The anthropologists are busy, indeed, and ready to transport us back into the savage forest, where all human things...have their beginnings; but the … - Edith Hamilton

Even of old the Christian world, so bitterly antagonistic to any ideas not specifically contained in their creeds and dogmas, made an exception in Socrates’ case. They recognized his likeness to Christ. He was the example that a soul could be Christlike, not through grace, but by nature. Erasmus said: "Holy Socrates, pray for us." To know him is a help to knowing Christ, and it is not hard to know him. We can see him quite clearly. Plato, who drew his portrait, could not, of course, keep himself out of it, any more than Christ’s recorders could; but at least magic did not dog Plato’s footsteps, as it did everyone’s footsteps when the Gospels were written. In the fourth century B.C. Greeks had no leaning to marvels. Also in the centuries that followed no one founded a church on Socrates and built up around him a theology and hung creeds and ceremonials upon him. To see what he was, we do not have to brush anything away, except a bit of Plato. We can use him as a stepping stone to Christ, a first aid in realizing what Christ was.

He was, first and last, the born fighter, to whom the consciousness of being matched against a great adversary suffices, and who can dispense with success. Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.

Very few great artists feel the giant agony of the world.