It is pleasant to stand at last face to face with a personality apparently so real as Socrates. But when we consider the two sources upon which we must rely for our knowledge of Socrates we find that one of them, Plato, writes imaginative dramas, that the other, Xenophon, writes historical novels, and that neither product can be taken as history. "They say," writes Diogenes Laertius, "that Socrates having heard Plato read the Lysis, cried out, ’O Heracles! what a number of lies the young man has told about me!' For Plato had set down a great many things as sayings of Socrates which he had never said." Plato does not pretend to limit himself to fact; probably it never occurred to him that the future might have scant means of distinguishing, in his work, imagination from biography. But he draws so consistent a picture of his master throughout the Dialogues, from Socrates' youthful timidity in the Parmenides and his insolent loquacity in the Protagoras to the subdued piety and resignation of the Phaedo, that if this was not Socrates, then Plato is one of the greatest character creators in all literature. Aristotle accepts as authentically Socratic the views attributed to Socrates in the Protagoras. Recently discovered fragments of an Alcibiades written by Aeschines of Sphettos, an immediate disciple of Socrates, tend to confirm the portrait given in the earlier dialogues of Plato, and the story of the philosopher's attachment to Alcibiades. On the other hand, Aristotle classes Xenophon's Memorabilia and Banquet as forms of fiction, imaginary conversations in which Socrates becomes, more often than not, a mouthpiece for Xenophon's ideas. If Xenophon honestly played Eckermann to Socrates' Goethe we can only say that he has carefully collected the master's safest platitudes; it is incredible that so virtuous a man should have upset a civilization. Other ancient writers did not make the old sage into such a saint; Aristoxenus of Tarentum, about 318, reported, on the testimony of his father – who claimed to have known Socrates – that the philosopher was a person without education, "ignorant and debauched"; and Eupolis, the comic poet, rivaled his rival Aristophanes in abusing the great gadfly. Making due discount for polemic vitriol it is at least clear that Socrates was a man, hated and loved beyond any other figure of his time.

His father was a sculptor, and he himself was said to have carved a Hermes, and three Graces that stood near the entrance to the Acropolis. His mother was a midwife: it was a standing joke with him that he merely continued her trade, but in the realm of ideas, helping others to deliver themselves of their conceptions. One tradition describes him as the son of a slave; it is improbable, for he served as a hoplite (a career open only to citizens), inherited a house from his father, and had seventy minas ($7000) invested for him by his friend Crito; for the rest he is represented as poor. He paid much attention to the training of the body, and was usually in good physical condition. He made a reputation for himself as a soldier during the Peloponnesian War: in 432 he fought at Potidaea, in 424 at Delium, in 422 at Amphipolis. At Potidaea he saved both the life and the arms of the young Alcibiades, and gave up in the youth's favor his claim to the prize for valor; at Delium he was the last Athenian to give ground to the Spartans, and seems to have saved himself by glaring at the enemy; even the Spartans were frightened. In these campaigns, we are told, he excelled all in endurance and courage, bearing without complaint hunger, fatigue, and cold. At home, when he condescended to stay there, he worked as a stonecutter and statuary. He had no interest in travel, and seldom went outside the city and its port. He married Xanthippe, who berated him for neglecting his family; he recognized the justice of her complaint, and defended her gallantly to his son and his friends. Marriage disturbed him so little that he seems to have taken an additional wife when the mortality of males in the war led to the temporary legalization of polygamy.

All the world knows the face of Socrates. Judging precariously from the bust in the Museo delle Terme at Rome, it was not typically Greek; its spacious spread, its fiat, broad nose, its thick lips, and heavy beard suggest rather Solon's friend of the steppes, Anacharsis, or that modern Scythian, Tolstoi. "I say," Alcibiades insists, even while protesting his love, "that Socrates is exactly like the masks of Silenus, which may be seen sitting in the statuaries' shops, having pipes and flutes in their mouths; and they are made to open in the middle, and there are images of gods inside them. I say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr. You will not deny, Socrates, that your face is that of a satyr." Socrates raises no objection; to make matters worse he confesses to an unduly large paunch, and hopes to reduce it by dancing.

Plato and Xenophon agree in describing his habits and his character. He was content with one simple and shabby robe throughout the year, and liked bare feet better than sandals or shoes: He was incredibly free from the acquisitive fever that agitates mankind. Viewing the multitude of articles exposed for sale in the market place, he remarked, "How many things there are that I do not want!" – and felt himself rich in his poverty. He was a model of moderation and self-control, but all the world away from a saint. He could drink like a gentleman, and needed no timid asceticism to keep him straight. ["So far as drinking is concerned;" Xenophon makes Socrates say, "wine does of a oath 'moisten he soul' and lull our griefs to sleep . . . . But I suspect that men's bodies fare like those of .planets . . . . When God gives the plants water in floods to drink they cannot stand up straight to let the breezes blow through them; but when they drink only as much as they enjoy they grow up straight and tall, and come to full and abundant fruitage."] He was no recluse; he liked good company, and let the rich entertain him now and then; but he made no obeisance to them, could get along very well without them, and rejected the gifts and invitations of magnates and kings. All in all he was fortunate: he lived without working, read without writing, taught without routine, drank without dizziness, and died before senility, almost without pain.

His morals were excellent for his time, but would hardly satisfy all the good people who praise him. He "took fire" at the sight of Charmides, but controlled himself by asking if this handsome lad had also a "noble soul." Plato speaks of Socrates and Alcibiades as lovers, and describes the philosopher "in chase of the fair youth." Though the old man seems to have kept the use amours for the most part Platonic, he was not above giving advice to homosexuals and hetairai on how to attract lovers. He gallantly promised his help to the courtesan Theodora, who rewarded him with the invitation: "Come often to see me." His good humor and kindliness were so unfailing that those who could stomach his politics found it simple to put up with his morals. When he had passed away Xenophon spoke of him as "so just that he wronged no man in the most trifling affair . . . so temperate that he never preferred pleasure to virtue; so wise that he never erred in distinguishing better from worse . . . so capable of discerning the character of others, and of exhorting them to virtue and honor, that he seemed to be such as the best and happiest of men would be." Or, as Plato put it, with moving simplicity, he "was truly the wisest, and justest, and best of all the men whom have ever known."

Being curious and disputatious he became a student of philosophy, and was for a time fascinated by the Sophists who invaded Athens in his youth. There is no evidence that Plato invented the fact as well as the content of Socrates' meetings with Parmenides, Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and Thrasymachus; it is likely that he saw Zeno when the latter came to Athens about 450, and that he was so infected with Zeno's dialectic that it never left him. Probably he knew Anaxagoras, if not in person then in doctrine; for Archclaus of Miletus, pupil of Anaxagoras, was for a time the teacher of Socrates. Archelaus began as a physicist and ended as a student of morals; he explained the origin and basis of morals on rationalistic lines, and perhaps turned Socrates from science to ethics:" By all these avenues Socrates came to philosophy, and thenceforth found his "greatest good in daily converse about virtue, examining myself and others; for a life unscrutiuized is unworthy of a man." * So he went prowling among men's beliefs, prodding them with questions, demanding precise answers and consistent views, and making himself a terror to all who could not think clearly. Even in Hades he proposed to be a gaddv, and "find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise and is not."' He protected himself from a similar cross-examination by announcing that he knew nothing; he knew all the questions, but none of the answers; he modestly called himself an "aurateur in philosophy." What he meant, presumably, was that he was certain of nothing except man's fallibility, and had no hard and fast system of dogmas and principles. When the oracle at Delphi, to Chaerephon's alleged inquiry, "Is any man wiser than Socrates?" gave the alleged reply, "No one," Socrates ascribed the response to his profession of ignorance.

From that moment he set himself to the pragmatic rash of getting clear ideas. "For himself," he said, "he would hold discourse, from time to time, on what concerned mankind, considering what was pious, what impious; what was just, what unjust; what was sanity, what insanity; what was courage, what cowardice; what was the nature of government over men, and the qualities of one skilled in governing them; and touching on other subjects . . . of which he thought that those who were ignorant might justly be deemed no better than slaves." To every vague notion, easy generalization, or secret prejudice he pointed the challenge, "What is it?" and asked for precise definitions. It became his habit to rise early and go to the market place, the gymnasiums, the palaestras, or the workshops of artisans, and engage in discussion any person who gave promise of a stimulating intelligence or an amusing stupidity. "Is not the road to Athens made for conversation?" he asked." His method was simple: he called for the definition of a large idea; he examined the definition, usually to reveal its incompleteness, its contradictoriness, or its absurdity; he led on, by question after question, to a fuller and luster definition, which, however, he never gave. Sometimes he proceeded to a general conception, or exposed another, by investigating a long series of particular instances, thereby introducing a measure of induction into Greek logic; sometimes, with the famous Socratic irony, he unveiled the ridiculous consequences of the definition or opinion he wished to destroy. He had a passion for orderly thinking, and liked to classify individual things according to their genus, species, and specific difference, thereby preparing for Aristotle's method of definition as well as for Plato's theory of Ideas. He liked to describe dialectic as the art of careful distinctions. And he salted the weary wastes of logic with a humor that died an early death in the history of philosophy.

His opponents objected that he tore down but never built, that he rejected every answer but gave none of his own, and that the results demoralized morals and paralyzed thought. In many cases he left the idea that he had set out to clarify mare obscure than before. When a resolute fellow like Critias tried to question him he turned his reply into another question, and at once recaptured the advantage. In the Protagoras he offers to answer instead of asking, but his good resolution lasts but a moment; whereupon Protagoras, being an old hand at the game of logic, quietly withdraws from the argument. Hippias rages at Socrates' elusiveness: "By Zeus," he cries, "you shall not hear [my answer] until you yourself declare what you think justice to be; for it is not enough that you laugh at others, questoning and confuting everybody, while you yourself are unwilling to give a reason to anybody, or to declare your opinion on any subject." To such taunts Socrates replied that he was only a midwife like his mother. The reproach which is often made against me, that I ask questions of others and have not the wit to answer them myself, is very just. The reason is that the god compels me to be a midwife, but forbids me to bring forth" – a deus ex machina worthy of his friend Euripides,

In many ways he resembled the Sophists, and the Athenians applied the namz to him without hesitation, and usually without reproach: Indeed, he was often a Sophist in the modern sense: he was rich in crafty dodges and rgumentative tricks, slyly changed the scope or meaning of terms, drowsed the problem in loose analogies, quibbled like a schoolboy, and beat the wind bravely with words.' The Athenians might be excused far giving him hemlock, since there is no pest like a conscious logician. In four points he differed from the Sophists; he despised rhetoric, he wished to strengthen morality, he did not profess to teach anything more than the art of examining ideas, and he refused to take pay for his instruction, though he appears to have accepted occasional help from his rich friends. With all his irritating faults his students loved him deeply. "Perhaps," he says to one of them, "I may be able to assist you in the pursuit of honor and virtue, from being mutually disposed to love; for whenever I conceive a liking for persons I devote myself with ardor, and with my whole mind, to love them, and be loved by them in return, regretting their absence and having mine regretted by them, and longing for their society while they long for mine."

Aristophanes' Clouds represents the pupils of Socrates as forming a school with a regular meeting place; and a passage in Xenophon lends some color to this conception. Usually he is pictured as teaching wherever he found a pupil or a listener. But no common doctrine united his followers; they differed so widely among themselves that they became the leaders of the most diverse philosophical schools and theories in Greece – Platonism, Cynicism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism. There was the proud and humble Antisthenes, who took from his master the doctrine of simplicity in life and needs, and founded the Cynic school; perhaps he was present when Socrates said to Antiphon: "You seem to think that happiness consists in luxury and extravagance; but I think that to want nothing is to resemble the gods, and that to want as little as possible is to make the nearest approach to the gods." There was Aristippus, who derived from Socrates' placid acceptance of pleasure as a good the doctrine which he later developed at Cyrene, and which Epicurus would preach at Athens. There was Eucleides of Megara, who sharpened the Socratic dialectic into a skepticism that denied the possibility of any real knowledge. There was the young Phaedo, who had been reduced to slavery, and had been ransomed by Crito at the behest of Socrates; Socrates loved the lad, and "made him a philosopher." There was the restless Xenophon who, though he gave up philosophyfor soldiering, testified that "nothing was of greater benefit than to assodate with Socrates, and to converse with him, on any occasion, on any subject whatever." There was Plato, upon whose vivid imagination the sage trade so lasting an impression that the two minds are mingled forever in phlosophical history. There was the rich Crito, who "looked upon Socrates with the greatest affection, and took care that he should never be in want of anything." There was the dashing young Alcibiades, whose infidelities were to discredit and endanger his teacher, but who now loved Socrates with characteristic abandon, and said:

When we hear any other speaker, even a very good one, his words produce absolutely no effect upon us in comparison, whereas the very fragments of your words, Socrates, even at second hand, and however imperfectly reported, amaze and possess the souls of every man, woman and child who comes within hearing of them .... I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him and fly from the voice of the siren, he would detain me until I grew old sitting at his feet . . . . I have known in my soul, or in my heart . . . that greatest of pangs, more violent in ingenuous youth than any serpent's tooth, the pang of philosophy . . . . And you, Phaedrus, you, Agathon, you, Eryximachus, you, Pausanias, you, Aristodemus, you, Aristophanes, all of you, and I need not say Socrates himself, have all had experience of the same madness and passion for philosophy.

There was the oligarchic leader Critias, who enjoyed Socrates' quips against democracy, and helped to incriminate him by writing a play in whic he described the gods as the invention of clever statesmen who used them as night watchmen to frighten men into decency." And there was the son of the democratic leader Anvtus, a lad who preferred to hear Socrates discourse rather than to attend to his business, which was dealing in leather. Anytus complained that Socrates had unsettled the boy with skepticism, that the boy no longer respected his parents or the gods; moreover. Anytus resented Socrates' criticisms of democracy. [Possibly, as Plutarch and Athenaeus assure us, Anytus loved Alcibiades, who rejected him leir Socrates.] "Socrates," says Anytus, "I think you are too ready to speak evil of men; and if you will lake my advice, I would recommend you to be careful. Perhaps there is nocity in which it is not easier to do men harm than to do them good; and this is certainly the case at Athens." Anytus bided his time.

Behind the method seas a philosophy, elusive, tentative, unsystematic, but o real that in effect the man died for it. At first sight there is no Soctytic philosophy; but this is largely because Socrates, accepting the relatavism of Protagoras, refused to dogmatize, and was certain only of his ignorance.

Though condemned far irreligion, Socrates gave at least lip service to the gods of his city, participated in its religious ceremonies, and was never known to utter an impious word. He professed to follow, in all important negative decisions, an inner daimonion which he described as a sign from heaven. Perhaps this spirit was another play of the Socratic irony; if so, it was remarkably well sustained; and it is but one class of many appeals, in Socrates, to oracles and dreams as messages from the gods. He argued that there were too many instances of amazing adaptation and apparent design to allow us to ascribe the world to chance or any, unintelligent cause. On immortality he was not so definite; he pleads for it tenaciously in the Phaedo, but in the Apology he says, "Were I to make any claim to be wiser than others, it would be because I do not think that I have any sufficient knowledge of the other world, when in fact I have none." In the Cratylus he applies the same agnosticism to the gods: "Of the gods we know nothing." He advised his followers not to dispute of such matters; like Confucius, he asked them did they know human affairs so well that they were ready to meddle with those of heaven. The best thing to do, he felt, was to acknowledge our ignorance, and meanwhile to obey the oracle at Delphi, which, when asked how one should worship the gods, answered, "According to the law of your country."

He applied this skepticism even more rigorously to the physical sciences. One should study them only so far as to guide his life; beyond that they are an inscrutable maze; each mystery, when solved, reveals a deeper mystery: In his youth he had studied science with Archelaus; in his maturity he turned from it as a more or less plausible myth, and interested himself no longer in facts and origins but in values and ends. "He discoursed," says Xenophon, "always of human affairs."' The Sophists had also "turned around" from natural science to man, and had begun the study of sensation, perception, and knowledge; Socrates event further inward to study human character and purpose. "Tell me, Euthydemus, have you ever gone to Delphi?" "Yes, twice." "And did you observe what is written on the temple wall – Know thyself" "I did." "And did you take no thought of that inscription, or did you attend to it, and try to examine yourself, and ascertain what sort of character you are.?"

Philosophy, therefore, was for Socrates neither theology nor metaphysics nor physics, but ethics and politics, with logic as an introduction and a means. Coming at the close of the Sophistic period, he perceived that the Sophists had created one of the most critical situations in the history of any culture-the weakenin, of the supernatural basis of morals. Instead of a frightened return to orthodoxy, he moved forward to the profoundest question that ethics can ask: is a natural ethic possible? Can morality survive without supernatural belief? Can philosophy, by molding an effective secular moral code, save the civilization which its freedom of thought has threatened to destroy? When, in the Euthyphro, Socrates argues that the good s not good because the gods approve of it, but that the gods approve of it because it is good, he is proposing a philosophical revolution. His conception of good, so far from being theological, is earthly to the point of being utilitarian. Goodness, he thinks, is not general and abstract, but specific and practical, "good for something." Goodness and beauty are forms of usefulness and human advantage; even a dung basket is beautiful if it is well formed for its purpose. Since (Socrates thought) there is nothing else so useful as knowledge, knowledge is the highest virtue, and all vice is ignorance – though "virtue" (arete) here means excellence rather than sinlessness. Without proper knowledge right action is impossible; with proper knowledge right action is inevitable. Men never do that which they know, to be wrong – i.e., unwise, injurious to themselves. The highest good is happiness, the highest means to it is knowledge or intelligence.

If Inowledge is the highest excellence, Socrates argues, aristocracy is the best forrll of government, and democracy is nonsense. "It is absurd," says Xenophon's Socrates, "to choose magistrates by lot where no one would dream of drawing lots for a pilot, a mason, a flute-player, or any craftsman at all, though the shortcomings of such men are far less harmful than those that lisorder our government." He condemns the litigiousness of the Athenians, their noisy envy of one another, the bitterness of their political factions and disputes: "On these accounts," he says, "I am constantly in the greatest fear lest some evil should happen to the state too great for it to bear." Nothing could save Athens, he thought, except government by knovzledge and ability; and this was no more to be determined by voting than the qualifications of a pilot, a musician, a physician, or a carpenter. Nor should power or wealth choose the officials of the state; tyranny and plutocracy are as bad as democracy; the reasonable compromise is an aristocracy in which office would be restricted to those mentally fit and trained for it. Despite these criticisms of Athenian democracy Socrates recognized its advantages, and appreciated the liberties and opportunities that: gave him. He smiled at the tendency of some followers to preach a "return to Nature," and adopted towards Antisthenes and the Cynics the same attitude that Voltaire would take towards Rousseau – that with all its faults civilization is a precious thing, not to be abandoned for any primeval simplicity:

Nevertheless the majority of the Athenians looked upon him with irritated suspicion. The orthodox in religion considered him to be the most dangerous of the Sophists; for while he observed the amenities of the ancient faith he rejected tradition, wished to subject every rule to the scrutiny of reason, founded morality, in the individual conscience rather than in social good or the unchanging decrees of heaven, and ended with a skepticism that left reason itself in a mental confusion unsettling to every custom and belief. To him, as well as to Protagoras and Euripides, praisers of the past like Aristophanes attributed the irreligion of the age, the disrespect of the young for the old, the loosened morals of the educated classes, and the disorderly individualism that was consuming Athenian life. Though Socrates refused to support the oligarchic faction, many of its leaders were his pupils or his friends. When one of them, Critias, led the oligarchs in a rich man's revolution and a ruthless terror, democrats like Anytus and Meletus branded Socrates as the intellectual source of the oligarchic reaction, and determined to remove him from Athenian life.