A simpleton, shipwrecking in a storm, while the passengers all were grasping some utensil to save themselves, seized one of the anchors.

One of two brothers having died, a simpleton met the living one, and asked him, "Did you die, or your brother?"

A simpleton's child died, and seeing so great a multitude of people assemble, he said, "I am ashamed to carry so small a child before so great an assembly."

A friend wrote to a simpleton, who was in Greece, to purchase him some books. But he neglected it; and when, after a while, he was visited by his friend, he said, "The letter, which you sent me respecting the books, I did not receive."

Will our readers forgive us if we almost break a promise and interpose one more delay in proceeding to the next chapter, with also one more change in mood, this time back again "from lively to severe?" We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of giving our friends a taste of Xenophon such as he appears in one of the best of his books, not the "Anab'asis.” Greek Readers often embrace extracts from Xenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates. Let us, accordingly, with this for our justifying reason, introduce here a few specimen pages of that highly interesting work. The work relates to Socrates. It was designed by Xenophon to vindicate his master's memory from the odium of guilt on those charges under which he had suffered the penalty of death-that is, the charges of impiety and of corrupting influence exerted on the Athenian youth. The plan of the work is, largely, to relate what Socrates did actually teach.

SOCRATES.

Here, first, are some notes of a conversation in which pagan Socrates, arguing for the existence and the benevolent character of God, in large part anticipates the famous elaborate treatise of Christian Paley on "Natural Theology." Let it be noted, also, how Socrates, in his allusion to the influence of the physical conformation of man on his general condition and his ability to do things, says, in essence, all that the

materialistic French philosopher, Helvetius, made so much of in seeking to establish his dismal theory that we human beings are dust and nothing more. With aim and with effect far other than those of Helvétius, our own American Webster, too, consciously or unconsciously, was following Socrates when, in an address before a mechanics' society, he once enlarged so lucidly and strikingly on the idea of man's depending on his hand as a necessary instrument for the carrying out of his conceptions, and thus for his progress in civilization. Such quickening suggestions from the Greek philosopher's brain make it easier to understand why it is that, without having ever written a line himself, Socrates should. yet have exercised so much teaching power in his time, and have left behind him so illustrious, imperishably illustrious, a name. With no further introduction, we give our first extract from Xenophon's Memorabilia:

But if any suppose that Socrates, as some write and speak of him on conjecture, was excellently qualified to exhort men to virtue, but incapable of leading them forward in it, let them consider not only what he said in refutation, by questioning, of those who thought that they knew every thing, (refutations intended to check the progress of those disputants,) but what he used to say in his daily intercourse with his associates, and then form an opinion whether he was capable of making those who conversed with him better. I will first mention what I myself once heard him advance in a dialogue with Aristode'mus, surnamed The Little, concerning the gods; for, having heard that Aristodemus neither sacrificed to the gods nor prayed to them, nor attended to auguries, but ridiculed those who regarded such matters, he said to him: "Tell me, Aristodemus, do you admire any men for their genius?" "I do," replied he. "Tell us their names, then," said Socrates. "In epic poetry I most admire Homer, in dithyrambic Melanip'pides, in tragedy Soph'ocles, in statuary Polycli'tus, in painting Zeux'is." "And whether do those who form images without sense or motion, or those who form animals endowed with sense and vital energy, appear to you the more worthy of admiration?" "Those who form animals, by Jupiter, for they are not produced by chance, but by understanding." "And regarding things of which it is uncertain for what purpose they exist, and those evidently existing for some useful purpose, which of the two would you

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say were the productions of chance, and which of intelligence?" "Doubtless those which exist for some useful purpose must be the productions of intelligence." Does not he, then," proceeded Socrates, "who made men at first, appear to you to have given them, for some useful purpose, those parts by which they perceive different objects, the eyes to see what is to be seen, the ears to hear what is to be heard? What would be the use of smells, if no nostrils had been assigned us? What perception would there have been of sweet and sour, and of all that is pleasant to the mouth, if a tongue had not been formed in it to have a sense of them? In addition to these things, does it not seem to you like the work of forethought, to guard the eye, since it is tender, with eye-lids, like doors, which, when it is necessary to use the sight, are set open, but in sleep are closed! To make the eyelashes grow as a screen, that winds may not injure it? To make a coping on the parts above the eyes with the eye-brows, that the perspiration from the head may not annoy them? To provide that the ears may receive all kind of sounds, yet never be obstructed? And that the front teeth in all animals may be adapted to cut, and the back teeth to receive food from them and grind it? To place the mouth, through which animals take in what they desire, near the eyes and the nose? And since what passes off from the stomach is offensive, to turn the channels of it away, and remove them as far as possible from the senses?—can you doubt whether such a disposition of things, made thus apparently with intention, is the result of chance or of intelligence?" No, indeed," replied Aristodemus, "but to one who looks at those matters in this light, they appear like the work of some wise maker who studied the welfare of animals." "And to have engendered in them a love of having offspring, and in mothers a desire to rear their progeny, and to have implanted in the young that are reared a desire of life, and the greatest dread of death?" "Assuredly these appear to be the contrivances of some one who designed that animals should continue to exist."

“And do you think that you yourself have any portion of intelligence?" "Question me, at least, and I will answer. "And can you suppose that nothing intelligent exists anywhere else? When you know that you have in your body but a small portion of the earth which is vast, and a small portion of the water which is vast, and that your frame is constituted for you to receive only a small portion of each of other things that are vast, do you think that you have seized for yourself, by some extraordinary good fortune, intelligence alone which exists nowhere else, ind that this assemblage of vast bodies, countless in number, is maintained in order by something void of reason?" "By Jupiter, I can hardly

suppose that there is any ruling intelligence among that assemblage of bodies, for I do not see the directors, as I see the agent of things which are done here." "Nor do you see your own soul, which is the director of your body; so that, by like reasoning, you may say that you yourself" do nothing with understanding, but every thing by chance."

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However, Socrates," said Aristodemus, "I do not despise the gods, but consider them as too exalted to need my attention." But," said Socrates, "the more exalted they are, while they deign to attend to you, the more ought you to honor them." "Be assured," replied Aristodemus, "that if I believed the gods took any thought for men, I would not neglect them." Do you not, then, believe that the gods take thought for men? the gods who, in the first place, have made man alone, of all animals, upright, (which uprightness enables him to look forward to a greater distance, and to contemplate better what is above, and renders those parts less liable to injury in which the gods have placed the eyes, and ears, and mouth ;) and, in the next place, have given to other animals only feet, which merely give them the capacity of walking, while to men they have added hands, which execute most of those things through which we are better off than they. And though all animals have tongues, they have made that of man alone of such a nature, as by touching sometimes one part of the mouth, and sometimes another, to express articulate sounds, and to signify every thing that we wish to communicate one to another. Nor did it satisfy the gods to take care of the body merely, but, what is most important of all, they implanted in him the soul, his most excellent part. For what other animal has a soul to understand, first of all, that the gods, who have arranged such a vast and noble order of things, exist? What other species of animal, besides man, offers worship to the gods? What other animal has a mind better fitted than that of man, to guard against hunger or thirst, or cold or heat, or to relieve disease, or to acquire strength by exercise, or to labor to obtain knowledge; or more capable of remembering whatever it has heard, or seen, or learned? Is it not clearly evident to you that in comparison with other animals, men live like gods, excelling them by nature both in body and mind? For an animal having the body of an ox, and the understanding of a man, would be unable to execute what it might meditate; and animals which have hands, but are without reason, have no advantage over others; and do you, who share both these excellent endowments, think that the gods take no thought for you? What then must they do before you will think that they take thought for you?" "I will think so," observed Aristodemus, "when they send me, as you say that they send to you, monitors to show what I ought, and what I ought not,

to do." "But when they send admonitions to the Athenians on consulting them by divination, do you not think that they admonish you also? Or, when they give warnings to the Greeks by sending portents, or when they give them to the whole human race, do they except you alone from the whole and utterly neglect you? Do you suppose, too, that the gods would have engendered a persuasion in men that they are able to benefit or injure them, unless they were really able to do so, and that men, if they had been thus perpetually deluded, would not have become sensible of the delusion? Do you not see that the oldest and wisest of human communities, the oldest and wisest cities and nations, are the most respectful to the gods, and that the wisest age of man is the most observant of their worship? Consider also, my good youth," continued Socrates, "that your mind, existing within your body, directs your body as it pleases; and it becomes you, therefore, to believe that the intelligence pervading all things directs all things as may be agreeable to it, and not to think that while your eye can extend its sight over many furlongs, that of the divinity is unable to see all things at once, or that while your mind can think of things here or things in Egypt or Sicily, the mind of the deity is incapable of regarding every thing at the same tine. If, however, as you discover by paying court to men those who are willing to pay court to you in return, and by doing favors to men those who are willing to return your favors, and as by asking counsel of men you discover who are wise, you should in like manner make trial of the gods by offering worship to them, whether they will advise you concerning matters hidden from man; you will then find that the divinity is of such power, and of such a nature, as to see all things and hear all things at once, to be present everywhere, and to have a care for all things at the same time."

By delivering such sentiments, Socrates seems to me to have led his associates to refrain from what was impious, or unjust, or dishonorable, not merely when they were seen by men, but when they were in solitude, since they would conceive that nothing that they did would escape the knowledge of the gods.

The "Memorabilia" of Xenophon is such a treasury of interesting matter, that it is hard to refrain from incorporating here more than a just proportion of its contents. It is almost equally hard to choose our extracts, amid the embarrassment of riches that on every hand dazzles and perplexes the mind. On the whole, perhaps the dialogue which Xenophon reports

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