Socrates

But there must have been more behind the charge, and it seems likely that Burnet is right in reminding us that the prosecution of Andocides revived the old scandal of the "profanation of the mysteries," which had thrown Athens into a ferment on the eve of the Sicilian expedition in 416-415. The two chief victims, Alci biades and his uncle Axiochus, were both among the intimates of Socrates, and there is reason to think that others of his friends were affected. If this is what lay behind the charge, we can under stand why its real meaning seems never to have been explained. Owing to the terms of the amnesty, the matters in question were not really within the competency of the court. Socrates himself, in the account of Plato, who was present at the trial, treats the whole matter with contempt. His defence consists in narrating the facts of his past life, which proved that he was equally ready to defy the populace and the "thirty" in the cause of right and law, and in insisting on the reality of his mission from God and his deter mination to discharge it, even at the cost of life. The prosecutors had no desire for blood. They counted on a voluntary withdrawal of the accused from the jurisdiction before trial; the death penalty was proposed to make such a withdrawal certain. Socrates himself forced the issue by refusing at any stage to do anything involving the least shade of compromise. The prosecution had raised the question whether he was a traitor or, as he held himself to be, an envoy from God ; Socrates was determined that the judges should give a direct verdict on the issue without evasion. This is what makes him a martyr, but also what forbids us to call Anytus a murderer.

Doctrine and Method.

Socrates was a man of the Periclean age, and the Periclean age witnessed one of the periodical "bank ruptcies of science." Cosmological speculation, which had been boldly pursued from the beginning of the 6th century seemed by the middle of the sth to have led to a chaos of conflicting systems, each of which could establish only one point, that all its rivals were wrong. Parmenides of Elea had apparently cut away the ground from science by showing that the real world must be quite unlike anything which our senses reveal to us, and that, conse quently, the method of cosmology, interpretation of the world by analogies from familiar sensible experiences, is inherently falla cious. His pupil Zeno seemed to have shown that even the postu lates of mathematics are mutually contradictory.

Science, then, seems impossible, and this is why the ablest men of the generation before Socrates, such as Protagoras and Gorgias, turned away from the pursuit of it and tried to find a use for the intellect in professions which concern themselves, not with the discovery of truth, but with making a success of human life. "Prob ability is the very guide of life," and in practical matters "useful" points of view may be attainable, even if scientific certainty is beyond our reach. According to the narrative of the Phaedo,

Socrates, as a young man, began with an experience typical of his age. He was enthusiastically interested in "natural science," and familiarized himself with the various current systems, being spe cially interested in the contrast between the old Milesian type of cosmology with its flat earth and the Italian type with its spherical earth. He was also interested in the mathematical puzzles raised by Zeno about "the unit" (i.e., the problem of continuity). He discovered, to his distress, that though each authority was quite sure that the views of the others were wrong, none of them could give any proof that his own were right.

There was a complete lack of critical method. For a moment he hoped to find salvation in the doctrine of Anaxagoras that "mind" is the source of all cosmic order, since this seemed to mean that "everything is ordered as it is best that it should be," that the uni verse is a rational teleological system. But on reading the book of Anaxagoras, he found that the philosopher made no effective use of his principle ; the details of his scheme were as arbitrary as those of any other. After this disappointment, Socrates decided that he had "no head for physics" and must fall back on his own mother-wit. Accordingly he resolved henceforth to consider pri marily not "facts" but Xlryot the "statements" or "propositions" we make about them. His method should be to start with whatever seemed the most satisfactory "hypothesis," or postulate, about a given subject, and to consider the consequences which follow from it. So far as these consequences prove to be true and consistent, the "hypothesis" may be regarded as provisionally confirmed ; if they are false or mutually inconsistent it is discredited. But it must be a strict rule of method not to confuse enquiry into the consequences of the "hypothesis" with proof of its truth. If the question of its truth is raised, the issue can only be settled by de ducing the initial "hypothesis" as a consequence from some more ultimate "hypothesis" which both parties to the dispute are con tent to accept. The method, still familiar to us as that of true science, is manifestly suggested by reflection on the "antinomies" of Zeno, whom Aristotle called the creator of "dialectic," and whom Plato, in the Parmenides, afterwards described as meeting Socrates in the youth of the latter. So far, Plato's story has every appear ance of being historical. But it is still the fashion to hesitate to follow it any further. According to him, Socrates next proceeded to take it as his own fundamental "hypothesis" that every term (such as "good," "beautiful," "man") which has a single unequivo cal denotation directly names a single self-same object of a kind inaccessible to sense-perception and apprehensible only by thought. Such an object Socrates calls an Wa or erbos, Form.