INTRODUCTION TO THE EUTHYPHRON.

Euthyphron, a person who professes to be thoroughly conversant in the knowledge of divine things, is represented as meeting Socrates at the king’s porch, that is, the entrance of the court in which trials for murder and impiety were carried on. He is surprised at seeing Socrates at such a spot, for he cannot believe that he has a cause pending there. Socrates tells him that he is indicted by one Melitus, a person of no note at Athens, but one who knows how to govern the city rightly, for that he charges Socrates with impiety in introducing new gods and corrupting the youth. Socrates then asks Euthyphron whether he too has a cause in the same court, and is informed that he has indicted his own father for murder, because he had occasioned the death of one of their hired servants, who had himself first slain a slave of Euthyphron’s father, and then been cast bound into a ditch, where he died from hunger and cold. On hearing this, Socrates asks whether he has such a perfect knowledge of holiness and impiety that he is sure he is right in bringing his father to trial; and on Euthyphron’s asserting that he has, Socrates begs that he will accept him for his disciple, in order that he may learn how to clear himself in his own approaching trial, and first of all desires to know what holiness and impiety are. Euthyphron confidently answers that what he is now doing is holy, namely, to prosecute any one who acts unjustly, whoever he may be, but that not to prosecute such an one is impious. Socrates, however, is not satisfied with this answer, for that he did not ask about particular actions, but about holiness in the abstract. “That, then, which is pleasing to the gods is holy,” says Euthyphron. But Socrates shews that different things are pleasing to different gods, so that the same things are both loved 457and hated by divers of them, whence it follows that the same things are both holy and unholy.

Euthyphron, feeling the force of this objection, next says that the holy is that which all the gods love, and the impious that which they all hate: but here again Socrates shews that this cannot be a correct definition of holiness, for that it is not holy because they love it, but they love it because it is holy. To help him out of his difficulty, Socrates suggests that holiness is a part of justice; to which Euthyphron assents, and adds that it is that part of it which is concerned about our care for the gods. But, asks Socrates, what care for the gods will holiness be? A kind of service paid to them, is the answer. But to what end do our services of the gods avail? Euthyphron evades the question by saying they are many and beautiful; but when further pressed, he says that holiness consists in sacrificing and praying to the gods, wherein, he is led to admit, men beg those things that they need, and sacrifice such things as the gods need, from whence Socrates concludes that holiness is a kind of traffic between gods and men. But it is clear that the gods cannot be benefited by men; therefore, as Euthyphron says, it must be that which is most dear. But this definition of holiness had been already rejected. Socrates, therefore, proposes to renew the enquiry, but Euthyphron, finding himself defeated at all points, suddenly breaks off the discussion, on pretence of business elsewhere.

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