Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/69

 SOCRATES 41 What rendered the manner of Socrates peculiarly engaging was, that though in his own practice he maintained the most rigid severity, yet to others he was in the highest degree gentle and complaisant. The first principle with which he wished to inspire his youthful auditors was piety and reverence for the gods ; he then allured them as much as possible to observe temperance, and to avoid vo- luptuousness ; representing to them how the latter deprives a man of liberty, the richest treasure of which he is possessed. His manner of treating the science of morals was the more insinuating, as he always conducted his subject in the way of conversation and without any appar- ent method. For without proposing any point for discussion, he kept by that which chance first presented. Like one who himself wished information, he first put a question, and then, profiting by the concessions of his respondent, brought him to a proposition subversive of that which in the beginning of the debate had been considered as a first principle. He spent one part of the day in confer- ences of this kind, on morals. To these everyone was welcome, and according to the testimony of Xenophon, none departed from them without becoming a better man. Though Socrates has left us nothing in writing, yet by what we find in the works of Plato and Xenophon, it is easy to judge both of the principles of his ethical knowledge and of the manner in which he communicated them. The uniformity observable (especially in his manner of disputing), as transmitted by these two scholars of Socrates, is a certain proof of the method which he fol- lowed. It will be difficult to conceive how a person who exhorted all men to honor the gods, and who preached, so to speak, to the young to avoid and abandon every vice, should himself be condemned to death for impiety against the gods received at Athens, and as a corrupter of youth. This infamously unjust pro- ceeding took place in a time of disorder and under the seditious government of the thirty tyrants. The occasion of it was as follows : Critias, the most powerful of these thirty tyrants, had formerly, as well as Al- cibiades, been a disciple of Socrates. But both of them being weary of a philos- ophy the maxims of which would not yield to their ambition and intemperance, they, at length, totally abandoned it. Critias, though formerly a scholar of Soc- rates, became his most inve'terate enemy. This we are to trace to that firmness with which Socrates reproached him for a certain shameful vice ; and to those means by which he endeavored to thwart his indulging in it. Hence it was that Critias, having become one of the thirty tyrants, had nothing more at heart than the destruction of Socrates, who, besides, not being able to brook their tyranny, was wont to speak against them with much freedom. For, seeing that they were always putting to death citizens and powerful men, he could not refrain from observing, in a company where he was, that if he to whom the care of cattle was committed, exhibited them every day leaner and fewer in number, it would be very strange if he would not himself confess that he was a bad cow-herd. Critias and Charicles, two of the most powerful of the thirty tyrants, feeling