their nation. The Egyptians affirm, that no deity ever appeared in human shape. Their story of Osiris and his battles with Typho shows that their gods are personifications of mere passions and desires. Now, the God of the Jews is not a personification of any passion, though he is sometimes poetically described as having the passions of a man. He is indeed that Principle, whatever be its name, which controls and subdues, and absorbs and annihilates all passions, emotions and desires, of whatever name; a Principle superior to life and death, to flesh and matter; above fate, and more than will. Now, these Syrians affirm, that by and by a man shall appear in their nation, in whom this principle shall evidently shine; and that he shall give new laws and a new religion to all the world. His name, as a man, is to be called Messias. When I asked a reason for so extraordinary a belief, they referred me to their holy books. But this did not satisfy me; for I reflected, that the prophets of any nation might make what predictions they pleased, shaping them so as to make sure of their being believed by the ignorant; indeed, I myself could prophesy tolerably well in the Egyptian fashion, and have something of the art still left in me. There was a something divine and stupendous in this Syrian prophecy, which I could not comprehend. But now, when I reflect upon the character of this Hebrew people, the antiquity of their traditions, which reach authentically back to the creation of man; when I consider the wonderful purity of their manners, compared with all other nations-the sublimity of their prayers and hymns to the One Being-their perfect knowledge of the right and the wrong, and contempt of all things in comparison of that knowledge; when I remember the series of their holy prophets, God-appointed spirits, and the exquisite wisdom recorded of them-making the words of Solon trivial, and the wisdom of Hermes contemptible; when I remember the amazing grandeur of their Epic poetry, compared with which our Iliad is an infant's babble-for their poets make men converse with God in a language well befitting such amazing discourse, unfolding the principles of all existence, and showing all things penetrated with the Eternal, and this, too, in a solemn melody, not unfit to be chaunted by a choir of deities praising their ineffable source; it seems no longer won

derful to me that their prophets should have predicted an incarnation of the Highest in the body of one of their race. Nay, I myself, ignorant as I am, will even now prophesy the same, and declare that some one shall arise in that nation whose name alone shall subdue the world, and whose faith shall extinguish the memory and overthrow the empire of the gods of Egypt."

The Ionian seconded Diotima's enthusiasm with an approving smile, not moving from his easy posture.

"It gives me inexpressible pleasure," said he, "to hear you utter such opinions; but I am troubled in spirit for the poor ignorant multitude," he continued, relaxing into a laugh, "when I consider what they will do for consolation when the Mercuries and the Jupiters are thrown from their pedestals."

Men," said Lysis, "will never be at a loss for gods, any more than children for playthings. Religion, though the most expensive, is the most necessary of all luxuries, and seems to have a very beneficial effect. I believe, if nothing else were left men, they would worship their grandmothers."

Cymon seemed mightily amused with this suggestion; but Diotima answered gravely, that she had heard of certain Eastern nations beyond the Indus, who not only did so, but offered monthly sacrifices to their ancestors, even to the fifth generation.

"Is it possible," cried the Ionian, "for rational beings to have sunk so low?"

Then Socrates spoke, rising first upon the couch, and sitting with his feet folded under him: "I fear we are abusing our entertainer's goodness with these perpetual interruptions; but indeed it is her own fault. Instead of launching into a narrative of terrible adventures, which she might easily do, I think, she excites our attention with a sketchy narrative, and deludes us into listening to philosophical discourses."

"For my part," said Cymon, "I care not so much for the story as for the opinions."

"And I," said the Ionian, "am delighted with both."

"I, on the contrary," said Lysis, "would have been content with the opinions without the history. Diotima's ability seems to me by no means that of a story-teller, or rhapsodist; but she seems to enter with reluctance on the

recital of adventures, and runs lightly over the narrative; but when you tell us of Pythagoras and Dione, or of the reason of things, or of opinions of divine matters, then, Diotima, your face glows with a youthful color and you speak like the Pythoness, with a kind of violence, which puts us in awe of you."

"I am not used," said Metrodorus, speaking in a low voice," to discover in myself any excessive awe of Pythonesses or the like-they incline me rather to a mirthful vein; but I do confess to a little of a certain kind of fear, when our entertainer is at the height of her eloquence, but my fear is of a generous kind; I am afraid I shall never be able to compete with her in the art of speech, her diction exceeds anything I have ever heard. For the sweetness and purity of her Greek, she should have been an Ionian."

While Lysis and the sophist bandied in this style, meaning to engage the favor of their entertainer, Socrates conversed apart with Cymon, seeming to urge some request which the other made a difficulty of granting; Diotima, meanwhile, remained silent, with a look of abstraction such as they are apt to wear, who often hear, and always neglect, the sound of their own praises.

Presently Cymon spoke as follows: "Socrates urges me to ask you, Metrodorus, whether I shall be a better or a worse man for the instruction you wish to give me."

"A better, of course," answered the other; "I were a dog else."

"So he said you would reply, and now he will have me ask in what particulars I am to be the gainer by your teaching."

"In self-knowledge," said the other, gathering himself up with a ready look, and a smile of courtesy upon the questioner.

"He then would have me inquire whether this knowledge will be of my defects or of my good parts."

"Of both," said the Ionian, nodding keenly at Socrates, who sat upon the couch with his eyes cast down, as if listening. But Metrodorus now got up, and loosened the folds of his dress, and sat down again with his feet under him, as if ready for a dispute; for it was his custom in all places and at all times, regardless of persons or circumstances, to engage in arguments, and to make extemporaneous speeches on all manner of topics, rather to show his wit than his

knowledge, and because this was his first opportunity at Athens he resolved to make the best of it.

"One more question, and he is satisfied," said Cymon; " tell me, Metrodorus, whether you instruct for the love you bear to others, or for the love you bear to yourself; meaning your self-respect."

The sophist hesitated a moment, and then answered guardedly, "If I say for others, it would prove me enslaved by love; if I say for myself, it would-" here he hesitated; but Lysis answered quickly-"agree with your principle." Metrodorus assented with a nod, but seemed all the while to be arranging a speech in his head; presently he broke out:

"Forgive me, Diotima, for so often interrupting the delightful course of your divine narrative, which, indeed, though it interests me more than Homer himself, may be continued with equal pleasure and advantage at some other time; but you will easily see how I am constrained by this man. Coming into Athens a stranger, desirous of living in the good opinion of all, I am driven by him to a defence, lest I be condemned unheard, and upon an accusation perfectly gross and infamous, which his questions imply of me, and which I see he is ready to declare of me everywhere, in his conversation with the shrewd Athenians. I perceive he is jealous of my coming here, and would willingly see me driven out of the city, lest I impair the eminence of his reputation, and force him to confess that there are others as wise and as skillful in disputation as himself. Confess, Socrates, lest you be forced to it by a sharp argument-confess that your first question, through the innocent lips of my friend, (for you dared not ask it of yourself,) was intended to fill his mind, and the mind of my friend Lysis, and of Diotima, with a cruel suspicion of me, that I make my pupils worse by my discipline. Confess, too, that by your second and third questions, through the noble mouth of Cymon, which he too courteously lent you, you wished to plant a doubt in their minds of my honesty, hinting that I pursued the vile and easy occupation of a flatterer, under pretence of giving self-knowledge to the young; that while I showed them their good parts, I neglected to guard them against their weaknesses and vices. Lastly, acknowledge the rancor and jealousy of your last question, delivered through the

amiable Cymon, whom you wish to prevent me from benefiting by my know ledge-confess, I say, that by this question you wish me to appear as a person of mercenary soul, who instructs for the sake of the money and the gifts which his rich pupils force upon him.

"So you cast down your eyes, and will not confess, until you are forced by a sharp argument? Hear, then, the proof of your insinuations. With a skill given you, for evil purposes, by an evil genius, you balanced your questions in such a manner, that if I assented to one side, it should contradict my principles (which you wrought out of me in our previous conversation, when I had no suspicion of your forward maliciousness); but if I assented to the other side, then was my honesty impeached, and I proved a nuisance, and fit only to be carried out of the city on a pole, like a dead dog.

"Not to dwell long upon these proofs of malice in you, I will merely ask whether he who makes men worse by his instruction, who does this for hire, and who under pretence of giving selfknowledge, is a gross flatterer of youth, confirming them in every unhappy weakness and conceit, is not of all men the most to be hated and avoided? See you in me, my friends, any of the signs of these vile qualities-am I, Metrodorus of Samos, a descendant of Hercules, a man of fortune, a priest before the altar of Zeus, a man praised even by his enemies and worshiped by his friends

am I the mischievous creature this rude man would have me seem to be? But I scorn to make advantage of these externals. Look now at my doctrine: and I beseech you hear me patiently; as if not I alone, but a vast and now increasing multitude spoke through me.

"We know, my friends, that the Grecians are not inferior to any people of the world in their natural abilities; yet there was a time, and that not long ago, when they were ignorant of liberty, and content to be the servants of kings. By a wonderful fate, and the exercise of their proper virtue, their cities, excepting a few, threw off the burden of tyranny, and established themselves upon laws; but before that time, their laws were the words of certain wise old men, the councillors of their kings: If the king commanded, it was done; the will of one man, guided by the opinion of a few old men, was the divine law of the Greek cities.

"But when the people came together in the market-places and tumultuously expelled the kings, and agreed among themselves that no one man's will should be law, but the will of a majority; wherein was this will more sacred than the other? Because all law is a birth of necessity, and that only to be obeyed which necessity urges. They affixed penalties to their decrees, that they might have the force of fatal and natural laws.

"It is not necessary for me, my friends, to remind you of that multitude of evil decrees inflicted on us by this majority; depriving some men of their fortunes, under pretence of fines; ruining the internal industry of the cities, under a silly hatred of monopolies; banishing wealthy citizens, for the sake of confiscation; slaying some, imprisoning others, under false accusations, because of jealousy ;nor is it needed here to speak of their wars; city against city, and the strongest enslaving the weakest.

"Why are these things so long endured? Shall I declare it to you? It is because we do not sufficiently respect ourselves; the habit of obedience is not yet worn out of our souls! We dare not act at liberty, each acknowledging a divine law in himself, sufficient for the rule of himself. We live in childish terror of opinion, and of the popular voice; though we know that there is no divinity in its decrees: therefore only, are these laws valid, “because we fear to disobey them; remove the fear, and the law is of no force, so say the judges. They are therefore of no effect with the brave and the wise. Such being a law to themselves, and to those who are weaker than they.

66

Come then, why should we argue long, (for I see you begin to feel it in your souls,) the laws were not made for us, but for the weak, the slavish and the ignorant.

"Of this then be assured, the Grecians will never attain the felicity fated their superior natures, until they cease to respect their laws and their gods; seeing they are the makers alike of both. I would have the wise, the wealthy, and the noble, be a law to themselves-a natural aristocracy, discrete and irresistible: they should be the law-makers, if laws are to be made, and by no means submit to the will of a blundering majority.

Interrupt me not Socrates;-I know you love not the Athenian decrees, though you affect to obey them: making a vir

tue of your necessity (as we all do) ;and now since you have heard my opinion of the laws, (and who is able to confute it?) let me show you my doctrine of the divine natures. We know, excellent Diotima, the secret of divination and of the invention of deities, and for them we have to thank the poets and the priests who made them for us, and established their worship. They, in their wisdom, meaning to amuse and subdue the vulgar, invented terrible fictions, and not caring to betray the secret of their invention by a written testimony, drew the whole world, wise and unwise together, into their net; and soon the inheritors of the mystery began to worship the things which their fathers made. You, Cymon, who seem astonished at my doctrine, may ask Socrates if it is not a true one;-his master Anaxagoras thought so.

"And now once more, and I have done. Touching the obedience due from a child to its parents. I hold it a matter of necessity, like the other species of obedience. Our parents would fain have us do to them as they did to theirs; and fathers delight exceedingly in the adoration of children-what do I say? adoration? Yea, the father would be a god to his child, and would have the child a slave to himself. But for this, too, we may thank our priests and their maxims. Many a free spirit have I seen unnaturally crushed by the tyranny of a father. Our women, too, look in what a slavery they live and suffer; doing things merely servile, fit for slaves and those baser natures, whom nature makes happy in vile uses. Have I not seen a fair young woman, fit to be a queen, bearing a sick ly infant in her arms, stunned with its cries, sickened with its noisome habits, and wearied with its flaccid weight. Intolerable servitude! Have I not seen a venerable man, a nobleman, teaching his son the use of the pruning-hook, himself resembling the wretched Socrates; while near at hand, his wife an august matron, able to control an empire, busied her noble fingers with a distaff, and sometimes kneaded dough in a trough. To such vile use may we come!

"Need I weary your souls with a narrative of the sufferings of noble persons, born to be the lords of barbarians and slaves, (whom nature always inspires with a predilection for gross and filthy Occupations.) Think you these are evils inherent and irremediable? If I thought them so, I should be the last to complain

of them; but I perceive that they are the fruit of an unnatural humility forced upon us by a tyrannical education. Some natures there are, (I repeat it,) in whom meanness and a servile temper is ingrained, and wrought into the substance of the soul. Let these remain as they are; but let the naturally wise and the few intelligent (the natural aristocracy) be rescued from servility. Let those possess the wealth who alone know how to use and to enjoy it. Let those govern in whom is native authority. Let them receive honor to whom honor is due; but first, let them honor themselves; for it is a secret of the old wisdom, that as we honor our. selves we shall be honored-the world give us the place we see fit to take. "A word concludes the matter. Men should know their own worth-that is the secret. Know thyself, and act as becomes thy worth. Away with false shame, antique scruples. Be afraid only of thyself, O man, and thou shalt be friends with the gods, and have thy will.

Το

You have heard my doctrine. Behold in it the panacea, the universal physic for souls. But these are fine words. Come we to actions, and soon we shall have a fair world made to our hands; and we who made it shall be lords of it. you I open a deep matter, not fitted for the ears or for the souls of the vulgar. In public, and in the company of the ignorant, my talk is only of behavior and the art of self-confidence. Men are not yet

ripe for the whole doctrine. I have done. Speak, Socrates; I am ready; and these shall be umpires."

When Metrodorous had made an end of his speech, he looked about him with an air of expectation, as if for applausebut none followed; nor did either Diotima or Lysis discover the least astonishment or admiration. Cymon, on the contrary, seemed lost in a kind of stupid surprise, and looked with a troubled countenance at his friend, as if wondering what he would reply. Then Socrates, seeing the others expectant, began quietly as follows:

"It was not I, Metrodorus, but yourself, that aspersed you. What injury have I done you? or have you injured me hitherto in secret, that you are so violent against me now? Surely, was I a father, with a son or a daughter to be educated, and you, a stranger, named to me as one capable of teaching them, your friend who proposed you would not fall out with me if I inquired of him whether

my children would be the worse or the better for your teaching; or whether, by too great a leniency, you might not nourish evil in them? And if assured the contrary, I should then desire to know the particulars of your instruction-whether my children might not learn of you to despise me, and to speak with contemptuous pity of my infirmities:-your friend would not be angry with me, nor esteem my questions impertinent?

66

Come, then, let us lay the fault of this difference upon the wine, and so forget it. Believe me, I am astonished at the freedom and elegance of your speech, and I think the Athenians would rather have heard it than a comedy written in ridicule of the gods, or an oration from Pericles to advise the laying of cushions on the seats of the theatre. Be your doctrine true or false, it is fitted to these times and to this people, as I think. The Athenians have long since laid aside modesty; and if they praise it in boys, they abhor it in men. The vilest of them wait not to be rich before they are impudent; and it is even dangerous to do any man a courtesy, lest you be thought servile-so little used are we to what our fathers practiced upon instinct. But tell me, I beseech you, Metrodorus, are the Ionians more impudent than any other people of the Greeks?"

"If you mean to ask," replied the sophist, "whether they transcend all other Grecians in the divine quality of self-respect, I may say they do so."

"A transcendant quality, indeed," continued Socrates, "and beautifully born in the soul; for it seems to me the offspring of superior contemplations; such as none but the superior man may indulge, suffering all things to dwindle and fall before him when he opens his heart to the influence of his own excellencies, and is taken, like Narcissus, with the beauty of his own person. Did you not comfort us with this opinion, that the truly wise and the truly great-or those who know that they are wise and great should be the masters of those who do not know that they are either wise or great?" "I did," replied the other. "What follows upon that?"

"A very surprising matter," continued Socrates; "no less than that you should be my master, and possess my house, and hold me for a slave; for, as I live, I have no such consciousness: nay, I am perpetually sunk in the sense of my own unworthiness and ignorance. The blessed

ness of the superior man is not conceded to me; I have never dared transcend the common opinion, or that experience which tells me I am mortal, and a creature of mere accidents and impulses. How much, then, should I be bound to you, divine Metrodorus, if I might recover my natural right to my house and land, and even to my personal liberty, by receiving from you that royal opinion of myself which belongs only to the wise, and entitles them to be masters, possessors and instructors. Only one thing troubles me. Did you not say that they alone should be the masters of men and of riches who know how to govern and to live handsomely; and that if it were not for a fool. ish modesty the wise and magnanimous would immediately assume what is by nature theirs?"

"I said as much," replied the sophist.

"Then am I lost in doubt," continued Socrates," whether both of us, having an equal degree of self-respect, might not by some accident lay claim to the same land; or, happening to differ in a point of science, one of us might be compelled to yield, and confess himself in the wrong, which would argue a beastly humility in one of us; or, if both were lovers of the same woman, and desired her in marriage, being equally meritorious, (that is to say, equally full of proper pride,) and she, too, a superior person, how would she conclude in a choice? Or, indeed, to push this matter to the worst, would it not argue a contemptible modesty in me if I failed to gratify a generous passion for my neighbor's wife, my neighbor not being a superior person? Indeed, Metrodorus, I am severely tried, and involved in unspeakable difficulties, through my ignorance. You will, doubtless, be able to resolve me in them, as the superior man should do, by some short and simple argument."

"It is necessary, Socrates, not to drive a principle into its extremes," replied the other.

"But 1 do no such thing, divine sophist," continued Socrates. "On the contrary, so ignorant am I of the art of the superior man, I cannot so much as open my lips, or walk the streets, or visit a friend, or buy in the market, without an afflicting sense of my ignorance. Injurious shame follows me. I dare not walk naked in the street-I dare not speak an offensive word-I dare not blaspheme-I dare not lie. If a child loves and reveres a foolish father, I dare not undeceive him. If the Athenians