The Twilight of the Idols · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
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To judge from his origin, Socrates belonged to the lowest of the low: Socrates was mob. You know, and you can still see it for yourself, how ugly he was. But ugliness, which in itself is an objection, was almost a refutation among the Greeks. Was Socrates really a Greek? Ugliness is not infrequently the expression of thwarted development, or of development arrested by crossing. In other cases it appears as a decadent development. The anthropologists among the criminal specialists declare that I the typical criminal is ugly: _monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo._ But the criminal is a decadent?[1] Was Socrates a typical criminal?—At all events this would not clash with that famous physiognomist’s judgment which was so repugnant to Socrates’ friends. While on his way through Athens a certain foreigner who was no fool at judging by looks, told Socrates to his face that he was a monster, that his body harboured all the worst vices and passions. And Socrates replied simply: “You know me, sir!”— Not only are the acknowledged wildness and anarchy of Socrates’ instincts indicative of decadence, but also that preponderance of the logical faculties and that malignity of the misshapen which was his special characteristic. Neither should we forget those aural delusions which were religiously interpreted as “the demon of Socrates.” Everything in him is exaggerated, _buffo,_ caricature, his nature is also full of concealment, of ulterior motives, and of underground currents. I try to understand the idiosyncrasy from which the Socratic equation:—Reason = Virtue = Happiness, could have arisen: the weirdest equation ever seen, and one which was essentially opposed to all the instincts of the older Hellenes.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.