ow the Athenians came to be persuaded that Socrates fell short of
sober-mindedness as touching the gods. A man who never ventured one
impious word or deed against the gods we worship, but whose whole
language concerning them, and his every act, closely coincided, word
for word, and deed for deed, with all we deem distinctive of devoutest
piety.
II
No less surprising to my mind is the belief that Socrates corrupted
the young. This man, who, beyond what has been already stated, kept
his appetites and passions under strict control, who was pre-eminently
capable of enduring winter's cold and summer's heat and every kind of
toil, who was so schooled to curtail his needs that with the scantiest
of means he never lacked sufficiency--is it credible that such a
man could have made others irreverent or lawless, or licentious, or
effeminate in face of toil? Was he not rather the saving of many through
the passion for virtue which he roused in them, and the hope he infused
that through careful management of themselves they might grow to be
truly beautiful and good--not indeed that he ever undertook to be a
teacher of virtue, but being evidently virtuous himself he made those
who associated with him hope that by imitating they might at last
resemble him.
But let it not be inferred that he was negligent of his own body
or approved of those who neglected theirs. If excess of eating,
counteracted by excess of toil, was a dietary of which he disapproved,
(1) to gratify the natural claim of appetite in conjunction with
moderate exercise was a system he favoured, as tending to a healthy
condition of the body without trammelling the cultivation of the spirit.
On the other hand, there was nothing dandified or pretentious about
him; he indulged in no foppery of shawl or shoes, or other effeminacy of
living.
(1) See (Plat.) "Erast." 132 C.
Least of all did he tend to make his companions greedy of money. He
would not, while restraining passion generally, make capital out of the
one passion which attached others to himself; and by this abstinence,
he believed, he was best consulting his own freedom; in so much that he
stigmatised those who condescended to take wages for their society as
vendors of their own persons, because they were compelled to discuss for
the benefits of their paymasters. What surprised him was that any one
possessing virtue should deign to ask money as its price instead of
simply finding his rward in the acq
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