THE

Spiritual Magazine.

AUGUST, 1876.

PROPHETIC INTUITION AND THE DEMON
OF SOCRATES.

BY ALEXANDER WILDER, M.D.

AN infinitude of study has been bestowed upon the memorable words of Socrates to his judges: "I am moved by a certain divine and spiritual influence. It began with me from childhood, being a kind of voice which, when present, always dissuades me from what I am about to do, but never urges me on. ." We are conscious of a propensity in us all, when in perplexity, to seek admonition and guidance from a source superior to ourselves. Men who have ordinarily felt sufficient for all occasions, when they chance to encounter some exigency for which they had not been prepared are disposed, perhaps above others, to seek out some occult means for knowledge of what to do or expect. King Saul, visiting the Obeah woman of En-Dor, was no isolated example. Alexander of Macedon, in like dilemma, also sought aid from divination. Julius Cæsar had with him a Chaldæan. But we care not to explore this department of human research. Except the denizens of another form of life shall have attained a superior moral altitude, and are able to take wider views of the great interior world of fact, they can render us little service, but rather will do us harm.

Nevertheless, there are periods in the life of every one when he desires to obtain a suggestion which will facilitate the forming of a right conclusion, or the adoption of a purpose which will be purely wise. It is easy to declaim about superstition and credulity, but we do not see why a person should be impugned in that manner, because, after having exhausted the finite powers at his command, he looks beyond them for aid and instruction

T.S.-II.

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from a source above himself. If we approve the young and inexpert when they ask for advice from those who are older and more intelligent, the same logic will carry us further—even to the fountain of Infinite Wisdom itself. It is an instinct in the savage, and we do not perceive that our more erudite civilized man has got on much further. All that has been lost of the intuitive perception, there is good reason to apprehend has been characterized by an equivalent sacrifice of moral sentiment, and of conscientious regard for the right. Such maturity we have no ambition to acquire.

We are not precluded from learning anything that it is possible or wholesome to know. Nor is it to be presumed that we shall ever be able either to measure ourselves or what is above us. But an intelligent conception may be attained of the facts which underlie our being, and we may hope to ascertain how our actions are directed.

It ought to be considered in this connection, that no faculty is possessed by one person and withheld from another universally. The superiority of one person to another is, therefore, only in degree, not in kind; and whatever one has really attained or performed, another can do or attain potentially. Every person must make the path for his own feet. It is his right to exercise his mental powers, and to cast off whatever restrictions others may desire to impose upon his thought. Nay, more, there can be no important progress made in a divine life except this freedom shall be exercised in a catholic spirit.

There are in every neighbourhood traditions and anecdotes concerning individuals possessing certain occult powers that enable them to obtain a knowledge which transcended the ordinary limit of human faculties. Sometimes the possession of these gifts appears to constitute a religion, but the fact, we think, is more frequently otherwise. However, what was denominated prophetic power in ancient times was denounced as magic and sorcery in the Middle Ages. At the present day there exists a form of Spiritualism which seems to have seized upon these ideas and cognate facts as its exclusive province. We do not quite relish this appropriation; it savours to us too much of a diverting of what may be interior wisdom into the avenues of charlatanry, into which we desire not to enter. Nevertheless, in all ages the highest truth possessed has been employed for the greatest wrongs; and the alternatives are offered to us, to reject it for having been thus perverted, or to rescue it and set it again in its proper place. We propose to accept the latter. We will not reject faith or spirituality, because of any error or aberration of "Spiritualism unphilosophical.

It has been propounded by Lyell and other geologists that there have been no catastrophes or miraculous changes in the physical condition of the earth, but a steady progress from century to century and from age to age. So far as we can apprehend the matter, this is plausible. By an analogous principle the human soul undergoes no catastrophes or supernatural transformations, but steadily moves forward in its career toward the Infinite. Yet being capable of volition, passion, and moral action, it becomes a legitimate subject of inquiry whether it may not so approximate the diviner nature as to receive therefrom a certain quickening of its powers.

If we were to attempt an answer it would be in the affirmative. Believing that all evolution in nature is the bringing into phenomenal life a potency which must have been first involved; also that the human soul, as it is developed in higher life, exhibits powers which it has derived from the divine, we are of opinion, and from conviction, that it is capable of direct inspiration and enlargement of its faculties by a communion with that source of its existence. It is no abnormal condition, but one incident to our spiritual nature; not the establishing of a relation with Deity outside of us, but emphatically the bringing to light of divinity within us.

I suppose that this was the "demon" which Socrates indicated as his interior guide. When Demodocus brought to him his own son Theages, to discourse about the acquiring of wisdom, Socrates named the several branches of knowledge and referred him to distinguished teachers, because he was himself illiterate. "I know none of that blessed and beautiful knowledge, although I wish I did," said he. The young man, however, was not willing to drop the matter in this way. Others, who knew nothing before they associated with him, became in a very little time better than those to whom they had been inferior.

No," protested the philosopher, "you do not perceive how this occurs; I will tell you. There is by a divine allotment a certain demon that has attended me from my very childhood. It is a voice which, when it is perceived, always signifies to me to relinquish what I am about to do; but it never at any time incites me. And if any one of my friends suggests anything to me, and the voice is heard, it dissuades me from that very thing, and will not suffer me to do it."

Socrates also explained to Alcibiades that he had refrained from speaking to him for this very cause. That impediment had now ceased. It appears, also that Alcibiades, at this time, gave heed to his great teacher, and that his conduct was praiseworthy.

Apuleius gives a reason why the demon of Socrates was

generally in the habit of forbidding him to do certain things, but never exhorted him to the performance of any act. Socrates, being of himself a man exceedingly perfect, and prompt to do whatever he ought, never stood in need of any one to exhort him, though he sometimes required to be forbidden, if danger happened to lurk in any of his undertakings. Being thus admonished, he was enabled to use due precaution, and desist for the present from his endeavour, either to resume it more safely at a future period, or enter upon it in some other way. It was usual for him to describe those warnings as "a voice proceeding from the demon"-in fact his guardian spirit.

In no case did Socrates speak of it as an omen. In this particular it would seem to have differed somewhat from the oracles and Bath Kol of the Jews, which appear to have been the utterance of an object, a scene, or an impression, by which an effect is produced on the mind. "The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy ?" (Amos, iii. 8). If Socrates had derived his admonition from an omen, he would have said as much. But he employed no such method of divination. Yet it was the day of such things. About that time Nebuchadnezzar, a King of Babylon, from the very head-quarters of theurgy, having set out on an expedition to reconquer his rebellious vassals, and in doubt which route to choose, made use of sortilege, divination, and augury. He took his position at the parting of the ways which led to the metropolis of Ammon and to Jerusalem. "He shuffled his arrows, he consulted the teraphim, he looked into the liver-in his right hand was the divination of Jerusalem" (Ezekiel, xxi. 21-22).

Apuleius was of opinion that Socrates used to perceive indications of his demon, not only with his ears, but with his eyes, as he frequently declared that it was not a voice but a sign which had impressed him. The Pythagoreans were in the habit of expressing surprise when anybody denied having seen a demon. The prophet Elisha is recorded as evoking a vision of this nature. His servant being terrified at the appearance of a body of troops sent by the King of Syria to apprehend him, "Elisha prayed and said, 'Lord, I pray thee open his eyes that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha" (2 Kings, vi. 15-17). If we receive either of these narratives as literally true, there is no reason for doubting that Socrates beheld spiritual forms, as well as perceived their presence.

It would be easy, in such case, to have regarded his demon as a familiar spirit or guardian genius; and those who regard all demons as evil have accordingly imagined the great philosopher

to have been the subject of magical or diabolical influence. But it is not clear to me that he ever assigned to it an actual individual or personal existence. He always calls it ri daoviov (ti daimonion), oι δαιμονιον τι (daimonioneti), and never δαιμον (daimon); and Cicero has rendered this designation by the phrase "divinum quiddam"-a certain something divine. It was a divine, or rather a spiritual entity, a sign or voice to which he attached quality and source that were superior to his own unaided powers. It acted as a curb, and was in no sense a stimulus to passion. Of course, every intelligent reader knows that a demon is properly a spiritual essence, and by no means necessarily of an evil character. Greek scholars often translate it God or Divinity, and it is about synonymous with our word spirit or intelligence.

We have already declared our belief that this interior divine or spiritual something was not a supernatural or miraculous endowment. Marvellous displays are superficial, temporary and external, however glorious. When Elijah, the Israelitish prophet, was at the mystic cave of Horeb it is recorded that แ a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice" (1 Kings, xix. 11-12). The prophet then went forth covering his face in his mantle. Very similar to this was the voice or sign of the demon to Socrates, but not to Plato.*

The writer of the book of Deuteronomy is, however, most significant and emphatic. "The word is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in the heaven, that thou shouldst say, 'Who shall go up for us to heaven and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldst say, 'Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it." It is neither speech nor desire, but a divine entity interior to both. But is it subjective, or objective-is it uttered in the heart or into the heart? Is it not both?

To answer this question intelligently requires to know both God and man. From one standing-point the divine sign and voice appear to emanate from the individual; from another, they are seen to be from above. The Delphic inscription, гve

*In an article on "Platonism," by William Hitchman, M.D., recently forwarded to the Tiber Academy of Rome, he has shown that spiritual intelligences of 1876 are the higher demons of Apuleius, the guardian spirits of mortals, as taught by Plato, &c.