nd years. The first recorded martyr to free speculation
in philosophy was Anaxagoras in Greece. Muleted in the sum of five
talents, and expelled from Athens, he was considered fortunate in being
allowed to retire to Lampsacus and end his days there. His fate,
however, was soon eclipsed by the execution of Socrates,--an event
whereby the Athenian burghers were enabled to bias the expression of
free opinions from that time to this. The first person to feel the shock
was Plato. That he was affected by it, to the extent of suppressing his
views on the higher questions, we can infer with the greatest
probability.

[CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXECUTION OF SOCRATES.]

Aristotle was equally cowed. A little before his death, the chief priest
of Eleusis, following the Socratic precedent, entered an indictment
against him for impiety. This indictment was supported by citations of
certain heretical doctrines from his published writings; on which Grote
makes the significant remark, that his paean in honour of his friend
Hermeias would be more offensive to the feelings of an ordinary Athenian
citizen than any philosophical dogma extracted from the _cautious prose
compositions_ of Aristotle. That is to say, the execution of Socrates
was always before his eyes; he had to pare his expressions so as not to
give offence to Athenian orthodoxy. We can never know the full bearings
of such a disturbing force. The editors of Aristotle complain of the
corruptness of his text; a far worse corruptness lies behind. In Greece,
Socrates alone had the courage of his opinions. While his views as to a
future life, for example, are plain and frank, the real opinion of
Aristotle on the question is an insoluble problem. Now, considering the
enormous sway of Aristotle in modern Europe,--how desirable was it that
his real sentiments had reached us unperverted by the Athenian burgher
and the hemlock!

It would be too adventurous to continue the illustration in detail
through the Christian ages. It is well known that the later schoolmen
strove to represent reason as against authority, but wrote under the
curb of the Papal power; hence their aims can only be divined. A modern
instance or two will be still more effective.

It can at last be clearly seen what was the motive of Carlyle's
perplexing style of composition. We now know what his opinions were,
when he began to write, and that to express them then would have been
fatal to his success; yet he was not a man