feet swathed in felts and fleeces, in the midst of this Socrates, with his bare feet on the ice, and in his ordinary dress, marched better than any of the other soldiers who had their shoes on."1 His courage was shown in peace as well as in war. When acting as president of the prytanes, he had declined, in face of the popular clamor, to put to vote illegally the resolution condemning the generals at Arginusæ; and once again, in the perilous times under the Thirty Tyrants, he had, at the risk of his life, refused to act contrary to the laws at their bidding. This combination of rectitude of character, with striking intellectual gifts- a combination which his personal peculiarities served rather to heighten than obscure-gave to Socrates an influence on the thought of his day equalled by that of no other man. It is not strange, however, that he should have raised up enemies as well as friends. Few people can bear with equanimity the public exposure of their own ignorance; and Socrates' conception of his moral mission made him careless of the hard feelings he might excite. He fell, too, under the public suspicion which the sceptical and irreligious tendencies of the Sophistic movement had aroused in the minds of lovers of the old way of things, although he was himself of a deeply religious nature, and an observer of the customary forms of worship. Not long after the overthrow of the Thirty, therefore, he was publicly accused of denying the gods of the city, and of corrupting its youths, and was brought to trial. If he had been willing to adopt a conciliatory tone, he probably would have escaped; but he refused to lower himself by flattering the people, when he was conscious of no guilt, and by a narrow vote, he was condemned to drink the hemlock. "And Crito made a sign to the servant; and the servant went in, and remained for some time, and then returned with the jailer carrying the cup of poison. Soc 1 1 Symposium, 220, rates said: You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters, shall give me directions how I am to proceed. The man answered: You have only to walk about until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will act. At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with all his eyes, as his manner was, took the cup and said: What do you say about making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not? The man answered: We only prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough. I understand, he said; yet I may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world-may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. Then holding the cup to his lips, quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I was not weeping over him, but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out into a loud cry which made cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness: What is this strange outcry? he said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way, for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have patience. When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back, according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard, and asked him if he could feel; and he said, No; and then his leg, and so upwards and upwards, and showed us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the poison reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin, when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last words) — he said: Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the attendant uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. Such was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and justest, and best of all the men whom I have ever known." 1 LITERATURE Plato, esp. Charmides, Lysis, Laches, Ion, Meno, Euthyphro, Protagoras, Gorgias, Apology, Crito, Phædo, Symposium. Xenophon, Memorabilia, Apology, Banquet. Zeller, Socrates and the Socratic Schools. § 10. The Schools of Megara and Elis. Aristippus and the Cyrenaics. Antisthenes and the Cynics The influence which Socrates left behind him, while it was widespread and profound, was not so much the influence of a definite philosophical doctrine, to which, indeed, he never wholly attained, as of an impressive personality. There are, accordingly, a number of distinct schools tracing their origin to him. In addition to the more important development of Socrates' teaching in Plato, there were 1 Phado, 117. also the relatively unimportant schools of Megara and Elis, founded respectively by Euclides and Phado; and the more striking tendencies represented in the Cynics and Cyrenaics. In these latter, we meet the first definite formulation of the two great types of ethical theory, which ever since have been contending with each other in the history of thought. Both of them profess to go back to Socrates. As we have seen, Socrates' own conception of the true end of human life was vague in its outlines. That virtue is the highest good, and that virtue is intimately bound up with the possession of knowledge or insight of this he was assured. But virtue, or insight, is good for what? For its own sake? That leaves no content to virtue. To say that the supreme good is virtue, and that virtue is insight into the good, seems to be going in a circle; good for what? we ask again. Now the one obvious and seemingly unambiguous answer to this is: pleasure, or happiness. This gives at last a definite content. All men will agree that pleasure is a good in its own right, needing no justification by reference to a more remote end; and it is the only good about which they would so agree. 1. The Cyrenaics. - Socrates himself had had a leaning toward this solution, although he had not been altogether satisfied with it; but with Aristippus of Cyrene, it is elevated to the position of a central doctrine. Pleasure is man's sole good-pleasure in the most concrete form, and so, first of all, the more intensive pleasures of the body, although not such pleasures exclusively. If we could live from moment to moment, filling each with the fullest delight that sense and mind alike are capable of receiving, that would be the ideal of life. Unfortunately there are difficulties—practical difficulties in the way of this. Our acts have consequences that we do not intend, and so in our well-meant pursuit of pleasure, we are apt-nay, we are sure continually to be blundering upon pain and loss. Here, therefore, is the place for the Socratic insight. Only the wise man can be truly and permanently happy, he who does not let him self be carried off his feet by the rush of his passion; who can enjoy, but at the same time be above enjoyment, its master. Wisdom is thus no sober kill-joy. It means simply the ability to weigh and compound our pleasures well; the ability, while we seize the fleeting moment, at the same time, in full possession of ourselves, to look beyond the moment, foresee the consequences our acts will entail, and choose accordingly. Since, then, it is the part of wisdom to avoid pain, as well as to win pleasure, the life of purely sensuous enjoyment will have to be checked and moderated in some degree, in favor of the less intense, but safer, joys of the mind. We are not to suppose that there is any shame attaching to the life of the senses as such, or any higher law to which this is subordinate; nothing is disgraceful in itself." The necessity is based merely on prudential grounds, because to the abuse of such bodily pleasures, more definite penalties are attached. This conception of the end of life is known as Hedonism, and it never has been formulated more consistently and forcibly than in this statement of it first given by Aristippus. It is true that it affords no room for the play of those finer sentiments about the good and the just, the beauty of righteousness, the nobility of duty. But in compensation, it offers a well-defined view of life, with no nonsense about it, which lends itself to what is intellectually the simplest and most clear-cut of theories, and which, besides, appeals powerfully to the natural man. Naturally, this cutting away of the roots of the moral sentiments also carried with it religion. Theodorus is known as the Atheist; and Euhemerus is the originator of a philosophy of religion on a naturalistic basis, in which the stories of the gods are carried back to historical events in the lives of human kings and heroes, misinterpreted by tradition - a theory which had great notoriety in ancient times. Evidently, in all this, the really characteristic element in Socrates' thought has been lost. The universal factor in human life and knowledge, on which Socrates had so |