Note 66.1 — SOCRATES.

One of the oddities of Socrates which seems to have offended the nice taste of the χαρίεντες, or men of elegant culture in Athens, was the homeliness of his style and the familiarity of his illustrations. This is particularly alluded to by Alcibiades in the humorous speech in Plato’s Banquet; from which an extract has been already made. In the peroration of that speech Alcibiades is made to say that not only the personal appearance, but the whole style and language of Socrates, had a close affinity to the Sileni and Satyrs; for instead of using elegantly turned sentences and studiously selected illustrations, like the Sophists, he was always talking about “smiths and tanners and shoemakers, and asses with pack-saddles,” and a whole host of such vulgarities, which to the hearer at first seemed to make him ridiculous; but by and by they discovered that behind all this rough Satyr’s hide of uncouth expression there lurked a truly divine meaning, and the faces of gods peeped out through the holes of the beggar’s coat. And the same language is used in Xenophon by Critias and Charicles when, in the exercise of a tyrannical authority, they called upon the philosopher to cease from his dangerous business of talking sedition to the young men. Now, any man who considers this matter will perceive that the peculiarity of style here noted lay partly in the natural character of the man, partly was the best style which he could possibly have adopted, if he really wished to do good as a moral missionary, and not merely to parade himself before men as a clever talker. The dignity of the pulpit in modern times is one of the great causes of its comparative inefficiency; it will not condescend to familiar subjects; it rejects familiar illustrations as bad taste, and the consequence too frequently is that it is not received into the confidence of every-day life, and stands apart on too lofty a pedestal to be useful. But as a sensible and acute ethical writer remarks, “if moral questions disdain to walk the streets, the philosophy of them must remain in the clouds;”[66.1] and so Socrates is justified in his method of testing every lofty principle by a familiar example, and, like Wordsworth, the thoughtful poet of the Lakes, teaching us that philosophy is then most profound when it points out what is uncommon in common things, and that he is a wiser man who plucks a lesson from the daisy at his feet than he who wanders for it to the stars above his head.