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563 Socrates, Schleiermacher, and Delhrtieck. 563 imagine confined to the worst school of the worst time of the Jesuits. The Introduction to the Apology, though interesting enough in itself, and in some points bearing on the former essay, would hardly have claimed a place by its side, if it had not been con- nected with the subject of a little work of Mr Delbrueck's, which I noticed in the article already referred to, and in a manner which would have been scarcely fair, if I had not in- tended to return to it. Mr Delbrueck's Reflexions on Socrates turn entirely ^upon Plato's Apology, and his difficulties in a great measure arise out of Schleiermacher''s view of it, which he adopts as his own. As the reader now has this view before him, he is fully prepared to understand the nature of the diffi- culties which it has raised in Mr Delbrueck'^s mind, and which certainly do not the less deserve to be stated because Mr D. has been fortunate enough to find a solution of them, which, as has already been intimated, may not suit the case of ordinary per- sons. Mr D. opens the subject with some reflexions on the famous answer of the Delphic oracle, mentioned in the Apology as exercising such an important influence on the destiny of Socrates. He is surprised (p. 14.) that this oracle and its effect upon Socrates have been hitherto so seldom made a subject of investigation, and laments that even among the admirers of Socrates in our day, there should be many who, like some of his contemporaries and his judges, take the oracle for a fiction, and his appeal to it for irony. With as much reason, Mr D. thinks, might Thomas a Kempis, or Pascal, or Fenelon, be sus- pected of an affectation of humility, when they confirm their convictions on sacred subjects by quotations from the Bible. Like them, Socrates was in tlie best sense of the word a Mystic (p. 18.) : and the answers of the Delphic oracle exercised an influence on the weal and woe of Greece, similar to that which the Bible exerts on the destinies and the proceedings of Christ- endom (p. 25). The death of Socrates was the most important event in his history : with it began the happier life which he has ever since lived in the memory of mankind (p. 41). But this was only the close of a series of phenomena which had their origin in the answer of the Delphic oracle ; so that again Mr D. cannot contain his surprise, that this answer should have attracted so little attention (p. 42). It may indeed be thought Vol II. No. 6. 4 C