In the picture of Socrates by Xenophon in the Memorabilia, which bears all the marks of true portraiture, goodness goes with happiness and knowledge. It is a most winning combination--beautiful as a Greek statue. Xenophon lays stress on his happiness, but the basis is self-command. Among a people where even religion and philosophy were tolerant of sensuality, he was pure. He was hardy, trained to bear heat and cold, temperate, simple, faithful to civic duty, a reverent worshiper of the gods, watchful for the divine leading. Xenophon shows him absorbed in teaching, imparting the best he has found, never so happy as when he can win a young man to virtue. His ideal society is the union of those who together are seeking goodness and knowledge. His patience is shown under the worst of domestic annoyances, a scolding wife,--he says he thus learns to bear all other crosses. His admonition to his son to bear with her shows genuine tenderness. He has the heroic quality. He resists the raging people, and refuses the part assigned him in voting the death sentence on the generals whose defeat had been a misfortune and not a fault. He calmly disobeys the Thirty Tyrants, at the risk of his life. He dies at last, a tranquil martyr to fearless truth-speaking. He teaches nobly of Providence, the Supreme, the guidance from above. He conforms to the religion of his people, while planting a higher truth. When Athens, faithfully warned by him in vain, was sinking toward ruin and decay, he was sowing the seeds of spiritual harvests for future generations, like Jesus when Judea was tottering to its fall. In the intellectual development of man's higher life he holds a place not unlike that of Jesus in the emotional development. Socrates, as Xenophon describes him, goes no farther as a teacher than to impress the principles of conduct as they were generally accepted by good men of the time, with peculiar persuasiveness. But Plato shows him as an original investigator of the human mind and the universe. In this there is an undoubted trait of true portraiture, but its limit is very difficult to trace, because in Plato's dialogues the master is made the mouthpiece of all the pupil's philosophy. The most distinctive feature which can be identified as that of Socrates himself is the cross-examination. Under this process, high-sounding generalities,--put in the mouths of speakers in the dialogues, the whole word-play set forth with exquisite grace and charm,--are shown by a rigid sifting to resolve themselves into nebulous and baseless figments,--the mere simulacra of true knowledge.