Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/440

418 418 HISTORY OF THE It must indeed be allowed that Socrates, in the earlier part of his career, had not advanced -with that security with which we see him invested in the writings of Xenophon and Plato, that he still took more part in the speculations of the Ionian philosophers with regard to the universe,* than he did at a later period ; that certain wild elements were still mixed up in his theory, and not yet purged out of it hy the Soeratic dialectic : still it is quite inconceivable that Socrates should ever have kept a school of rhetoric (and this is the real question), in which instruction was given, as in those of the sophists, how to make the worse appear the better reason. f But even this misrepresentation on the part of Aris- tophanes may have been undesigned : we see from passages of his later comedies,^ that he actually regarded Socrates as a rhetorician and declaimer. He was probably deceived by appearances into the belief that the dialectic of Socrates, the art of investigating the truth, was the same as the sophistry which aped it, and which was but the art of producing a deceitful resemblance of the truth. It is, no doubt, a serious reproach to Aristophanes that he did not take the trouble to distinguish more accurately between the two : but how often it happens that men, with the best intentions, condemn arbitrarily and in the lump those ten- dencies and exertions which they dislike or cannot appreciate. The whole play of the Clouds is full of ingenious ideas, such as the chorus of Clouds itself, which Socrates invokes, and which represents appropriately the light, airy, and fleeting nature of the new philo- sophy^ A number of popular jokes, such as generally attach them- selves to the learned class, and banter the supposed subtilties and refine- ments of philosophy, are here heaped on the school of Socrates, and often delivered in a very comic manner. The worthy Strepsiades, whose home-bred understanding and mother-wit are quite overwhelmed with astonishment at the subtle tricks of the school-philosophers, until at last his own experience teaches him to form a different judgment, is from the beginning to the end of the piece a most amusing character. Notwithstanding all this, however, the piece cannot overcome the defect arising from the oblique views on which it is based, and the superficial manner in which the philosophy of Socrates is treated, — at least not in TO ftiTitUQCt. f The "irruv or Hhxas, and the xpirrm or Vixa.nn Xoyo;. Aristophanes makes the former manner of speaking the representative of the assuming and arrogant youth, and the latter of the old respectable education, and personifies them both. % See Aristoph. Frogs, 1491. Birds, 1555. Eupolis had given a more correct picture of Socrates, at least in regard to his outward appearance. Bergk de rel. com. Attica, p. 353. § That this chorus loses its special character towards the end of the piece, and even preaches reverence of the gods, is a point of resemblance between it and the choruses in the Acharnians and the Wasps, who at least act rather according to the general character of the Greek chorus, which was on the whole the same for tragedy and comedy, than according to hc particular part which has been assigned to them.