Talks with Athenian Youths, continued
Perhaps no-where more clearly do we see the attitude of Socrates towards his younger followers, or rather his fellow-searchers for truth, -- for as such he preferred to regard them. If a touch of his accustomed irony may be discerned in a somewhat exaggerated self-depreciation and deference to their opinions, we mark at the same time his encouragement of their efforts, his ready adaptation to their limited powers of understanding, and above all his steady determination that they shall use their own faculties, and always say what they think.
In the main, it is the young who, untrammelled by the bonds of pride or self-interest, and "capable of progress in everything," willingly lend themselves to the healing cross-examination, and are finally enabled to "bring out more than was within them"; to "discover of themselves many noble truths."
The application of this apparently simple rule was fraught with peculiar difficulties in a period of transition such as that in which the mission of Socrates was begun. Old schools of philosophy had lost their power and vitality, while the new conceptions destined to lay the foundations of modern philosophy were as yet in process of evolution.
Meanwhile the field temporarily left vacant was occupied by eristics, or masters "in the art of word-fighting." Then indeed with truth might men be called "slaves of their words." It need only that a proposition would be boldly enunciated by some "teacher of wisdom," for it to become straightway an axiom; and the more unintelligible was its meaning, apparently the more readily was it adopted.
For logic, as yet an unknown study, had not taught men to see through verbal fallacies and consider each proposition in its exact meaning, not "tricked out with empty words." Failing to distinguish between forms of thought and forms of expression, they regarded the two as identical and interchangeable, while their unfamiliarity with abstract ideas constantly led them to confuse the abstract with the concrete.
The urgency with which Socrates insisted upon a clear-cut definition of every term as a necessary preliminary to any discussion marks a new era in thought. The effort, however unsuccessful, to define any abstract idea or quality must of necessity throw some light upon its essential nature, even when nothing is effected beyond eliminating false conceptions of it. Subjected to this test, the stock sayings which had formerly passed unchallenged were proved unmeaning and worthless, and he who had most loudly proclaimed them was, "as if by a torpedo fish," torpified into silence...Nor is it from ill will that he thus deprives men of the false conceptions endeared by long familiarity, but because he is constrained by the law of his nature "never to consent to a lie or to stifle the truth."...
Although certain parts of Plato's dialogues may strike us today as obscure or obsolete, it is impossible to read them without being impressed by the modernness of their thought. We are constantly startled by passages which bear as directly upon questions of our own day as if they were written by one conversant with the latest phase of nineteenth-century life.
The truth is we are indebted to Plato for more that we know. Like the man who found in Shakespeare nothing but a collection of quotations, we are constantly recognizing in him thoughts long familiar to ourselves.
"Out of Plato," says Emerson, "come all the thoughts that are still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he of our originalities. We have reached the mountain from which all these drift boulders were detached. The Bible of the learned for twenty-two centuries, every brisk young man who says in succession fine things to each reluctant generation is some reader of Plato translating into the vernacular, wittily, his good things."
What is perhaps its most important contribution to philosophy -- the discovery that the soul of man is a central principle by which alone perception is transformed into thought -- excited among its first hearers an enthusiasm which may appear unwarranted by a proposition so familiar to ourselves. So true it is that "the highest effort of philosophy in one generation may become the common sense of the next," and that what today stands in the light of a mere truism was little short of a revelation in the eyes of those to whom it threw open a whole world of new ideas.
But Plato does not long confine his subject to a purely intellectual plane. Since to his mind right conduct is inseparable from right knowledge, the moral aspect cannot be far from view...the motives for right action imply a spiritual conception of the future life. The incentive to "become just, holy, and wise withal" is that, since the man "who has made himself the most just" is most like him who himself is "perfectly just," we shall thus "grow like unto God," and so find the "way of escape hence to yonder place." The "reward of unrighteousness" to be dreaded is that we shall "grow in the likeness of that which we resemble," and may not therefore hope, "when dead, to be received into that place which is free from evil."
It is surely not fanciful to trace throughout...a foreshadowing of the triumphant vindication soon to be shown forth in the trial and death of Socrates, a fit ending to a life wherein "words are attuned to deeds," -- such a life as is "lived by gods and by men blessed of Heaven."*
*Talks with Athenian Youths, translations from the Charmides, Lysis, Laches, Euthydemus, and Theatetus of Plato, (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891), Preface, pp. vi - xx.
