Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

388 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH ANDwarmly pursued and never wholly neglected, wereyet subordinate.18Who is this man of singular ugliness, with aface like a Silenus, with a body enduring hungerand impervious to heat and cold, who for thirtyyears frequents from morning to night the agora,the streets, the porticoes of Athens; who can drainthe wine-cup through the night, and with reasonunimpaired discuss philosophy through the followingday; never alone, ready to converse with allin whom he discerned the germ of inquiry; whoneither courts the high nor despises the low, butbeside whom may be found the reckless beauty ofAlcibiades and the staid gravity of Nicias, the ad-miring gaze of Plato even in youth majestic, andthe sober homage of plainer Xenophon ? Who isthis, the man most social of men where the wholepopulation is a club, the club of Athenian citizenship; whose tongue arrests the most volatile andinconstant of peoples; whose reason attracts andby turns draws out or silences the most oppositeof characters; whose whole life is publicity; ofspirit at once homely and subtle, simple and critical,parent both of philosophic certitude and philosophicscepticism? This is Socrates, the son ofSophroniscus, to whom Greek philosophy will look18 Thus Zeller throughout his great work perpetually deplores that-through this long period, and with increasing force after Aristotle's time,Wissenscliafimmgreatest good, and his happiness.