Socrates

And still, from Socrates who, upon his final hour when Crito asked how he wished to be buried, replied:

But I am surprised by how accepting Xenophon is of this, both in the words and the various deeds of his perfect emperor, he so wonderfully measured an author in such things, as a distinguished leader and a philosopher among the first disciples of Socrates.

Perhaps Socrates’s daemon was some kind of impulse of the will presenting itself to him immediately, bypassing the advice of reason.

I have felt some that were as irrational as they were compelling — or dissuasive, which was more common with Socrates — but proved so useful and fortunate when I gave in to them that they could almost be said to be the product of some divine inspiration.

In Plato, Socrates mocks Laches who defined fortitude as facing and holding the line against the enemy.

“The Thirty Tyrants have sentenced you to die” they told Socrates.

to be the author of the sole immortal deed of mortals, a divine deed to Socrates — as Love is a desire for immortality and an immortal daemon itself.

Public society has nothing to do with our thoughts, but the rest, as our actions, our labors, our fortunes, and our lives, we are to lend and abandon them to its service and to the common opinion, as did that good and great Socrates who refused to preserve his life by a disobedience to the magistrate, though a very wicked and unjust one for it is the rule of rules, the general law of laws, that every one observe those of the place wherein he lives.

”It is very pleasant to see Socrates, after his manner, rallying Hippias, who recounts to him what a world of money he has got, especially in certain little villages of Sicily, by teaching school, and that he made never a penny at Sparta:

“What a sottish and stupid people,” said Socrates, “are they, without sense or understanding, that make no account either of grammar or poetry, and only busy themselves in studying the genealogies and successions of their kings, the foundations, rises, and declensions of states, and such tales of a tub!

Socrates, and since him Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, and then they spoke to them.

si quid Socrates aut Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere:

One asking Socrates of what country he was, he did not make answer, of Athens, but of the world;

If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life within their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are, that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we had better let alone, and following Socrates’ direction, limit the course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real utility:

Socrates, her first minion, is so averse to all manner of violence, as totally to throw it aside, to slip into the more natural facility of her own progress;

For my part, I hold, and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly and clear imagination, he will express it well enough in one kind of tongue or another, and, if he be dumb, by signsVerbaque prævisam rem non invita sequentur.

One telling Socrates, that such a one was nothing improved by his travels:

Socrates says, that boys are to cause themselves to be instructed, men to exercise themselves in well-doing, and old men to retire from all civil and military employments, living at their own discretion, without the obligation to any office.

Sometimes they even crack a joke and drink to their companions, just like Socrates.

And Socrates thinks it worthy a father’s care to give fine names to his children.

History tells us of three of the name of Socrates, of five Platos, of eight Aristotles, of seven Xenophons, of twenty Demetrii, and of twenty Theodores;

Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato, indifferent to Socrates.

” Socrates and Plato “an art to flatter and deceive.

We read of Socrates, that though he never departed from Athens during the frequent plagues that infested the city, he only was never infected.

considering that the Gentiles expressly forbad Socrates, Plato, and the other sages to inquire into or so much as mention the things committed to the priests of Delphi;

As Socrates said that the principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from evil, we, the best of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of the science of distinguishing betwixt vice and vice, without which, and that very exactly performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain confounded and unrecognized.

And the great Socrates is said, in these drinking bouts, to have carried off the palm.

Is it to be imagined that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter?

Of what does Socrates treat more largely than of himself?

Because Socrates had alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, “to know himself,” and by that study arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought, he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage.

Socrates put himself, methinks, upon a ruder trial, keeping for his exercise a confounded scolding wife, which was fighting at sharps.

but here it comes into my head that the soul of Socrates, the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge, should by this rule be of very little recommendation;

And who, that has his brain never so little tinctured with the true philosophy, can be content to imagine Socrates only free from fear and passion in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation?

Socrates confessed to some who had discovered a certain inclination to vice in his physiognomy, that it was, in truth, his natural propension, but that he had by discipline corrected it.

As the virtuous actions of Socrates and Cato remain vain and fruitless, for not having had the love and obedience to the true creator of all things, so is it with our imaginations and discourses;

Unless we shall also think fit, as even Socrates does, to add to the counterpoise that notable prerogative above beasts, That whereas nature has prescribed them certain seasons and limits for the delights of Venus, she has given us the reins at all hours and all seasons.

After that Socrates was told that the god of wisdom had assigned to him the title of sage, he was astonished at it, and, searching and examining himself throughout, could find no foundation for this divine judgment.

Timaeus, being to instruct Socrates in what he knew of the gods, the world, and men, proposes to speak to him as a man to a man;

This practice in philosophy of disputing against every thing, and of absolutely concluding nothing, begun by Socrates, repeated by Arcesilaus, and confirmed by Cameades, has continued in use even to our own times.

and Socrates of them all, excepting that which treats of manners and of life.

Socrates, the conductor of his dialogues, is eternally upon questions and stirring up disputes, never determining, never satisfying, and professes to have no other science but that of opposing himself.

Socrates said that midwives, in taking upon them the trade of helping others to bring forth, left the trade of bringing forth themselves;

Xenophon reports a like perplexity in Socrates’s doctrine;

Yet not so inevitable and useful but that Socrates thought it was enough to know so much of geometry only as to measure the land a man bought or sold;

Socrates in Xenophon, concerning this affair, says of Anaxagoras, reputed by antiquity learned above all others in celestial and divine matters, “That he had cracked his brain, as all other men do who too immoderately search into knowledges which nothing belong to them:

’Tis Socrates’s opinion, and mine too, that the best judging of heaven is not to judge of it at all.

As Socrates says, in Plato, “That whoever meddles with philosophy may be reproached as Thales was by the woman, that he sees nothing of that which is before him.

This same Plato, who defines man as if he were a cock, says elsewhere, after Socrates, “That he does not, in truth, know what man is, and that he is a member of the world the hardest to understand.

the slaver of a contemptible cur shed upon the hand of Socrates, to shake all his wisdom and all his great and regulated imaginations, and so to annihilate them, ad that there remained no trace of his former knowledge:

” But who desires to see him, who is yet the most sober and moderate of the whole gang of philosophers, lay about him with greater boldness, and relate his miracles upon this subject, I refer him to his treatise Of the Moon, and Of the Daemon of Socrates, where he may, as evidently as in any other place whatever, satisfy himself that the mysteries of philosophy have many strange things in common with those of poetry;

Archelaus, the physician, whose disciple and favorite Socrates was, according to Aristoxenus, said that both men and beasts were made of a lacteous slime, expressed by the heat of the earth.

And therefore it was that Socrates only begged of the gods that they would give him what they knew to be best for him;

For that which our reason advises us to, as the most likely, is generally for every one to obey the laws of his country, as was the advice of Socrates, inspired, as he says, by a divine counsel;

” Socrates’s wife exasperated her grief by this circumstance:

As they who never knew Socrates cannot, when they see his picture, say it is like him.

There is nothing, in my opinion, more illustrious in the life of Socrates, than that he had thirty whole days wherein to ruminate upon the sentence of his death, to have digested it all that time with a most assured hope, without care, and without alteration, and with a series of words and actions rather careless and indifferent than any way stirred or discomposed by the weight of such a thought.

observe in the hands of Socrates, her most intimate and familiar friend, how many several points it has.

Socrates says, that some god tried to mix in one mass and to confound pain and pleasure, but not being able to do it;

for in this one thing, which ought chiefly to be considered, which alone truly denotes us for what we are, and which alone I make counterbalance all the rest put together, he comes not short of any philosopher whatever, not even of Socrates himself.

insomuch that the sage Dandamis, hearing the lives of Socrates, Pythagoras, and Diogenes read, judged them to be great men every way, excepting that they were too much subjected to the reverence of the laws, which, to second and authorize, true virtue must abate very much of its original vigor;

and the virtue of Alexander appears to me of much less vigor in his great theater, than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure employment.

I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates, I cannot.

I can easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates, I cannot.

In observing the wisdom of Socrates, and many circumstances of his condemnation, I should dare to believe that he in some sort himself purposely, by collusion, contributed to it, seeing that, at the age of seventy years, he might fear to suffer the lofty motions of his mind to be cramped and his wonted lustre obscured.

“according to what a man can,” was the favorite sentence and motto of Socrates.

it appertains to one sole Socrates to meet death with an ordinary countenance, to grow acquainted with it, and to sport with it;

Socrates had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling, not sourly austere, like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh.

” Socrates being told that people spoke ill of him, “Not at all,” said he, “there is nothing, in me of what they say.

Socrates being asked, whether it was more commodious to take a wife or not, “Let a man take which course he will,” said he;

Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athenspleased, as ladies do whom men court for love;

We yet see the edicts of the old and wise Rome made for the service of love, and the precepts of Socrates for the instruction of courtesans:

They say that Socrates swore by the dog;

According to Socrates, love is the appetite of generation by the mediation of beauty.

do but observe how much the manner of salutation, particular to our nation, has, by its facilities, made kisses, which Socrates says are so powerful and dangerous for the stealing of hearts, of no esteem.

and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking of an amorous object:

Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem, any other thing.

Let us make a relation of that which Alcibiades reports of Socrates, his fellow in arms:

That Socrates always received smilingly the contradictions offered to his arguments, a man may say arose from his strength of reason;

I am of opinion that, in Plato and Xenophon, Socrates disputes more in favor of the disputants than in favor of the dispute, and more to instruct Euthydemus and Protagoras in the, knowledge of their impertinence, than in the impertinence of their art.

and Socrates is of opinion that whoever should find himself, his son, and a stranger guilty of any violence and wrong, ought to begin with himself, present himself first to the sentence of justice, and implore, to purge himself, the assistance of the hand of the executioner;

and such natures are very rare — and the weak ones, says Socrates, corrupt the dignity of philosophy in the handling, it appears useless and vicious, when lodged in an ill-contrived mind.

Not because Socrates has said so, but because it is in truth my own humor, and peradventure not without some excess, I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Polander as a Frenchman, preferring the universal and common tie to all national ties whatever.

What Socrates did toward his end, to look upon a sentence of banishment as worse than a sentence of death against him, I shall, I think, never be either so decrepit or so strictly habituated to my own country to be of that opinion.

I should rather have chosen to poison myself with Socrates, than stab myself with Cato.

Could it be imagined that Socrates should have administered occasion of laughter, at the expense of his own reputation, to the Athenians for:

Observe his footsteps in the Daemon of Socrates.

Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture carried in pomp through his city:

” Socrates does not say:

That image of Socrates’s discourses, which his friends have transmitted to us, we approve upon no other account than a reverence to public sanction:

Socrates makes his soul move a natural and common motion:

and Socrates teaches us, that this is in us, and the way how to find it, and the manner how to use it.

Socrates shall be one;

Had a suppliant voice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates, that lofty virtue had struck sail in the height of its glory;

If any one shall think that, among so many other examples that I had to choose out of in the sayings of Socrates for my present purpose, I have made an ill choice of this, and shall judge this discourse of his elevated above common conceptions, I must tell them that I have properly selected it;

But besides, is not the way of arguing which Socrates here makes use of, equally admirable both in simplicity and vehemence?

Truly, it is much more easy to speak like Aristotle, and to live like Caesar, than to speak and live as Socrates did;

a ridiculous fruit of learning that Socrates so pleasantly discusses against Euthydemus.

Socrates was a perfect exemplar in all great qualities, and I am vexed that he had so deformed a face and body as is said, and so unsuitable to the beauty of his soul, himself being so amorous and such an admirer of beauty:

As Socrates said of his, it betrayed equal ugliness in his soul, had he not corrected it by education;

” I have not, as Socrates did, corrected my natural composition by the force of reason, and have not in the least disturbed my inclination by art;

That reason which straightens Socrates from his vicious bend, renders him obedient to the gods and men of authority in his city;

and that makes a quite contrary show to that of Socrates.

Socrates asked Menon, “What virtue was.

” “Very fine,” cried Socrates, “we were in quest of one virtue, and thou hast brought us a whole swarm.

and Socrates minutely verifies it in Xenophon.

as Socrates gives Euthydemus to understand.

Such as will not conclude it in themselves, by so vain an example as mine, or their own, let them believe it from Socrates, the master of masters;

for the philosopher Antisthenes, said to his disciples, “Let us go and hear Socrates:

” except of the force of Socrates, added he.

and he might have learned it of Socrates who, advising his disciples to be solicitous of their health as a chief study, added that it was hard if a man of sense, having a care to his exercise and diet, did not better know than any physician what was good or ill for him.

Socrates answered Alcibiades, who was astonished how he could endure the perpetual scolding of his wife, “Why,” said he, “as those do who are accustomed to the ordinary noise of wheels drawing water.

When Socrates, after his fetters were knocked off, felt the pleasure of that itching which the weight of them had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the strict alliance betwixt pain and pleasure;

I don’t know about this, but there are wonderful instances of it that Socrates, Xenophon, and Aristotle, men of irreproachable authority, relate.

Socrates one that was all conduct and action;

The true point is found in Socrates;

Nor is there anything more remarkable in Socrates than that, old as he was, he found time to make himself taught dancing and playing upon instruments, and thought it time well spent.

This is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours:

and nothing is hard for me to digest in the life of Socrates but his ecstasies and communication with daemons;