Phaedrus — Plato

GENERAL INTRODUCTION xli Plato's system of thought in the brief outline which is given, or in the fuller accounts which you may find in other books. But if you suppose that any such outline of doctrines can compass the fullness of Plato, you will not understand this or any philosophy in the spirit. With whatever formal devices you study any master-book, the essential condition of becoming really acquainted with it is that you shall live with it in joyful, informal fellowship.

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APOLOGY

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APOLOGY

INTRODUCTION The defense of Socrates includes an answer to the formal accusations made against him in court, and an answer to those who for years had attacked his reputation. In both cases, the charge is the same in substance,^ — ^that he is the enemy of the traditional religion and morality of the State. Those who brought this charge before the court, supported it with false or trivial evidence and arguments.

Socrates met these with argipwents, which are, in form, nearly upon the same level. His numerous unofficial accusers, Socrates met partly by an explanation of the popular misunderstanding which identified him with the natural philosophers or with the Sophists, but especially by a declaration of his own mission in life, which was not to deny God but to know and obey the will of God, and not to corrupt but to save men.

In studying the defense of 'Socrates against his official and unofficial accusers, it should be seen that the conflict was not merely one between a wise and good man and a crowd of ignorant and malicious ones. The real conflict was between the unwritten religious, moral, and social constitution of the Athenian people, and a man who would put everything in that constitution to questipn with the hope of arriving at a better.

Socrates was not many things that his accusers charged, — not a natural philosopher, not a Sophist, not an atheist, perhaps not a disbeliever in the popular mythology, not responsible for the sins of young Athenians whom he 3

p. 4. had labored to make men of. But the instinct of the Athenians was not substantially wrong in holding him an alien from their religion and morality. " 1 do believe that there are gods," says Socrates in closing his first speech, " and In a far higher sense than any of my accusers believe in them. Because he believed in God, the formal charges against him were false.

But because he believed in God in a far higher sense than did his accusers, he and his accusers, the people of Athens, stood in real conflict. They stood for the religion and morals which they had inherited. He stood for a religion and morality based upon deeper insight into the truth. It was a conflict between a people and its prophet.

It was a conflict in some respects like that between the orthodox Jews, who would defend their law and their separate nationality against destruction, and Him who came not to destroy but to fulfill. In such a case the question decided is this : Will the people rise from their own view to their prophet's view of the life which is proper for them ? At Athens, as at Jerusalem, the people chose for their traditions. Socrates, like our Saviour, rejected of his own, became minister to all hiankind.