Socrates^ Schleiermachery aiid Delhrueck. 585 tage of it. How does Mr D. know what Meletus meant by his indictment? and why may not Xenophon have been right in his conjecture, that it may have been suggested to him by the reports that were spread about the peculiar kind of divi- nation which Socrates professed ? If so, it would not have been likely that he should have answered Socrates by saying that ^aijixovia meant something which did not imply the exist- ence of any kind of supernatural beings, and he would have entangled himself in a difficulty from which an abler disputant would scarcely have been able to extricate himself, if he had attempted to define a class of supernatural agents which did not fall under the denomination either of Qeo^ or ^aiiuiwv. On the other hand, if Socrates, as he is made to say at p. 31 D., was reminded by the indictment of his own supernatural warnings, and was in the habit of referring them to a higher power, he had no inducement to combat the charge, as if it had imputed to him disbelief of all personal existence of beings superior to man. It seems very doubtful whether any Greek could have given a better answer than Meletus : for Aristotle in alluding to it, expressly in one passage of the Rhetoric (iii. 18.), and tacitly, but distinctly, in another (ii. 23), manifestly considers the argument as a legitimate one, from which there was no escape. And indeed what could it be that guided or warned Socrates, in the most momentous epochs of his life, but some- thing endowed with intelligence and will ? Meletus therefore when pressed upon this point, could scarcely help retracting his charge of atheism, which nevertheless, without a great deal more either of candour or of forethought than we are called upon to attribute to him, he was very likely to make. From whatever side the charge of irreligion was examined, it was sure to prove a base, malignant, calumny. Socrates began at a point from which he was soon led to detect the confusion of his adversary's ideas, and hence to drop the inquiry : but both the negative and the positive part of the charge, in the sense which Meletus assigned to them, are substantially answered in our Apology. On the other hand the declaration which Mr Delbrueck wishes Socrates to have made, would certainly have been unintelligible to the great majority of his hearers, even if he would have understood it himself; but all that is in it really
