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heavenly fire. A son of a poor stone-cutter, released from drudgery in his early, and saved from peril in his maturer manhood, gave utterance, at length, to knowledge that had not yet been gained in heathendom. Socrates was a brave warrior and a noble citizen in the service of his country,234 before. he distinguished himself by courage and nobleness, such as his country could neither immediately value nor at any time command. He became the great philosopher of Athens, instructing his pupils in a method of reasoning 235 more accurate than any other yet adopted, and setting new objects 236 before them to which the method might be applied. But it is neither as a philosopher, nor yet as a warrior and a citizen, that the name of Socrates may be taken to crown our retrospect of the better days of liberty in Greece. His philosophy, as such, will be better judged hereafter in the account we shall have to take of his successors, in connection with the last years of liberty in Rome.

If the measure of liberty be proved, as this history of it maintains, by the measure of the faculties it quickens and the attainments it inspires, as well under the laws of God as under those of man, then there is reason for giving Socrates the palm above

tor.

233 Abovpyós. Perhaps a sculp- fence, again, of an innocent man. Diog. Laert., II. 18. See Xen., Mem., IV. 4. 23.

234 As is testified by his sublime behaviour before the Athenian assembly in favor of some who were unjustly persecuted, and afterwards before the Thirty Tyrants in the de

235 Which Xenophon describes, Mem., Cap. VI.

236 See Cicero's opinions, Acad. II., Lib. I. 4; Tusc. Quæst., V. 4 ; and compare Xen., Mem., IV. 7. 6.

all who were free in ancient times. Nor need his merits be exaggerated in order to prove the blessing that descended upon him, not to make him secure, but to awaken his anxiety and his thoughtfulness. He said things, if we trust the reports of old, of which he could not himself have perceived the full and glorious significance; and when he was discoursing, for the last time, of immortality, he interrupted himself to order the sacrifice of a cock to Esculapius. It would have been unnatural that he should have been totally spared the errors which lay in ambush amongst men. But though he could not obliterate the stains of the humanity he bore, he washed them partly from his brow in the spring to which his steps were led. Ardent to learn because he knew how much he had to learn, yet humble because he felt how much there was beyond his learning, he called himself the architect of his own philosophy,238 but confessed that his morality was imparted to him from a spirit with which his higher nature alone obtained communion.239 Socrates was so entirely above all others as to seem the only one in the heathen universe who heard the voices or beheld the forms of

237 Ελεγε δὲ καὶ ἓν μόνον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι, τὴν ἐπιστήμην, “ He said, too, there was but one great good, namely, knowledge." Diog. Laert., II. 31. So Xen., Mem., III. 9. 5. If the reader have forgotten the account in the Apology of the exertions made by Socrates to find a man wiser than himself, which resulted in his conviction that wisdom was

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but the humble consciousness of human ignorance, I beg him here to read it in any translation of Plato. 238 Xen., Conviv., I. 5.

239 It is in this view that his demon, or, as we should call it, his guardian angel, is to be explained. See Cic., De Div., I. 54. Xen., Mem., I. 1. 4.

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Truth. He was a moral man; and his desires reached beyond the freedom of the body under law, or that of the mind under knowledge, to the higher freedom of the soul, which can exist only under morality. Full of earnestness to make this known among men, he confined his instructions neither to school nor class, but sought his pupils in the thoroughfares, the lowly as well as the magnificent amongst his countrymen. In teaching some of the grandest lessons to be learned or practised through liberty, he caught a glimpse of the world to which, not altogether blindfold, he looked forward, and where a place has since been promised to the pure in heart. He was the chosen servant to make one effort, at least, in the preparation of the human mind for the promises of Him who not only beheld the truth, but revealed it to make His followers free.

Had the Greeks been slaves to Persia, Macedonia, or Rome, Socrates would scarcely have been born amongst them; had they, on the other hand, been truer to liberty, he would certainly not have been condemned, like a criminal, to die. The design of his life, however, may have been completed in the manner of his death. The very fact, that he wrote. nothing, while other philosophers were allowed to compose each a library, as their works in some cases may be styled, compels us to consider Socrates in a peculiar light. It was permitted that the pall should be a little withdrawn from the prospects that had

240 Τοῖς βουλομένοις ἐξῆν ἀκούειν. Xen., Mem., I. 1. 10.

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