The Cross-Examination of Meletus

Now Socrates turns to the formal charges. Meletus, one of his three accusers, is present in the courtroom. Socrates questions him directly. Watch how a simple series of questions forces Meletus to contradict himself.

Enough about the old rumors. Now let us talk about the actual charges.

Meletus says I corrupt the young people of Athens. So let me ask him: who improves them? If I am making them worse, someone must be making them better. Who is it?

Meletus said: the laws.

I pressed him: the laws are a system, not a person. Which person makes the youth better?

He looked at the crowd and said: everyone here. The judges, the audience, the assembly. All of them.

Think about what he just said. He is claiming that every single person in Athens improves the young, except for me. That I am the only person in this entire city making them worse.

Does that make any sense to you?

Think about horses. Does every person who spends time around horses make them better? Of course not. Training a horse well takes real skill and real knowledge. Most people who try will make the horse worse, not better. Only a few trained people can actually improve a horse. Having more people involved does not help. It usually makes things worse.

People are the same. Good character does not come from being surrounded by a crowd of well-meaning strangers. It comes from careful, skilled guidance. The idea that all of Athens educates its young people, and only Socrates ruins them, is the idea of someone who has never thought seriously about what education actually requires.

Meletus has shown us, just by answering that question, that he has never genuinely cared about the education of young people. This charge is not about them. It never was.

Now let me deal with the second part of the charge: that I corrupt young people on purpose.

Think about this carefully. I live here. These young people are my neighbors. I see them every day. If I make them worse, I make my own life worse, because I have to live with them. Who deliberately makes their own neighbors worse? No sane person does that.

If I have been doing any harm, it must have been by accident. If it was an accident, you do not drag someone to court. You go to them privately. You explain what they are doing wrong. You give them a chance to fix it. Meletus never did that. He came straight here.

That tells you everything you need to know about what this is really about.

Now the charge that I do not believe in the city’s gods. Meletus says I introduce new divine beings. When I pressed him further, he started saying something different. He said I believe in no gods at all.

Those are not the same claim. He cannot have it both ways. Either I believe in the wrong gods, or I believe in no gods. He mixed up two different accusations without thinking about either one.

I have spoken my whole life about a divine sign, a kind of inner voice that stops me when I am about to do something wrong. If I believe in that sign, I believe in something divine. If divine things exist, divine beings must exist. Meletus tied himself in a knot. He did not think this through.