comparison of the duty of self-examination, and of those principles of
truth and right which he deemed to be the foundation of religion.
(Compare Phaedr.; Euthyph.; Republic.)
The second question, whether Plato meant to represent Socrates as
braving or irritating his judges, must also be answered in the
negative. His irony, his superiority, his audacity, “regarding not the
person of man,” necessarily flow out of the loftiness of his situation.
He is not acting a part upon a great occasion, but he is what he has
been all his life long, “a king of men.” He would rather not appear
insolent, if he could avoid it (ouch os authadizomenos touto lego).
Neither is he desirous of hastening his own end, for life and death are
simply indifferent to him. But such a defence as would be acceptable to
his judges and might procure an acquittal, it is not in his nature to
make. He will not say or do anything that might pervert the course of
justice; he cannot have his tongue bound even “in the throat of death.”
With his accusers he will only fence and play, as he had fenced with
other “improvers of youth,” answering the Sophist according to his
sophistry all his life long. He is serious when he is speaking of his
own mission, which seems to distinguish him from all other reformers of
mankind, and originates in an accident. The dedication of himself to
the improvement of his fellow-citizens is not so remarkable as the
ironical spirit in which he goes about doing good only in vindication
of the credit of the oracle, and in the vain hope of finding a wiser
man than himself. Yet this singular and almost accidental character of
his mission agrees with the divine sign which, according to our
notions, is equally accidental and irrational, and is nevertheless
accepted by him as the guiding principle of his life. Socrates is
nowhere represented to us as a freethinker or sceptic. There is no
reason to doubt his sincerity when he speculates on the possibility of
seeing and knowing the heroes of the Trojan war in another world. On
the other hand, his hope of immortality is uncertain;—he also conceives
of death as a long sleep (in this respect differing from the Phædo),
and at last falls back on resignation to the divine will, and the
certainty that no evil can happen to the good man either in life or
death. His absolute truthfulness seems to hinder him from asserting
positively more than this; and he makes no attempt to veil his
ignorance in mythology and figures of speech. The gentleness of the
first part of the speech contrasts with the aggravated, almost
threatening, tone of the conclusion. He characteristically remarks that
he will not speak as a rhetorician, that is to say, he will not make a
regular defence such as Lysias or one of the orators might have
composed for him, or, according to some accounts, did compose for him.
But he first procures himself a hearing by conciliatory words. He does
not attack the Sophists; for they were open to the same charges as