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Again, when Socrates argues that he must believe in the gods because he believes in the sons of gods, we must remember that this is a refutation not of the original indictment, which is consistent enough-" Socrates does not receive the gods. whom the city receives, and has other new divinities "--but of the interpretation put upon the words by Meletus, who has affirmed that he is a downright atheist. To this Socrates fairly answers, in accordance with the ideas of the time, that a downright atheist cannot believe in the sons of gods or in divine things. The notion that demons or lesser divinities are the sons of gods is not to be regarded as ironical or sceptical. But the love of argument may certainly have led Plato to relapse into the mythological point of view, and prevented him from observing that the reasoning is only formally correct.

The second question, whether Plato meant to represent Socrates as needlessly braving or irritating his judges, must also be answered in the negative. His irony, his superiority, his audacity," regarding not the person of man," necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his situation. He is not acting a part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has been all his life long, "a king of men." He would rather not appear insolent, if he could avoid this. He is not desirous of hastening his own end, for life and death are simply indifferent to him. But neither will he say or do anything which might avert the penalty; he cannot have his tongue bound, even in the "throat of death": his natural character must appear. He is quite willing to make his defence to posterity and to the world, for that is a true defence. But such a defence as would be acceptable to his judges and might procure an acquittal, it is not in his nature to make. With his actual accusers he will only fence and play. The singularity of the mission which he ascribes to himself is a great reason for believing that he is serious in his account of the motives which actuated him. The dedication of his life to the improvement of his fellowcitizens is not so remarkable as the ironical spirit in which he goes about doing good to all men only in vindication of the credit of the oracle, and in the vain hope of finding a wiser man than himself. Yet this singular and almost accidental character of his mission agrees with the divine sign which, according to our notions, is equally accidental and irrational, and is nevertheless accepted by him as the guiding principle

SOCRATES.

Photogravure from a bust in the Villa Albami.

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in his life. Nor must we forget that Socrates is nowhere represented to us as a freethinker or sceptic. There is no reason whatever to doubt his sincerity when he implies his belief in the divinity of the sun and moon, or when he speculates on the possibility of seeing and knowing the heroes of the Trojan War in another world. On the other hand, his hope of immortality is uncertain; he also conceives of death as a long sleep (in this respect differing from the "Phædo "), and at last falls back on resignation to the divine will, and the certainty that no evil can happen to the good man either in life or death. His absolute truthfulness seems to hinder him from asserting positively more than this. The irony of Socrates is not a mask which he puts on at will, but flows necessarily out of his character and out of his relation to mankind. This, which is true of him generally, is especially true of the last memorable act, in which his life is summed up. Such irony is not impaired but greatly heightened by a sort of natural simplicity.

It has been remarked that the prophecy at the end, of a new generation of teachers who would rebuke and exhort the Athenian people in harsher and more violent terms, as far as we know was never fulfilled. No inference can be drawn from this circumstance as to the probability of their having been actually uttered. They express the aspiration of the first martyr of philosophy, that he would leave behind him many followers, accompanied by the not unnatural feeling that they would be fiercer and more inconsiderate in their words when emancipated from his control.

The above remarks must be understood as applying with any degree of certainty to the Platonic Socrates only. For, however probable it may be that these or similar words may have been spoken by Socrates himself, we cannot exclude the pos sibility that like so much else, e.g. the wisdom of Critias, the poem of Solon, the virtues of Charmides, they may have bee due only to the imagination of Plato.

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