Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/56

32 him a prodigious number of lesser divinities. They had only one cult, but they permitted numbers of special systems.

The Greeks, for instance, however religious they were, allowed the Epicureans to deny providence and the existence of the soul. I need not speak of the other sects which all offended against the sound  idea of the creative being, yet were all tolerated.

Socrates, who approached nearest to a knowledge of the Creator, is said to have paid for it, and died a martyr to the Deity; he is the only man  whom the Greeks put to death for his opinions. If that was really the cause of his condemnation, however,  it is not to the credit of intolerance, since  they punished only the man who alone gave glory  to God, and honoured those who held unworthy  views of the Deity. The enemies of toleration would, I think, be ill advised to quote the odious  example of the judges of Socrates.

It is evident, moreover, that he was the victim of a furious party, angered against him. He had made irreconcilable enemies of the sophists, orators,  and poets who taught in the schools, and of all the  teachers in charge of the children of distinguished  men. He himself admits, in his discourse given to us by Plato, that he went from house to house proving  to the teachers that they were ignorant. Such conduct was hardly worthy of one whom an oracle  had declared to be the wisest of men. A priest and a councillor of the Five Hundred were put forward  to accuse him. I must confess that I do not know what the precise accusation was; I find only vagueness  in his apology. He is made to say, in general,