Euthyph. — “The investigation must stand over to another time, I have engagements now which call me elsewhere.”

Sokratic spirit of the dialogue — confessed ignorance applying the Elenchus to false persuasion of knowledge.

The questions always difficult, often impossible to answer. Sokrates is unable to answer them, though he exposes the bad answers of others.

We must (as I have before remarked) take this ignorance on the part of the Platonic Sokrates not as assumed, but as very real. In no part of the Platonic writings do we find any tenable definition of the Holy and the Unholy, such as is here demanded from Euthyphron. The talent of Sokrates consists in exposing bad definitions, not in providing good ones. This negative function is all that he claims for himself — with deep regret that he can do no more. “Sokrates” (says Aristotle34) “put questions, but gave no answers: for he professed not to know.” In those dialogues where Plato makes him attempt more (there also, against his own will and protest, as in the Philêbus and Republic), the affirmative Sokrates will be found only to stand his ground because no negative Sokrates is allowed to attack him. I insist upon this the rather, because the Platonic commentators usually present the dialogues in a different light, as if such modesty on the part of Sokrates was altogether simulated: as if he was himself,35 from the beginning, aware of the proper answer to his own questions, but refrained designedly from announcing it: nay, sometimes, as if the answers were in themselves easy, and as if the respondents who failed must be below par in respect of intelligence. This is an erroneous conception. The questions put by Sokrates, though relating to familiar topics, are always difficult: they are often even impossible to answer, because they postulate and require to be assigned a common objective concept which is not to be found. They only appear easy to one who has never attempted the task of answering under the pressure of cross-examination. Most persons indeed never make any such trial, but go on affirming confidently as if they knew, without trial. It is exactly against such illusory confidence of knowledge that Sokrates directs his questions: the fact belongs to our days no less than to his.36

Objections of Theopompus to the Platonic procedure.

The assumptions of some Platonic commentators — that Sokrates and Plato of course knew the answers to their own questions — that an honest and pious man, of ordinary intelligence, has the answer to the question in his heart, though he cannot put it in words — these assumptions were also made by many of Plato’s contemporaries, who depreciated his questions as frivolous and unprofitable. The rhetor and historian Theopompus (one of the most eminent among the numerous pupils of Isokrates, and at the same time unfriendly to Plato, though younger in age), thus criticised Plato’s requirement, that these familiar terms should be defined: “What! (said he) have none of us before your time talked about the Good and the Just? Or do you suppose that we cannot follow out what each of them is, and that we pronounce the words as empty and unmeaning sounds?”37 Theopompus was the scholar of Isokrates, and both of them probably took the same view, as to the uselessness of that colloquial analysis which aims at determining the definition of familiar ethical or political words.38 They considered that Plato and Sokrates, instead of clearing up what was confused, wasted their ingenuity in perplexing what was already clear. They preferred the rhetorical handling (such as we noticed in the Kriton) which works upon ready-made pre-established sentiments, and impresses a strong emotional conviction, but presumes that all the intellectual problems have already been solved.

Objective view of Ethics, distinguished by Sokrates from the subjective.

All this shows the novelty of the Sokratic point of view: the distinction between the essential constituent and the objective accidental accompaniment,39 and the search for a definition corresponding to the former: which search was first prosecuted by Sokrates (as Aristotle40 points out) and was taken up from him by Plato. It was Sokrates who first brought conspicuously into notice the objective intellectual, scientific view of ethics — as distinguished from the subjective, emotional, incoherent, and uninquiring. I mean that he was the first who proclaimed himself as feeling the want of such an objective view, and who worked upon other minds so as to create the like want in them: I do not mean that he provided satisfaction for this requirement.

Subjective unanimity coincident with objective dissent.

Undoubtedly (as Theopompus remarked) men had used these ethical terms long before the time of Sokrates, and had used them, not as empty and unmeaning, but with a full body of meaning (i.e. emotional meaning). Strong and marked emotion had become associated with each term; and the same emotion, similar in character, though not equal in force — was felt by the greater number of different minds. Subjectively and emotionally, there was no difference between one man and another, except as to degree. But it was Sokrates who first called attention to the fact as a matter for philosophical recognition and criticism, — that such subjective and emotional unanimity does not exclude the widest objective and intellectual dissension.41

Cross-examination brought to bear upon this mental condition by Sokrates — position of Sokrates and Plato in regard to it.

As the Platonic Sokrates here puts it in the Euthyphron — all men agree that the person who acts unjustly must be punished; but they dispute very much who it is that acts unjustly — which of his actions are unjust — or under what circumstances they are so. The emotion in each man’s mind, as well as the word by which it is expressed, is the same:42 but the person, or the acts, to which it is applied by each, although partly the same, are often so different, and sometimes so opposite, as to occasion violent dispute. There is subjective agreement, with objective disagreement. It is upon this disconformity that the Sokratic cross-examination is brought to bear, making his hearers feel its existence, for the first time, and dispelling their fancy of supposed knowledge as well as of supposed unanimity. Sokrates required them to define the general word — to assign some common objective characteristic, corresponding in all cases to the common subjective feeling represented by the word. But no man could comply with his requirement, nor could he himself comply with it, any more than his respondents. So far Sokrates proceeded, and no farther, according to Aristotle. He never altogether lost his hold on particulars: he assumed that there must be something common to them all, if you could but find out what it was, constituting the objective meaning of the general term. Plato made a step beyond him, though under the name of Sokrates as spokesman. Not being able (any more than Sokrates) to discover or specify any real objective characteristic, common to all the particulars — he objectivised43 the word itself: that is, he assumed or imagined a new objective Ens of his own, the Platonic Idea, corresponding to the general word: an idea not common to the particulars, but existing apart from them in a sphere of its own — yet nevertheless lending itself in some inexplicable way to be participated by all the particulars. It was only in this way that Plato could explain to himself how knowledge was possible: this universal Ens being the only object of knowledge: particulars being an indefinite variety of fleeting appearances, and as such in themselves unknowable. The imagination of Plato created a new world of Forms, Ideas, Concepts, or objects corresponding to general terms: which he represents as the only objects of knowledge, and as the only realities.

The Holy — it has an essential characteristic — what is this? — not the fact that it is loved by the Gods — this is true, but is not its constituent essence.

In the Euthyphron, however, we have not yet passed into this Platonic world, of self-existent Forms — objects of conception — concepts detached from sensible particulars. We are still with Sokrates and with ordinary men among the world of particulars, only that Sokrates introduced a new mode of looking at all the particulars, and searched among them for some common feature which he did not find. The Holy (and the Unholy) is a word freely pronounced by every speaker, and familiarly understood by every hearer, as if it denoted something one and the same in all these particulars.44 What is that something — the common essence or idea? Euthyphron cannot tell; though he agrees with Sokrates that there must be such essence. His attempts to explain it prove failures.

The definition of the Holy — that it is what the Gods love — is suggested in this dialogue, but rejected. The Holy is not Holy because the Gods love it: on the contrary, its holiness is an independent fact, and the Gods love it because it is Holy. The Holy is thus an essence, per se, common to, or partaken by, all holy persons and things.

Views of the Xenophontic Sokrates respecting the Holy — different from those of the Platonic Sokrates — he disallows any common absolute general type of the Holy — he recognises an indefinite variety of types, discordant and relative.

So at least the Platonic Sokrates here regards it. But the Xenophontic Sokrates, if we can trust the Memorabilia, would not have concurred in this view: for we read that upon all points connected with piety or religious observance, he followed the precept which the Pythian priestess delivered as an answer to all who consulted the Delphian oracle on similar questions — You will act piously by conforming to the law of the city. Sokrates (we are told) not only acted upon this precept himself, but advised his friends to do the like, and regarded those who acted otherwise as foolish and over-subtle triflers.45 It is plain that this doctrine disallows all supposition of any general essence, called the Holy, to be discovered and appealed to, as type in cases of doubt; and recognises the equal title of many separate local, discordant, and variable types, each under the sanction of King Nomos. The procedure of Sokrates in the Euthyphron would not have been approved by the Xenophontic Sokrates. It is in the spirit of Plato, and is an instance of that disposition which he manifests yet more strongly in the Republic and elsewhere, to look for his supreme authority in philosophical theory and not in the constituted societies around him: thus to innovate in matters religious as well as political — a reproach to him among his own contemporaries, an honour to him among various subsequent Christian writers. Plato, not conforming to any one of the modes of religious belief actually prevalent in his contemporary world, postulates a canon, suitable to the exigencies of his own mind, of that which the Gods ought to love and must love. In this respect, as in others, he is in marked contrast with Herodotus — a large observer of mankind, very pious in his own way, curious in comparing the actual practices consecrated among different nations, but not pretending to supersede them by any canon of his own.

The Holy a branch of the Just — not tenable as a definition, but useful as bringing to view the subordination of logical terms.

Though the Holy, and the Unholy, are pronounced to be each an essence, partaken of by all the particulars so-called; yet what that essence is, the dialogue Euthyphron noway determines. Even the suggestion of Sokrates — that the Holy is a branch of the Just, only requiring to be distinguished by some assignable mark from the other branches of the Just — is of no avail, since the Just itself had been previously declared to be one of the matters in perpetual dispute. It procures for Sokrates however the opportunity of illustrating the logical subordination of terms; the less general comprehended in the more general, and requiring to be parted off by some differentia from the rest of what this latter comprehends. Plato illustrates the matter at some length;46 and apparently with a marked purpose of drawing attention to it. We must keep in mind, that logical distinctions had at that time received neither special attention nor special names — however they may have been unconsciously followed in practice.

The Euthyphron represents Plato’s way of replying to the charge of impiety, preferred by Melêtus against Sokrates — comparison with Xenophon’s way of replying.

What I remarked about the Kriton, appears to me also true about the Euthyphron. It represents Plato’s manner of replying to the charge of impiety advanced by Melêtus and his friends against Sokrates, just as the four first chapters of the Memorabilia represent Xenophon’s manner of repelling the same charge. Xenophon joins issue with the accusers, — describes the language and proceedings of Sokrates, so as to show that he was orthodox and pious, above the measure of ordinary men, in conduct, in ritual, and in language; and expresses his surprise that against such a man the verdict of guilty could have been returned by the Dikasts.47 Plato handles the charge in the way in which Sokrates himself would have handled it, if he had been commenting on the same accusation against another person and as he does in fact deal with Melêtus, in the Platonic Apology. Plato introduces Euthyphron, a very religious man, who prides himself upon being forward to prosecute impiety in whomsoever it is found, and who in this case, under the special promptings of piety, has entered a capital prosecution against his own father.48 The occasion is here favourable to the Sokratic interrogatories, applicable to Melêtus no less than to Euthyphron. “Of course, before you took this grave step, you have assured yourself that you are right, and that you know what piety and impiety are. Pray tell me, for I am ignorant on the subject: that I may know better and do better for the future.49 Tell me, what is the characteristic essence of piety as well as impiety?” It turns out that the accuser can make no satisfactory answer: that he involves himself in confusion and contradiction:—that he has brought capital indictments against citizens, without having ever studied or appreciated the offence with which he charges them. Such is the manner in which the Platonic Sokrates is made to deal with Euthyphron, and in which the real Sokrates deals with Melêtus:50 rendering the questions instrumental to two larger purposes — first, to his habitual crusade against the false persuasion of knowledge — next, to the administering of a logical or dialectical lesson. When we come to the Treatise De Legibus (where Sokrates does not appear) we shall find Plato adopting the dogmatic and sermonising manner of the first chapters of the Xenophontic Memorabilia. Here, in the Euthyphron and in the Dialogues of Search generally, the Platonic Sokrates is something entirely different.51

END OF VOL. I.

Transcriber’s Note

This HTML version was prepared initially for the on-line Grote Project by Ed Brandon from volumes in the Internet Archive. It owes a very great deal (its style sheet) to the Project Gutenberg versions of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica produced by Don Kretz and others. Don provided a revised style for the side-notes to accommodate Grote’s predilection for very long notes. (Even so there are a few occasions where the appearance may yet be bad in some browsers because the side-note extends over more lines than its accompanying paragraph. If there are also footnotes in the paragraph I have had to guess at how much blank space should be inserted for the footnote not to overlap the side-note.) I have modified it in one respect to permit Grote’s use of italics in some side-notes.