the Speculatist, desiring to know how far he may urge his theories without danger to practice; and the Religious, anxious to prevent belief sinking into scepticism, and devotion being chilled into irreligion, may find much that deserves his attention in the conduct and motives of Socrates. For the very end of Socrates' philosophy is to fix important objects, and to develop sufficient motives to excite men to pursue them. Socrates investigated human nature for principles, and examined human affairs for consequences; and ascended, by the soundest inferences of reason and the purest dictates of conscience, to a still higher obligation. He desired something which might be made a Discipline for the young, a Rule for the guiding of middle life, and a Support to the aged. And surely his Philosophy is addressed to the feelings of the purest time of life; yet stands the test to which the experience and knowledge of manhood can put it; and its recollections and anticipations are among the best comforts of age. It affords a system of obligation which rests on the most enlarged view of moral and physical causation. It does not indulge in the splendid error which would separate the present from the past; yet it proposes to make the present better than the past, and the future than the present time. And, lastly, it affords one of the most perfect comments which reason and conscience have ever supplied on the truth and importance of the moral lessons we have derived from the Christian Religion. KENSINGTON, THE RELIGION OF SOCRATES ANTIQUITY has adjudged to Socrates the palm for goodness and for wisdom; for the goodness which labours to promote the wellbeing, and for the wisdom which discerns what constitutes the well-being of man. In all that Socrates is recorded by his more scrupulous biographer to have said or done, there is so much good sense, and so much right feeling, that we are in danger of forgetting his power of intellect in dwelling on the soundness of his character. We are in danger of considering the philosopher, who may with truth be said to have developed all the leading truths of natural religion and morals, merely a plain good man, because he has preferred whatever is sound in practice to what is striking in theory. But the simplicity of Socrates' manner may with many prove as great an obstacle to his being ranked high as a Philosopher, as is the soundness of his matter.* If ever there existed a merely human being who could recognize the Divine voice in the plain instincts of conscience, and the simplest inferences of reason, it may be admitted that Socrates had that power. Therefore it is that his opinions and conduct exhibit a harmony so consentient between feelings not too acute, and a reason not too grave, yet each yielding its clear and perfect tone, that we are tempted to consider the instrument perfectly attuned by the Divine The opinions and conduct of Socrates may safely be estimated from Xenophon's note-book of his conversations. Plato had theories of his own, was a mystic in religion, and not sufficiently tender of the opinions of his country, and cannot therefore be taken as an incorrupt reporter of the philosophy of Socrates. But Xenophon respected his master too religiously to dare to interpolate any thing into his opinions. |