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564 Socrates^ Schleiermacher^ and Delbrueck. that the fault lies in some measure with Socrates himself, and that he did not act well in withholding the knowledge of the oracle from his contemporaries until he had occasion to publish it at his trial. His silence however was necessary to prevent expectations which the disclosure of it might have raised, and which he, who could only detect error without imparting wis- dom, would not have been able to satisfy. Unfortunately the consequence was, that when at last he revealed the secret to his judges, he was not believed, and instead of listening to his wit- nesses of the fact, or sending an embassy to Delphi to ascertain the truth, they treated his appeal to the God as an ironical feint. But the time soon came when they were punished for their profane incredulity, by the stings of remorse, and in bitter grief applied the verses of Euripides, which reproached the Greeks for the murder of Palamedes, to their own deed. But still more sensibly is the same misunderstanding avenged at this day, inasmuch as those who take the main thought on which the whole apology turns for irony, deprive not only this speech, but the life of Socrates, of all its sublimity, and its edifying virtue. No one can sincerely admire, and cordially love, both the life of the sage, and this vindication of it, who does not per- ceive in the words of Socrates the unfeigned language of pious enthusiasm (p. 46). But Mr D. had at the outset (p. 2.) intimated that there were three passages in the Apology which seemed to him to form an exception to its general character, and to these he now proceeds to direct our attention. It is not without a kind of reluctance and great diffidence, that he ventures to express his opinion of them ; for as Schleiermacher only remarks in general terms, that there are weak points in the speech, which any one may easily discover, if he only half opens his eyes, Mr D. fears that he may have been the first person who has felt the passages in question to be not merely weak, but offensive, and who has marked them as utterly unworthy of Socrates. Should this be the case, his modesty leads him to apprehend, that he has either mistaken the sense and spirit of the whole work, or has mis- understood these parts of it; if there is any other alternative he does not know how to describe it. The first of the offensive passages is the plea which Socrattes sets up against the charge of corrupting the young, in the ad-