We may believe that Socrates displayed the highest civic virtue and the highest moral courage on the only two occasions when he is stated to have been clothed with an official character. He was at all times averse to political employment, and avoided it as unsuited to his temperament and habitudes; but he renounced no duty. As presiding member of the Prytany, he refused to put to the vote the iniquitous decree against the generals inculpated at Arginusre; and, under the Thirty T3'rants, he opposed the execution of the infamous order for the arrest of Leon the Salaminian. In one case he braved the furious mob, in the other the despotic oli- garchs. The vocation of Socrates lay not in art, nor in litigation, nor in war, nor in politics. His mission was that of a reformer of morals and of speculation, and was created by and for himself. At what time he entered upon this career it is impossible to ascertain. It prob- ably grew upon him gradually, and strengthened and shaped itself as it grew, until at length it became rec- ognised as a definite and irrecusable duty. There is so much in both method and doctrine that springs from the peculiarities of the man, so much in the fashion of liis apostolate that reflects and elucidates any possible interpretation of his character, that his marvellous ca- reer must be deemed primarily spontaneous and uncon- scious. The deliberate and systematic prosecution of his high vocation must have begun soon after the death of Pericles, though it probably did not assume its char- acteristic form till a later time. He must have attained public notoriety in those years, for Aristophanes and Ameipsias offered him to the merciless ridicule of the Athenian people in the spring after the battle of Deli- um. The new teacher presented as curious a spectacle as the fancy of a caricaturist could devise. He was earnest, enthusiastic, untiring, pertinacious; pressing forward, " in season and out of season," with " line upon line and precept upon precept;" tackling everybody, high and low, at work or at recreation, in street and temple, theatre and banquet-hall, court, dock-yard, and grove ; in school, workshop, conference, and as- sembly. He claimed to be impelled to catechise, and to expose ignorance, under the solemnity of a divine call. But the missionary was grotesque in all res|)ects, repulsive in many. He was garrulous beyond meas- ure, an interminable disputant; boring everybody with an unceasing and pitiless storm of questions, and an- swering others only with a fresh shower of questions. This concorporated note of interrogation was ugly be- yond known examples of human ugliness, with short,
SOCRATES
850
SOCRATES
squat fiffiirp. fat, round holly, cj^SSle ^y^'S- *^i<"l' '"P"- ^''S n](iiitli,piig-ii(>so, transcciiiiin;; in \ta i>Hf/-mm-fi/ all ob- scrvi'tl piit:};islinoss. Kvi'ii fripiuls and admirers called him a satyr, and oom|mrod liini t<i the comic masks of Sileniis. Ivabolais wittily assimilated him to a patcnt- phvsic-lH>ttlc. lie was liahitiially miwashed and un- sh.Kl, and cl<>the<l with an old. worn, j^roasy chlaniys. His mamiors tended to increase repugnance. His speech was rnde and inelegant, his voice grating, his immedi- ate topics and examples himible. if not positively vul- gar ; his bearing was olitrusive. without being presumj)- luous: his address plain and unpolished, tiiough not discourteous, 11 is maimers were termed coarse and clownish by Aristoxeiuis. Politicians, legists, orators, philos«iphers. so|)hists. magistrates, generals, and citi- zens were decried by him as fools and knaves, and com- I>elled to gaze in the mirror held before them, that they might recognise their own folly, fraud, and ignorance. This drastic medicine was force<l upon those who en- joyed the discomliture of others, but not their own, by the i|uainl i>ersoiiage wlio could stand, and keep others standing, from morning to night, and who talked without intermission, though able sometimes to listen with the utmost patience. Nevertheless, this portentous mouth- jiiece of the gods had strange powers of enchantment, and lulled those on whom he fasteneit like a vampire, fanning them while sucking their blood, or held them, like the skinny linger of the Ancient Mariner, so that " they could not choose but hear." The lustre of an- other world broke forth in his speech, like the moon emerging from a shapeless bank of clouds, and re- vealed a tenderness of sentiment, a purity of feeling, a depth of thought, a fertility of illustration, an over- Howing humor, a playful and penetrating wit, a wealth of knowledge, an ingenuity of argument, and a concou- I rat ion of noble aims. His magic wrought like the Vice of the poet :
" A monster of so frightful mien As, to be hated, needs but to be seen ; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace."
It could scarcely increase the favor of Socrates with the multitude, who knew him only bj' sight, to see him attended by Critias, Alcibiades, Charmides, Xenophon, Arisiippus, etc.. and to hear that this zealot of a new doctrine, who condemned present conduct and current opinion, jirofessed to keep a little divinity of his own, and was declared by the Delphic oracle to be the wisest of men. The humility of his interpretation of the oracle might be unknown, or might seem a mock-humility, cor- respondent to his familiar and hal>itual irony. The only ground of the oracular utterance, he said, was that he knew that he knew nothing, while others mistook their own ignorance for knowledge. There is more wit than roas<^>n in the remark of Athena>us (v, (>((), " If knowing nothing i» wisilom, knowing all things must be f<illy." He proceeds to say that Socrates was wortliy of belief when he professed himself "not to Ik." wise;" and that it was as needless to consult the god on this ])oint as to ask " whether any one was more pug-nosed than Socrates."