It had always been the impression, I believe, upon the minds both of ordinary readers and of scholars, that the Comedian of Athens intended to represent Socrates as a Sophist, who was corrupting the old spirit of Greece with modern philosophical refinements. Upon this view of the case, Aristophanes, though he may have entirely mistaken the character and objects of the person whom he was ridiculing, will still confirm the impression which we derive from other sources, that he was emphatically a moral teacher, that he meddled with physical speculations only just so far as they illustrated his principles concerning the life of man, that his great effort was to awaken men to self-knowledge. A teacher who asserted that a constant conflict was going on in man between two principles, one drawing him upwards, one dragging him to earth, might easily be represented as keeping a right and a wrong reason, and being able upon all fitting occasions to make the latter predominant. One who urged his pupils to study the meaning of words, might be plausibly accused of inventing the most subtle and aerial distinctions. One who wished to guide them through the thick coming thoughts and fancies which the teachings of the sophists had stirred up within them to a solid foundation, might easily be suspected of administering to the growth of self-consciousness, and so of interfering with simple and practical life. These charges are just such as any man coming into a vicious state of society, and seeking to reform it, not by preaching about the past, but by actually entering into the present, and endeavouring to discover a way out of its confusions, must always incur. It is the best proof which can be afforded of the talent of Aristophanes, that he so clearly understood the kind of work in which Socrates was engaged; the best excuse for his character, that he confounded him with persons who deserved all reprobation, and whom he was, by a very different course to that which the Comedian followed, refuting and exposing.
But a modern editor of Aristophanes, Mr. Mitchell, whose English notes, whose criticisms, and whose previous translations, are likely to make his work very popular, has promulgated an entirely new theory upon this subject. He maintains that the notion of the objects of Socrates which we obtain from either of his disciples, or from tradition, is utterly false; that he was primarily, and almost exclusively, a physical philosopher, that as such he is ridiculed in the Clouds, and that the hero of that part of the play which seems to describe him in another character, is really not Socrates but Euripides!
The last hypothesis will, I should think, be a much more effectual confutation of this ingenious scheme, than any arguments which can be brought against it. To prove his point against the philosopher, Mr. Mitchell is obliged to destroy our respect for the genius of his own favourite poet. For he represents this his most elaborate composition as utterly deficient in unity of purpose or principle, as nothing but a collection of incoherent lampoons upon two persons, who it would appear were not even connected by a common object or by the same class of pursuits. One can scarcely imagine a more satisfactory confirmation of the common opinion, that Socrates was what Xenophon and Plato (much as they differ in the character of their minds, and in their ways of regarding their master) both represent him to have been, than that which is supplied by this desperate effort to set it aside.
So far as the assertion in the text is concerned, these remarks might be sufficient. But I cannot help perceiving that Mr. Mitchell’s remarks on this point are in strict accordance with those which he is everywhere endeavouring to propagate, respecting Greek philosophy generally, and that he is availing himself, it seems to me most mischievously, of Christian feelings and prejudices in support of them. In a passage of his Preface to the Clouds, he gives it as his opinion, that the highest honour which Pythagoras ever received was to be made ‘the hero and object of ridicule in one of Lucian’s unmatched dialogues.’ He speaks of him and of Epimenides and Empedocles as ‘impostors’ and ‘charlatans.’ And having assumed that Socrates belonged to the same class of thinkers with them, and received much of his teaching from the Italian school, he leaves his readers to draw the inference that he was an impostor and charlatan also.
As our notices of Pythagoras, though sufficient to show that the greatest among the Greeks regarded him with respect and admiration, are rather scattered and miscellaneous, my readers may wish to know something of the process by which Mr. Mitchell arrives at his conclusions respecting him. Perhaps they may suppose that he collects the remarks respecting him, which are to be found in Plato and Aristotle, that he then resorts to Diogenes Laertius, and finally avails himself of any hints which Cicero either from Greek or Italian sources may be able to supply. No, our author disdains all these vulgar methods. His authorities are derived from a period subsequent to the Christian era. He takes the life of Apollonius of Tyana by the sophist Philostratus. He finds that this mythical hero equipped himself in the cast-off garments of the Samian, inventing, he fairly confesses, some stories, but in all probability “finding others ready made to his hand;” the chief ground for this last opinion being that ‘the immortal Lucian’ believed or feigned to believe them. Out of these materials Mr. Mitchell constructs a Pythagoras, and thence by the easiest process imaginable (his former hypothesis being admitted), a Socrates.
I entreat my reader to verify these assertions, by turning to the preface of which I have spoken: for I do not ask him to believe on my authority that any scholar conversant with the laws of historical evidence, has adopted such a course for discovering the character and merits of an ancient teacher. It is quite superfluous to observe in what way the precedent might be applied to other cases. Of course if any Father or Apostle has been chosen for the subject of a biography by an Italian monk of the last or present century, who has discovered his relics and wrought miracles with them, that biography must henceforth be received as genuine; upon the strength of it the Father or Apostle of it must be pronounced an impostor or charlatan, provided only Voltaire or some other immortal Lucian of the West has adopted it as the warrant for his jests. Nevertheless Mr. Mitchell’s statements will in many quarters be eagerly received. There are some who seem to think that the proof of the Divine origin and worth of Christianity depends upon the mean estimate which we form of all the wise men whom Greece produced in its best days; that if we can but succeed in wiping out the respect for them, no matter by what means, there is a tabula rasa on which we may inscribe all the feelings and principles of the New Testament. Alas! what a tabula rasa! one on which scorn, scepticism, indifference to all earnest hopes, unbelief in any principle, have been written in the deepest characters beforehand! These are the preparations for the Gospel! These are the habits of mind which we are to foster in order that we may feel our own nothingness, and our need of a Divine Teacher, and may believe that we have one! That facts are against such a notion; that the sceptics and scoffers of the ages after Christianity had been proclaimed, were not the men most ready to receive it; that those who were most earnestly and truly holding fast that which they had, seeking for God by every light which Mythology or Philosophy threw in their way, were those who most welcomed the voice of the messenger bringing good tidings, and saying, Behold your God—this is certain. Nevertheless in the teeth of the clearest evidence of this kind, we suppose that we are proving Christianity to be that which all men want, by proving that all those who showed they did want it were imposing upon others or upon themselves.
The ground for such a suspicion is however the point upon which I am most anxious to speak. It is this: whenever these heathen philosophers perceived a great moral principle, the knowledge of which they believed might be for the good of ages unborn, they said they were inspired. Now that they were ignorant of the conditions, under which spiritual life and wisdom are communicated: that the belief of being taught from above produced an intoxication which at times carried them into extravagant courses; that it may have ultimately engendered a vanity which was the parent of real impostures, I make no doubt. But I ask, is it safe, in spite of all these facts, to say that honesty of purpose, and real positive wisdom, were the fruits of delusion and falsehood? All that is sincere in my mind revolts against such an opinion. Good produces good, lies bring forth lies; what there was of deceit in these men led to evil results, kept up a superstition which was ultimately exposed and which carried away much sound faith along with it; but they did some good, great good. Did this come from any hollowness and trickery? Μὴ γένοιτο! It must have come from deep and wise counsels; earnest meditations; loving feelings. And whence came these? Are we, just because we are Christians, to say it was pretence and cheating to affirm that they came from the source of all truth and good? Are we, just because we know that not only rains and fruitful seasons, but all holy thoughts, good counsels and just works have a Divine Author, to say that the dim recognition of this truth by elder men was actually a crime; that they would have been better and wiser if they had taken the honour to themselves? Yet we must charge this humility upon them as a sin, if we are determined to adopt the Pelagian doctrine, that the good which was in these men had its root in human nature, existing apart from God, and not in the teachings and impulses of the Divine Word.