I have thus attempted a rough sketch of the position which Sokrates, as an avowed free-thinker and Skeptic, occupied before his judges. The main features of his defence, assuming it to have agreed in substance with the Platonic Apology, are indifference and defiance. The former we may take as the practical analogue of the intellectual suspense he prescribed in philosophy. The key-note of the Apology,' like the final chord in a strain of solemn music, seems to me the expressive words with which it concludes: The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways-I to die and you to live. Which is better, God only knows.' I

The sublime indifference to his fate here disclosed sheds a flood of reflected light on the mind of the great thinker. It denotes the calm self-possession, the unruffled composure of a man who has long resolved on what he considers his highest duty, and is determined to follow it at all costs. It reveals a profound conviction that no evil from any source, human or divine, can harm the good man. He is no more terrified by the uncertainties of the next world than he has been by the insoluble problems of this. So far as in him lies, he will explore the former with the same eager intentness, the same philosophical serenity, the same zeal for truth, that he brought to bear on terrestrial questions. He has attained that unmoved equanimity in adverse circumstances which after Skeptics believed to be one direct outcome of their teaching. The elevation above mundane considerations which Aristophanes had burlesqued so many years before is now manifested in a peculiarly noble manner in the supreme hour of his fate. For the same reason, he defies his enemies and challenges their hostility, not in any arrogant, obtrusive manner, but with the calm intrepidity which is the result of long and intense self-concentration. Were it true, as some persons suppose, that the manner in which a man encounters death is a test of the motive principles that actuated his life, few could claim superiority over the unrestrained Dialectic, the conscious Nescience, the absolute verities which sustained Sokrates before the Dikasts, and nerved his hand to receive the cup of poison.

The narrative of his condemnation we need not stop to particularize. Out of 501 Dikasts 220 had voted for sparing his life, a number which, considering his unpopularity, much surprised him. He was condemned to death on the day after that on which the vessel had been despatched to Delos, on the periodical theoric mission. Until its return no State criminal could be executed.

1 Jowett's trans. i. p. 356.

For thirty days, therefore, Sokrates was kept in prison, and there he employed himself with his accustomed serenity in making attempts (the first in his life) at poetical composition, and in philosophical discussions with his friends. At last the ship returned from her sacred voyage, and Sokrates had to prepare for death. His manner of doing this is described by Plato in language of such exquisite and simple pathos that I shall take the liberty of reading to you from Professor Jowett's translation' the paragraph that recounts it. This will be the more fitting as we shall have to compare with his martyrdom that of other free-thinkers on our list. His friend Kriton had been urging Sokrates to defer drinking the cup of hemlock till later in the day, but the philosopher refuses, and requests that it might be brought to him at once. The story then proceeds; the narrator being supposed to be Phaidon, who was present :

'Kriton, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant; and the servant went in and remained for some time, and then returned with the jailor carrying the cup of poison. Sokrates said: "You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed." The man answered: "You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down and the poison will act." At the same time he handed the cup to Sokrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of colour or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, as his manner was, took the cup and said: "What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not?" The man answered, "We only prepare, Sokrates, just so much as we deem enough." "I understand," he said: "yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to the other world-may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me!" Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now, when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face, and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Kriton when he found himself unable to restrain his tears had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment, Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry, which made cowards of us all. Sokrates alone retained his

1 Vol. i. p. 468.

calmness. "What is this strange outcry?" he said: "I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience." When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said no; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff, and he felt them himself and said: "When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end." He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words): "Kriton, I owe a cock to Asklepius. Will you remember to pay the debt?" "The debt shall be paid," said Kriton. "Is there any. thing else?" There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Kriton closed his eyes and his mouth. Such was the end,' continues Phaidon, 'of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest and justest and best of all the men whom I have ever known.'

I will not detract by any words of mine from the solemn beauty of this picture. The death of Sokrates has always and most deservedly occupied a high place in the lugubrious chronicles of similar events. A termination in completer harmony with the current of his life it would be impossible to conceive. There is almost a peculiar fitness in his execution as a Neologian and Freethinker-like a brave soldier dying, not on his bed, but on the battle-field. We are almost inclined to forgive the philistinism, the intolerance, the religious dogmatism, the philosophical narrowness which could achieve such results. Nor is the melancholy satisfaction we feel at the mode of his death diminished when we bear in mind attendant circumstances. His life's work was clearly done; whatever efficacy was likely to attend his mission had been already attained; it was most improbable that it could have been increased by a few more years' labour in so ungrateful a field. His unpopularity was on the increase, and his memory was hated by his fellow-citizens after his death. Besides, he was now seventy years old, many more years he could not have expected to see, and,

Probably to be taken in the sense that death is the supreme physician, the healer of all human evils. This interpretation is entirely in harmony with Sokratic irony, and with his custom of paying homage to the deities of his own choosing, though employing popular designations for them.

as Mr. Grote has remarked, it is a consolatory thought that he probably suffered less after his hemlock-draught than he would have done had he died of disease, or even by the general decline of old age.

Sokrates is the first eminent Skeptic who has appeared in European philosophy, the first who asserted the rights of the human reason to inquire in whatsoever manner or direction it thought fit -who proclaimed Nescience as the highest human wisdom. As I have already more than once remarked, he is more Skeptical than Pyrrhôn; not that his Skepticism is more pronounced, nor that he arranged its method and conclusions into a definite system, nor that he devised the formulas, definitions, &c., which mark succeeding Skeptics. Against dogmatic negation such as that of Pyrrhôn, Sokrates would have recalcitrated more vehemently than against dogmatic assertion. An unbelief which started instead of terminating with Nescience he would have deemed spurious; but he is Skeptical by virtue of his confessed ignorance and his unremitting search. His Nescience was mainly a personal conviction, a peculiar idiosyncrasy by which he was in theory distinguished from all other men. No doubt it was at the same time a starting-point in the downward path of negation. It only needed the transference of the thinker's standpoint from the individual to the race to make his personal suspense assume the form of universal negation. Such a transference was almost inevitable, and we shall on the next occasion have to discuss it as the next stage in the Skeptical evolution of Greek philosophy. Nor were the other personal peculiarities of Sokrates of less importance in the interests of freethought-the individualism which marks the personal consciousness and the reason, the ultimate standards of truth; the indomitable courage and independence which pursued the path of research with little regard to popular obloquy and malignity; the final scene of his life, the imperturbable sang-froid with which he took his evening draught of hemlock as if it had been some harmless beverage all these influences combined to attach to his personality a vigorous and predominating power.

Thus Sokrates, the central figure of Greek thought, represents the culminating point of its Skepticism. His position of personal doubt stands midway between the half-formed Skepticism of the Eleatics, the Atomists, Herakleitos, and the Sophists on the one hand, and the determined and universal negation of Pyrrhôn and Ainesidemos on the other. Accordingly his nam stands high as an authority among the Geeek Skeptics, from Pyrrhôn to Sextos.'

Sext. Emp. adv. Math. xi. 2; comp. Cicero, de Orat. iii. 17, who says:

Not that I would maintain that the influence of Sokrates on succeeding thinkers was exclusively Skeptical. A gigantic intellect like his throwing itself with ardour into every object and mode of thought operates on after-speculation like a stone thrown into a pond. It induces movement not in one but in all directions. The waves of agitation which it raises are concentric, and all have the same central impulse. Hence all the subsequent mental activity of Greece may be traced directly or indirectly to its great freethinker. The transcendentalism of the Platonists; the Dialectic, the stress on induction, the versatility of Aristotle; the Hedonism of the Epikouræans; the absolute morality of the Stoics; no less than the negation of Pyrrhôn and Timon; the probabilism of the Academy; the suspense of Ainesidemos and Sextos Empeirikos, are all so many ramifications of Sokratic teaching or emanations of the Sokratic spirit. Still, I contend, the chief impulse was Skeptical. Partly the exaltation of Nescience, partly the stress on self-consciousness as the root of all knowledge, partly the individualism and self-assertion begotten of the last principle which Sokrates manifested both in life and death, gave an impulse to Greek free-thought which it never afterwards lost. The extent of this is seen by a brief observation of the various directions in which his disciples proceeded after his death. Plato, the most famous of the companions of Sokrates, carried out the Sokratic introspection into an elaborate scheme of idealism, which is, however, not without Skeptical elements and self-contradictions. Like his master, he proclaims the sacredness of search after wisdom, while its actual attainment is pronounced impossible for humanity, at least in this sphere of existence. The mode in which he works up the antinomical discussion of his Dialogues, though derived originally from the viva voce of Sokrates, clearly proves the stress he himself placed on controversial Dialectics, as well as the supreme indifference with which he contemplated their inconclusive results. If the spoken 'Dialogue of Search' represents Sokrates as a free-thinker and unscrupulous logician, it is difficult to see why the written dialogue, often with additions, should not prove Plato himself to possess similar tendencies. His method is Dialectical. He is more thoroughly convinced than Sokrates that 'Dialectic is the nature of things.' This renders all the more remarkable his admission of the self-destructive character of logical exercitation, and of the danger of imparting Dialectics to immature intellects. But besides allowing the Skeptical issue of unrestrained Dialectic, Plato does not hesitate to 'Fuerunt etiam alia genera philosophorum, qui se omnes fere Socraticos esse dicebant: Eretriacorum, Herilliorum, Megaricorum, Pyrrhoniorum.'