of all proportion to that bestowed on the rank and file who fought with her. Her citizens, as partakers in the new-found dignity, came to regard themselves with peculiar satisfaction. The sovereign people acquired unexpected importance, and those who could sway the democracy by art or by ability were assured of surpassing success in life. Till Socrates taught a more excellent way, it was altogether forgotten that "where rhetorical skill is regarded as paramount, the higher ends of education are apt to be overlooked, for readiness and fluency of speech may proceed out of emptiness, no less than out of fulness, of mind." In response to some such combination of influences the Sophists appeared. Many of them were, no doubt, sincere and able men. But for others, and those were perhaps the majority, it was as certainly true that skill to prove the worse the better reason stood in place of higher wisdom. The delightful contrast between Gorgias' theory and his practice may serve to illustrate their general morale. He was able to show metaphysically "that nothing could exist, that what did exist could not be known by us, and that what was known could not be imparted to any one. Yet we are aware that he amassed wealth, and was held in much repute as a teacher. Surely the apotheosis of eristic-to teach that teaching is impossible! The inevitable result was, that "to expose fallacy or inconsistency was found to be both an easier process, and a more appreciable display of ingenuity, than the discovery and establishment of truth in such a manner as to command assent."3 Cultivated criticism, secured 1 Ferrier's Greek Philosophy, p. 188. 2 Outlines of Greek Philosophy, Zeller, p. 93. "2 from defeat by a recognised dogmatic appeal to self, took the place of the older positive philosophy. Matter and mind, no less than physics and ethics, were forgotten for the moment amid the parade of a wisdom which recommended itself by a certain ease of attainment. Opinion celebrated its triumph in obliteration of the distinction between right and wrong, or in convenient disregard of the evidence of sense-perception. Socrates thus appeared at a turning-point in the history of Greek thought. Religion could not be expanded so as to include man's growing ethical consciousness within its purely mythological and naturalistic conceptions. Philosophy, while discrediting the objectivity of truth, had failed to furnish any homogeneous account of the world or of human life. The subordination of the individual to the state had resulted in such splendid achievement, that each citizen now sought his own share of the general good, plus as much more as superior education or cunning enabled him to filch. Disregard for customs once venerated, degradation if not despair of philosophy, and belief only in self were not a little characteristic of the Athenians towards the close of the Periclean era. But the crisis was not merely subjective. When Socrates began to teach, it was aggravated by certain objective relationships. After Pericles' death the glory slowly departed from Athens. The exhausting and disastrous course of the Peloponnesian war was but the prelude to a continuous and almost unparalleled decline. Socrates did his best work during the years of this war. While Athens and Lacedæmon were ruining Greece by their bootless rivalry, he was providing his countrymen with a more lasting kingdom than that built up at the expense of Xerxes. The city state, for which every one had hitherto been spent, was already in process of passing away. Yet the individual, at least so far as concerned his moral and spiritual value, was scarcely discovered. For Socrates the years had reserved the appreciation of this new factor in philosophy and in life. His it was to react on his conditions, to transform them, and so to render them organic factors in the development not only of Greek, but also of all civilisation. He was "an exceptional person" who came to deliver man from an exceptional difficulty, and, as a consequence, the interaction between his personality and the circumstances of the time was unusually intense. To this attention must now be given. 31 CHAPTER III. THE MISSION AND PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES. AT the outset it is to be remembered that Socrates is known to us only as an elderly man. The period of his life with which we are directly acquainted does not begin before his forty-fifth year, and the principal records relate to the last decade of his life. In short, the historical Socrates is neither a youth suffering the pangs of welt-schmerz, nor a young man striving, like Goetz von Berlichingen, to subdue the world by force. He has cast away the illusions and hopes of early life, and has consciously set himself to realise more serious aims. What, then, was his peculiar work, and how came it to be forced upon him? Socrates is, in a sense, the first of the Greeks who was not entirely Greek. "The Grecian state," Emerson said, "is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body." In Socrates this characteristic unconsciousness passed away never to be regained. The personal nature of man, with its implications of intellectual and practical activity, asserted itself. Great 1 Essay on History. questions regarding knowledge and conduct were now for the first time consciously put. Metaphysical difficulties vaguely indicated by Socrates still engage thinkers, while his ethical problem, with which, as we shall see, no Greek could be fully acquainted, was to find solution not in any theory, but in a unique life. It is a commonplace to say that the atmosphere in which Socrates found himself was eminently favourable to the decisive change which he was to inaugurate. The serious events which marked the struggle for the hegemony of Greece could not fail to turn some away from the barren irreflective scepticism of the Sophists and the educated class. If knowledge were valueless save to the individual in possession of it, if religious belief existed only to draw down insult, and if, after all sacrifices, the greatness of his city were not eternally assured, what resource had the Athenian but in his own human nature? As strong manhood ripened into vigorous age, Socrates appears to have appreciated more and more the necessity of his time. It is easy to contrast his lack of customary philosophical formalism with the importance assigned to him in the progress of Greek thought,1 and to cavil at "his excellent qualities, which, yet, are not such as fit a man to play a brilliant part in history." But this has about as much integral bearing on the state of the case as has Heine's typical comment," that Xanthippe's husband should have become so great a philosopher, is remarkable. Amid all the scolding, to be able to think! But he could not write; that was impossible." The very fact that Socrates revealed a theory through the medium of his 1 Cf. Schleiermacher, The Worth of Socrates as a Philosopher, pp. 129, 141. |