure, but, rather, in perfect mental and moral freedom; neither being dependent upon pleasure as a necessity of existence, not being ever overtaken or degraded by its seductive influences.
Lastly, I may mention that all the public actions of Socrates' life of which we have any record always exhibit the same qualities as his private virtues, being essentially noble and heroic, and giving a picture of moral greatness coupled with an entire absence of any pretence or display. He served in the Athenian ranks as a hoplite or heavy armed soldier in three of the campaigns which arose out of the Peloponnesian War--at Potidea, at Delium, and at Amphipolis, to which fact he refers in the "Apologia." But, at the same time, he omitted to mention, that at the first battle he not only saved the life of Alkibiades, but also renounced in his favour the prize granted for special valour, and that his fearlessness and his bravery at the disastrous battle of Delium won for him universal praise. Still more important was the moral courage which he displayed in the case of the six Arginusae generals, in which, as the President for the day of the Dikastery before which they were tried, he utterly refused to put the question as to their guilt or otherwise in an illegal way, notwithstanding the howling of an infuriated populace, clamorous for their immediate death.
A similar illustration of his moral courage and refusal at the risk of his life to do what was wrong, is afforded by the case of Leon the Salaminian. In this matter, the Thirty Tyrants who dominated Athens for a brief period after the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War, had ordered Socrates with four others to bring over this Leon from Salamis to Athens, in order that they might put him to death. And the sequel may best be told in his own words: "That Government with all its power did not terrify me into doing anything wrong, but when we left the Council Chamber, the other four went over to Salamis and brought Leon across to Athens, but I went away home. And if the rule of the Thirty had not been destroyed soon afterwards, I should very likely to have been put to death for what I did then."
To these particulars respecting the public and the private life of Socrates, I ought perhaps to add a brief reference to his personal appearance, which certainly was not attractive, and to keen worshippers of physical beauty in both sexes, like the Athenians, must have been most repulsive. Indeed, the combination of the flat nose, the thick lips, and the prominent eyes, with a bodily presence somewhat resembling the typical satyr or Silenus, formed an abundant matter for jesting both to his friends and his foes.
And as in appearance, so also in his method of teaching he was utterly unlike any public man that the Athenians had ever seen. He openly refused to take any part in politics (though as we have seen he did not shirk any of his duties as a private citizen), declaring that his mission was not to govern men but to teach them first to govern themselves, and when this preliminary was fully accomplished, then to aspire to rule the State. Unlike also all his predecessors and contemporaries, he carefully avoided anything like systematic teaching or lecturing, professing, indeed, not to teach but only to learn, never forcing his own convictions upon others, but simply examining theirs; not dealing out, as it were, ready-made truth like coin fresh from a mint, but seeking only to overthrow spurious, and to discover real, knowledge. And so, in the course of the twenty-five or thirty years of his labours, there grew up a circle of admirers, consisting chiefly of young men of every rank in life who were attracted by the charm of his discourses and the brilliancy of his dialectics; and who remained with him, some for a longer, and others for a shorter period. And from these again was gradually formed the inner group of decided disciples and the nucleus of a Socratic school, united together, not so much by a common set of doctrines, as by the spirit and the new method of enquiry after knowledge, and by a common love for the person of its founder.
But alas, there also grew up that other constant accompaniment of exceptional greatness, the band of detractors, who, although they might be widely divergent from each other in all other respects, were yet firmly united in the bond of a common hatred for the person and the mission of Socrates. Comic dramatists, obscure poets, unsuccessful rhetoricians, the professional Sophists, and the discredited politicians, together with the contingent supplied by that large class who are always the professed eulogists of the times and the men that have passed away and the adverse critics of their own--these formed a host of personal enemies whose fear and hatred was, as usual, more passionate and more conducive of results than the affection of his friends and the esteem of the great mass of the population. And it must be confessed that, for some of them, an explanation of, it not an excuse for, their personal hostility may easily be found in the circumstances under which they became practically acquainted with the Socratic dialectic. For the exposure of ignorance and of the conceit of wisdom without its reality, however salutary it may be, is not exactly a pleasant operation to the subject of it; nor is his pleasure likely to be increased by the operation having been performed in the open air, and in the presence of a highly appreciative and grinning crowd. And hence it followed, that although emanating from a minority, the evil prevailed over the good, and in his seventieth year, the blow fell upon Socrates which at once put an end to his personal mission and to his life.
But before I deal with the final scene, it will be necessary for me to revert to the second of the three "notes" or marks of the exceptional greatness of Socrates, viz., his Divine Call to the work of his mission and his close and intimate dependence upon a Supernatural Power throughout the whole course of his public life.
(To be continued.)
Proofread by LNL, Jun. 2011