which hurries women into what dis- if it should be supposed, though it pleases the men, debars them of the cannot be proved, that some women virtues requisite to support them un- have been more flagitious than any der the ill treatment they are loaded men, that will no ways redound to with by the men, in consequence of the dishonour of our sex in general. their indiscretions: and for want of The corruption of the best is ever the those virtues they often run very un- worst: and should we grant that in justifiable lengths to be revenged on quality of vices some of our sex have their tyrants. Thus does it arise, exceeded the men, it must be owned generally speaking, that both men and that their numbers would at least bawomen hold one another in sovereign lance the account. I believe no one contempt, and therefore vie with will deny but that at least, upon the each other which shall treat the most moderate computation, there other the worst. Whereas, how hap- are a thousand bad men to one bad py might they be, would both sexes woman. But to know whether but resolve each to give the other, that either sex be naturally more vicious just esteem which is their due! than the other, we must observe that However, if truth may be spoken, there is nothing but the soul capable it is undeniable that the blame lies of virtue, which consists in a firm rechiefly and originally in the men. solution of doing what we judge the Since, if they would but allow women best, according to the dictates of reathe advantages of education and litera- son and religion compared with the ture, the latter would learn to de- different occurrences we meet with spise those follies and trifles for in life. Now the mind is no less cawhich they are at present unjustly pable in women than in men of that despised. Our sex would be enabled firm resolution which makes up virto give the men a better opinion of tue, nor of knowing the occasions of our capacity of head and disposition putting it in practice. of heart and the men, in proportion to the increase of their esteem for us, would lessen, and by degrees reform, their ill treatment of us. Women would make it their study to improve their parts, and with increase of knowledge they must grow good. Their pleasure and study would be to entertain the men with sense, and to add solidity to their charms. By which means both sexes would be happy, and neither have cause to blame the other. But while they lock up from us all the avenues to know ledge, they cannot without reproach to themselves blame us for any misconduct which ignorance may be mother of: and we cannot but accuse them of the most cruel injustice in dis-esteeming and ill-using us for faults they put out of our power to We Weak as the generality reckon us women, we can regulate our passions as well as the men; and are no more inclined to vice than to virtue. might even make the scale turn in our own favour in this particular, without doing violence to truth or justice.However, upon the whole, if there be equal occasion of finding fault in both sexes, that which accuses the other offends against natural equity. If there be more evil in the men than in us, and they are too stupified to see it, they are guilty of rashness in finding fault with our sex. And if they do see and maliciously conceal their own greater faults, is it not base in them to blame us who have less? If there be more good in women than in men, ought not the men to be accused of ignorance or envy in not acknowledging it? When a woIt would be needless to say any man has more virtue than vice, should more on this subject, if it was not in not the one atone for the other? This answer to some weak people, who are is especially true when our defects are vainly persuaded that there is a real insurmountable, and when we are dedifference between us and the men prived of means to rid ourselves of with regard to virtue: whereas no- them; which is generally the case thing can be more absurd. It is un- with most of the faulty of our sex, doubtedly true, that there have been, and ought to merit them compassion and are, many very good, and as many rather than contempt. Lastly, when very bad people of both sexes. And our failings are only seemingly such, correct. or at most but trivial in themselves, it is imprudent, malicious, and pitiful to insist on them. And yet it is easy to prove, that such are the generality of the faults we are charged with, which can any way affect us all. claiming or valuing it, shew ourselves worthy something from them, as much above their bare esteem, as they conceit themselves above us. In a word, let us shew them, by what little we do without aid of education, the much we might do if they did us justice; that we may force a blush from them, if possible, and compel them to confess their own baseness to Our right is the us, and that the worst of us deserve much better treatment than the best Thus then does it hitherto fully appear how falsely we are deemed, by the men, wanting in that solidity of sense which they so vainly value themselves upon. NOTES to the DIALOGUE of ESCHI- HARMES, one of the associates Socrates, was a handsome young man, ennobled by the writings of Plato, one of whose dialogues bears his name. same with theirs to all public employments; we are endowed, by nature, of us receive. with geniuses at least as capable of filling them as theirs can be: and our hearts are as susceptible of virtue as our heads are of the sciences. We neither want spirit, strength, nor courage, to defend a country, nor prudence to rule it. Our souls are as perfect as theirs, and the organs they depend on are generally more refined. However, if the bodies be compared to decide the right of excellence in either sex, we need not contend: the men themselves I pre- The Amazonian pillar, near which sume will give it up. They cannot Axiochus resided, derived its name deny but that we have the advantage from a nation of female warriors, in of them in the internal mechanism of the north-west part of Scythia, if cre our frames; since, in us, is produced dit be given to their history, who the most beautiful and wonderful of invaded Athens on the south, and had all creatures and how much have a battle there with Theseus, one of we not the advantage of them in out- its thirty kings. side? What beauty, comeliness, and graces, has not heaven attached to our sex above theirs? I should blush with scorn to mention this, if I did not think it an indication of our souls being also in a state of greater delicacy; for I cannot help thinking that the Wise Author of nature suited our frames to the souls he gave us.And surely then the acuteness of our minds, with what passes in the inside of our heads, ought to render us at least equals to men, since the outside seldom fails to make us their absolute mistresses. When Socrates argues with Axiochus as an Athenian, he refers to the character which the citizens of Athens bore for superior wisdom and goodness; as surpassing, in these excellencies, not only the barbarous nations around them, but the other states of Greece. Plato, in his treatise on the Laws, introduces Megillus, a Lacedæmonian, testifying to the celebrity of their good qualities, acknowledging the justness of the character they bore, and ascribing their goodness, which was pure and unfeigned, not to the constraint of law, but to nature and the divine provi dence. It often happens, as Axiochus states it with respect to himself, that, in the moment of trial, those sentiments which were at first received with warm approbation, when the mind is not fixed in its judgment, lose their hold and evaporate. Cicero con And yet I would have none of my sex build their authority barely on so slight a foundation. No: good sense will out-last a handsome face: and the dominion gained over hearts by reason is lasting. I would therefore exhort all my sex to throw aside idle amusements, and to betake them selves to the improvement of their minds, that we may be able to act with that becoming dignity our nature has fitted us to; and, without last, p. 382. See Universal Magazine for May me." fessed, "that when he read Plato's Prodicus, from whose lectures Soreasonings concerning the immor- crates derived his sentiments, floutality of the soul, he was convinced: rished about 396 before Christ, was but, as soon as he had laid down the a native of the isle of Cos; but taught book, and began to reflect on the sub- at Athens, where he was put to death, ject, all my assent," he said, "fails on pretence that he corrupted the morals of the youth. Callias, whose name occurs a few lines further on, was his friend; a man, who, it appears by the mention of him in Plato's Apology of Socrates," highly valued the acquisition of wisdom, and expended larger sums than his contemporaries on the sophists of the day. Draco and Clisthenes, to whom Socrates refers, were two characters of great influence and power at Athens, which Draco exercised with peculiar rigour. He lived one hundred and eighty years before the date of this dialogue: before this time Athens had no written laws; and those which he published were so severe, that they were said to be written in blood, and such was their indiscriminate severity, that they punished the smallest offence as well the most enormous crime with death. Clisthenes had flourished seventy years prior to this period: he broke the tyrannical power of the family of Pisistratus and expelled it; he was favoured by the attachment of the people; introduced good laws, and, as Plutarch says, settled a well-tempered form of government. When Socrates relates the information which he had received from Gobrias, one of the eastern magi, he appeals to fables, observes Le Clerc, which he himself did not believe, but which he thought would have an effect in calming the mind of his friend, He was satisfied with a belief of the immortality of the soul, indifferent as to the knowledge of those circumstances of another life, which were unknown in his times. Gobrias adopted the philosophy of Zoroaster, and was one in the succession of the magi from him. He is said to have predicted the violent death of Socrates. When Axiochus, expressing the change produced in his views of death by the reasonings of Socrates, describes himself as "a new man," the phrase may be considered, remarks Le Clerc, as illustrating the apostolic language, Kawn xos, kaivos agos, man," as applied to persons converted a new creation," "a new from the Jewish and Pagan institutions to Christianity. See 2 Cor. v. 17. Gal. vi, 15, Ephes. ii. 15. iv. 24. The metaphors of a prison and a tabernacle, under which Socrates here describes the state of the human soul in this life, are frequently used by the Platonic writers, who considered the soul as an immaterial, immortal principle, which had preexisted before it animated the human body which, on account of the restraint it caused, in their opinion, to the full and vigorous expansion of the intellectual powers, they called a prison; on account of its transient, temporary duration, they denominated it a tabernacle; and, on the ground of the evils and calamities of ideas of Socrates, concerning the conCicero is supposed to allude to the human life, they regarded this stage templative nature of a future existof the soul's existence as a punish- ence, when he says, L. v. cap. 19. de ment for its sins in a former state of finibus, that " its being. The sacred writers have sophers imagined that the life of the some ancient philoadopted, in part, the language of the wise and the isies of the blessed, Platonists. Peter, 2 Ep. 1. 13, 14. would be exempted from all care, speaks of the present life as "being requiring no provision for the supin a tabernacle," and of his death as port of existence; and would be "putting off this tabernacle:" and wholly employed in intellectual rePaul, who, it appears, was conversant searches and the study of nature: a in Grecian literature, calls this state divine kind of life, and worthy of the. of being as existing in a tabernacle," highest praise." and of death as the dissolution of our earthly house of this tabernacle." 2 Cor. iv. 1. UNIVERSAL MAG. VOL. XIV. * Watkins' Biographical Dictionary. 2 N "is the object of my greatest Grotius in Loc. General Remarks.. Minos and Rhadamanthus, it is vens, well known, according to the Grecian care." mythology, were the judges who assigned to men their respective dooms in the infernal regions. Plate speaks The Dialogue, of which we have of them in different places, as having given a translation, can scarcely be these high provinces assigned to them read by any without interest. It apon account of the strict and impartial pears, by this discourse of Socrates integrity with which they had ad- with a person in the view of death, ministered their governments on by his conversation with his friends earth. Le Clerc further supposes, before, his own death, by the first that these fables should be referred book of Cicero's Tusculan Disputaback to the times when the Greeks tions on the contempt of death, and and the inhabitants of the neighbour- from other remains of the specula ing islands used the oriental language; tions of ingenious and reflecting Fa for these names have not, in the Greek, gans, that their minds, as it was natuany particular meaning and force; but ral in their circumstances, laboured when expressed in Hebrew, it will be under much anxiety and uncertainty immediately acknowledged, by all concerning the issues of death. Of who are acquainted with that lan- this the application made to Socrates guage, that they are terms expressive to visit Axiochus in great dejection of the dispositions and actions of men. and anguish of spirit, under the proMinos, if written Minoh, they spect of his dissolution, is an affecting -will instantly perceive contains the Proof. Though the reasoning of the radical letters which signifies he philosopher appears to have satisfied the mind of the dying man, and to weighed: which is very appropriate have even inspired him with a desire to the office of a judge, who holds of it, yet it is evident that it was prothe balance and weighs all things posed by Socrates himself with hesi with equal scales. In like manner, tation, not so much as the result of his Rad-hammeth, is lord of conviction as a relation of the lectures the dead; a title aptly descriptive of he had received in early life, mingled the office of Radamanthus, who, it is with much fable, and producing in imagined, determines the lots of the himself only a general conclusion, dead. The place in which these two that the soul is immortal, and, on persons preside is called "the Field leaving this state, will be released of truth;" because there the truth from all sorrow and trouble. cannot be concealed. On the same It is also to be observed, that tho ground, Plato, it seems, fixes this the suggestions of Socrates created, plain to the heavenly regions, because in Axiochus, a happy frame of mind, he believed that truth was known the sentiments he delivered do not only amongst the gods. Hence, in his Phaedo, he says, that souls who had fallen from heaven were seized with an ardent desire of visiting "the Field of Truth." appear to have been commonly rethe discourse of the philosopher had ceived; for the dying man owns that led him into views entirely different from what he had before. And the When, at the close of the dialogue, future state, which Socrates delineates, Axiochus expresses his contempt of is such as would suit only persons of life in the prospect of " going to a a refined taste, of a philosophic mind, much better abode," it reminds us of and an ear for music; rather than a the elevated views entertained by the scene adapted to the mass of manancient patriarchs, who, an apostolical kind, as the reward of those who had, writer assures us, "desired better in humble and uncultivated scenes, country, that is, an heavenly." 1 Heb. xi. 16. Anaxagoras replied to one who observed that he had no care about a country;"" indeed you must correct yourself, for my country," pointing with his finger to the hea fulfilled, with probity, the duties of life. Much of the reasoning of Socrates is drawn from sources independent of the hope of another life; namely, from an enumeration of the evils accompanying every period of our earthly existence and attendant on our different occu- mixing with all their entertainments; pations in life*, which Axiochus re- and when it did so, would as unavoidgarded only as the rhetorical decla- ably allay and spoil their relish, which mation, from which death would be we find some of them confessing and an eternal release: or from the idea complaining of. This was the sword of it as a state of insensibility, in continually hanging over their heads which all consciousness of pain or by a single hair; the spectre always enjoyment would be lost. These baunting their abode *." The piece, were considerations that at best afforded only a negative consolation: they left a dying man to lament over himself with the moralizing heathen poet, "that he must soon leave, for ever, wife and friend, and all that was dear to him; his pleasurabie house and inviting gardens; and nothing but the dull cypress accompanying him to the grave, his eternal home." Here was no counterpart to grief, no redress for his fears and sorrow, no compensation for a temporary loss, no hope of his joys and felicities being renewed. In the subsequent part of the conversation, as it has been noticed, Socrates does, indeed, set sublimer views, more exhilarating prospects before his friend; but then, as we have said, not without evident signs of fluctuating in doubt; of inward distrust in the justness of his own conclusions, and in the truth of the principles he had learnt from Gobrias. under our review, is, on these grounds, a memento to us of the excellence and value of Christianity, which has brought life and immortality to light. From the spirit and sentiments expressed by Axiochus and Socrates, in this death-bed scene, it may be con ceived with what high esteem and gl. 1ness such persons would receive the discoveries of the gospel, and the evidence it affords of a resurrection to immortality and glory, as the reward of a patient continuance in welldoing a reward held up not merely to superior and cultivated intellect, but preached to the poor; who, tho' philosophy has not entered them into her school, nor science placed them among her sons, may be rich in faith and virtue; and, by the grace of the gospel, are chosen to be heirs of the heavenly kingdom. It is Christianity which gives confidence to hope, certainty to our faith, and ardour to our virtue. ERRATUM. Vol. XII. p. 386, col. 2, line 8, for thining, read shining boil. The ADVENTURES and TRAVELS, in various Parts of the Globe, of HENRY VOGEL. Translated from the German. [Continued from p. 203.] T was on the 26th of April, 1754, On the whole, this Dialogue may be looked upon as a proof of the ignorance and gloomy uncertainty concerning a future state, and the consequences of death, with which the minds of the heathen world, even where the light of philosophy shone, were perplexed and dejected. It is a testimony, though I know not that it has ever been produced for this purpose, to the correctness and truth of the apostle's representation, when he that I left the university of Jena, speaks of Pagans being, through the in company with many other students, fear of death, all their lifetime sub- and under the impression of various ject to bondage," and "being without feelings. In general, the journey hope. To them," as a most valu- from this place to Leipsick was through able writer says, "death had a terrible sound, and could not but be attended fels or Merseburg, because in that Kamburg, Naumburg, and Weissenwith a train of the most melancholy route we meet not only with fine, reflection whenever they were forced level roads, but also pass through (as they were frequently) to reflect upon it. This would be unavoidably 66 "The evils of life," says Dr.Jortin, are no where better described than in Eschines, Dialogue iii, p. 92. some handsome towns. As I bappened, however, to have an intimate friend from Gera, and two others from Law's "Theory of Religion," 7th ed. p. 302. |