commanded him to obey God rather than man', he is represented as deriving consolation from the reflection that there would be a more just judgment hereafter. And after his condemnation, when his friends had made all things ready for his escape from prison, and urged him to fly from his impending fate, he refuses at once, alleging as the grounds of his refusal the duty of submission to the laws: when they persist in their solicitations, urging that the injustice of the law, in condemning him though innocent, would warrant his disobedience; he answers them with the Christian maxim, that it is our duty to return good for evil';

· ΠΕΙΣΟΜΑΙ ΔΕ ΜΑΛΛΟΝ ΤΩΙ ΘΕΩΙ Η ὙΜΙΝ. Apologia, Bekker, pars i. vol. ii. p. 115. εὑρήσει τοὺς ὡς ̓ΑΛΗΘΩΣ ΔΙΚΑΣΤΑΣ, οἵ περ καὶ λέγονται ἐκεῖ δικάζειν. ΑροApologia, p. 138. The practical effects of his belief in a future judgment are stated also in the Gorgias: Ὑπὸ τούτων τῶν λόγων πέπεισμαι, καὶ σκοπῶ ὅπως ἀποφανοῦμαι τῷ κριτῇ ὡς ὑγιεστάτην τὴν ψυχήν. χαίρειν οὖν ἐάσας τὰς τιμὰς τὰς τῶν πολλῶν ἀνθρώπων, τὴν ἀλήθειαν σκοπῶν, πειράσομαι τῷ ὄντι ὡς ἂν δύνω μαι βέλτιστος ὢν καὶ ζῆν καὶ ἐπειδὰν ἀποθνήσκω ἀποθνήσκειν. Παρακαλῶ δὲ καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους πάντας ἀνθρώπους. Gorgias, Plato, Bekker, pars ii. vol. i. Ρ. 170.

s The passage is very strong in the original: Socrates denies that we have the right, under any circumstances,

assigning at the same time as the motive of his conduct, that he may be able to give a good account to the gods who reign in Hades'. Thus the very same man whose arguments for the soul's immortality are unsatisfactory or unintelligible, teaches in plain and simple language the right source of moral obligation ", the most perfect moral precept, and the strongest motive and encouragement for the practice of it

of returning evil for evil: Οὔτε ἄρα 'ΑΝΤΑΔΙΚΕΙΝ δεῖ οὔτε ΚΑΚΩΣ ΠΟΙΕΙΝ οὐδένα ἀνθρώπων, ΟΥ̓Δ' *ΑΝ ΟΤΙΟΥΝ ΠΑΣΧΕΙ ὙΠ' ΑΥΤΩΝ. Crito, Bekker, pars i. vol. ii. p. 157.

In the Gorgias also he declares that it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it: Σὺ ἄρα βούλοιο ἂν ἀδικεῖσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ ἀδικεῖν ; (Soc.) Βούλοιμην μὲν ἂν ἔγωγε οὐδέτερα· εἰ δ ̓ ἀναγκαῖον εἴη ἀδικεῖν ἢ ἀδικεῖσθαι, ἑλοίμην ἂν μᾶλλον ἀδικεῖ olaadine. Gorgias, Bekker, pars ii. vol. i. p. 49.

ι Μήτε παῖδας περὶ πλείονος ποιοῦ μήτε τὸ ζῆν μήτε ἄλλο μηδὲν πρὸ τοῦ δικαίου, ἵνα εἰς "Αιδου ἐλθὼν ἔχῃς ταῦτα πάντα ἀπολογή σασθαι τοῖς ἐκεῖ ἄρχουσιν. Crit. p. 167.

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u The statement here given by no means coincides with the following assertions of Warburton: "The ancients "neither knew the origin of obligation nor the consequence of obedience. Revelation hath discovered these principles; and we now wonder that such prodigies of parts and knowledge could commit the gross absurdities "which are to be found in their best discourses on mo"rality." Divine Legation, lib. iii. s. 5. vol. iii. p. 144.

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in the expectation of future retribution. It is not my intention to pursue the subject at length through the different schools of antiquity; through the scepticism of some, the atheism of others, or the systems of those who allowed the existence, yet denied the providence of God; nor to examine how far their principles are consistent with their ordinary precepts, and the comparative credit due to either in deciding upon their own belief. But it may be a matter of interesting inquiry to investigate the opinions of one distinguished teacher respecting a future state, who more than divided with Plato the empire of philosophy. It is however by no means easy to ascertain the sentiments of Aristotle on the subject as he taught that happiness would be the reward of virtue in this life, he makes few allusions in his practical works to the destinies of the soul in another state of being. He never directly proposes the doctrine of a future retribution as the motive of our morality: and though he certainly held the soul's immortality, it is doubted by some if he believed its exist

ence after death in a state of personal identity. In that important question, whether the abstract principles of reason or the common opinions of mankind are the best evidence of truth, he uniformly gives the preference to the latter. And if this be adopted as the test of his own notions in the present case, he believed in the separate existence of the soul, for he represents it as affected after death by the fortunes of its living friends': but at other times his language appears to be of a different tendency; and in his metaphysical works, if amid many perplexed and obscure statements his meaning be rightly understood,

* Hence his continual appeal in his Ethics to the language of men as an evidence of truth: and in the 10th book, chap. 8, he observes, that the arguments of philosophers have weight when they agree with experience, but when they disagree they must be rejected.

y Aristot. Ethics, lib. i. cap. 11.

z Vid. Aristot. de Anima, book ii; also more particularly book iii. chap. 5, 6. Tennemann's Geschichte der Philosophie, art. Aristotle, p. 109. Cudworth's Intellect. Syst. book i. §. 45. Warburton's Divine Legation, book 3. sect. 4. vol. iv. p. 112. No writer but Warburton professes to think Aristot. de Anima, book iii. chap. 5, 6. clear and intelligible. His theory of the TO 'EN intro

he denies to that part, or rather power of the soul which he invests with immortality, the possession of memory, and consequently, by a possible though not necessary inference, of individual consciousness". The failure of the two most distinguished among the philosophers of antiquity may teach us how little the force of natural reason could effect in clearing up the most important of all subjects. Whatever they believed themselves, or their followers believed, respecting a future state, could not have been altogether in consequence of their arguments. As moralists they speak with the tongue of men and of angels, and prescribe a code of moral discipline beyond the capacity of man to practise, but their reasonings for the soul's immortality, with some few exceptions, began and ended in speculations alike inconceivable and unprofitable, and left the common expectations of mankind, loaded as they were with absurdity, a better guide even to themselves

duced to explain the difficulty is an assumption, not an argument.