=Socrates and Athens.= Socrates had a religious reverence for his own mission in the Athenian community. He was the “gad-fly of the Athenian public”; he was the educator of the time; he was divinely appointed to the Athenian people. He felt himself so necessary to the Athenian State that at his trial he proudly suggested that instead of punishing him the State keep him at the public expense in the Prytaneum. But the educator creates nothing; he only awakens and develops the germs of knowledge that lie latent. The human Athenian nature is big with truth; Socrates was divinely appointed to bring it forth. He called his method, after the profession of midwifery of his mother, the _maieutic method_. It was intellectual midwifery, and he was the intellectual midwife of Athens. Although he failed to find any concrete form of ultimate truth, he never had any doubt about the correctness of his method and of undertaking the problem afresh. He believed that his failure was due to the inherent weakness of human discernment; and so far as man’s discernment or insight is clear, so far will he know the true significance of things. Socrates believed in man, and he believed that in man were contained all those elements that make up a firm, rational, and moral society. Since he failed to justify this belief in a theoretical way, his belief became largely a matter of faith. Humanity is something to be won, something to be developed. He was personally the embodiment of his faith, and his large influence was due to his unswerving confidence in ethical ideals that did not allow the least paltering.