584 Socrates J Schleierinacher^ and Delbrueck. us it might have been truly said^ that Socrates was inwardly encouraged to present himself before his judges, because the warning voice had given no signal of any approaching evil. Thiersch has some excellent remarks on the steps by which this divine voice or sign was gradually elevated in the imagin- ation of later writers into a supernatural being, the genius of Socrates. But this is an inquiry foreign to our present subject. It appears then that we have no reason to think that our Apologist mistook anything that was intelligible in the charge of irreligion and new religion which was brought against Socrates. But still we have to inquire whether his attempt to refute the latter charge is not, as Mr Delbrueck contends, a mere sophistical evasion. Mr Ast likewise condemns it as not merely sophistical and absurd, but, if that is anything more, idle and groundless. But his manner of proving it to be so seems to partake very largely of the same qualities ; for he assumes that the work is a counterfeit, and that Meletus meant to charge Socrates not with absolute atheism, but only with introducing new deities. Since however we cannot yet consent to this as- sumption, we must take it for granted that in the course of the trial Meletus, being questioned about his meaning, gave the answer which we find reported in the Apology, and which he probably thought would be most injurious to Socrates, or most difficult for him to refute, or the easiest for himself to defend : that he believed no gods at all. This then was the charge which Socrates had to meet. But Mr Delbrueck objects that instead of meeting it fairly, by a confession of his religious principles according to the model he himself proposes, Socrates again contents himself with a miserable triumph over the sim- plicity of Meletus, who is entrapped into a declaration con- trary to his own meaning, about the equivocal word ^ai/uovia. Mr Delbrueck will have it that Meletus in his indictment used the word, not, as Mr Ast supposes, in a very narrow sense, but in the most general of all, and so as to exclude all relation to Sai/xove^ as personal beings. But little as we can feel any par- tiality for Meletus, justice is due to him as well as to his adver- sary, and it really seems to be taking too great a liberty with him, to impute to him a degree of stupidity almost worthy of Melitides, merely that Socrates may take a contemptible advan-
