A Life of Socrates by Dr. G. Wiggers [pp. 236-265]

Lack of )Divine Revelation.
sagacious men, fatal errors both, in faith and practice, and to
give a necessary degree of certainty to our religious belief.
Indeed, it seems to us that one of the most powerful popular
arguments might easily be constructed, out of the admissions of
Socrates, inl favour of the indispensable necessity of a well authenticated and well-proven revelation from heaven. If
native strength of mind, prodigious powers of reasoning, conver sation with the most learned men among the heathen of many
countries, and incessant reflection and inquiry on such subjects,
could in any case have given sufficient light to guide the soul, it
would have done it in the case of Socrates. Yet what do we
find? In his practice he interlards his conversation with oaths,
swearing by the names of the gods of his country, when an
oath is by no means called for. Sometimes he speaks of the
Deity, of God, and then again of the gods, so that whether he
worshipped one, or twenty, or a thousand gods, none can tell.
Even when in extremes he calls on Crito to sacrifice a cock to
.ZEsculapius. What miserable uncertainty is here! In his
Apology he says, " Do I not, like the rest of mankind, believe
that the sun and moon are gods?" Indeed the whole subject of
futurity, and of religious truth in general, was in his mind
dreadfully vague. Hear him: "To die is one of two things;
for either the dead may be annihilated, and have no sensation
of any thing whatever; or, as it is said, there is a certain
change or passage of the soul from one place to another. And
if it is a privation of all sensation, as it were a sleep in which
the sleeper has no dream, death would be a wonderful gain.
For I think that if any one, having selected a night, in which
he slept so soundly as not to have had a dream, and having
compared this night with all the other nights and days of his
life, should be required on consideration to say how many days
and nights he had passed better and more pleasantly than this
night throughout his life, I think that not only a private person,
but even the great king himself would find them easy to number
in comparison with other days and nights. If, therefore, death
is a thing of this kind, I say it is a gain; for thus all futurity
appears to be nothing more than one night." Here is the light
of nature shining to guide a man, and it brings him to the conclusion that the gulf of annihilation is not so dark and dreary
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