Socrates J Schleierm acker ^ and Delhrueck. 565 mission which he extorts from Meletus, that bad men are hurt- ful to their neighbours, good men useful to them : from which he draws the conclusion, that if he has made men worse, it must have been involuntarily, and through ignorance, which called not for public punishment, but for private admonition, and in- struction. This plea Mr D. considers as a piece of sophistry, false in substance, and only coloured by the ambiguity of the Greek word e/cwr, which may denote the direction of the will to an object, either as a mean, or as an end. In the latter sense of the word Socrates, Mr D. thinks, might truly say, that he could not have corrupted the young, e/ctoi/, for the sake of spoiling them without any ulterior object : but then, this would equally serve as a defense for the most shameless of the So- phists, who most deliberately instilled the most mischievous doctrines into the minds of their hearers. It was only in the other sense of the word, in which it signifies no more than con- sciously, or wittingly, that it could be properly used to meet the charge of Meletus; but in this sense the general proposition, that no one makes men worse, e/coJi;, with a distinct conscious- ness of doing so, is glaringly false, and therefore can avail Socrates nothing. What then, Mr D. asks, are we to suppose.? That Socrates perceived the ambiguity of the word, but know- ingly concealed it, in order to perplex his adversaries, and de- ceive his judges.? Or, that he deceived himself with a fallacy which he mistook for a sound argument ? In the former case we must rank him among the Sophists, with whom he was his whole life throug-h in conflict : in the latter we should have to deplore, that Socrates, the sage who had applied all his thoughts and faculties to the investigation of moral and political truth, and who was supposed, under the divine assistance, to have succeeded in clearing his mind from delusion and prejudice on these subjects, should have made so little progress as to be unable to distinguish between two notions so different as those just mentioned, and should thus, on the point of death, have been led to make assertions which belied the whole tenor of his former life. In either case, the passage discussed is not merely weak, but scandalous, offensive, and unworthy of Socrates (p. 5S). All these qualities Mr D. finds united, if possible, in a still greater degree, in another passage. This is the reply which
