SOCINUS, Faustus, nephew of Lælius, was born at Siena in 1539. He followed the example of his uncle in inquiring into the verities of the christian religion, and embarrassing himself with doubts, which drew upon his head the suspicion of heresy. His education in early life was neglected, in consequence of the death of his parents. At the age of twenty he found it necessary to leave the paternal abode. Danger threatened the youthful inquirer and his family. After the death of his uncle he returned to Italy, and lived twelve years at the court of Florence, in the service of the grand-duke of Tuscany. His uncle's papers had come into his possession, and he studied them carefully. There he found confirmation of his previous opinions, so that full conviction of their truth took possession of his mind from that time. During his abode at Florence he began to disseminate his sentiments in short treatises without his name. From Italy, where the dangers of the inquisition threatened, he went to Basle to study theology about 1574. About four years after he was invited into Transylvania by George Blandrata, chiefly to oppose the tenets of Francis Davideis respecting the person of Christ and the honour due to him. But Davideis was not convinced; and the prince of Transylvania imprisoned him. There is no ground for the view often expressed that Socinus persecuted Davideis. It was the civil power of the land which brought about his death. Socinus found numerous adherents in Transylvania, among whom he promulgated his doctrines openly. Thence he went to Poland, where he reckoned upon a greater number of followers. Yet the unitarian congregations did not receive him cordially, because he differed from them in various views. In consequence of his treatise, "Defensio veræ sententiæ de magistratu politico," being misrepresented to the king of Poland, he withdrew from Cracow to the vicinity of a powerful nobleman, Christopher Morsztyn, whose daughter he married. His wife dying in 1587, he returned to Cracow and was present at the synod of Brest, 1588, taking a leading part in the discussions. After the publication of his book, "De Jesu Christo Servatore," the excited rabble dragged him from his sick chamber, half naked, through the streets. His property was plundered, and his MSS. destroyed. He died in 1604. Faustus Socinus succeeded in organizing many small congregations of christians holding his religious views. He also gained over to his opinions many of the nobility. Several even of the clergy attached themselves to him. He was eloquent, conciliatory, moderate, a man of fine tone, temper, and conduct, and was the first to reduce anti-trinitarian opinions to a system. All his works, which are written in a good Latin style, are in the first two volumes of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polanorum, 1656, folio. His life was written by Toulmin, 1777, and by Brzypkowski, the latter being prefixed to his works.—S. D.
SOCINUS, Lælius, was born at Siena in Italy, 1525. His forefathers were celebrated for their legal knowledge; and he himself was brought up to the study of the law, but abandoned it for that of the Holy Scriptures. He had not, however, been long engaged in the latter, before he entertained doubts of various doctrines he had hitherto believed. His love of knowledge induced him to travel in Switzerland and Germany, where he became acquainted with several of the reformers. He also lived in Wittenberg for about three years, where he studied the oriental languages, and obtained the approbation of Melancthon. He concealed, however, his peculiar opinions. He went next to Poland, where he met with various persons of similar sentiments with himself; but his views were privately promulgated. This, however, did not prevent him from incurring suspicion and questioning. When danger threatened, he escaped by concealing his real convictions. After visiting Poland a second time he went to Zürich, where he died in 1562. His travels extended not only to Germany, Switzerland, and Poland, but also to England and France. His brief life was a restless one. Of an inquiring turn of mind, and ardent in pursuit of knowledge, he knew that toleration in religion was a doctrine then unknown, and feared to promulgate his opinions, except in circumstances where he might hope to suffer little injury. They took most root in Poland, and fructified there.—(See Illgen's Vita Lælii Socini, 1814; and Symbolæ ad vitam et doctrinam Lælii Socini, 1826.)—S. D.
SOCRATES, the most characteristic and illustrious representative of philosophy, whose singularly balanced and richly developed character has been described as "without parallel among contemporaries or successors," was the son of Sophroniscus the statuary, and Phænarete a midwife, who is praised for her merits in Plato's Theætetus. He was born in Attica about 470 b.c. The life of Socrates belongs to the most splendid period of Athenian history. During the twenty years preceding the birth of the philosopher, Athens had risen in dignity to the place of highest repute in the affairs of Greece, in consequence of the victories of Marathon, Salamis, Platæa, and Mycale The first forty years of the life of Socrates were contemporary with the age of Pericles, when the power of Athens as the supreme state in Greece was organized, and the philosopher seems to have entered on his public life in the metropolis of Attica, about the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, and shortly before the death of Pericles. His middle life, and most of his public teaching, belong to the period of that great struggle between the rival states of Greece. In his old age he lived under the thirty tyrants, and his martyrdom was almost contemporary with the restoration of the democracy. He was a young man when Æschylus died, and he lived to see Sophocles and Euripides pass away. It was when he was about five and twenty years of age that Herodotus read his history at Athens, and received public honours, while the philosopher must have been familiar with the philosophical historian of the Peloponnesian war. Anaxagoras was still teaching about the time that Socrates began to teach, and Plato and Xenophon, who have transmitted his picture to succeeding ages, were among the number of his disciples. It was the age of the great Greek poets and historians, and when the great Greek victories by sea and land were in the mouths of men. The speculative schools of Ionia, Italy, and Elea had already marked the rise of intellectual life and interest in Greece and the surrounding countries, while at Athens the Sophists were famous as the public professors of knowledge. Such was the age of the illustrious philosophical missionary of Athens, whose name is perhaps the most conspicuous in the whole history of thought and civilization. Yet when we examine the records he has left behind him, we are surprised by their scantiness. We ask for his writings, and we learn that there are none. The greatest name in philosophy is associated with no "editions" of his works. We hear of a long and comparatively uneventful life, passed within the walls of Athens, in daily converse with the Athenian citizens, by one whose knowledge of men was mainly drawn from observation and experiment upon life within the narrow territory of Attica. What we know about Socrates we learn from others, and not from himself. The history of his life, the nature of his influence and teaching, and the cause of his condemnation and death, still involve problems only imperfectly solved. But the character and personal appearance of this most renowned of the Athenian citizens, have been made familiar to us by his disciples and contemporaries to a degree hardly equalled in the case of any other personage in the ancient world. We see him as he stood in the market-place of Athens during the Peloponnesian war, with his prominent eyes, his flat nose, his thick lips, his open mouth, his protuberant stomach and his sturdy frame, surrounded by groups of young men and old, some eager to learn and others to refute the teacher. In his youth he is said to have followed his father's profession, and statues of the Graces, admired for their simplicity and power, have been mentioned as the work of his hands. Notwithstanding the comparatively humble resources of his family, Socrates received a good education, in a country and age rich in the means of mental culture. Music, poetry, and gymnastic exercises he was taught, as part of the recognized training of the Athenian youth. He is said to have been for a time a pupil of Archelaus, the disciple of Anaxagoras. Parmenides, Zeno, and Anaxagoras himself, among the philosophers, Evenus and Prodicus among the Sophists, are also mentioned as his teachers. He thus learned mathematics, and many received doctrines in cosmology, the value of which he afterwards rated low. He found, in intercourse with distinguished men and women, a more congenial education in that self-knowledge which all his life he strove to elicit in himself and others; and this was doubtless promoted by that increased knowledge of himself, which could be gained only through a knowledge of others. He was dissatisfied with the philosophers and teachers of his time—the Sophists and cosmologists; and the conviction grew in his mind that he was bound to prepare himself for reviving a genuine, scientific, and moral life among his fellow-citizens, teaching them what manner of thing it is really to know, what as human beings they really ought to do, and what they might with reason expect to happen. But his early experience of men was not confined to peaceful life within the walls of Athens. Socrates served in war,
