Euthyphro | Page 5

unable to follow him he is very willing to be led by
him, and eagerly catches at any suggestion which saves him from the
trouble of thinking. Moreover he is the enemy of Meletus, who, as he
says, is availing himself of the popular dislike to innovations in religion
in order to injure Socrates; at the same time he is amusingly confident
that he has weapons in his own armoury which would be more than a
match for him. He is quite sincere in his prosecution of his father, who
has accidentally been guilty of homicide, and is not wholly free from
blame. To purge away the crime appears to him in the light of a duty,
whoever may be the criminal.
Thus begins the contrast between the religion of the letter, or of the
narrow and unenlightened conscience, and the higher notion of religion
which Socrates vainly endeavours to elicit from him. 'Piety is doing as I
do' is the idea of religion which first occurs to him, and to many others
who do not say what they think with equal frankness. For men are not
easily persuaded that any other religion is better than their own; or that
other nations, e.g. the Greeks in the time of Socrates, were equally
serious in their religious beliefs and difficulties. The chief difference
between us and them is, that they were slowly learning what we are in
process of forgetting. Greek mythology hardly admitted of the

distinction between accidental homicide and murder: that the pollution
of blood was the same in both cases is also the feeling of the Athenian
diviner. He had not as yet learned the lesson, which philosophy was
teaching, that Homer and Hesiod, if not banished from the state, or
whipped out of the assembly, as Heracleitus more rudely proposed, at
any rate were not to be appealed to as authorities in religion; and he is
ready to defend his conduct by the examples of the gods. These are the
very tales which Socrates cannot abide; and his dislike of them, as he
suspects, has branded him with the reputation of impiety. Here is one
answer to the question, 'Why Socrates was put to death,' suggested by
the way. Another is conveyed in the words, 'The Athenians do not care
about any man being thought wise until he begins to make other men
wise; and then for some reason or other they are angry:' which may be
said to be the rule of popular toleration in most other countries, and not
at Athens only. In the course of the argument Socrates remarks that the
controversial nature of morals and religion arises out of the difficulty of
verifying them. There is no measure or standard to which they can be
referred.
The next definition, 'Piety is that which is loved of the gods,' is
shipwrecked on a refined distinction between the state and the act,
corresponding respectively to the adjective (philon) and the participle
(philoumenon), or rather perhaps to the participle and the verb
(philoumenon and phileitai). The act is prior to the state (as in Aristotle
the energeia precedes the dunamis); and the state of being loved is
preceded by the act of being loved. But piety or holiness is preceded by
the act of being pious, not by the act of being loved; and therefore piety
and the state of being loved are different. Through such subtleties of
dialectic Socrates is working his way into a deeper region of thought
and feeling. He means to say that the words 'loved of the gods' express
an attribute only, and not the essence of piety.
Then follows the third and last definition, 'Piety is a part of justice.'
Thus far Socrates has proceeded in placing religion on a moral
foundation. He is seeking to realize the harmony of religion and
morality, which the great poets Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Pindar had
unconsciously anticipated, and which is the universal want of all men.

To this the soothsayer adds the ceremonial element, 'attending upon the
gods.' When further interrogated by Socrates as to the nature of this
'attention to the gods,' he replies, that piety is an affair of business, a
science of giving and asking, and the like. Socrates points out the
anthropomorphism of these notions, (compare Symp.; Republic;
Politicus.) But when we expect him to go on and show that the true
service of the gods is the service of the spirit and the co-operation with
them in all things true and good, he stops short; this was a lesson which
the soothsayer could not have been made to understand, and which
every one must learn for himself.
There seem to be altogether three aims or interests in this little
Dialogue: (1) the dialectical development of the idea of piety; (2)