Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/101

Rh son, and in all probability Xanthippe may have had many a word with him on the subject of his not going on with his profession, and making money to keep his family in comfort. But, by inheritance or otherwise, he had some very small means, and instead of increasing these to meet the desires of ordinary people, he determined to cut down his wants to what he had, and thus he voluntarily adopted a life of austere simplicity and poverty, entirely devoted to what he considered his spiritual calling. India of the present day throws light on many of the features of ancient Greek society, and in India such lives of renunciation and of contented poverty are not unfrequent. Often in the Indian bazaars may you see Socrates, or something like him, in the person of some stout Brahman, good-humouredly lounging about in loose robes and with bare legs, ready to discuss for hours, with all comers, any topic that may turn up, but for preference some point of Vedanta philosophy. The resemblance is doubtless an external one, yet still there is the same simple notion of life, contented with the barest necessaries, and cheered by the play of the intellect in talk.

But the talk of Socrates was not idle—it was always directed to a definite purpose. Every conversation was meant to produce a result, and to leave the person who had talked with Socrates in a better condition than before—either with truer views as to the conduct of life, or disabused of some fallacy, or stimulated to inquire about some point in a deeper way and after a sounder method. For such talk he laid himself out,