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The average intelligence among them was low; and the idea that they were such a wonderful people has gained a foothold simply because they are so far off. The miracle of it all is that such sublimely great men as Pericles, Phidias, Socrates and Anaxagoras should have sprung from such a barbaric folk. The men just named were as exceptional as was Shakespeare in the reign of Elizabeth.
He made use of two great faculties: the sense of proportion, which enabled him to apprise life and its accidents justly, and the gift of in-seeing, which led Socrates after him, and Blessed John in lonely exile on Patmos, to look through the things temporal to the hidden meanings of eternity.
Here Adeimantus interposed and said: To these statements, Socrates, no one can offer a reply; but when you talk in this way, a strange feeling passes over the minds of your hearers: They fancy that they are led astray a little at each step in the argument, owing to their own want of skill in asking and answering questions; these littles accumulate, and at the end of the discussion they are found to have sustained a mighty overthrow and all their former notions appear to be turned upside down.
At which Hermogenes seeming surprised, Socrates said to him, "Why are you surprised that this God thinks it better for me to leave this world than to continue longer in it?
Against these, too, I must try to make a defence: Let their affidavit be read: it contains something of this kind: It says that Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own. Such is the charge; and now let us examine the particular counts.
Suffer me, then, before revealing to your eyes the leaves of the book of life, to prepare your soul by this sceptical purification which the great teachers of the people Socrates, Jesus Christ, St. Paul, St. Remi, Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, Kant, etc. have always claimed of their disciples.
When the queen was translating Socrates or Seneca, the maids of honor found it convenient to affect at least a taste for the classics. For the nobleman and the courtier an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and Italian was essential to "good form."
Socrates was not an expositor but a questioner; he disclaimed the position of a teacher, he refused to admit that any were his pupils or disciples. But his questioning had two sides, each in its way leading people on to an apprehension of the ideal in existence. The first side may be called the negative or destructive, the second, the positive or constructive.
Once there happened a sharp skirmish, in which they both behaved with signal bravery; but Alcibiades receiving a wound, Socrates threw himself before him to defend him, and beyond any question saved him and his arms from the enemy, and so in all justice might have challenged the prize of valor.
If you will think, Socrates, of the nature of punishment, you will see at once that in the opinion of mankind virtue may be acquired; no one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong, only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that manner.
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