Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/119

Rh man, met two females at a cross road—one called Vice, meretricious in dress and form; the other called Virtue, beautiful, dignified, and noble. Each made offers and promises to induce him to accompany her. These offers and promises were the descriptions, from a moral point of view, of a virtuous and vicious life respectively. Such was the sermon, borrowed from one of the Sophists, which Xenophon represents Socrates as having preached on this occasion. Nothing could have been less qualified to produce an impression on a man of the world like Aristippus. And we may be sure, if the real Socrates was at all like what Plato has led us to imagine him, that he never spoke exactly as here represented. Several dialogues, occupying the middle part of the 'Memorabilia,' are of the same "goody" character, and entirely devoid of the racy cleverness and biting wit which Socrates was in the habit of using. Colonel Mure indeed suspects that Xenophon has "made his master the mouthpiece for his own conceptions." At all events, if he has given us actual recollections or traditions of Socrates, he has served up many of them in such a way as to deprive them entirely of the Socratic flavour. There would be no interest in dwelling over such discourses as that in which the Xenophontic philosopher recommends two brothers to be good friends with each other; or those in which he dilates on the advantages and duties of friendship. Such matter as this is moral and well-intentioned enough, but it would not have required the "dæmon" of Socrates, or his own demonlike ability, to reveal it to the world.