time, in inquiries merely curious, involved in impenetrable darkness, and absolutely incapable of contributing to human happiness; whilst be neglected to inform himself in the ordinary duties of life, and in learning what is conformable, or opposite to piety, justice, and probity; in what fortitude, temperance, and wisdom consist; and what is the end of all government, and what the rules of it, and what qualities are necessary for commanding and ruling well. We shall see in the sequel the use he made of this study. It was so far from preventing him to discharge the duties of a good citizen, that it was the means of making him the more observant of them. He bore arms, as did all the people of Athens; but with more pure and elevated motives. He made many campaigns, was present in many actions, and always distinguished himself by his valour and fortitude. He was seen, towards the end of his life, giving in the senate, of which he was a member, the most shining proofs of his zeal for justice, without being intimidated by the greatest present dangers. * He had accustomed himself early to a sober, severe, laborious life; without which it seldom happens that men are capable of discharging the greatest part of the duties of good citizens. It is difficult to carry the contempt of riches and the love of poverty farther than he did. He looked upon it as a divine perfection to be in want of nothing; and believed the less we are contented with, the nearer we approach to the divinity. † Seeing the pomp and show displayed by luxury in certain ceremonies, and the infinite quantity of gold and silver employed in them "How many "things," said he, congratulating himself on his condition, " do I not want!" Quantis non egeo! His father left him 80 minæ, that is to say, 4000 livres, which he lent to one of his friends who had occasion for that sum. But the affairs of that friend having taken an ill turn, he lost the whole, and suffered that misfortune with such indifference and tranquility, that be did not so much as complain of it. We find in Xenophon's Economics that his whole estate amounted to no more than five minæ, or 250 livres. The richest persons of Athens were his friends, who could never prevail upon him to accept any share of their wealth. When he was in want of any thing, he was not ashamed to declare it: "If I had money," said he one day in an assembly of his friends, "I should buy me a cloak." He did not address himself to any body in particular, but contented himself with that general information. His disciples contended for the honour of making him this small present; which was being too slow, says Seneca; their own observation ought to have prevented both the want and the demand. He generously refused the offers and presents of Archelaus king of Macedonia, who was desirous of having him at his court; adding, “that he "could not go to a man who could give him more than it was in his power "to return." Another philosopher does not approve this answer. "Was "it making a prince a small return," says Seneca, "to undeceive him in "his false ideas of grandeur and magnificence; to inspire him with a con"tempt for riches; to show him the right use of them; to instruct him in the "great art of reigning: in a word, to teach him how to live and how to die? * Xenoph. Memorab. l. i. p. 731. + Socrates in pompa, cum magna vis auri argentique ferretur: Quam multa non desidero inquit. Cic. Tusc. Quæst. 1. 5. Liban. in Apolog. Socrat. p. 640. Xenoph. Econ. p. 322. Socrates, amicis audientibus: Emissem, inquit, pallium, si nummos haberem. Neminem poposcit, omnes admonuit. A quo acciperet, ambitus fuit-Post hoc quisquis properaverit, sero dat; jam Socrati defuit. Senec. de benef. 1. viii. c. 24 "But," continues Seneca, "the true reason which prevented his going to "the court of that prince was, that he did not think it consistent for him to "seek a voluntary servitude, whose liberty a free city could not suffer him "to enjoy." Noluit ire ad voluntariam servitutem is cujus libertatem civitas libera ferre non potuit.* The peculiar austerity of his life did not render him gloomy and morose, as was common enough with the philosophers of those times. In company and conversation he was always gay and facetious, and the sole joy and spirit of the entertainment. Though he was very poor, he piqued himself upon the neatness of his person and house, and could not suffer the ridiculous affectation of Antisthenes, who always wore dirty and ragged clothes. He told him once, that through the holes in his cloak, and the rest of his tatters, abundance of vanity might be discerned. One of the most distinguishing qualities of Socrates was a tranquility of soul, that no accident, no loss, no injury, no ill treatment, could ever alter. Some have believed, that he was by nature hasty and passionate, and that the moderation to which he had attained, was the effect of his reflections and endeavours to subdue and correct himself; which would still add to his merit. Seneca tells us, that he had desired his friends to apprize him whenever they saw him ready to fall into a passion, and that he had given them that privilege over him which he took himself with them. Indeed the best time to call in aid against rage and anger, that have so violent and sudden a power over us, is when we are yet ourselves, and in cool blood. At the first signal, the least animadversion, he either softened his tone or was silent. Finding himself in great emotion against a slave; "I would "beat you," says he, "if I were not angry:" ¶ Cæderem te, nisi irascerer. Having received a box on the ear, he contented himself with only saying with a smile, ** "Tis a misfortune not to know when to put on a helmet. Without going out of his own house, he found enough to exercise his patience in all its extent. Xantippe his wife put it to the severest proofs by her capricious, passionate, violent disposition. It seems, before he took her for his companion, that he was not ignorant of her character; and be says himself in ft Xenophon, that he had expressly chosen her, from the conviction, that if he should be capable of bearing her insults, there would be nobody, though ever so difficult to endure, with whom he could not live. Never was a woman of so violent and fantastical a spirit, and so bad a temper. There was no kind of abuse or injurious treatment which he had not to experience from her. She would sometimes be transported with such an excess of rage, as to tear off his cloak in the open street; and even ‡‡ one day after having vented all the reproaches her fury could suggest, she emptied a pot upon his head; at which he only laughed, and said, "That so "much thunder must needs produce a shower." Some ancient authors write, that Socrates married a second wife, named Myrto, who was the grand-daughter of Aristides the Just, and that he suffered exceedingly from them both, who were continually quarrelling * Senec. de benef. 1. v. c. 6. + Xenoph. in conviv. Senec, de Ira. l. iii. c. 15. Elian. 1. iv. c. 11. et l. ix. c. 35. Contra potens malum et apud nos gratiosum, dum conspicimus, et nostri sumus, advocemus. Senec. de Ira. 1. i. c. 15. fi Ibid. 1. iii. c. 11. tt Diog. in. Socrat. p. 112. ** Xenoph. in conviv. p. 876. |||| Plut. in Aristid. p. 235. Athen. 1. xiii. p. 555. Diog. Laert. in Socrat. p. 114. with each other, and never agreed, but in loading him with reproaches, and doing him all the offence they could invent. They pretend, that during the Peloponnesian war, after the pestilence had swept off great part of the Athenians, a decree was made, whereby to retrieve the sooner the ruins of the republic, each citizen was permitted to have two wives at the same time, and that Socrates took the benefit of this new law. Those authors found this circumstance solely upon a passage in a treatise on nobility, ascribed to Aristotle. But besides that, according to Plutarch himself, Panetius, a very grave author, has fully refuted this opinion; neither Plato nor Xenophon, who were well acquainted with all that related to their master, say any thing of this second marriage of Socrates; and on another side, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Diodorus Siculus, who have treated at large all the particulars of the Peloponnesian war, are alike silent in regard to the pretended decree of Athens which permitted bigamy. We may see in the first volume of the memoirs of the Academy of Belles Lettres, a dissertation of Monsieur Hardion's upon this subject, wherein he demonstrates, that the second marriage of Socrates, and the decree upon bigamy, are supposititious facts. SECTION II. OF THE DÆMON, OR FAMILIAR SPIRIT OF SOCRATES. OUR knowledge of Socrates would be defective, if we knew nothing of the genius, which, he said, had assisted him with its council and protection in the greatest part of his actions. It is not agreed among authors what this genius was, commonly called "The Dæmon of Socrates," from the Greek word Aarovov, that signifies something of a divine nature, conceived as a secret voice, a sign, or such an inspiration as diviners are supposed to have had. This genius diverted him from the execution of his designs when they would have been prejudicial to him, without ever inducing him to act any thing: *Esse divinum quoddam, quod Socrates dæmonium appellat, cui semper ipse paruerit, nunquam impellenti, sæpe revocanti. Plutarch, in his treatise intitled, "Of the genius of Socrates," repeats the different sentiments of the ancients upon the existence and nature of this genius. † I shall confine myself to that of them which seems the most natural and reasonable, though he does not lay much stress upon it. We know that the divinity has a clear and unerring knowledge of futurity; that man cannot penetrate into its darkness but by uncertain and confused conjectures; that those who succeed best in that research, are such as, by a more exact and studied comparison of the different causes capable of influencing future events, distinguish, with greater force and perspicuity, what will be the result and issue of the conflict of those different causes in conducing to the success or miscarriage of an effect or enterprise. This foresight and discernment has something of divine in it, exalts us above the rest of mankind, approaches us to the Divinity, and makes us participate in some measure in his councils and designs, by giving us an insight and prescience to a certain degree, of what he has ordained concerning the future. Socrates had a just and piercing judgment, joined with the most exquisite prudence. He might call this judgment and prudence, storio, "something divine," being indeed a kind of equivocality in the expression, without attributing to himself, however, the merit of his wisdom in conjecturing upon the future. The Abbe Fraguier comes very near the same *Cic. de Divin. I. i. n. 122. * Page 580. opinion in the dissertation he has left us upon this subject in the Memoirs of the Academy of Belles-Lettres.* †The effect, or rather function of this genius, was to stop and prevent his acting, without ever inducing him to act. He received also the same impulse, when his friends were going to engage in any bad affair, and communicated it to them; and several instances are related, wherein they found themselves very unfortunate from not having believed him. Now what other signification can be given to this, than that it implies, under mysteri ous terms, a mind which, by its own lights, and the knowledge of mankind, has attained a sort of insight into futurity? And if Socrates had not intended to lessen in his own person the merit of an unerring judgment, by attributing to a kind of instinct; if at bottom he had desired any thing to be understood besides the general aid of the divine wisdom, which speaks in every man by the voice of reason; would he have escaped, says Xenophon, the censure of arrogance and falsehood? God has always prevented me from speaking to you, says he to Alcibiades, whilst the weakness of your age would have rendered my discourses ineffectual to you. But I conceive I may now enter into dispute with you, as an ambitious young man, for whom the laws open a way to the dignities of the republic. Is it not visible here, that prudence prevented Socrates from treating Alcibiades seriously, at a time when grave and severe conversation would have given him a disgust, of which perhaps he might never have got the better? And when in his dialogue upon the commonwealth, Socrates ascribes his avoiding public business to inspiration from above, does he mean any thing more than what he says in his Apology, that a just and good man, who intermeddles with the government in a corrupt state, is not long without perishing? If, ¶ when he appears before the judges who were to condemn him, that divine voice is not heard to prevent him, as it was upon dangerous occasions, the reason is, that he did not deem it a misfortune for him to die, especially at his age, and in his circumstances. Every body knows what his prognostication had been long before, upon the unfortunate expedition of Sicily. He attributed it to his dæmon, and declared it to be the inspiration of that spirit. A wise man, who sees an affair ill-concerted, and conducted with passion, may easily prophesy upon the event of it, without the aid of a dæmon's inspiration. It must be allowed, however, that the opinion which gives men genii and angels to direct and guard them, was not unknown even to the pagans. ** Plutarch cites the verses of Menander, in which that poet expressly says, "That every man at his birth has a good genius given him, which at"tends him during the whole course of his life as a guide and director." Παντι δαίμων ανδρι συμπαραςασει Ευθύς γενομένω, μυςαγωγος το βιδ It may be believed with probability enough, that the dæmon of Socrates, which has been so differently spoken of, and thereby made it a question whether it was a good or bad angel, was no more than the force and recti tude of his judgment, which, acting according to the rules of prudence, and with the aid of a long experience, supported by wise reflections, made him foresee the events of those things upon which he was either consulted or deliberated himself. I conceive at the same time, that he was not sorry the people should believe him inspired, or that he knew futurity by any effect of the divinity whatsoever. That opinion might exalt him very much in the sense of the Athenians, and give him an authority, of which the greatest persons of the pagan world were very fond, and which they endeavoured to acquire by secret communications, and pretended conferences with some divinity: but it drew the jealousy of many of the citizens upon him. * SECTION III. SOCRATES DECLARED THE WISEST OF MANKIND BY THE ORACLE. THIS declaration of the oracle, † 90 advantageous in appearance for Socrates, did not a little contribute to the inflaming envy, and stirring up of enemies against him, as he tells us himself in his Apology, wherein he recounts the occasion, and true sense of that oracle. Cherephon, a zealous disciple of Socrates, happening to be at Delphos, demanded of the oracle, whether there was a wiser man than Socrates in the world: the priestess replied there was none. This answer puzzled Socrates extremely, who could scarce comprehend the sense of it: for on the one side, he well knew, says he of himself, that there was neither much nor little wisdom in him; and, on the other, he could not suspect the oracle of falsehood, the divinity being incapable of telling a lie. He therefore considered it attentively, and took great pains to penetrate the sense of it. At first he applied himself to a powerful citizen, a statesman, and a great politician, who passed for one of the wisest men of the city, and who was himself as much convinced of his own merit as any body. He found by his conversation that he knew nothing, and insinuated as much to himself in terms sufficiently intelligible; which made him extremely odious to that citizen, and all who were present. He did the same by several others of the same profession; and all the fruit of his inquiry was, to draw upon himself a greater number of enemies. From the statesmen he addressed himself to the poets, whom he found still fuller of self-esteem, but really more void of knowledge and wisdom. He pursued his inquiries to the artisans, and could not meet with one, who, because he succeeded in his own art, did not believe himself very capable, and fully informed in all that was great besides; which presumption was the almost universal failing of the Athenians. As they had naturally abundance of wit, they pretended to be knowing in every thing, and believed themselves capable of pronouncing upon all things. His inquiries amongst strangers were not more successful. Socrates afterwards entering into, and comparing himself with all those he had questioned, ‡ discovered, that the difference between him aud them * Lycurgus and Solon had recourse to the authority of oracles to advance their credit. Zeleucus pretended that his laws had been dictated to him by Minerva. Numa Pompilius boasted his conferences with the goddess Egeria. The first Scipio Africanus made the people believe that the gods gave him secret counsels. Even Sertorius' hind had something divine in it. † Plut. in. Apolog. p. 21, 22. ‡ Socrates in omnibus fere sermonibus sic disputat, ut nihil affirmet ipse, re |