Having no special occupation or profession in life, Socrates might perhaps have passed in Athens for an idle man, a lounger about the streets, and public talker, had there not sprung up about this time a class of men professing to be teachers of eloquence and of all wisdom, with whom he was brought into connexion. These were the Sophists, a name which means nothing more than professors or teachers of wisdom. Like these men, Socrates was always seen in the streets and public places of Athens, conversing with the clever young men, and publicly debating all points of speculative and practical interest. He was therefore in outward appearance and to the { 7} general eye a mere Sophist among Sophists. For it is not everybody who cares to know that two men who fight with the same weapons and in the same style of fence may be fighting for very different causes, on opposite sides, and with altogether contrary results. But the truth behind the appearance was, that while the majority of these Sophists taught eloquence as a trade, and logical training as an affair of intellectual exhibition, Socrates preached virtue as a mission, and the exercise of right reason as the only means of obtaining virtue. We say _mission_ here not as a fashionable phrase of the day, but with a special emphasis; for it is quite certain, both from the speech of the philosopher at his trial, and from not a few passages in Xenophon, that he devoted his life to self-improvement in the first place, and to the improvement of his fellow-citizens in the second place, with the conscientious devotedness of a man who was strongly impressed with the conviction, that this employment was assigned to him direct from God, whose high injunction he was not at liberty to neglect. His language with regard to this is in a precisely similar tone to that of St. Paul when he writes, “_Woe is me if I preach not the gospel_.” The human source through which he got this mission some writers have been curious to trace, alleging that his master was Anaxagoras, and other things to that effect; but there is no hint of this either in Xenophon or Plato; and in fact it is foolish to go in search of a master for a man so thoroughly original, so distinct and decided a protester against all who had gone before him. We may be assured, at least, that in the moral philosophy which was the burden of all his teaching, he had no master but { 8} himself (as indeed Xenophon makes him say in express words) and the God to whom he habitually referred his highest inspirations; while in regard to other matters he had enjoyed the common training of all Athenians in music, poetry, gymnastics, and a little mathematics to boot--a science which, since the days of Thales (600 B.C.) and Pythagoras (550 B.C.), had occupied a conspicuous place in the higher culture of the Athenians. Of the exact date when he assumed a prominent position as a public teacher of wisdom and virtue we have no exact account; it is natural however to suppose, from the sobriety and solidity of his character, and from the long-continued quiet search after truth which occupied him in his early years, that he did not suddenly emerge into notoriety, but grew up step by step into that general acknowledgment of superior wisdom, on which, according to a well-accredited account, the Delphic oracle was not afraid to put its seal. Certain it is that in the year 423 B.C., when he was about forty-seven years of age, he was such a notable character in Athens as to have been brought upon the stage by the broad license of Attic comedy as the representative of the whole class of Sophists, with whom, by the superficial eye, he was naturally confounded. We must suppose therefore that his reputation as a great public talker and debater had been gradually growing, up to that period. And no doubt, even if he had been a man of less original talent, there was something about his personal appearance and character that could not fail to make him the mark of general observation among the busy-idle community of Athens. He was no less odd in his features and in his manner than in his doctrines; an ἄτοπος or { 9} eccentric person In the general opinion, whom no man knew exactly what to make of. His features, the very reverse of classical, are familiar to all the frequenters of our public museums; and are, besides, minutely described by both his illustrious disciples. His general appearance was that of a Silenus or Satyr, with a flat, somewhat turned-up, nose, full prominent eyes, big lips, and in later life, as appears from the monuments, a bald head; but these defects were of no avail, even with the beauty-loving Athenians, to diminish the charm of his conversation and the power of his address.