Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/437

UNPOPULAR EXAMINATION. 415 I have given rather ample extracts from the Platonic Apology, because no one can conceive fairly the character of Sokrates who does not enter into the spirit of that impressive discourse. We see in it plain evidence of the marked supernatural mission which he believed himself to be executing, and which would not allow him to rest or employ himself in other ways. The oracular answer brought by Chjerephon from Delphi, was a fact of far more importance in his history than his so-called dasmon, about which so much more has been said. That answer, together with the dreams and other divine mandates concurrent to the same end, came upon him in the middle of his life, when the intel- lectual man was formed, and when he had already acquired a reputation for wisdom among those who knew him. It supplied a stimulus which brought into the most pronounced action a pre- existing train of generalizing dialectics and Zenonian negation, an intellectual vein with which the religious impulse rarely comes into confluence. Without such a motive, to which his mind was peculiarly susceptible, his conversation would probably have taken the same general turn, but would assuredly have been re- stricted within much narrower and more cautious limits. For nothing could well be more unpopular and obnoxious than the task which he undertook of cross-examining, and convicting of ignorance, every distinguished man whom he could approach. So violent, indeed, was the enmity which he occasionally pro- voked, that there were instances, we are told, in which he was struck or maltreated, 1 and very frequently laughed to scorn. Though he acquired much admiration from auditors, especially youthful auditors, and from a few devoted adherents, yet the philosophical motive alone would not have sufficed to prompt him to that systematic, and even obtrusive, cross-examination which he adopted as the business of his life. This, then, is the second peculiarity which distinguishes Sok- rates, in addition to his extreme publicity of life and indiscrimi- nate conversation. He was not simply a philosopher, but a religious missionary doing the work of philosophy ; " an clench- by Dr. Uutclicson, as the motto for his Synopsis Philosophise Moralis) .aiira 6e fn TJTTOV ireiaeo&e fiat Liyovri. 1 Diogcn. Laert. ii, 31