Life, Teachings, and Death of Socrates: From Grote's History of Greece

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Stanford & Delisser, 1859 - 219 pages

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Page 21 - But as it was engaging, curious, and instructive to hear, certain persons made it their habit to attend him in public, as companions and listeners.
Page 90 - Almost all its conclusions stand in open and striking contradiction with those of superficial and vulgar observation, and with what appears to every one, until he has understood and weighed the proofs to the contrary, the most positive evidence of his senses.
Page 208 - Socrates was indeed the reverse of a sceptic : no man ever looked upon life with a more positive and practical eye ; no man ever pursued his mark with a clearer perception of the road which he was travelling ; no man ever combined, in like manner, the absorbing enthusiasm of a missionary, with the acuteness, the originality, the inventive resource, and the generalising comprehension of a philosopher.
Page 210 - To hear of any man, 1 especially of so illustrious a man, being condemned to death on such accusations as that of heresy and alleged corruption of youth, inspires at the present day a sentiment of indignant reprobation, the force of which I have no desire to enfeeble. The fact stands eternally recorded as one among the thousand misdeeds of intolerance, religious and political.
Page 26 - ... march with a consciousness of this bridle in his mouth, that when he felt no check, he assumed that the turning which he was about to take was the right one. Though his persuasion on the subject was unquestionably sincere, and his obedience constant — yet he never dwelt upon it himself as anything grand, or awful, or entitling him to peculiar deference ; but spoke of it often in his usual strain of familiar playfulness. To his friends generally, it seems to have constituted one of his titles...
Page 48 - Do these inquirers (he asked) think that they already know human affairs well enough, that they thus begin to meddle with divine ? Do they think that they shall be able to excite or calm the winds and the rain at pleasure, or have they no other view than to gratify an idle curiosity ? Surely, they must see that such matters are beyond human investigation.
Page 22 - Now no other person in Athens, or in any other Grecian city, appears ever to have manifested himself in this perpetual and indiscriminate manner as a public talker for instruction.
Page 95 - His manner of enforcing it was alike original and effective, and though he was dexterous in varying his topics and queries according to the individual person with whom he had to deal, it was his first object to bring the hearer to take just measure of his own real knowledge or real ignorance. To preach, to exhort, even to confute particular errors, appeared to...
Page 70 - ... too narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. The respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the amendment ; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies* with an admission that he could make no satisfactory answer to the original inquiry which had at first appeared so easy.
Page 73 - ... is merely nominal and fallacious. In either case, he is put upon the train of thought which leads to a correction of the generalization, and lights him on to that which Plato 1 calls, seeing the one in the many, and the many in the one.

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