CHAP. refined taste of an Athenian. Even Plato's Alcibiades' This peculiarity was not, however, the result of any lack of taste, but of the profound originality of his ideas, for which customary figures were insufficient. Yet again, sometimes the soul of the philosopher, diving into its own recesses, so far lost itself in this labour as to be insensible to external impressions, and at other times gave utterance to enigmatical sayings, which appeared strange to it in a wakeful state. Serious and fond of meditation 3 as was Socrates, it not unfrequently happened that 1 Symp. 221, Ε. Conf. Kallicles in Gorgias 490, C.: περὶ σιτία λέγεις καὶ ποτὰ καὶ ἰατρούς καὶ φλυαρίας . . . . ἀτεχνῶς γε ἀεὶ σκυτέας τε καὶ γναρέας καὶ γείρους λόγων καὶ ἰατροὺς οὐδὲν παύει, ὡς περὶ τούτων ἡμῖν ὄντα τὸν λόγον. μα 2 Mem. i. 2, 37: 'O dè Kpirías ἀλλὰ τῶν δέ τοί σε ἀπέχεσθαι, ἔφη, δεήσει, ὦ Σώκρατες, τῶν σκυτέων καὶ τῶν τεκτόνων καὶ τῶν χαλκέων, καὶ γὰρ οἶμαι αὐτ TOÙS ON KATATEтpîplaι dialрvXovμévovs vτò σoû. Again in iv. 4, 6: καὶ ὁ μὲν Ιππίας· ἔτι γὰρ σύ, ἔφη, ὦ Σώκρατες, ἐκεῖνα τὰ αὐτὰ λέγεις ἃ ἐγὼ πάλαι ποτέ σου ἤκουσα. The like complaint and the like answer is met with in Plato's Gorgias, 490, E. Conf. 497, C.; σμικρὰ καὶ στενὰ ἐρωτήματα. Accordingly in the Aristotelian problems, xxx. 1, 953, a, 26, he is reckoned amongst the melancholy, which is not at variance with the gentle firmness (τd στáσμov) which Aristotle (Rhet. ii. 15) assigns to him. deep in thought he remained, for a longer or shorter time, indifferent to the outer world,' and stood there as one absent in mind. According to Plato, he once remained in this state, standing on the same spot, from one day to the next. So energetically did he struggle with himself to attain an insight into his. every motive. In doing this, he discovered a residuum of feelings and impulses, which he watched with conscientious attention without being able to explain them from what he knew of his own inner life. Hence arose his belief in those divine revelations, which he thought to enjoy. And not only was he generally convinced that he stood and acted in the service of God, but he also held that supernatural suggestions were communicated to him, not only through the medium of public oracles, but also in dreams, and more particularly by a peculiar kind of higher inspiration, which goes by the name of the Socratic δαιμόνιον. 1 Plato, Symp. 174, D. Volquardsen, D. Dæmon. d. Socr. 25, 63 and Alberti, Socr. 148 have entirely mistaken the meaning of the text in supposing that it attributes to Socrates any ecstatic states. 2 Symp. 220, C. The circumstances may indeed be regarded as a fact; still we do not know from what source Plato derived his knowledge of it, nor whether the authority which he followed had not exaggerated the time during which Socrates stood there. Favorinus in Gell. N. A. ii. 1, makes the one occasion into many, and says G 3 stare solitus, etc. Philop. De 3 Conf. p. 76, 7, and 89. 4 Conf. p. 60, 2. In the passage here quoted Socrates refers to dreams in which the deity had commanded him to devote himself to his philosophical activity. In the Crito 44, A., a dream tells him that his death will follow on the third day. 5 Volquardsen, Das Dæmonium d. Socr. und seine Interpreten, Kiel, 1862. Ribbing, Ueber Socrates' Daimonion CHAP. IV. CHAP. (a) The δαιμόνιον not a per sonal genius. Even among the ancients many regarded these suggestions as derived from intercourse with a special and personally-existing genius, of which Socrates boasted; in modern times this view was for a long time the dominant one.2 It was no doubt somewhat (Socratische Studien II., Upsala Universitets A°rskrift, 1870. 1 The bill of accusation against Socrates seems to have understood the daμóviov in this sense, since it charges him with introducing ἕτερα καινὰ δαιμόνια in the place of the Gods of the state; nor does Ribbing's (Socrat. Stud. II. 1) remark make against this, that Meletus (in Plato Apol. 26, B.) thus explained his language; Socrates not only denies the Gods of Athens but all and every God; the heavenly beings, whose introduction he attributes to him not being regarded as Gods, just as at a later time Christians were called or though worshipping God and Christ. Afterwards this view appears to have been dropped, thanks to the descriptions of Xenophon and Plato, and does not recur for some time, even in spurious works attributed to these writers. Even Cicero, Divin. i. 54, 122, does not translate dauóviov by genius, but by 'divinum quoddam,' and doubtless Antipater, whose work he was quoting, took it in the same sense. But in Christian times the belief in a. genius became universal, because it fell in with the current belief in dæmons. For instance, Plut. De Genio So cratis, c. 20; Max. Tyr. xiv. 3; Apuleius, De Deo Socratis, the Neoplatonists, and the Fathers, who, however, are not agreed whether his genius was a good one or a bad one. Plutarch, and after him Apuleius, mention the view that by the δαιμόνιον must be understood a power of vague apprehension, by means of which he could guess the future from prognostications or natural signs. 2 Compare Tiedemann, Geist der spekulat. Philosophie, ii. 16; Meiners, Ueber den Genius des Sokr. (Verm. Schriften, iii. 1); Gesch. d. Wissensch. II. 399, 538, Buhle, Gesch. d. Phil. 371, 388; Krug, Gesch. d. alten Phil. p. 158, Lasaulx, too (Socrates, Leben, 1858, p. 20) in his uncritical and unsatisfactory treatise respecting the δαιμόνιον, believes it to be a real revelation of the deity, or even a real genius, and even Volquardsen gathers as the conclusion of his careful, and in many respects meritorious, disquisition, that a real divine voice warned Socrates. The older literature in Olearius, 148, 185, Brucker, I. 543, which includes many supporters of the opinion that the genius of Socrates was only his own reason. Further particulars in Krug, 1. c. and Lélut, Démon de Socrates, 163. humiliating in the eyes of rationalising admirers, that a man otherwise so sensible as Socrates should have allowed himself to be ensnared by such a superstitious delusion. Hence attempts were not wanting to excuse him, either on the ground of the universal superstition of his age and nation, or else of his having a physical tendency to fanaticism. Some even went so far as to assert that the so-called supernatural revelations were a shrewd invention,2 or a result of his celebrated irony. Such a view, The first-named excuse is universal. Marsilius Ficinus (Theol. Platon. xiii. 2, p. 287) had assumed in Socrates, as well as in other philosophers, a peculiar bodily disposition for ecstasy, referring their susceptibility for supernatural revelations to their melancholy temperament. The personality of the dæmon is not however called in question by him or by his supporters (Olearius, 147). Modern writers took refuge in the same hypothesis in order to explain in Socrates the possibility of a superstitious belief in a daiμóviov. For instance, Tiedemann, 'The degree of exertion, which the analysis of abstract conception requires, has, in some bodies, the effect of mechanically predisposing to ecstasy and enthusiasm.' 'So crates was so cultivated that deep thought produced in him a dulness of sense, and came near to the sweet dreams of the KσTATIKOί.' Those inclined to ecstasy mistake suddenly rising thoughts for inspirations.' 'The extraordinary condition of the brain during 2 Plessing, Osiris and So- 3 Fraguier, Sur l'ironie de Socrate in the Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions, iv. 368, expresses the view that Socrates understood by the daiμóviov his own natural intelligence and power of combination, which rendered it possible for him to make right СНАР. IV. CHAP. IV. 1 however, is hard to reconcile with the tone in which, on the testimony of both Plato and Xenophon, Socrates speaks of the suggestions of the δαιμόνιον, or with the value which he attaches to these suggestions on the most important occasions. To explain the phenomenon by the irritability of a sickly body falls not far short of deriving it from the fancy of a monomaniac, and reduces the great reformer of philosophy to the level of a madman.2 All these explanations, however, can now be dispensed with, Schleiermacher having shown,3 with the general apSocrates as probation of the most competent judges,1 that by (b) Re garded by an inward oracle. guesses respecting the future; 1 Xen. Mem. iv. 8, 4. Plato, 2 Many have spoken of the superstition and fanaticism of Socrates in a more modest way, but comparatively recently Lélut (Du Démon de Socrate, 1836) has boldly asserted, 'que Socrate était un fou-a category, in which he places amongst others not only Cardan and Swedenborg, but Luther, Pascal, Rousseau and others. His chief argument is that Socrates not only believed in a real and personal genius, but in his hallucinations believed that he audibly heard its voice. Those who rightly understand Plato, and can distinguish what is genuine from what is false, will not need a refutation of these untruths. 3 Platon's Werke, i. 2, 432. 4 Brandis, Gesch. d. Gri. Rom. Phil. ii. a. 60. Ritter, Gesch. d. Phil. ii. 40. Hermann, Gesch. u. Syst. d. Plato i. 236. Socher, Über Platon's Schriften p. 99. Cousin in the notes to his translation of Plato's Apology p. 335. Krische, Forschungen, 227. Ribbing, 16. Conf. Hegel, Gesch. d. Phil. ii. 77. Ast too (Platon's |