well be supposed, created a profound impression. It
was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
ever since in the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of
Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
America. "No man has ever been found," says Grote, "strong enough to
bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
thinker of antiquity." His teachings gave an immense impulse to
civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
of evil.

* * * * *

AUTHORITIES.

The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grot