Apology | Page 7

gods, because it was better for
him to depart; and therefore he forgives his judges because they have
done him no harm, although they never meant to do him any good.
He has a last request to make to them--that they will trouble his sons as
he has troubled them, if they appear to prefer riches to virtue, or to
think themselves something when they are nothing.
...
'Few persons will be found to wish that Socrates should have defended
himself otherwise,'--if, as we must add, his defence was that with which

Plato has provided him. But leaving this question, which does not
admit of a precise solution, we may go on to ask what was the
impression which Plato in the Apology intended to give of the
character and conduct of his master in the last great scene? Did he
intend to represent him (1) as employing sophistries; (2) as designedly
irritating the judges? Or are these sophistries to be regarded as
belonging to the age in which he lived and to his personal character,
and this apparent haughtiness as flowing from the natural elevation of
his position?
For example, when he says that it is absurd to suppose that one man is
the corrupter and all the rest of the world the improvers of the youth; or,
when he argues that he never could have corrupted the men with whom
he had to live; or, when he proves his belief in the gods because he
believes in the sons of gods, is he serious or jesting? It may be
observed that these sophisms all occur in his cross-examination of
Meletus, who is easily foiled and mastered in the hands of the great
dialectician. Perhaps he regarded these answers as good enough for his
accuser, of whom he makes very light. Also there is a touch of irony in
them, which takes them out of the category of sophistry. (Compare
Euthyph.)
That the manner in which he defends himself about the lives of his
disciples is not satisfactory, can hardly be denied. Fresh in the memory
of the Athenians, and detestable as they deserved to be to the newly
restored democracy, were the names of Alcibiades, Critias, Charmides.
It is obviously not a sufficient answer that Socrates had never professed
to teach them anything, and is therefore not justly chargeable with their
crimes. Yet the defence, when taken out of this ironical form, is
doubtless sound: that his teaching had nothing to do with their evil lives.
Here, then, the sophistry is rather in form than in substance, though we
might desire that to such a serious charge Socrates had given a more
serious answer.
Truly characteristic of Socrates is another point in his answer, which
may also be regarded as sophistical. He says that 'if he has corrupted
the youth, he must have corrupted them involuntarily.' But if, as
Socrates argues, all evil is involuntary, then all criminals ought to be
admonished and not punished. In these words the Socratic doctrine of
the involuntariness of evil is clearly intended to be conveyed. Here

again, as in the former instance, the defence of Socrates is untrue
practically, but may be true in some ideal or transcendental sense. The
commonplace reply, that if he had been guilty of corrupting the youth
their relations would surely have witnessed against him, with which he
concludes this part of his defence, is more satisfactory.
Again, when Socrates argues that he must believe in the gods because
he believes in the sons of gods, we must remember that this is a
refutation not of the original indictment, which is consistent
enough--'Socrates does not receive the gods whom the city receives,
and has other new divinities' --but of the interpretation put upon the
words by Meletus, who has affirmed that he is a downright atheist. To
this Socrates fairly answers, in accordance with the ideas of the time,
that a downright atheist cannot believe in the sons of gods or in divine
things. The notion that demons or lesser divinities are the sons of gods
is not to be regarded as ironical or sceptical. He is arguing 'ad
hominem' according to the notions of mythology current in his age. Yet
he abstains from saying that he believed in the gods whom the State
approved. He does not defend himself, as Xenophon has defended him,
by appealing to his practice of religion. Probably he neither wholly
believed, nor disbelieved, in the existence of the popular gods; he had
no means of knowing about them. According to Plato (compare Phaedo;
Symp.), as well as Xenophon (Memor.), he was punctual in the
performance of the least religious duties; and he must have believed in
his own oracular sign, of which he seemed to have an internal witness.
But the existence