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health, to sound reflection, and like- ceiving pay for philosophical instrucwise to virtue, for

"Even from the body's purity, the mind Receives a secret, sympathetic aid."

Can we suppose that Socrates, who was so anxious to promote all these objects, would be liable to, or encourage by his example, what was so hostile to them?

-We think that a melancholy temperament is not more fairly imputed to him; for we cannot read Plato's Dialogues, without being made to believe that he possessed the greatest cheerfulness and good humour. We do not remember an instance of harshness or sourness displayed by him, except when vice called forth his rebuke. Indeed, we think that every one who peruses Plato must be convinced that he was a model of pleasantry unmingled with bitterness, and that he was in possession of a mind serene and unclouded. Xenophon represents him as the best and the happiest of men ; a delineation which savours nothing of gloom and melancholy. The assertion, then, that every single trait of the Aristophanic Socrates may be traced in the Platonic, seems to be perfectly unwarranted. Indeed, to say that a writer of such genius as Plato would express the highest admiration for a person who is represented in his own writings as delivering many most absurd and immoral opinions, seems to carry its confutation in itself.

The Reviewer proceeds: "Even from the golden Memorabilia, in which Mr. M. will allow but a few blots to be discoverable, and from that immortal Trilogy which has been embalmed by the tears of all ages, we should not despair, however invidious the task, of extracting quite enough to support our view of the subject.

"In the very first book of the former, we find the charge of re

VOL. XXIII. NO. II.

tions, to which Mr. M. excepts as a false feature in the portrait of the Clouds; not indeed directly fastened upon Socrates himself, but strongly countenanced by the mode of remuneration, to which he would recommend the philosopher to trust. It is no impolitic disinterestedness that leaves recompense to gratitude; and even Protagoras would sometimes rather appeal for his reward to the feelings of his scholars than to previous stipulation."

The insinuation here thrown out against Socrates, we consider to be perfectly unfounded, and unsupported by the language of Xenophon, if fairly interpreted. That writer says,

Ον ουδ' μην ερασι χρηματους γε τους συνομ τας εποίει των μεν γαρ αλλων επιθυμιών επανε, τους δε ἑαυτου επιθυμουντας ουκ επρατα τετο χρηματα. Τούτου δ' απεχομενους ενόμιζεν ελευθερίας επιμελείσθαι τους δε λαμβάνοντας της ομιλίας μισθον ανδραποδιστας ἑαυτων απεκαλεί, δια το αναγκαίον αυτοίς είναι, διαλέγεσα θαι παρ ών αν λάβοιεν τον μισθόν. Εθανμαζί δέ, ει τις αρετην επαγγελλόμενος αργυ

πράττοιτο, και μη νομίζει το μεγιστον

κέρδος έξειν, φίλον αγαθον κτησαμενος, αλλα φίβοιτο, μη ὁ γενομενος καλός καγαθος το τα μέγιστα ευεργέτησαντι με την μεγιστην χαριν i-Mem. lib. i. c. ii. sect. 5, 6, 7.

“He did not make his disciples fond of gain; for he taught them to curb their other desires, and exacted no pay from those who attended upon his instructions. He thought that those who abstained from this mode of gain consulted their freedom, and that those who accepted of hire for their instructions enslaved themselves; because they

were necessitated to converse with those from whom they received hire. It excited his wonder that any one who professed himself a teacher of virtue, should exact pay, and should not consider it the greatest gain to acquire possession of a virtuous friend, but should be afraid lest he who was taught to be virtuous, would not feel the deepest gratitude to his greatest benefactor."

L

We challenge any one to read this passage, and to deny that the Reviewer's interpretation of it is very unfair, or that he is extremely ignorant. Does not Xenophon expressly deny that Socrates made his disciples fond of gain; does he not deny that the philosopher himself accepted of any reward for his instructions? Does he not farther assert, that Socrates considered those who taught for hire as having no regard for liberty, and as rendering themselves slaves? But he thought the friendship of those whom any teacher rendered virtuous by his instructions, was to be highly valued; and he entertained so favourable an opinion of human nature, as to express his surprise that any should doubt their receiving grateful returns from those on whom, by imparting sound knowledge to them, they had conferred the greatest benefits. But is this to say that Socrates taught his disciples to trust to the gratitude of those instructed by them as a more effectual mode of extorting money than previous stipulation? Is friendship nothing but a powerful means of extorting money? Is this really the Reviewer's opinion? Does it consist of nothing more generous? Is that which has been so highly prized by the most virtuous men, and been the theme of their greatest panegyrics, nothing but this vile passion? If so, then is the Reviewer's charge against Socrates correct; then he who recommended the friendship of virtuous men as a reward, strongly countenanced the most odious means of accumulating gain. Had Socrates shown in the

course of his life that he courted the friendship of others, solely from sordid interest, were there the slightest evidence that he was actuated by this vile motive, then would there be some ground for the Reviewer asserting, that when he recommended the friendship of the virtuous, he recommended the surest means of gain; but when we reflect that he considered the man who had no wants as like the gods, and him who had fewest wants as resembling them the nearest; when we reflect that he lived poor and died poor, that not even Mr. M. not even the Reviewer, has dared to attribute this vileness to himself, then are we surprised at the Reviewer's insinuations, and are satisfied that there is not the smallest foundation for them, either in the passage of Xenophon, to which he refers, or in the conduct and character of the philosopher *.

The Reviewer continues thus: "A far darker imputation upon the Socratic code of morals,-for we shut our ears as we must our hearts, against any impeachment of the sage's individual purity, is only too well warranted by the disgusting coolness with which in the same book he is made to argue on the subject of a crime, that all ages and all religions have concurred in branding as the most horrible of treasons against nature."

Here again we are bound to say that the Reviewer does Socrates injustice, since the philosopher expresses, in the strongest manner, his disgust at the crime above al luded to, and compares Critias, who was guilty of it, to one of the most

The heathen philosophers thought that virtue was for its own sake inestimable, and the greatest gain of a teacher to make a soul virtuous; so Xenophon writes of Socrates, who never bargained with any for teaching them; he feared not lest those who had received so high a benefit from him would not of their own free will return him all possible thanks. Was moral virtue so lovely and so alluring, and heathen men so enamoured of her, as to teach and study her, with greatest neglect and contempt of worldly profit and advancement ?" &c. &c.-Milton's Prose Works, vol. i. p. 90.

grovelling of animals. Xenophon says, Mem. lib. i. c. ii. sect. 30:

Λίγεται τον Σωκρατην, άλλων τε πολλων παρόντων και του Ευθύδημου, ειπειν, ὅτι ὑϊκον αυτῷ δοκοιη πασχειν ὁ Κριτίας, επιθυμων Ευθύδημον προσκνασθαι, ώσπερ τα ίδια.

How could disgust be more strongly expressed than by these words of Socrates, which he uttered in the presence of many persons, and which had the effect of rendering Critias ever after his deadly enemy? We are aware that there is a passage, of which different interpretations have been given, according to one of which Socrates is made to utter language which shocks the moral feelings; this mode of interpreting the passage, however, we consider to be inaccurate. Indeed, it would be strange were Socrates, who, as Plato informs us in his Symposium, expressed his disgust at the loathsome and abominable language uttered by Aristophanes at the Banquet, and who in the passage quoted lately, and in many others, expresses his abhorrence of a most foul and monstrous crime, to be so inconsistent with himself as to countenance at one time what he condemns at another. Taking this into consideration, and reflect ing that the passage has received different interpretations, it ought to be allowed, we think, that the more probable rendering is that which makes Socrates speak a language consistent with purity. The passage is this,

Οντω δη και αφροδισιάζειν τους μη ασφα. λως έχοντας προς αφροδίσια ως το χρηναι προς τοιαύτα, οικ, μη πάνυ μεν δεομένου του σωμαTOS, OUR ar προσδεξαιτο ἡ ψυχη δεομένου δε ουκ αν πραγματα παρέχοι.

Mem. lib. i. c. iii. sect. 14.

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diagos Taura equivalent to ἑαυτους έχειν προς τοιαυτα αφροδισια, we would render the passage as follows: "Et eos, qui contra res venereas se non munivissent, hoc modo quidem se gerere (sc. a conspectu pulchrorum discedere, diuque abesse) putabat oportere contra res venereas tales quales, corpore non postulante, animus non appeteret, corpore autem postulante (animus) negotia non facesseret, i. e. stimulos corpori non adderet." In English thus, "And he gave it as his opinion, that those whose virtue is not firmly established, ought, when assailed by those desires which reason, instead of approving of, condemns, and which arise entirely from the body, to remove themselves from the objects by which those desires are excited." This rendering of the passage, which seems the most natural, which is in harmony with the precepts delivered by Socrates on many other occasions, and with pure morality, shows that what has been sometimes considered as detracting from the high character of the philosopher, ought, on the contrary, to add to its lustre *.

"The Trilogy of Plato," says the Reviewer, “ is in some respects not more impregnable. The Apologia, which stands first in that col lection, notwithstanding its touching and powerful rhetoric, is debased

"Thus, from the laureate fraternity of poets, riper years and the ceaseless round of study and reading, led me to the shady spaces of philosophy, but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato and his equal Xenophon; where, if I should tell ye what I learned of chastity and love, I mean that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only virtue, which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy (the rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion, which a certain sorceress, the abuser of love's name, carries about ;) and how the first and chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soul, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and virtue; with such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth your listening, readers," &c.—Milton, vol. i.

p.

109.

by a vein of quibbling that blends but ill with the simple and manly eloquence with which it closes. Socrates must have known that the charges expressed by his accusers were mere pretexts; that his political sentiments were the real cause for which he was prosecuted, and why did he not boldly force his assailants to drop the mask? Why strain his ingenuity to repel allegations, which, after all, he could not wholly or implicitly deny? why does he fight so shy of the charge concerning religion as it is worded in the indictment, if he thought it worth the while to answer it at all? why shift his ground by aid of his sophistical interrogatives, or fly for shelter to that paltry play upon the definition of his Dæmon, which might do well enough for Aristotle to quote among his specimens of Enthymematic reasoning, but can hardly be considered by us as any thing better than what Shakspeare would have called some quip, some quillet to deceive! !"

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We think, notwithstanding these remarks of the Reviewer, that no one can read the defence of Socrates left us by Plato, without being perfectly satisfied that it is a complete answer to the charges against him; but this, in the Reviewer's opinion forsooth, is not enough; he should have forced his accusers to drop the mask (how? it might be asked) and should have strained his ingenuity to repel charges which were not brought against him!! Were it true that his political sentiments were the real cause for which he was prosecuted; still it might be deemed hard to blame the philosopher for not answering charges which were not imputed to him. But where did the Reviewer learn that his political sentiments were the real cause for which he was prosecuted? They seem rather to have been one of the pretexts under which he was brought to trial. This is expressly stated by Xenophon,

Mem. lib. i. c. ii. sect. 56, et seq.; so that the Reviewer has fallen into various mistakes. He thinks that the real cause of the odium excited against Socrates was his political opinions; but we have formerly shown that it was very different. And he says that that was not brought as a charge against him which was actually brought as a charge against him. He besides neglects to state that Socrates did tear off the mask from his accusers; that he plainly told them the true reasons for which he was prosecuted, and clearly showed that his conduct, which had excited their hatred, merited their deepest gratitude. That Socrates was hostile to the democratic government of Athens we see no reason to believe; on the contrary, he seems to have preferred it to all other governments. He was an enemy to certain abuses existing in it, which he wished to see remedied. That which seems to have displeased him most was the choosing of the archons by lot. This practice he did not hesitate to con demn. But that he was an enemy only to the abuses of the government of his country, we learn from Plato's Dialogue, entitled Crito, in which, stating his reasons for not availing himself of an opportunity to escape from prison, he supposes the laws of his country to address him, and to say that if he violated their authority, he would be deserving of more blame than almost any other Athenian, and were I, says he, to ask why? they might justly answer,

Ότι εν τοις μαλιστα Αθηναίων εγω αυτοίς ὡμολογηκως τυγχανω ταύτην την ὁμολογιαν· Φαιεν γαρ αν, ότι, ω Σωκρατες, μεγάλα ἡμιν τούτων τεκμηρια εστιν, ότι σοι και ήμεις ηρεσο κομεν και ἡ πολις· κ γαρ άν ποτε των άλλων Αθηναίων ἁπάντων διαφέροντας εν αυτή επι δημείς, ει μη σου διαφέροντας ηρεσκο και ουτ' επι θεωρίαν πώποτε εκ της πόλεως εξηλα θες, ότι μη άπαξ εις Ισθμον, ετι άλλοσε ουδα μοσε, ει μη του στρατευσομενος· στι αλλην εποίησε αποδημίαν πωποτε, ώσπερ οι άλλοι ανα era, &c. Crito, sect, 14.

"That I have pledged myself more strongly than any other of the Athenians to yield obedience to them. For they might say, we have the clearest proofs that we and the city afford you great satisfaction; for you would never, in a way which distinguished you from the rest of the Athenians, have dwelt so constantly in it, if it had not been signally agreeable to you. You never left the city to be a spectator of the games, except once, when you went to the Isthmus; to no other place did you go, unless when enrolled as a soldier in the service of your country. You never went to travel in foreign countries like other men," &c.

No one, after perusing this passage, and various others in the same Dialogue, can refuse to allow that Socrates was a friend to the democratic government established at Athens. The Reviewer being in error in regard to this point, is also mistaken when he blames Socrates for answering only the pretexts which his accusers brought against him, without replying to the real causes for which he was prosecuted. "Why did he not force his assailants to drop the mask? why strain his ingenuity to repel allegations, which, after all, he could not wholly or implicitly deny." We answer, that he not only wholly and implicitly denied the charges brought against him, but tore off the mask from his opponents; stated the real causes of the prosecution instituted against him, and showed, in the clearest manner, that it was from their allowing themselves to be influenced by malignant passions, that they were endeavouring to ruin the man whom they ought to esteem as their greatest benefactor.

"In the Criton," says the Reviewer, "which displays the magnanimity of Socrates in the most conspicuous and affecting manner, we may entertain some doubts as to the soundness of an argument, that

makes the highest reverence to wards the laws consist in aiding them to commit an act of the most monstrous injustice. But the exquisite pathos of that suicidal dia. logue, as well as its indisputable alienation of self, may be allowed to shield it from a cavil."

As the Reviewer only entertains some doubts in this case, and as he does not attempt to refute the powerful, we may say the unanswerable arguments which Socrates states in defence of his conduct, and in opposition to the objection that he ought not to assist the laws in committing an act of the most monstrous injustice, we consider it unnecessary to make any other remark on this subject, than that we suspect that it would require powers of mind superior to those even of the Reviewer, to overturn the rea soning of Socrates in that dialogue.

Speaking of Plato's Dialogue on the immortality of the soul, the Reviewer says, "But amidst all the tediousness of the metaphysical subtilties, there is that vile doctrine of referring all abstract knowledge to the memory of a previous existence, more futile than the theory of innate ideas, overturned by Locke, and as dangerous, when viewed in connexion with the other Socratic doctrine of ascribing all virtue to knowledge, as any of the moral heresies entertained by the sophists, which would confound the whole distinctions between probity and vice, destroy the real merit of every species of excellence, and make the moral world a mere realm of anar chy for chance to riot in uncontrolled." With regard to the doctrine of referring all abstract knowledge to the memory of a previous existence, so pregnant, in the Reviewer's opinion, with danger, we would observe, that, as we learn from Plato, it was a prejudice existing in the time of Socrates, and that he endeavoured to convert it, as he did

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