TWO:"Perhaps I can help you," Hetty suggested.Modern critics, beginning with Hegel,109 have discovered reasons for considering Socrates a dangerous character, which apparently did not occur to Meltus and his associates. We are told that the whole system of applying dialectics to morality had an unsettling tendency, for if men were once taught that the sacredness of duty rested on their individual conviction they might refuse to be convinced, and act accordingly. And it is further alleged that Socrates first introduced this principle of subjectivity into morals. The persecuting spirit is so insatiable that in default of acts it attacks opinions, and in default of specific opinions it fastens on general tendencies. We know that Joseph de Maistre was suspected by his ignorant neighbours of being a Revolutionist because most of his time was spent in study; and but the other day a French preacher was sent into exile by his ecclesiastical superiors for daring to support Catholic morality on rational grounds.110 Fortunately Greek society was not165 subject to the rules of the Dominican Order. Never anywhere in Greece, certainly not at Athens, did there exist that solid, all-comprehensive, unquestionable fabric of traditional obligation assumed by Hegel; and Zeller is conceding far too much when he defends Socrates, on the sole ground that the recognised standards of right had fallen into universal contempt during the Peloponnesian war, while admitting that he might fairly have been silenced at an earlier period, if indeed his teaching could have been conceived as possible before it actually began.111 For from the first, both in literature and in life, Greek thought is distinguished by an ardent desire to get to the bottom of every question, and to discover arguments of universal applicability for every decision. Even in the youth of Pericles knotty ethical problems were eagerly discussed without any interference on the part of the public authorities. Experience had to prove how far-reaching was the effect of ideas before a systematic attempt could be made to control them.
