Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/865

SOCRATES. not the case with reference to the more exact definition and carrying out of the idea of that knowledge which should have moral action as its immediate and necessary consequence. What is comprised in, and what is the source of, this know- ledge ? Is it to be derived merely from custom and the special ends and interests of the subject which acts ? Every thing, according to the Xeno- phontic Socrates, is good and beautiful merely for that to which it stands in a proper relation {Mem. iii. 8. § 3, 7). The good is nothing else than the useful, the beautiful nothing else than the service- able {Mem. iv. 6. § 8, &c., Symp. 5. § 3, &c.), and almost throughout, moral precepts are referred to the motives of utility and enjoyment {Mem. i. 5, § 6, ii. 1. § 1, iv. 3. § 9, &c.; comp. ii. 1. § 27. &c., i. 6. § 9, iv. 8. § 6) ; while on the contrary the Platonic Socrates never makes use of an argu- ment founded on the identity of the good and the agreeable. In the passages which have been brought forward to show that he doeo {Protag. pp. 353, &c. 333), he is manifestly arguing ad hominem from the point of view of his sophistical antagonist. Now, that the doctrine of Socrates must have been a self-contradictory one, if on the one hand it laid down the above assertions respect- ing knowledge, and undertook to prove that only good conduct, and not good fortune (eJ7rpa|:a not €yri»xta), was valuable in itself (Xen. Mem. iii. 9. § 11), and yet on the other hand referred the good to the useful and the agreeable, even the defenders of the representation given b}' Xeno- phon admit, but suppose that this contradiction was an unavoidable consequence of the abstract and merely formal conception of virtue as know- ledge (see especially Zeller, I. c. ii. p. 63, &c.). But however little Socrates may have had occasion for, or been capable of, analysing what was com- prised in this knowledge, i. e. of establishing a scientificall}'^ organised system of ethics (and in fact, according to Aristotle, Eth. Eudem. i. 5, he investigated what virtue was, not how and whence it originated), he could not possibly have sub- ordinated knowledge, to which he attributed such unlimited power, and of which he affirmed that opposing desires were powerless against it, to enjoyment and utility. A man who himself so manifestly annulled his own fundamental maxim could not possibly have permanently enchained and inspired minds like those of Alcibiades, Eu- cleides, Plato, and others. In fact Socrates de- clared in the most decisive manner that the validity of moral requirements was independent of all re- ference to welfare, nay even to life and death, and unlimited (Plat. Apol. pp. 28, 38, Crito, p. 48 ; comp. Xen. Mem. i. 2. § 64, 6. § 9), and in those dialogues of Plato in which the historical Socrates is more particularly exhibited, as in the Protagoras, Charmides, Laches, and Euthyphro, we find him offering the most vigorous resistance to the as- sumption that the agreeable or useful has any value for us. That Socrates must rather have had in view a higher species of knowledge, inherent in the self-consciousness, as such, or developing itself from it, is shown by the expressions selected by Aristotle (eTTiffTTj^cu, yoi, (ppou-^aeis)., which even still make their appearance through the shallow notices of Xenophon (Brandis, /. c. ii. p. 43.). But in connection with this, Socrates might, nay must have endeavoured to show how the good is coincident with real uiility and real SOCRATES. 853 enjoyment ; and it is quite conceivable that Xeno- phon's unphilosophical mind may on the one hand have confounded sensual enjoyment and utility with that of a more exalted and real kind, and on the other comprehended and preserved the externals and introductions of the conversations of Socrates rather than their internal connection and objects. Besides, his purpose was to refute the prejudice that Socrates aspired after a hidden wisdom, and for that very reason he might have found himself still more in- duced to bring prominently forward every thing by which Socrates appeared altogether to fall in with the ordinary conceptions of the Athenians. Whether and how Socrates endeavoured to connect the moral with the religious consciousness, and how and how far he had developed his con- victions respecting a divine spirit arranging and guiding the universe, respecting the immortality of the soul, the essential nature of love, of the state, &c., we cannot here inquire. [Ch. A. B.] SO'CRATES. designated in the title of his Ecclesiastical History Scholasticus, from his fol- lowing the profession of a scholasticus or pleader, was, according to his own testimony {Hist. Eccles. V. 24), born and educated in the city of Constan- tinople, in which also he chiefly or wholly resided in after life. When quite a boy {koixiZt] i/4os oSj/) he studied {Hist. Eccles. v. 16) under the gram- marians Ammonius and Helladius, who had been priests at Alexandria, the first of the Egyptian Ape, the second of Jupiter, and had fled from that city on account of the tumults occasioned by the destruction of the heathen temples, which took place, according to the Chronicon of Marcellinus, in the consulship of Timasius and Promotus, A. d. 389 [Ammonius Grammaticus]. From these data Valesius calculates that Socrates was born about the beginning of the reign of Theodosius the Great (a. d. 379) : his calculation is based on the assumption that Socrates was placed under their charge at the usual age of ten years, and that he attended them immediately after their removal from Alexandria to Constantinople ; and it is confirmed by the circumstance that Socrates writing of some dissensions among the Macedo- nians and Eunomians of Constantinople about A. D. 394 (//. E. V. 24), mentions as one reason for his particularity in speaking of these, and generally of events which had occurred at Con- stantinople, that some of them had occurred under his own eyes ; a reason which he would hardly have urged in this place had it not applied to the particular events in question ; and had he been younger than Valesius' calculation would make him, he would hardly have been old enough to feel interested in such matters ; indeed he must, on any calculation, have given attention to them at a com- paratively early age. And had he been much older than Valesius makes him, he must have commenced his attendance on his masters after the usual age, and then he would hardly have said that he went to them KOfiiSrj ve'os tSf, " when quite young." Valesius suspects from the very high terms in which Socnites speaks of the rheto- rician Troilus, and the acquaintance he shows with his affiurs, that he studied under him also, which may be true. Beyond this, little seems to be known of the personal history of Socrates, except that he followed the profession of a pleader at Constantinople, and that he survived the seven- teenth consulship of the emperor Theodosius the 3 I ;5