A Discourse Concerning Socrates's Daemon (9-10)

As soon as my father had ended this discourse, Galaxidorus cried out: Good Gods! how hard a matter is it to find a man pure from vanity and superstition! For some are betrayed into those fooleries by their ignorance and weakness; others, that they may be thought extraordinary men and favorites of Heaven, refer all their actions to some divine admonition pretending dreams, visions, and the like surprising fooleries for every thing they do. This method indeed is advantageous to those that intend to settle a commonwealth, or are forced to keep themselves up against a rude and ungovernable multitude; for by this bridle of superstition they might manage and reform the vulgar; but these pretences seem not only unbecoming philosophy, but quite opposite to all those fine promises she makes. For having promised to teach us by reason what is good and profitable, falling back again to the Gods as the principle of all our actions, she seems to despise reason, and disgrace that demonstration which is her peculiar glory; and she relies on dreams and visions, in which the worst of men are oftentimes as happy as the best. And therefore your Socrates, Simmias, in my opinion followed the most philosophical and rational method of instructions, choosing that plain and easy way as the most genteel and friendly unto truth, and scattering to the sophisters of the age all those vain pretences which are as it were the smoke of philosophy. And Theocritus taking him up said: What,

Galaxidorus, and hath Meletus persuaded you that Socrates contemned all divine things?—for that was part of his accusation. Divine things! by no means, replied Galaxidorus; but having received philosophy from Pythagoras and Empedocles, full of dreams, fables, superstitions, and perfect raving, he endeavored to bring wisdom and things together, and make truth consist with sober sense.

Be it so, rejoined Theocritus, but what shall we think of his Daemon? Was it a mere juggle? Indeed, nothing that is told of Pythagoras regarding divination seems to me so great and divine. For, in my mind, as Homer makes Minerva to stand by Ulysses in all dangers. so the Daemon joined to Socrates even from his cradle some vision to guide him in all the actions of his life; which going before him, shed a light upon hidden and obscure matters and such as could not be discovered by unassisted human understanding; of such things the Daemon often discoursed with him, presiding over and by divine instinct directing his intentions. More and greater things perhaps you may learn from Simmias and other companions of Socrates; but once when I was present, as I went to Euthyphron the soothsayer’s, it happened, Simmias,—for you remember it,—that Socrates walked up to Symbolum and the house of Andocides, all the way asking questions and jocosely perplexing Euthyphron. When standing still upon a sudden and persuading us to do the like, he mused a pretty while, and then turning about walked through Trunk-makers’ Street, calling back his friends that walked before him, affirming that it was his Daemon’s will and admonition. Many turned back, amongst whom I, holding Euthyphron, was one; but some of the youths keeping on the straight way, on purpose (as it were) to confute Socrates’s Daemon, took along with them Charillus the piper, who came in my company to Athens to see Cebes. Now as they were walking through Gravers’ Row,

near the court-houses, a herd of dirty swine met them; and being too many for the street and running against one another, they overthrew some that could not get out of the way, and dirted others; and Charillus came home with his legs and clothes very dirty; so that now and then in merriment they would think on Socrates’s Daemon, wondering that it never forsook the man, and that Heaven took such particular care of him.