SOURCE: "His Teaching: Treatment of Enemies," in Socrates: The Man and His Mission, Books for Libraries Press, 1914, pp. 142-94.

[In the following essay, Cross points out that Socrates was known for his teaching that "in no circumstances is it just to injure anyone," including one's enemies. This concept, states Cross, contrasted sharply with popular sentiment at the time. Below, Cross identifies an incident in which Socrates appears to be saying that injuring one's enemies is acceptable. After exploring the apparent contradiction, Cross concludes that "we may take it as certain that Socrates practised, and practically certain that before his death he taught, the doctrine … that 'neither injury, nor retaliation, nor warding off evil by evil is ever right'."]

Reason and Reflection are radical forces, much more so than is sentiment; and just because more radical in their standards, they are more Catholic and universal in their judgments. Their function and tendency is to strip off the accidental and transient and penetrate to the essential.… Socrates, by appealing to the Reason within, was at once carried to a view which broke down the great conventional distinction between the class of the free who toiled not neither did they spin, and the class which had to toil and spin for them, a distinction which in any case was counting for less and less in the public life of Athens, as the Aristophanic drama shows.

The critical principle applied by Socrates not only cut at the root of the conventional opinion in regard to labour which set up a cleavage within the same society, but it was bound also to operate as a solvent for the unnatural divisions and relations between members of different societies.

If a man, e.g., ought to love his neighbour as himself, the inference of Reason is that he ought also to love everybody else's neighbour as himself. The consideration as to whether a man lives in the same street and the same society or in another street and different society, makes no difference from the point of view of the Reason in the way in which you ought to treat him. Taking them simply as individuals, the colour of men's skin, or their position geographically on the surface of the globe, does not affect the fundamental rights and duties which the Moral Law imposes as between them and ourselves. This was one of the great principles of the Practical Reason in the thought of Kant, who expressed it in the imperative so to act as if the maxim on which you act were to become through your will a universal law of nature. That means that ethically every person must have equal value for us, and we must treat all in the same spirit, and it leads to what may be called a rational or ethical Humanitarianism in which all such divisions and antipathies and hatreds as have no justification in reason and morality are abolished.

The question is, did Socrates see all to which the principle committed him, and did the vision liberate him from the ordinary ethic of his time, which drew a sharp line between friends and enemies, and sanctioned opposite modes of conduct toward them? "It is commonly held to redound to a man's praise," he says in conversation with Chærecrates, "to have outstripped an enemy in mischief or a friend in kindness,"¹ a quotation of ordinary sentiment which it is worth observing occurs in a talk in which Socrates is pressing Chærecrates to take the initiative in healing the quarrel which has arisen between him and his brother. He advises him to go and frankly offer his hand to his brother in reconciliation. He will be sure to find his generosity reciprocated, but even if it should not be so, then "at the worst you will have shown yourself to be a good, honest, brotherly man, and he will appear as a sorry creature on whom kindness is wasted."²

But Socrates had a very high ideal of family relationships, and brotherhood was a natural tie which he believed God intended should bind members of the family together closer than hands and feet, or ears and eyes, in a community of mutual good;³ and the "Recollections" don't represent Socrates as inculcating the same attitude in the case of mutual enemies in general. Take the following words addressed to Critobulus by Socrates, who assumes the role of an agent for promoting friendships:

"If you will authorise me to say that you are devoted to your friends; that nothing gives you so much joy as a good friend; that you pride yourself no less on the fine deeds of those you love than on your own; that you never weary of plotting and planning to procure them a rich harvest of the same; and lastly, that you have discovered a man's virtue is to excel his friends in kindness and his foes in hostility. If I am authorised thus to report of you, I think you will find me a serviceable fellow-hunter in the quest of friends, which is the conquest of the good."⁴

It would seem as though Socrates had failed of his own principles in this matter, and that the pressure of environing ideas was too strong for the fidelity of his own spirit to itself. We confess we find it difficult, in virtue of the impression which the whole character of the man makes upon us, and which we have tried to convey … to believe that Socrates could be satisfied with such an attitude of mind towards his enemies. It conflicts with all we know of him, in his bearing towards others. We are not convinced by Professor A. E. Taylor's "Varia Socratica" that Socrates was actually a member of a Pythagorean brotherhood, but he was intimate with Pythagoreans, and it is not credible to us that one whom they affectionately recognised to be greater than themselves should have fallen below the moral level of the teaching of their school, which was, according to Aristotle, that they were "never to injure anyone, but endure patiently wrongs, and injury, and, in a word, do all the good they could." This was the very doctrine that Socrates practised. It was he of whom his jailor at the last could say that he was unlike other prisoners, for he had never railed at him, but had spoken only kindly words, and showed nothing but courtesy and benevolence; of whom Demetrius, quoted by Diogenes Laertius, could relate that once when he was kicked by some cad in passing, he only laughed, and when his friends expressed astonishment at this meek and mild behaviour, asked whether when asses kicked him he was to have the law of them;⁵ of whom Xenophon himself says that "he was never the cause of evil to the state, was free of offence in private as in public life, never hurt a single soul either by deprivation of good or infliction of evil, and never lay under the imputation of any such wrong-doing"; who, according to Plato's "Apology," found at heart no cause of anger against his accusers or those who condemned him to death,⁶ and could say in the presence of his fellow-citizens that he had never intentionally wronged anyone;⁷ who held that men do not commit wrong except because of ignorance, error, or illusion, not seeing the true character and consequence of their action. Could such an one believe in the doctrine of retaliation or of injuring enemies?

We confess we derive little consolation from Professor Joël's theory that Xenophon's account would be influenced by the Cynic doctrine that Justice consists in duct with his doctrine of ill-doing as ignorance, drives us to accept the unanimous testimony of the Platonic dialogues, which is to the effect that to return evil for evil on a man would only be to aggravate the evil.

In the "Apology," Socrates states his inmost conviction that "to be unjust and to disobey any one better than oneself, whether God or man, is contrary to duty and honour." The point, then, is as to whether or no it is unjust to render evil for evil, or under any circumstance to injure a fellow-creature. And to that we reply in the first place, that if doing evil is the result of ignorance, then to retaliate in like manner is unjust and wrong, and can only be the result of ignorance also, and we suggest that Socrates was not so dull and obtuse as to fail to recognise the obvious inference from his own principles.

Nor can we fall back on the idea that his conception of justice was, in itself, too confused and imperfect to exclude the maxim of retaliation. Socrates had got beyond the current position on this matter. "In questions of just and unjust, fair and foul," he says to Crito, "which are the subjects of our present consultation, ought we to follow the opinion of the many and to fear them; or the opinion of the one man who has understanding? Ought we not to fear and reverence him more than all the rest of the world; and if we desert him, shall we not destroy and injure that principle in us which may be assumed to be improved by justice and deteriorated by injustice?"⁸

In spite of the opinion of the many, and in spite of consequences whether better or worse, shall we insist as before, that injustice is always an evil and dishonour to him wpho acts unjustly?

CR. Yes.

SOC. Then we must do no wrong?

CR. Certainly not.

SOC. Nor when injured, injure in retuirn, as the many imagine; for we must injure no one at all?

CR. Clearly not.

SOC. Again, Crito, may we do evil?

CR. Surely not, Socrates.

SOC. And what of doing evil in return for evil, which is the morality of the many—is that just or not?

CR. Not just.

SOC. Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to any one whatever evil we may have suffered from him.⁹

The same conclusion is put into Socrates' mouth in the Republic:¹⁰

SOC. If, then, someone says that it is just to render to each what is due to him, by that understanding that injury is due to enemies, and service to friends, such an one would not be wise in so expressing himself. He has not spoken the truth. For it has been seen that in no circumstances is it just to injure anyone.

Socrates' argument has turned on the point, to him self-evident, that nothing that is right and good can possibly do hurt or injury to anyone.

In the "Gorgias" Plato makes him declare that the worst evil that can ever befall a man is to do wrong,¹¹ and that if it were a choice between acting unjustly and suffering unjustly, between doing wrong and having wrong done to himself, he would choose the latter.¹²

In these dialogues, then, there is not a quaver of uncertainty about the conviction that the just and good man will never repay injury with injury but always with good, and it fits in beautifully with Socrates' character.

Are we to suppose, then, that Plato gives us the truth, and that Xenophon was mistaken and inconsistent in his reminiscences of the master's teaching on this theme? We should have no hesitation in taking that position, only there is one other dialogue ascribed to Plato—the fragmentary dialogue "Clitophon"—in which Socrates is taken to task for the obscurity and ambiguity of his opinions on certain matters, and this very question of the treatment of enemies is mentioned. Clitophon speaks thus to him: "Finally, Socrates, I applied directly to yourself, and you told me that it was the principle of justice to injure enemies and do good to friends. But afterwards it came out that the just man never injures anyone, for he acts with a view to the good of everybody in everything. And this was my experience not once or twice but for a long time, so I gave up my persistency, having come to the conclusion either that while you were without a rival in stirring up people to the concern of virtue, but could do no more … either you do not know really what justice is or you do not choose to communicate your knowledge."

This is a most interesting and significant passage, and the vacillation which it attributes to Socrates is not without commentary and witness in the Platonic literature at large. It has the note of authenticity about it, and on the strength of it we would suggest that while Socrates had long risen in spirit and sympathy above the ethics of contemporary orthodoxy, yet in the realm of theory it cost him a prolonged struggle to shake himself quite free of the views in which his upbringing had been steeped, and which were strongly entrenched in the social and even religious authorities around him. He experienced a protracted duel between the loftier and the lower conception of moral obligations, and in the end the loftier vanquished, so that he found it impossible to conceive that a just man would do any injury to any fellow mortal, even if injured by him. In his speculations and discussions he would start off from the generally accepted hypotheses on the subject; but would by the force of his own reasoning always be driven to the higher point of view. Perhaps, indeed, it would be on the whole the most fitting inference from the evidence before us to hold that, in accordance with his usual method, he only laid down the accepted opinion as a point of departure from which he could set out and carry others with him to the recognition of its untenability and the acceptance of his own real view, a method which was obviously liable to create misunderstanding in those who did not clearly grasp it. The contradiction alluded to by Clitophon would thus receive explanation as being due to the fact that he mistook for an admission what was only a concession for the purposes of an argument, whose issue was its overthrow.

Reviewing all the evidence, we may take it as certain that Socrates practised, and practically certain that before his death he taught, the doctrine of returning good for evil, that "neither injury, nor retaliation, nor warding off evil by evil is ever right."¹³

Emerson achieved an insight into moral law which led him to pronounce in his own oracular way that "the good man has absolute good, which like fire turns everything to his own nature, so that you cannot do him any harm."¹⁴

But 400 years before Christ Plato put the same deep spiritual truth on the lips of Socrates, who after his sentence of death calmly declares that "no evil can happen to a good man in life or in death. "¹⁵ Virtue makes its possessor invulnerable; all things, even the rage of enemies, work together for good to those who love the good and are good. They are the protégés of Heaven; "neither they nor theirs are neglected by the gods. "¹⁶

With such conviction as that it would indeed be a degradation of self, not to say a grave inconsistency, to entertain the idea of revenge. Let a man be true to the divine law and ideal within him, and he has already conquered his enemies and the world. He can afford to do only good to every man, whether friend or foe. It is the same idea as was later promulgated by the Cynics, that all things were theirs. Spiritually they appropriated the universe. "The Cynic hath begotten all mankind, he hath all men for his sons, all women for his daughters; so doth he visit all and care for all. Thinkest thou that he is a mere meddler and busybody in rebuking those whom he meets? As a father he doth it, as a brother, and as a servant of the Universal Father, which is God."

It is worthy of grateful recognition that the principle of overcoming evil with good, which is the very flower of Christian ethic, was thus the possession of the great thinkers of Greece some centuries before Jesus and Paul inculcated it. And yet we must recognise a certain difference. Its root was not the same in Greek philosophy and in Christian teaching. In the former it was rather the flower of reason, in the latter the blossom of love. Perhaps in the case of Socrates we may say it was the fruit of both, as in that of Jesus; it grew not only out of his beautiful love but also out of his sweet reasonableness. We should not be doing more than justice to the Athenian saint to say that it was the natural product alike of his mind and his heart as they lie open to us in these wonderful records. The keenness of his intellect, the geniality of his nature, and the largeness of his soul, all led him to it, and it is as high as morality can take us.

Let us remember that for him all evil and wrongdoing has its origin in ignorance, ignorance of the true Good. That good, if we could only see it clearly, would be recognised to be one and the same for all. In it or moving towards it we are all in harmony and at peace. We only become enemies as we lose sight of the Highest and turn our hearts to lower and relative goods, poor deluded fools, divided not only from others but divided within ourselves. With the Apostle, Socrates could devoutly say, "Avenge not yourselves, beloved. For it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."¹⁷ Only that Socrates would have said that the man who does evil takes revenge on himself.

Notes

¹ Xen., Mem., bk. ii. ch. 3, 14.

²Ibid., 17.

³ Xen., Mem., bk. ii. ch. 3, 18, 19.

⁴ Xen., Mem., bk. ii. ch. 6, 35.

⁵ Diogenes Laertius, bk. ii. ch. 6, 21.

⁶ Apol., 41 d.

⁷ Apol., 37 a.

⁸ Plato, Crito, 47. (Jowett's trans.)

⁹ Plato's Crito, 49. (Jowett's trans.)

¹⁰ Bk. i. 335 e.

¹¹ Plato, Gorgias, 469 b.

¹²Ibid., 469 c.

¹³ Plato, Crito, p. 49 d.

¹⁴ Essay on "Compensation."

¹⁵ Apol., 41 d.

¹⁶Ibid.

¹⁷ Romans, ch. 12, v. 19.