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Encomiums could hardly go higher, and yet the language of Perrault is in a still higher strain: “There is more wit in these eighteen Letters than in Plato’s Dialogues; more delicate and artful raillery than in those of Lucian; and more strength and ingenuity of reasoning than in the orations of Cicero.” Their style especially is beyond all praise.
And Plato’s development of this theme shows clearly just what a general historical consideration might lead us to expect, namely, that it was naturalism and sophistic that jointly undermined the belief in the old gods. With Socrates and his successors the whole question of the relation of Greek thought to popular belief enters upon a new phase.
The object of Socrates in his relations with his fellow-men was, on his own showing—for on this important point I think we can confidently rely upon Plato’s Apology—to make clear to them that they knew nothing. And when he was asked to say in what he himself differed from other people, he could mention only one thing, namely, that he was aware of his own ignorance.
We might think of the sophist Thrasymachus, who in the first book of Plato’s Republic maintains a point of view corresponding to that of Callicles in Gorgias. But what we otherwise learn of Thrasymachus is not suggestive of interest in religion, and the only statement of his as to that kind of thing which has come down to us tends to the denial of a providence, not denial of the gods.
How to define a name, may not only be an inquiry of considerable difficulty and intricacy, but may involve considerations going deep into the nature of the things which are denoted by the name. Such, for instance, are the inquiries which form the subjects of the most important of Plato’s Dialogues; as, “What is rhetoric?” the topic of the Gorgias, or “What is justice?” that of the Republic.
To this may further be added the negative point that he never in any of his works made Socrates define his position in regard to the sophistic treatment of the popular religion. In Plato’s later works the case is different. In the construction of the universe described in the Timaeus the gods have a definite and significant place, and in the Laws, Plato’s last work, they play a leading part.
An indirect testimony to the correctness of the view here stated will be found in the way in which Plato’s faithful disciple Xenocrates developed his theology, for it shows that Xenocrates presupposed the existence of the gods of popular belief as given by Plato.
But the impotency of Plato’s attempts to solve these difficulties, may be explained without the least disparagement to his genius, or without leading us to hope for light only from the world’s possession of better minds.
The Darwinians appear to me to resemble the Roman emperors, who waited till the combat was ended, and then applauded the survival of the fittest. The idealist philosophy, be it Plato’s or Hegel’s, recognises in what actually is, the rational, the realisation of eternal, rational ideas.
In Plato Socrates refutes the accusation indirectly, using a line of argument entirely differing from that of Xenophon. But in Plato, too, the accusation is treated as being in no way extraordinary. In my opinion, Plato’s Apology cannot be used as historical evidence for details unless special reasons can be given proving their historical value beyond the fact that they occur in the Apology.
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