CHAP. VIII. to fools); 71, 16 (truth and virtue are identical); in Plut. Ed. Pu. c. 7, p. 4, on education (the passage in c. 9 is an inaccurate reference to Plato, Gorg. 470, D.); Cons. ad Apoll. c. 9, p. 106, that if all sufferings had to be equally divided, every one would gladly preserve his own: Conj. Præc. c. 25, p. 140 (Diog. ii. 33; Exc. e Floril. Joan. Damasc. ii. B. 98; Stob. Floril. ed. Mein. iv., 202), on the moral use of the looking glass; Ser. Num. Vind. c. 5, p. 550, deprecating anger; in Demet. Byz. quoted by Diog. ii. 21, (Gell. N. A. xiv. 6, 5), Muson. in the Exc. e Floril. Jo. Dam. ii. 13, 126, p. 221, Mein, that philosophy ought to confine itself to 8, TI τοῖ ἐν μεγάροισι, κακόν τ' ἀγαθόν τε τέτυκται; (others attribute the words to Diogenes or Aristippus) Cic. de Orat. i. 47, 204: Socrates said that his only wish was to stimulate to virtue; where this succeeded, the rest followed of itself (a statement thoroughly agreeing with the views of the Stoic Aristo, and probably coming from him. Conf. Zeller, Stoics, Epicureans, &c., p. 60; in Diog. ii. 30, blaming the sophistry of Euclid; in Diog. ii. 31 (undoubtedly from some Cynic or Stoic treatise) that intelligence is the only good, ignorance the only evil, and that riches and noble birth do more harm than good; in Diog. ii. 32, that to marry or to abstain from marriage is equally bad; in Gell. xix. 2, 7 (Athen. iv. 158; Plut. And. Poet. 4, p. 21), that most men live to eat, whilst he eats to live; in Stob. Ekl. i. 54, giving a definition of God; Ibid. ii. 356, Floril. 48, 26 (conf. Plato, Legg. i. 626, E.), that selfrestraint is the best form of government; in Teles. apud Stob. Floril. 40, 8, blaming the Athenians for banishing their best, and honouring their worst men, and the apophthegmata in Valer. Max. vii. 2, Ext. 1. A large number of sayings purporting to come from Socrates are quoted by Plutarch in his treatises and by Stobæus in his Florilegium; some, too, by Seneca. Most of them, however, are colourless, or else they aim at being epigrammatic, which is a poor substitute for being genuine. Altogether their number makes them very suspicious. Probably they were taken from a collection of proverbs which some later writer published under the name of Socratic proverbs. RETROSPECT. CHAPTER IX. XENOPHON AND PLATO. SOCRATES CHAP. phon's description. LOOKING back from the point now reached to the question raised before, as to which of his biographers we must look to for a historically accurate account A. Truthfulness of of Socrates and his teaching, we must indeed admit, Xenothat no one of them is so satisfactory an authority as any original writings or verbal reports of the utterances of the great teacher would have been.1 So much, however, is patent at once, that the personal character of Socrates, as pourtrayed by both Xenophon and Plato, is in all essential points, one and the same. Their descriptions supplement one another in some few points, contradicting each other in none. Nay more, the supplementary portions may be easily inserted in the general picture, present before the eyes (1) Xenoof both. Moreover the philosophy of Socrates is not phon's in the main represented by Plato and Aristotle in a a different light from what it is by Xenophon, provided those parts only in the writings of Plato be taken into account which undoubtedly belong to So 1 Conf. p. 98. view in harmony with that of Plato and Aris totle. CHAP. crates, and in the Socrates of Xenophon a distinction be drawn between the thought underlying his utterances and the commonplace language in which it was clothed. Even in Xenophon, Socrates expresses the opinion that true knowledge is the highest thing, and that this knowledge consists in a knowledge of conceptions only. In Xenophon, too, may be observed all the characteristics of that method by means of which Socrates strove to produce knowledge. In his pages likewise, virtue is reduced to knowledge, and this position is supported by the same arguments, and therefrom are deduced the same conclusions, as in Aristotle and Plato. In short, all the leading features of the philosophy of Socrates are preserved by Xenophon; granting as we always must that he did not understand the deeper meaning of many a saying, and therefore failed to give it the prominence it deserved. Now and then for the same reason he used a commonplace expression instead of a philosophical one; for instance, substituting for, All virtue is a knowing,' with less accuracy, All virtue is knowledge.' Nor need we feel surprise that the defects of the Socratic philosophy, its popular and prosaic way of treating things, the want of system in its method, the utilitarian basis of its moral teaching should appear more prominently in Xenophon than in Plato and Aristotle, considering the brevity with which Aristotle speaks of Socrates, and the liberty with which Plato expands the Socratic teaching both in point of substance and form. On the other hand, Xenophon's description is confirmed partly by indi 6 vidual admissions of Plato,1 partly by its inward truth and conformity to that picture which we must make to ourselves of the first appearance of Socrates' newly discovered principle. All then that can be conceded to the detractors of Xenophon is, that not fully understanding the philosophical importance of his teacher, he kept it in the background in his description, and that in so far Plato and Aristotle are most welcome as supplementary authorities. But it cannot be allowed for one moment that Xenophon has in any respect given a false account of Socrates, or that it is impossible to gather from his description the true character and importance of the doctrine of his master. CHAP. IX. ermacher's It may indeed be said that this estimate of Xeno- (2) Schleiphon is at variance with the position which Socrates objection is known to have held in history. As Schleiermacher answered. observes; Had Socrates done nothing but discourse on subjects beyond which the Memorabilia of Xenophon never go, albeit in finer and more brilliant language, it is hard to understand how it was, that in so many years he did not empty the marketplace and the workshop, the public walks and the schools, by the fear of his presence; how he so long satisfied an Alcibiades and a Critias, a Plato, and a Euclid; how he played the part assigned to him in the dialogues of Plato; in short, how he became the founder and type of the philosophy of Athens.' Fortunately in Plato himself we have a valuable testimony to the 1 See above, pp. 80; 150, 1. 2 Werke, iii. 2, 259, 287. CHAP. IX. accuracy of Xenophon's description. To what does his Alcibiades appeal when anxious to disclose the divine element concealed under the Silenus-like appearance of the Socratic discourses? To what does his admirable description of the impression produced on him by Socrates go back? 1 What is it which to his mind has been the cause of the revolution and change in the inner life of Greece? What but the moral observations which in Xenophon form 1 Symp. 215, Ε.: ὅταν γὰρ ἀκούω [Σωκράτους] πολύ μοι μᾶλλον ἢ τῶν κορυβαντιώντων ἥ τε καρδία πηδᾷ καὶ δάκρυα ἐκχεῖται ὑπὸ τῶν λόγων τῶν τούτου. ὁρῶ δὲ καὶ ἄλλους παμπόλλους τὰ αὐτὰ πάσχοντας: this was not the case with other speakers, οὐδὲ τεθορύβητό μου ἡ ψυχὴ οὐδ' ἠγανάκτει ὡς ἀνδραποδωδῶς διακειμένου, (similarly Euthydemus in Xen. Mem. iv. 2, 39) ἀλλ' ὑπὸ τουτουὶ τοῦ Μαρσύου πολλάκις δὴ οὕτω διετέθην, ὥστε μοι δόξαι μὴ βιωτὸν εἶναι ἔχοντι ὡς ἔχω ἀναγκάζει γάρ με ὁμολογεῖν ὅτι πολλοῦ ἐνδεής ὢν αὐτὸς ἔτι ἐμαυτοῦ μὲν ἀμελῶ τὰ δ ̓ Αθηναίων πράττω . . . (conf. Mem. iv. 2; iii. 6) πέπονθα δὲ πρὸς τοῦτον μόνον ἀνθρώπων, ὃ οὐκ ἄν τις οἴοιτο ἐν ἐμοὶ ἐνεῖναι, τὸ αἰσχύνεσθαι δυτινοῦν δραπετεύω οὖν αὐτὸν καὶ φεύγω, καὶ ὅταν ἴδω αἰσχύνομαι τὰ ὡμολογημένα καὶ πολλάκις μὲν ἡδέως ἂν ἴδοιμι αὐτὸν μὴ ὄντα ἐν ἀνθρώποις· εἰ δ' αὖ τοῦτο γένοιτο, εὖ οἶδ' ὅτι πολύ μεῖζον ἂν ἀχθοίμην, ὥστε οὐκ ἔχω, ὅ τι χρήσομαι τούτῳ τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ. Ib. 221, D. : καὶ οἱ λόγοι αὐτοῦ ὁμοιότατοί εἰσι τοῖς Σειληνοῖς τοῖς διοιγομένοις . διοιγομένους δὲ ιδὼν ἄν τις καὶ ἐντὸς αὐτῶν γιγνόμενος πρῶτον μὲν νοῦν ἔχοντας ἔνδον μούνους εὑρήσει τῶν λόγων, ἔπειτα θειοτάτους καὶ πλεῖστ ̓ ἀγάλματ' ἀρετῆς ἐν αὑτοῖς ἔχοντας, καὶ ἐπὶ πλεῖστον τείνοντας, μᾶλ λον δὲ ἐπὶ πᾶν ὅσον προσήκει σκοπεῖν τῷ μέλλοντι καλῷ κἀ γαθῷ ἔσεσθαι. Alberti's (p. 78) objections to the above use of these passages resolve themselves into this, that those ‘elements of conversation which rivet the soul, which are not altogether wanting in Xenophon, are more frequent and noticeable in Plato, that there fore the spirit of the Socratic philosophy comes out more clearly in Plato. Far from denying this, we grant it readily. The above remarks are not directed against the statement that Plato gives a deeper insight than Xenophon into the spirit of the Socratic teaching, but against Schleiermacher's statement that the discourses of Socrates were essentially different in substance and subject matter from those reported by Xenophon. |