hoods, there appears to have been a strong inclination, while retaining myth for the credulous masses, to frame a more spiritual idea of the gods, to arrange and unify the variety of local cults according to the inner relations of the theological idea, and to secure for the great national deities, such as the Olympian Zeus, and especially the Delphian Apollo, as wide a recognition as possible.44 To these endeavours Sokrates's manner of dealing with religion was to a certain point agreeable enough; and there is still some question whether we ought not to regard the remarkable answer of the oracle of Delphi, which declared Sokrates to be the wisest of the Hellenes, as a covert approval of his believing rationalism. Yet this very man could be more easily denounced to the people as a foe of religion, the more often he was accustomed openly, and with an avowed object of influencing his fellow-citizens, to discuss the most dangerous questions. This religious earnestness of the great man determined, then, his whole conduct in life and death, in a degree which lends to the man a still higher importance than to the doctrine, and which was quite calculated to make his pupils into disciples zealous to spread wider the flame of this lofty inspiration. The way in which Sokrates, following his sense of duty, opposed, as Prytanis, the passionate excitement of the populace, the way in which he refused to obey the Thirty Tyrants,45 and after his con

44 Mention has already been made of the 'Theokrasy' (the mingling and fusion into one of different gods and worships) of the Delphic priesthood in Note 2 above. The place of Apollo in the Sokratic spiritual movement has been recently pointed out very curiously and markedly by Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik: Leipzig, 1872. How this tendency, in connection with the Platonic theories, for centuries continued an exuberant growth, until, at last, although too

late for a regeneration of Paganism, it burst into full activity, we may learn, in particular, from the half philosophical, half mystical cult of

King Helios,' which the Emperor Julian would have opposed to Christianity. Comp. Baur, Gesch. d. Christl. Kirche, ii. (2 Ausg.) S. 23 ff.; Teuffel, Studien und Charakteristiken: Leipzig, 1871, S. 190.

45 Sokrates was Epistates of the Prytanes, and had in that capacity to put the question to the vote, on the day when the excited populace

demnation declined to flee, but, obedient to the law, with peaceful soul faced death, is a convincing proof that with him the doctrine and the life were completely fused.

It has been recently supposed that we must explain the philosophical significance of Sokrates by showing that he was anything but a mere teacher of morality, but that he has, on the contrary, left a very distinct mark upon the history of philosophy by certain definite innovations. To this there is no objection; only we wish to show how all these new views, with their bright and dark sides, have their roots directly in the theological and ethical principle by which Sokrates was guided in his whole conduct.

If we next ask how it was that Sokrates came to renounce speculation as to the essence of things, and instead to make the moral nature of man the supreme object of his philosophy, we have from himself and his pupils the explanation that he had in his younger days busied himself with physical science, but that everything in this province appeared to him so uncertain that he had abandoned this kind of inquiry as unprofitable. Much more important was it for him, according to the Delphic oracle, to know himself: the object, however, of this effort after self-knowledge is to become as good as possible.

We need not now concern ourselves with the question whether Sokrates had really at one time zealously pursued physical investigation, as would seem to follow from the satirical picture drawn by Aristophanes. In the period of his life which we know from Plato and Xenophon it was no longer so; on the contrary, we know from Plato that Sokrates had read many of the writings of the earlier philosophers without finding any satisfaction in them.

wished to condemn the generals who had neglected to pick up the dead after the battle of Arginusae. The proposal was not only unjust in itself, but it had a defect of form, and therefore Sokrates, at the risk of his own life, steadily refused to

put it to the vote. The Thirty Tyrants ordered him and four others to bring Leon back to Athens from Salamis; the other four obeyed, but Sokrates quietly went back home, although he knew that it was at the peril of his life.

He read, for instance, Anaxagoras, and when he found that Anaxagoras explained the creation by referring it to reason, he was uncommonly delighted, for he supposed that Anaxagoras would find in reason some explanation of all the arrangements of the universe, and show, for example, if the earth is flat, why it is best thus; or, if it is in the centre of the universe, why this must be so, and so on. Instead of this, he was rudely disenchanted when Anaxagoras spoke of physical causes only. That is as if some one should propose to explain why Sokrates is sitting in this particular place, and then when he began should explain the 'sitting' according to the principles of anatomy and physiology, instead of mentioning that the Athenians had thought good to condemn him, and how he had thought good in disdain of flight to sit here and await his fate.46

We see from this illustration how Sokrates came to the study of such treatises with a ready-made view. His entire conviction is that the reason which has created the world-structure proceeds after the manner of human reason; that we can follow its thoughts everywhere, although we must at the same time admit its infinite superiority. The world is explained from man, not man from the universal laws of nature. In the order of natural events, then, there is presupposed throughout that antithesis of thoughts and acts, of plan and material execution, which we find in our own consciousness. Everywhere we have an anthropomorphic activity. A plan, a purpose must first be provided, and then the matter and the force to set it going. We see here how much of a Sokratic Aristotle still was at bottom with his antithesis of form and matter, and the government of efficient causes by the final purpose. Without having dealt himself with physical science, Sokrates had yet already marked out

46 Lewes, Hist. of Phil., i. 81 foll., gives this passage of the Phaedo (comp. Note 39) at length. He rightly

thinks it to be genuinely Sokratic, and shows how Anaxagoras was misunderstood by Sokrates.

for it the path in which it was afterwards to travel with such steady persistence. But the peculiar principle of this theory of the universe is the theological. The architect of the worlds must be a Person who can be conceived and imagined by man, though he may not be understood in all his actions. Even the apparently impersonal expression that 'reason' has done all this receives a religious stamp through the unconditional anthropomorphism with which the work of this 'reason' is regarded. And therefore we find, even in the Platonic Sokrates-and this trait must be genuine-the expressions 'Reason' and 'God' often employed as quite convertible terms.

That Sokrates in his conception of these things rests upon essentially monotheistic views need not surprise us, for it lay entirely in the time. It is true this monotheism was nowhere dogmatic; on the contrary, the plurality of the gods is expressly maintained, but the preponderance of the God who is regarded as creator and preserver of the world makes the others beings of a lower rank, who may, for many speculative purposes, be left entirely out of sight.

So that we may perhaps assume that the uncertainty of physical speculations, of which Sokrates complains, was nothing but the too obvious impossibility of constructing a complete and rational explanation of the whole structure of the universe, such as he had vainly sought from Anaxagoras. For efficient causes are regarded by Sokrates, wherever he deals with them, as something entirely indifferent and unimportant; which is quite intelligible if they are conceived not as universal laws of nature, but merely as the implements of a reason which personally thinks or creates. The more exalted or majestic this is conceived to be,, so much the more indifferent and insignificant will the implement be considered; and so Sokrates can scarcely speak with sufficient contempt of the search after external causes.'

VOL. I.

One sees from this how at bottom the doctrine of the identity of thought and existence has a theological root, since it supposes that the reason of a world-soul, or a God, and a reason, moreover, differing from the human reason only in degree, has so contrived and disposed everything that we can think it again, and, if we use our reason quite rightly, must think it again.

The religious tendency inaugurated by Sokrates may be compared with the Rationalism of modern times. Sokrates is perfectly ready to retain the ordinary forms of religious cultus, only he imparts to them everywhere a deeper meaning; thus, for example, when he demands that we shall not pray for particular blessings, but much rather require 'good' from the gods, since they know best what is good for us. This doctrine seems as harmless as it is reasonable, until we reflect how deeply in Hellenic faith prayer for particular blessings was bound up with the very existence of particular deities. The gods of the popular belief were thus made by Sokrates only the representatives of a purer creed. Unity of worship between the people and the educated was preserved, but by the aid of an interpretation of traditional creeds which we may well call rationalistic. That Sokrates praises the oracles is quite in harmony with this tendency, for why should not the deity, who has taken thought in the smallest details for the good of man, also hold intercourse with him and afford him counsel? And even in our modern civilisation, and in England also, although more especially in Germany, a very powerful tendency has arisen, which thought it its duty to spread purer forms of faith, exactly out of zeal for the restoration of religion and its influence, and the main impulse of which, with all its rationalism, was a positive one. Zeal against Materialism, and the anxious assertion of the ideal benefits of faith in God, freedom, and immortality, was nowhere greater than amongst men of this tendency. So Sokrates also, who is under the double sway of destructive culture and love for