Socrates gave up his art; because art was no longer useful as an immediate lever for the age.  He knew poetry well, but insisted, as Professor Murray I think says, on always treating it as the baldest of prose.  There was poetry about, galore; and men did not profit by it:  something else was needed.  His mission was to the Athens of his day; he was going to save Athens if he could.  So he went into the marketplace, the agora, and loafed about (so to say), and drew groups of young men and old about him, and talked to them.  The Delphic Oracle had made pronouncement:  Sophocles is wise; Euripides is wiser; but Socrates is the wisest of mankind. Sometimes, you see, the Delphic Oracle could get off a distinctly good thing.  But Socrates, with his usual sense of humor, had never considered himself in that light at all; oldish, yes; and funny, and ugly, by all means;—­but wise!  He thought at first, he used to say, that the Oracle must be mistaken, or joking; for Athens was full of reputed wise men, sophists and teachers of philosophy like Prodicus and Protagoras; whereas he himself, heaven knew—.  Well, he would go out and make a trial of it.  So he went, and talked, and probed the wisdom of his fellow-citizens; and slowly came round to the belief that after all the Delphic Oracle might not have been such a fool.  For he knew his ignorance; but the rest were ignorant without knowing it.  This was his own way of telling the story; and you can never be sure how much camouflage was in it;—­and yet, too, he was a giant humorist.  Anyhow, he did show men their ignorance; and you all know his solemn way of doing it.  He drew them on with sly questionings to see what idiots they were; and then drew them on with more sly questionings to perceive at least a few sound ethical truths.

He took that humble patient means of saving Athens:  by breaking down false opinions and instilling true ones.  It was beginning quite at the bottom of things.  Where we advertise a public lecture, he button-holed a passer-by; and by the great power of his soul won a following presently.  To rouse up a desire for right living in the youth of Athens:  if he could do that, thought he, he might save Athens for the world.  I wonder what the cycles of national glory would come to, how long they might last, if only the Teachers that invade to save them could have their way.  Always we see the same picture:  the tremendous effort of the Gods to redeem these nations in the times of their creative greatness; to lift them on to a spiritual plane, that the greatness may not wane and become ineffective.  There is the figure that stands before the world, about whose perfection or whose qualities you may wrangle if you will; he is great; he is wonderful; he stirs up love and animosity;—­but behind him are the Depths, the Hierarchies, the Pantheons.  Socrates’ warning Voice, the Daimon that counseled him in every crisis, has always been a hard nut for critics to