The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

should have come to
THE SOCRATIC IMPULSE 19
venerate Socrates and to accept
him as one of their Ideal sages. If Plato, at one in
his estimate of Socrates with Xenophon, could conclude
the Phcedo with the sentence, "Such was the end,
Echecrates, of our friend ; concerning whom I
may
truly say,
that of all the men of his time whom I
have known, he was the wisest and justest
Xenophon could conclude his Memorabilia thus :
and best,"
"To me personally he was what I have already
endeavoured to describe : so pious and devoutly
religious that he would take no step apart from the
will of heaven ;
so just and upright that he never did
even a trifling injury to any living soul ;
so self-con
trolled, so temperate, that he never at any time chose
the sweeter in place of the better ;
so sensible, and
wise, and prudent, that in distinguishing the better
from the worse he never erred ;
nor had he need of
any helper, but for the knowledge of these matters,
his judgment was at once infallible and self-sufficing.
Capable of reasonably setting forth and defining moral
questions, he was also able to test others, and where
they erred, to cross-examine and convict them, and so
to impel and guide them in the path of virtue and
noble manhood (eV aper^t/ KOL KoAo/caya&W). With these
characteristics, he seemed to be the very impersonation
of human perfection and happiness. Such is our
estimate. If the verdict fail to satisfy, I would ask
those who disagree with it to place the character of
any other side by side with this delineation, and then
pass sentence" (Mem. iv. 8, trs. by H. G. Dakyns).
Perfection embodied in an individual such did
Socrates appear to his immediate disciples to be ;
and
that explains how he should have become the object
of special regard and devotion even to the Stoics,
whose test of greatness was life and character, not
mere power of abstract speculation.