Socrates was brought to trial. His divine monitor forbade his making a defence in the customary spirit. If he spoke what is reported by Plato, his Apology was calculated only to irritate his judges. There was no fixed or systematic law at Athens, especially in crimi- nal matters. Every indictment was a bill of attainder. Nevertheless, Socrates was condemned by a majority of only five or six voices in a dicastery of more than five hundred. After the condemnation the penalty had to be determined. Athenian procedure required the ac- cusers to name a penalty and the accused to offer an alternative satisfaction. The accusers had specified death. The alternative pmposed by Socrates was a virtual negation of the verdict bj' substituting for death public support in the Prytaneum, the highest honor that could be bestowed; or, in deference to the urgencj' of his friends, a fine of thirty mina; (about seven hun- dred dollars). The jury could choose only one or oth- er of these penalties. Socrates had already been de- clared guilty. The sentence could scarcely be other than — death.
Polycrates among the Greeks, and Cato among the Eomans, justified the condemnation of Socrates. Lelut and Forchhammer did the same thing forty years ago, and Dresig preceded them by a centur}'. Grote holds the balance even between tlie judges and the judged. The judgment of Polycrates may have been merely a rhetorical exercise, an intellectual ton?- de force ; or it may have been serious, and may have called out the Apologia of Xenophon as a rejily. It was recognised bj' friends and contemporaries, it was generally recog- nised in antiquity, it has usually been recognised by the moderns, that the condemnation and death of Soc- rates were his own act. He did not desire to live. His work was done, his career was bending to its close. He was willing, if not eager, to perpetuate his influence and to confirm his life and doctrine by his death. Nothing can be more exquisitely touching, more ennobling, or more memorable than the account given by Plato of the last days of Socrates, and of the cheerful, playful serenity with which he welcomed the hastening term of life. The closing scenes are among the noblest ex- hibitions of human, and almost of superhuman, virtue. That there is much of Plato in the pathetic story is indubitable. The artistic arrangement of details, the subdued coloring, the solemn calm, the dramatic pres- entation, are all Plato's; but the sidtstantial significances may be confidently ascribed to the genuine Socrates. We shall not repaint the rose or reperfume the lily. The tale must be read in the pages of the reverent disciple and consummate artist.
Socrates should have drunk the fatal hemlock the day after the sentence. But the sacred embassy had just sailed for Delos, and capital punishments were sus- pended till its return. Socrates lay in prison for a month, suffering, perhaps, the indignity of fetters, sur-
rounded by sorrowing friends, to whom he repeated the instructions of his life. Provision was made for his es- cape. He refused such release because firm in his obe- dience to the laws, whether just or unjust in their oper- ation upon him. At the appointed time, towards the end of May, he drank the deadly cup with perfect com- posure, and welcomed death in the hope, but without the confident expectation, of a tranquil immortality.
The death of Socrates scattered his disciples : he nev- er formed a school. The dispersion of the disciples disseminated his doctrine and method. Many years elapsed before philosophy revisited Athens. A long and troubled time intervened before Plato retumed to renew with caution, and to remodel, expand, and trans- figure the speculations of his master.
The Athenians have been alleged to have soon re- pented of the condemnation and execution of Socrates, and to have prosecuted his accusers capitally. There is neither valid evidence for this nor inherent probabil- ity in it. The supposed remorse of Elizabeth for the execution of Essex is not more fanciful. There was occasion for deep regret ; there was none for repentance. Socrates had left his judges little room for hesitation. There is no reason to suppose that they had decided contrary to their convictions of right and of law. More- over, the Athenians were oblivious of past incidents and of melancholj' events. They were always engrossed with the enjoyment or the expectation of something new. No reaction was known when Demosthenes and JEschines were rival orators, nor, previously, to Xeno- phon or Plato. A statue made by Lysippus in Mace- donian times is said to have been erected at Athens in memory of Socrates. This may be questioned; yet from this tribute, or from the belief in such a tribute, the legend of the repentance may have arisen.
n. Philosophi/. — There is no such thing, properlj' speaking, as a Socratic philosophy. There was a So- cratic impulse, a Socratic method, a Socratic inquiry, but no positive or sj'stematic Socratic speculation. He planted the vigorous seed; he did not cultivate the plant or gather the harvest. He was the father of all wholesome investigation by indicating, not by con- structing, the route. Like Bacon, he was the herald of conquest, not the conqueror. Potest videri ostendisse posteris, non tradidisse. " Still, enough remains to stamp him as the originator of the philosophy of conceptions, as the reformer of method, as the first founder of a sci- entific doctrine of morals." The characteristic and es- sential features of the philosophical career of Socrates were his aim and method. These determined all his philosophical developments, and were themselves deter- mined by the complexion and requirements of his time. Pericles, during his long ascendency, had "wielded at will the fierce democratic," and had restrained the vi- olent, excessive appetencies of a capricious and domi- neering populace and of their ambitious and unscrupu- lous guides. Yet the agitations of demagogues, the disappointments, disasters, and sorrows of the opening years of the Peloponnesian war, the distress and demor- alization produced by the plague, had gravely shaken his control in his latter life. After his death the polit- ical conflict lay between the wealthy but weak and su- perstitious Nicias and the turbulent, boastful, and rapa- cious Cleon. The voting and dicastic mass of the peo- ple were gravely debauched and completely misled by noisy bawlers and greedy flatterers. The corrosion of public, and, to a great extent, of private morals was fearfully aggravated by the destruction of all political, jural, ethical, and speculative principles through the harangues on the bema, the arguments in the courts, the predominance of rhetorical ingenuity, and the soph- istries of brilliant and mercenar}' teachers, who reduced all truth to semblance, all discussion to a conflict of showy words and dazzling plausibilities. The Atheni- ans had been brought to accept that most pernicious of all delusions — " There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" (see Protag. ap. Aristot. Met. hi,