RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Socrates Soerensen
of search for the truth. That method, the method of question and answer, was so characteristic of Socrates, and at the same time so full of life and power that it was adopted more or less by all his disciples and has ever since been known as the Socratic method. It is seen in its perfection in the " Dialogues " of Plato, which are the idealized conversations of the idealized Socrates. The subjectmatter of the Socratic philosophy is ethics in contradistinction to physics; its aim is practical to the exclusion of barren speculation; and conscious ignorance, modesty, moderation, and pure and high morality are among its most marked characteristics.
The chief good, our being's end and aim, according to the Socratic ethics, is happiness, that wellbeing which results from well-doing in obedience to the will of God and with the blessing of Heaven. Xenophon and Plato agree in making Socrates teach that he who knows justice is just, and the man who understands virtue is virtuous: in other words, he resolves all virtue into knowledge. But it is plain from both these writers that he used knowledge in a high and comprehensive sense unusual in ethical treatises, but strikingly analogous to that in which it is used in the Scriptures. He makes knowledge identical with wisdom, and ignorance with folly and sin, just as in the Bible piety is wisdom, and sin is folly: the wicked have no knowledge, while the righteous know all things.
Socrates believed in the existence of one supreme Divinity, the creator and disposer of the universe, all-powerful, omniscient, and omnipresent, perfectly wise and just and good. His method of demonstrating the existence of such a being was strictly Baconian, the same argument as Paley used in his Natural Theology. And what Xenophon records of his master of those unwritten laws in the soul of man which execute themselves, and make it impossible for any man to be unjust, or impure, or licentious, without paying the penalty (which proves a greater and better than any human lawgiver), recalls Bishop Butler himself. Socrates believed himself to be under the constant guidance of a divine voice, which always warned him when he was in danger of going or doing wrong, and thus, indirectly, always led him in the right way; and he taught that every man might have the same divine guidance. He held the doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the future life as strenuously as Plato did, but without those dreams and chimeras of its preexistence and successive transmigrations by which the creed of the latter was disfigured. It was the beauty and glory of Socrates' character, that his doctrine of providence and prayer and a future state was the controlling principle of his life, and he believed that death was not an evil, but the highest good and the richest blessing. His teachings, illustrated by a conscientious, unselfish, heroic, missionary life, and sealed by a martyr's death, are the main secret of his power, and these exhibit him in his true relation to Christianity.
D. Percy Gilmorb.
Bibliography: Sources are the " Memorabilia " and " Symposium " of Xenophon, Plato's " Apology," " Symposium," "Crito," and " Phaedo," Plutarch's Degenio Socratis, and Diogenes Laertius, " Lives of Philosophers." To be taken into account are the works on the history of philoso-
phy by H. Ritter, 4 vols., Oxford, 1838-46; W. A. Butler, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1855; G. H. Lewes, 4 vols., London, 1857; J. B. Mayor, Ancient Philosophy, Cambridge, 1881; A. Schwegler, 3d ed., Freiburg, 1882; W. Windelband, New York, 1893; J. E. Erdmann.vol. i., London, 1892; E. Zeller, 2 vols., 1897; F. Ueberweg, ed. Heinze, 9th ed., Berlin, 1901-05, Eng. transl., of earlier edition, vol. i., London, 1875. Consult further: F. Charpentier, La Viede Socrate, 3d ed., Paris, 1699, Eng. transl., London, 1758; R. Nares, An Essay on the Demon or Divination of Socrates, London, 1782; J. W. Hanne, Socrates als Genius der Humanitat, Brunswick, 1841; J. P. Potter, The Religion of Socrates, London, 1831; idem, Characteristics of the Greek Philosophers, Socrates and Plato, ib. 1845; E. M. Goulburn, Socrates, London, 1858; E. Goguel, Aristophane et Socrate, Strasburg, 1859; H. Schmidt, Sokrates, Halle, 1866; A. Gamier, Histoire de la morale, Paris, 1865; A. Chaignet, La Vie de Socrate, Paris, 1868; E. Alberti, Sokrates: ein Versuch uber ihn nach den Quellen, Gottingen, 1869; P. Montee, La Philosophic de Socrate, Arras, 1869; J. S. Blackie, Four Phases of Morals, London, 1871; H. E. Manning, The Dcemon of Socrates, London, 1872; A. Fouillee, La Philosophic de Socrate, 2 vols., Paris, 1874; C. Charaux, L'Ombre de Socrate, Paris, 1878; A. W. Benn, The Greek Philosophers, 2 vols., London, 1882; idem, The Philosophy of Greece, ib. 1898; A. B. Moss, Socrates, Buddha, and Jesus, London, 1885; C. du Prel, Die Mystik der alten Griechen, Leipsic, 1888; F. Diimmler, Akademika, Giessen, 1889; R. M. Wenley, Socrates and Christ, London, 1889; A. Doring, Die Lehre des Sokrates als sociales Reformsystem, Munich, 1895; R. W. Emerson, Two Unpublished Essays, Boston, 1896; A. D. Godley, Socrates and Athenian Society in his Day, London, 1896; E. Pfleiderer, Sokrates, Plato und ihre Schiiler, Tubingen, 1896; J. T. Forbes, Socrates, Edinburgh, 1905; E. Lange, Sokrates, Gutersloh, 1906.
SODEN, HANS KARL HERMANN, FREIHERR VON: German Protestant; b. at Cincinnati, O., Aug. 16, 1852. He was educated at Esslingen, Urach, and the theological institute of Tubingen, and was then curate at Wildbad, near Stuttgart (1875-80), pastor at Dresden-Striesen (1881-82), and archdeacon at Chemnitz (1883-86). Since 1887 he has been pastor of the Jerusalemkirche, Berlin, and in 1889 became privat-docent for New-Testament exegesis at the university of the same city, where he has been associate professor since 1893. In theology he belongs to the liberal school, and has written Der Brief des Apostels Paulus an die Philipper (Freiburg, 1889); the volumes on Hebrews, the Epistles of Peter, James, and Jude, Colossians, Ephesians, Philemon for the Handkommentar zum Neuen Testament (2 vols., 1890-91); Reisebriefe aus Palastina (Berlin, 1898); Palastina und seine Geschichte (Leipsic, 1899); Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments in ihrer dltesten erreichbaren Textgestalt (Berlin, 1902 sqq.); Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu (1904); and Urchristliche Literaturgeschichte (1905).
SODOM. See Palestine, II., § 10.