CHAPTER V.

SOCRATES.

BEFORE we enter upon the personal history or particular philosophy of the great man who stood alone, in the strength of his integrity, to stem the torrent of factious licentiousness at the most debased period of public corruption, it will be necessary to advert to the state of Athens, and the conjuncture of events at a time peculiarly favourable to the development of such a character. It is true, that " we find our attention arrested by little that belongs merely to the individual; but the tenor of his life and teaching is closely connected with the importance of the crisis at which he flourished," and the knowledge of his influence and bright example we owe to the popular feeling which has stamped his name as a distinct epoch in the progress of the human race.

Born at Athens, 469 or 470 B.C., the early

youth of the philosopher was spent in the sunshine of the Athenian empire. The victories of Marathon and Salamis, raising her to sovereign power, (during the interval between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars,) his native city was consolidating the scattered and discordant members of her rule in those states which, influenced by widely conflicting interests, only concurred in hatred of the tyranny which oppressed them. As the external relations of the Athenian state contained materials of disunion, so the domestic policy of her democratical government, in which arbitrary power was continually vested in the hands of factious demagogues, cherished the seeds of premature decay. While the fleets of Athens swept the seas, in all the martial spirit of successful enterprise, the porches and groves of the city were thronged by masters in every art; and presumption of knowledge and public corruption undermined the social system by the most flagitious debauchery in the family and household.

The three great evils implicated in the laws of Solon came now into most pernicious operation. By them slavery being permitted, and thus industry less imperatively called for, the

citizens lived in indolence and insolent luxury; abandoned all domestic employment, and exhibited to the life the faithful description given both by Demosthenes and the apostle Paul, of their spending their time in "nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing," Acts xvii. 21. Again, the spirit of the heathen religion not only withheld. truth from the people, and countenanced a false superstition, but was characterized by the grossest intolerance the instant the traditionary authority, on which alone it rested, was impugned.

There is generally the greatest practical immorality where we find the strictest arrogance of external profession; and it is the habit of men, when conscious of the weakness of a system, to be most jealous of the least infringement of their self-constituted claim. Thus, in Athens, where superstition was the tool of faction, the vilest libertinism went handin-hand with the most devoted observance and awe of the sacred mysteries; as in Spain and Italy, where the church demands the most servile submission, national vice is most unblushingly manifested; indeed, in both instances men commit deeds of violence and lust under the plea of devotion, and pretend to support

religion by forcible suppression of the truth, and persecution of all who subject their tenets to inquiry. "He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods," was the clamour against the apostle, uttered by the very persons who, themselves sticklers for externals, were yet "wholly given to idolatry," and sunk in sensuality and sin.

The last evil which polluted the atmosphere of Athenian society, and gave rise to that general corruption which Socrates sought to repel, was the degradation of the female sex, placed, by the code of Solon, in a condition most unfavourable to moral improvement. It has ever been the glory of Christian civilization, that it has purified social intercourse by the elevation of woman to her proper dignity; but while Solon permitted females to be sold, notwithstanding it was restricted to cases of flagrant misconduct, they were regarded as slaves. At the same time also that the cultivation of mind was forbidden to the virtuous matron by the burdensome rules of enforced seclusion, her absence from general society was supplied by characters which threw off both the restrictions and demeanour of modest and feminine delicacy, and concealed profligacy under the mask of intellectual taste. The

results of these three evils-slavery, superstition, and female debasement-were a frightful demoralization of the other sex, an idle and inquisitive scepticism, and a reluctance to receive instruction, manifested by an intense hatred against the man who rebuked national and individual error, by the severest lessonhis life.

Such was the state of things which gave to the philosophy of Socrates its peculiar character, and led him to propound a system opposed, in every respect, to the school of the Sophists, and the general tone of morals induced by them upon society. He commenced upon a different principle. Unlike them, he rejected all profit but that which the healthy exercise of individual thought afforded; professing himself a lover of truth for her own sake; and instead of arrogating the power of teaching all science, he started with the humble confession that "he knew nothing." The son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and Phænarete, a midwife, himself brought up to his father's trade, he was observed by Crito, a rich Athenian, to listen with eager attention to the lectures of Anaxagoras and Archelaus. Crito, pleased with the intelligence and modesty of