THE PLACE OF SOCRATES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.
I.
Apart from legendary reputations, there is no name in the world’s
history more famous than that of Socrates, and in the history of
philosophy there is none so famous. The only thinker that approaches
him in celebrity is his own disciple Plato. Every one who has heard
of Greece or Athens has heard of him. Every one who has heard of him
knows that he was supremely good and great. Each successive generation
has confirmed the reputed Delphic oracle that no man was wiser than
Socrates. He, with one or two others, alone came near to realising the
ideal of a Stoic sage. Christians deem it no irreverence to compare
him with the Founder of their religion. If a few dissentient voices
have broken the general unanimity, they have, whether consciously or
not, been inspired by the Socratic principle that we should let no
opinion pass unquestioned and unproved. Furthermore, it so happens
that this wonderful figure is known even to the multitude by sight as
well as by name. Busts, cameos, and engravings have made all familiar
with the Silenus-like physiognomy, the thick lips, upturned nose,
and prominent eyes which impressed themselves so strangely on the
imagination of a race who are accused of having cared for nothing
but physical beauty, because they rightly regarded it as the natural
accompaniment of moral loveliness. Those who wish to discover what
manner of mind lay hid beneath this uninviting exterior may easily
satisfy their curiosity, for Socrates is personally better known
than any other character of antiquity. Dr. Johnson himself is not
a more familiar figure to the student of literature. Alone among
classical worthies his table-talk has been preserved for us, and the
art of memoir-writing seems to have been expressly created for his
behoof.[79] We can follow him into all sorts of company and test his
behaviour in every variety of circumstances. He conversed with all
classes and on all subjects of human interest, with artisans, artists,
generals, statesmen, professors, and professional beauties. We meet
him in the armourer’s workshop, in the sculptor’s studio, in the
boudoirs of the _demi-monde_, in the banqueting-halls of flower-crowned
and wine-flushed Athenian youth, combining the self-mastery of an
Antisthenes with the plastic grace of an Aristippus; or, in graver
moments, cheering his comrades during the disastrous retreat from
Delium; upholding the sanctity of law, as President of the Assembly,
against a delirious populace; confronting with invincible irony the
oligarchic terrorists who held life and death in their hands; pleading
not for himself, but for reason and justice, before a stupid and
bigoted tribunal; and, in the last sad scene of all, exchanging Attic
courtesies with the unwilling instrument of his death.[80]
Such a character would, in any case, be remarkable; it becomes of
extraordinary, or rather of unique, interest when we consider that
Socrates could be and do so much, not in spite of being a philosopher,
but because he was a philosopher, the chief though not the sole
originator of a vast intellectual revolution; one who, as a teacher,
constituted the supremacy of reason, and as an individual made
reason his sole guide in life. He at once discovered new principles,
popularised them for the benefit of others, and exemplified them in
his own conduct; but he did not accomplish these results separately;
they were only different aspects of the same systematising process
which is identical with philosophy itself. Yet the very success of
Socrates in harmonising life and thought makes it the more difficult
for us to construct a complete picture of his personality. Different
observers have selected from the complex combination that which best
suited their own mental predisposition, pushing out of sight the other
elements which, with him, served to correct and complete it. The very
popularity that has attached itself to his name is a proof of this; for
the multitude can seldom appreciate more than one excellence at a time,
nor is that usually of the highest order. Hegel complains that Socrates
has been made the patron-saint of moral twaddle.[81] We are fifty
years further removed than Hegel from the golden age of platitude; the
twaddle of our own time is half cynical, half aesthetic, and wholly
unmoral; yet there are no signs of diminution in the popular favour
with which Socrates has always been regarded. The man of the world, the
wit, the _viveur_, the enthusiastic admirer of youthful beauty, the
scornful critic of democracy is welcome to many who have no taste for
ethical discourses and fine-spun arguments.
Nor is it only the personality of Socrates that has been so variously
conceived; his philosophy, so far as it can be separated from his
life, has equally given occasion to conflicting interpretations, and
it has even been denied that he had, properly speaking, any philosophy
at all. These divergent presentations of his teaching, if teaching it
can be called, begin with the two disciples to whom our knowledge of
it is almost entirely due. There is, curiously enough, much the same
inner discrepancy between Xenophon’s _Memorabilia_ and those Platonic
dialogues where Socrates is the principal spokesman, as that which
distinguishes the Synoptic from the Johannine Gospels. The one gives
us a report certainly authentic, but probably incomplete; the other
account is, beyond all doubt, a highly idealised portraiture, but seems
to contain some traits directly copied from the original, which may
well have escaped a less philosophical observer than Plato. Aristotle
also furnishes us with some scanty notices which are of use in deciding
between the two rival versions, although we cannot be sure that he had
access to any better sources of information than are open to ourselves.
By variously combining and reasoning from these data modern critics
have produced a third Socrates, who is often little more than the
embodiment of their own favourite opinions.
In England, the most generally accepted method seems to be that
followed by Grote. This consists in taking the Platonic _Apologia_ as a
sufficiently faithful report of the defence actually made by Socrates
on his trial, and piecing it on to the details supplied by Xenophon, or
at least to as many of them as can be made to fit, without too obvious
an accommodation of their meaning. If, however, we ask on what grounds
a greater historical credibility is attributed to the _Apologia_ than
to the _Republic_ or the _Phaedo_, none can be offered except the
seemingly transparent truthfulness of the narrative itself, an argument
which will not weigh much with those who remember how brilliant was
Plato’s talent for fiction, and how unscrupulously it could be employed
for purposes of edification. The _Phaedo_ puts an autobiographical
statement into the mouth of Socrates which we only know to be imaginary
because it involves the acceptance of a theory unknown to the real
Socrates. Why, then, may not Plato have thought proper to introduce
equally fictitious details into the speech delivered by his master
before the dicastery, if, indeed, the speech, as we have it, be not a
fancy composition from beginning to end?
Before we can come to a decision on this point it will be necessary
briefly to recapitulate the statements in question. Socrates is
defending himself against a capital charge. He fears that a prejudice
respecting him may exist in the minds of the jury, and tries to explain
how it arose without any fault of his, as follows:—A certain friend of
his had asked the oracle at Delphi whether there was any man wiser than
Socrates? The answer was that no man was wiser. Not being conscious of
possessing any wisdom, great or small, he felt considerably surprised
on hearing of this declaration, and thought to convince the god of
falsehood by finding out some one wiser than himself. He first went
to an eminent politician, who, however, proved, on examination, to be
utterly ignorant, with the further disadvantage that it was impossible
to convince him of his ignorance. On applying the same test to others a
precisely similar result was obtained. It was only the handicraftsmen
who could give a satisfactory account of themselves, and their
knowledge of one trade made them fancy that they understood everything
else equally well. Thus the meaning of the oracle was shown to be that
God alone is truly wise, and that of all men he is wisest who, like
Socrates, perceives that human wisdom is worth little or nothing. Ever
since then, Socrates has made it his business to vindicate the divine
veracity by seeking out and exposing every pretender to knowledge that
he can find, a line of conduct which has made him extremely unpopular
in Athens, while it has also won him a great reputation for wisdom,
as people supposed that the matters on which he convicted others of
ignorance were perfectly clear to himself.
The first difficulty that strikes one in connexion with this
extraordinary story arises out of the oracle on which it all hinges.
Had such a declaration been really made by the Pythia, would not
Xenophon have eagerly quoted it as a proof of the high favour in which
his hero stood with the gods?[82] And how could Socrates have acquired
so great a reputation before entering on the cross-examining career
which alone made him conscious of any superiority over other men, and
had alone won the admiration of his fellow-citizens? Our doubts are
still further strengthened when we find that the historical Socrates
did not by any means profess the sweeping scepticism attributed to
him by Plato. So far from believing that ignorance was the common and
necessary lot of all mankind, himself included, he held that action
should, so far as possible, be entirely guided by knowledge;[83] that
the man who did not always know what he was about resembled a slave;
that the various virtues were only different forms of knowledge; that
he himself possessed this knowledge, and was perfectly competent to
share it with his friends. We do, indeed, find him very ready to
convince ignorant and presumptuous persons of their deficiencies,
but only that he may lead them, if well disposed, into the path of
right understanding. He also thought that there were certain secrets
which would remain for ever inaccessible to the human intellect,
facts connected with the structure of the universe which the gods
had reserved for their own exclusive cognisance. This, however,
was, according to him, a kind of knowledge which, even if it could
be obtained, would not be particularly worth having, and the search
after which would leave us no leisure for more useful acquisitions.
Nor does the Platonic Socrates seem to have been at the trouble of
arguing against natural science. The subjects of his elenchus are the
professors of such arts as politics, rhetoric, and poetry. Further,
we have something stronger than a simple inference from the facts
recorded by Xenophon; we have his express testimony to the fact that
Socrates did not limit himself to confuting people who fancied they
knew everything; here we must either have a direct reference to the
_Apologia_, or to a theory identical with that which it embodies.[I]
Some stress has been laid on a phrase quoted by Xenophon himself as
having been used by Hippias, which at first sight seems to support
Plato’s view. The Elian Sophist charges Socrates with practising a
continual irony, refuting others and not submitting to be questioned
himself;[84] an accusation which, we may observe in passing, is not
borne out by the discussion that subsequently takes place between
them. Here, however, we must remember that Socrates used to convey
instruction under the form of a series of leading questions, the
answers to which showed that his interlocutor understood and assented
to the doctrine propounded. Such a method might easily give rise to
the misconception that he refused to disclose his own particular
opinions, and contented himself with eliciting those held by others.
Finally, it is to be noted that the idea of fulfilling a religious
mission, or exposing human ignorance _ad majorem Dei gloriam_, on which
Grote lays such stress, has no place in Xenophon’s conception of his
master, although, had such an idea been really present, one can hardly
imagine how it could have been passed over by a writer with whom piety
amounted to superstition. It is, on the other hand, an idea which would
naturally occur to a great religious reformer who proposed to base his
reconstruction of society on faith in a supernatural order, and the
desire to realise it here below.
So far we have contrasted the _Apologia_ with the _Memorabilia_. We
have now to consider in what relation it stands to Plato’s other
writings. The constructive dogmatic Socrates, who is a principal
spokesman in some of them, differs widely from the sceptical Socrates
of the famous _Defence_, and the difference has been urged as an
argument for the historical authenticity of the latter.[85] Plato, it
is implied, would not have departed so far from his usual conception
of the sage, had he not been desirous of reproducing the actual
words spoken on so solemn an occasion. There are, however, several
dialogues which seem to have been composed for the express purpose of
illustrating the negative method supposed to have been described by
Socrates to his judges, investigations the sole result of which is to
upset the theories of other thinkers, or to show that ordinary men
act without being able to assign a reason for their conduct. Even the
_Republic_ is professedly tentative in its procedure, and only follows
out a train of thought which has presented itself almost by accident
to the company. Unlike Charles Lamb’s Scotchman, the leading spokesman
does not bring, but find, and you are invited to cry halves to whatever
turns up in his company.
Plato had, in truth, a conception of science which no knowledge then
attained—perhaps one may add, no knowledge ever attainable—could
completely satisfy. Even the rigour of mathematical demonstration did
not content him, for mathematical truth itself rested on unproved
assumptions, as we also, by the way, have lately discovered. Perhaps
the Hegelian system would have fulfilled his requirements; perhaps
not even that. Moreover, that the new order which he contemplated
might be established, it was necessary to begin by making a clean
sweep of all existing opinions. With the urbanity of an Athenian, the
piety of a disciple, and the instinct of a great dramatic artist, he
preferred to assume that this indispensable task had already been done
by another. And of all preceding thinkers, who was so well qualified
for the undertaking as Socrates? Who else had wielded the weapons of
negative dialectic with such consummate dexterity? Who had assumed such
a critical attitude towards the beliefs of his contemporaries? Who
had been so anxious to find a point of attachment for every new truth
in the minds of his interlocutors? Who therefore could, with such
plausibility, be put forward in the guise of one who laid claim to no
wisdom on his own account? The son of Phaenaretê seemed made to be the
Baptist of a Greek Messiah; but Plato, in treating him as such, has
drawn a discreet veil over the whole positive side of his predecessor’s
teaching, and to discover what this was we must place ourselves under
the guidance of Xenophon’s more faithful report.
Not that Xenophon is to be taken as a perfectly accurate exponent of
the Socratic philosophy. His work, it must be remembered, was primarily
intended to vindicate Socrates from a charge of impiety and immoral
teaching, not to expound a system which he was perhaps incompetent
to appreciate or understand. We are bound to accept everything that
he relates; we are bound to include nothing that he does not relate;
but we may fairly readjust the proportions of his sketch. It is here
that a judicious use of Plato will furnish us with the most valuable
assistance. He grasped Socratism in all its parts and developed it in
all directions, so that by following back the lines of his system to
their origin we shall be put on the proper track and shall know where
to look for the suggestions which were destined to be so magnificently
worked out.[86]
II.
Before entering on our task of reconstruction, we must turn aside to
consider with what success the same enterprise has been attempted
by modern German criticism, especially by its chief contemporary
representative, the last and most distinguished historian of Greek
philosophy. The result at which Zeller, following Schleiermacher,
arrives is that the great achievement of Socrates was to put forward an
adequate idea of knowledge; in other words, to show what true science
ought to be, and what, as yet, it had never been, with the addition
of a demand that all action should be based on such a scientific
knowledge as its only sure foundation.[87] To know a thing was to know
its essence, its concept, the assemblage of qualities which together
constitute its definition, and make it to be what it is. Former
thinkers had also sought for knowledge, but not _as_ knowledge, not
with a clear notion of what it was that they really wanted. Socrates,
on the other hand, required that men should always be prepared to give
a strict account of the end which they had in view, and of the means
by which they hoped to gain it. Further, it had been customary to
single out for exclusive attention that quality of an object by which
the observer happened to be most strongly impressed, passing over
all the others; the consequence of which was that the philosophers
had taken a one-sided view of facts, with the result of falling into
hopeless disagreement among themselves; the Sophists had turned these
contradictory points of view against one another, and thus effected
their mutual destruction; while the dissolution of objective certainty
had led to a corresponding dissolution of moral truth. Socrates accepts
the Sophistic scepticism so far as it applies to the existing state of
science, but does not push it to the same fatal conclusion; he grants
that current beliefs should be thoroughly sifted and, if necessary,
discarded, but only that more solid convictions may be substituted for
them. Here a place is found for his method of self-examination, and
for the self-conscious ignorance attributed to him by Plato. Comparing
his notions on particular subjects with his idea of what knowledge in
general ought to be, he finds that they do not satisfy it; he knows
that he knows nothing. He then has recourse to other men who declare
that they possess the knowledge of which he is in search, but their
pretended certainty vanishes under the application of his dialectic
test. This is the famous Socratic irony. Finally, he attempts to come
at real knowledge, that is to say, the construction of definitions,
by employing that inductive method with the invention of which he
is credited by Aristotle. This method consists in bringing together
a number of simple and familiar examples from common experience,
generalising from them, and correcting the generalisations by
comparison with negative instances. The reasons that led Socrates to
restrict his enquiries to human interests are rather lightly passed
over by Zeller; he seems at a loss how to reconcile the alleged reform
of scientific method with the complete abandonment of those physical
investigations which, we are told, had suffered so severely from being
cultivated on a different system.
There seem to be three principal points aimed at in the very ingenious
theory which we have endeavoured to summarise as adequately as space
would permit. Zeller apparently wishes to bring Socrates into line with
the great tradition of early Greek thought, to distinguish him markedly
from the Sophists, and to trace back to his initiative the intellectual
method of Plato and Aristotle. We cannot admit that the threefold
attempt has succeeded. It seems to us that a picture into which so
much Platonic colouring has been thrown would for that reason alone,
and without any further objection, be open to very grave suspicion.
But even accepting the historical accuracy of everything that Plato
has said, or of as much as may be required, our critic’s inferences
are not justified by his authorities. Neither the Xenophontic nor the
Platonic Socrates seeks knowledge for its own sake, nor does either
of them offer a satisfactory definition of knowledge, or, indeed, any
definition at all. Aristotle was the first to explain what science
meant, and he did so, not by developing the Socratic notion, but by
incorporating it with the other methods independently struck out
by physical philosophy. What would science be without the study of
causation? and was not this ostentatiously neglected by the founder of
conceptualism? Again, Plato, in the _Theaetêtus_, makes his Socrates
criticise various theories of knowledge, but does not even hint that
the critic had himself a better theory than any of them in reserve.
The author of the _Phaedo_ and the _Republic_ was less interested in
reforming the methods of scientific investigation than in directing
research towards that which he believed to be alone worth knowing,
the eternal ideas which underlie phenomena. The historical Socrates
had no suspicion of transcendental realities; but he thought that
a knowledge of physics was unattainable, and would be worthless if
attained. By knowledge he meant art rather than science, and his
method of defining was intended not for the latter but for the former.
Those, he said, who can clearly express what they want to do are best
secured against failure, and best able to communicate their skill to
others. He made out that the various virtues were different kinds of
knowledge, not from any extraordinary opinion of its preciousness,
but because he thought that knowledge was the variable element in
volition and that everything else was constant. Zeller dwells strongly
on the Socratic identification of cognition with conduct; but how
could anyone who fell at the first step into such a confusion of ideas
be fitted either to explain what science meant or to come forward as
the reformer of its methods? Nor is it correct to say that Socrates
approached an object from every point of view, and took note of all
its characteristic qualities. On the contrary, one would be inclined
to charge him with the opposite tendency, with fixing his gaze too
exclusively on some one quality, that to him, as a teacher, was the
most interesting. His identification of virtue with knowledge is an
excellent instance of this habit. So also is his identification of
beauty with serviceableness, and his general disposition to judge
of everything by a rather narrow standard of utility. On the other
hand, Greek physical speculation would have gained nothing by a
minute attention to definitions, and most probably would have been
mischievously hampered by it. Aristotle, at any rate, prefers the
method of Democritus to the method of Plato; and Aristotle himself
is much nearer the truth when he follows on the Ionian or Sicilian
track than when he attempts to define what in the then existing state
of knowledge could not be satisfactorily defined. To talk about the
various elements—earth, air, fire, and water—as things with which
everybody was already familiar, may have been a crude unscientific
procedure; to analyse them into different combinations of the hot and
the cold, the light and the heavy, the dry and the moist, was not
only erroneous but fatally misleading; it was arresting enquiry, and
doing precisely what the Sophists had been accused of doing, that is,
substituting the conceit for the reality of wisdom. It was, no doubt,
necessary that mathematical terms should be defined; but where are we
told that geometricians had to learn this truth from Socrates? The
sciences of quantity, which could hardly have advanced a step without
the help of exact conceptions, were successfully cultivated before
he was born, and his influence was used to discourage rather than
to promote their accurate study. With regard to the comprehensive
all-sided examination of objects on which Zeller lays so much stress,
and which he seems to regard as something peculiar to the conceptual
method, it had unquestionably been neglected by Parmenides and
Heracleitus; but had not the deficiency been already made good by their
immediate successors? What else is the philosophy of Empedocles,
the Atomists, and Anaxagoras, but an attempt—we must add, a by no
means unsuccessful attempt—to recombine the opposing aspects of
Nature which had been too exclusively insisted on at Ephesus and Elea?
Again, to say that the Sophists had destroyed physical speculation
by setting these partial aspects of truth against one another is,
in our opinion, equally erroneous. First of all, Zeller here falls
into the old mistake, long ago corrected by Grote, of treating the
class in question as if they all held similar views. We have shown in
the preceding chapter, if indeed it required to be shown, that the
Sophists were divided into two principal schools, of which one was
devoted to the cultivation of physics. Protagoras and Gorgias were the
only sceptics; and it was not by setting one theory against another,
but by working out a single theory to its last consequences, that
their scepticism was reached; with no more effect, be it observed,
than was exercised by Pyrrho on the science of his day. For the two
great thinkers, with the aid of whose conclusions it was attempted to
discredit objective reality, were already left far behind at the close
of the fifth century; and neither their reasonings nor reasonings based
on theirs, could exercise much influence on a generation which had
Anaxagoras on Nature and the encyclopaedia of Democritus in its hands.
There was, however, one critic who really did what the Sophists are
charged with doing; who derided and denounced physical science on the
ground that its professors were hopelessly at issue with one another;
and this critic was no other than Socrates himself. He maintained, on
purely popular and superficial grounds, the same sceptical attitude
to which Protagoras gave at least the semblance of a psychological
justification. And he wished that attention should be concentrated
on the very subjects which Protagoras undertook to teach—namely,
ethics, politics, and dialectics. Once more, to say that Socrates was
conscious of not coming up to his own standard of true knowledge is
inconsistent with Xenophon’s account, where he is represented as quite
ready to answer every question put to him, and to offer a definition
of everything that he considered worth defining. His scepticism, if it
ever existed, was as artificial and short-lived as the scepticism of
Descartes.
The truth is that no man who philosophised at all was ever more
free from tormenting doubts and self-questionings; no man was ever
more thoroughly satisfied with himself than Socrates. Let us add
that, from a Hellenic point of view, no man had ever more reason
for self-satisfaction. None, he observed in his last days, had ever
lived a better or a happier life. Naturally possessed of a powerful
constitution, he had so strengthened it by habitual moderation and
constant training that up to the hour of his death, at the age of
seventy, he enjoyed perfect bodily and mental health. Neither hardship
nor exposure, neither abstinence nor indulgence in what to other men
would have been excess, could make any impression on that adamantine
frame. We know not how much truth there may be in the story that, at
one time, he was remarkable for the violence of his passions; at any
rate, when our principal informants knew him he was conspicuous for
the ease with which he resisted temptation, and for the imperturbable
sweetness of his temper. His wants, being systematically reduced to
a minimum, were easily satisfied, and his cheerfulness never failed.
He enjoyed Athenian society so much that nothing but military duty
could draw him away from it. For Socrates was a veteran who had served
through three arduous campaigns, and could give lectures on the
duties of a general, which so high an authority as Xenophon thought
worth reporting. He seems to have been on excellent terms with his
fellow-citizens, never having been engaged in a lawsuit, either as
plaintiff or defendant, until the fatal prosecution which brought his
career to a close. He could, on that occasion, refuse to prepare a
defence, proudly observing that his whole life had been a preparation,
that no man had ever seen him commit an unjust or impious deed. The
anguished cries of doubt uttered by Italian and Sicilian thinkers could
have no meaning for one who, on principle, abstained from ontological
speculations; the uncertainty of human destiny which hung like a
thunder-cloud over Pindar and the tragic poets had melted away under
the sunshine of arguments, demonstrating, to his satisfaction, the
reality and beneficence of a supernatural Providence. For he believed
that the gods would afford guidance in doubtful conjunctures to all who
approached their oracles in a reverent spirit; while, over and above
the Divine counsels accessible to all men, he was personally attended
by an oracular voice, a mysterious monitor, which told him what to
avoid, though not what to do, a circumstance well worthy of note, for
it shows that he did not, like Plato, attribute every kind of right
action to divine inspiration.
It may be said that all this only proves Socrates to have been, in
his own estimation, a good and happy, but not necessarily a wise man.
With him, however, the last of these conditions was inseparable from
the other two. He was prepared to demonstrate, step by step, that his
conduct was regulated by fixed and ascertainable principles, and was
of the kind best adapted to secure happiness both for himself and for
others. That there were deficiencies in his ethical theory may readily
be admitted. The idea of universal beneficence seems never to have
dawned on his horizon; and chastity was to him what sobriety is to us,
mainly a self-regarding virtue. We do not find that he ever recommended
conjugal fidelity to husbands; he regarded prostitution very much as
it is still, unhappily, regarded by men of the world among ourselves;
and in opposing the darker vices of his countrymen, it was the excess
rather than the perversion of appetite which he condemned. These,
however, are points which do not interfere with our general contention
that Socrates adopted the ethical standard of his time, that he adopted
it on rational grounds, that having adopted he acted up to it, and
that in so reasoning and acting he satisfied his own ideal of absolute
wisdom.
Even as regards physical phenomena, Socrates, so far from professing
complete ignorance, held a very positive theory which he was quite
ready to share with his friends. He taught what is called the doctrine
of final causes; and, so far as our knowledge goes, he was either the
first to teach it, or, at any rate, the first to prove the existence of
divine agencies by its means. The old poets had occasionally attributed
the origin of man and other animals to supernatural intelligence, but,
apparently, without being led to their conviction by any evidence of
design displayed in the structure of organised creatures. Socrates, on
the other hand, went through the various external organs of the human
body with great minuteness, and showed, to his own satisfaction, that
they evinced the workings of a wise and beneficent Artist. We shall
have more to say further on about this whole argument; here we only
wish to observe that, intrinsically, it does not differ very much
from the speculations which its author derided as the fruit of an
impertinent curiosity; and that no one who now employed it would, for a
single moment, be called an agnostic or a sceptic.
Must we, then, conclude that Socrates was, after all, nothing but a
sort of glorified Greek Paley, whose principal achievement was to
present the popular ideas of his time on morals and politics under
the form of a rather grovelling utilitarianism; and whose ‘evidences
of natural and revealed religion’ bore much the same relation to
Greek mythology as the corresponding lucubrations of the worthy
archdeacon bore to Christian theology? Even were this the whole truth,
it should be remembered that there was an interval of twenty-three
centuries between the two teachers, which ought to be taken due
account of in estimating their relative importance. Socrates, with his
closely-reasoned, vividly-illustrated ethical expositions, had gained
a tactical advantage over the vague declamations of Gnomic poetry and
the isolated aphorisms of the Seven Sages, comparable to that possessed
by Xenophon and his Ten Thousand in dealing with the unwieldy masses
of Persian infantry and the undisciplined mountaineers of Carduchia;
while his idea of a uniformly beneficent Creator marked a still greater
advance on the jealous divinities of Herodotus. On the other hand,
as against Hume and Bentham, Paley’s pseudo-scientific paraphernalia
were like the muskets and cannon of an Asiatic army when confronted by
the English conquerors of India. Yet had Socrates done no more than
contributed to philosophy the idea just alluded to, his place in the
evolution of thought, though honourable, would not have been what it is
justly held to be—unique.
III.
So far we have been occupied in disputing the views of others; it is
now time that our own view should be stated. We maintain, then, that
Socrates first brought out the idea, not of knowledge, but of mind in
its full significance; that he first studied the whole circle of human
interests as affected by mind; that, in creating dialectics, he gave
this study its proper method, and simultaneously gave his method the
only subject-matter on which it could be profitably exercised; finally,
that by these immortal achievements philosophy was constituted, and
received a threefold verification—first, from the life of its founder;
secondly, from the success with which his spirit was communicated to
a band of followers; thirdly, from the whole subsequent history of
thought. Before substantiating these assertions point by point, it will
be expedient to glance at the external influences which may be supposed
to have moulded the great intellect and the great character now under
consideration.
Socrates was, before all things, an Athenian. To understand him
we must first understand what the Athenian character was in itself
and independently of disturbing circumstances. Our estimate of that
character is too apt to be biassed by the totally exceptional position
which Athens occupied during the fifth century B.C. The possession
of empire developed qualities in her children which they had not
exhibited at an earlier period, and which they ceased to exhibit when
empire had been lost. Among these must be reckoned military genius,
an adventurous and romantic spirit, and a high capacity for poetical
and artistic production—qualities displayed, it is true, by every
Greek race, but by some for a longer and by others for a shorter
period. Now, the tradition of greatness does not seem to have gone
very far back with Athens. Her legendary history, what we have of it,
is singularly unexciting. The same rather monotonous though edifying
story of shelter accorded to persecuted fugitives, of successful
resistance to foreign invasions, and of devoted self-sacrifice to the
State, meets us again and again. The Attic drama itself shows how much
more stirring was the legendary lore of other tribes. One need only
look at the few remaining pieces which treat of patriotic subjects to
appreciate the difference; and an English reader may easily convince
himself of it by comparing Mr. Swinburne’s _Erechtheus_ with the same
author’s _Atalanta_. There is a want of vivid individuality perceptible
all through. Even Theseus, the great national hero, strikes one as a
rather tame sort of personage compared with Perseus, Heraclês, and
Jason. No Athenian figures prominently in the _Iliad_; and on the only
two occasions when Pindar was employed to commemorate an Athenian
victory at the Panhellenic games, he seems unable to associate it
with any legendary glories in the past. The circumstances which for
a long time made Attic history so barren of incident are the same to
which its subsequent importance is due. The relation in which Attica
stood to the rest of Greece was somewhat similar to the relation in
which Tuscany, long afterwards, stood to the rest of Italy. It was the
region least disturbed by foreign immigration, and therefore became
the seat of a slower but steadier mental development. It was among
those to whom war, revolution, colonisation, and commerce brought
the most many-sided experience that intellectual activity was most
speedily ripened. Literature, art, and science were cultivated with
extraordinary success by the Greek cities of Asia Minor, and even
in some parts of the old country, before Athens had a single man of
genius, except Solon, to boast of. But along with the enjoyment of
undisturbed tranquillity, habits of self-government, orderliness, and
reasonable reflection were establishing themselves, which finally
enabled her to inherit all that her predecessors in the race had
accomplished, and to add, what alone they still wanted, the crowning
consecration of self-conscious mind. There had, simultaneously, been
growing up an intensely patriotic sentiment, due, in part, to the
long-continued independence of Attica; in part, also, we may suppose,
to the union, at a very early period, of her different townships into a
single city. The same causes had, however, also favoured a certain love
of comfort, a jovial pleasure-seeking disposition often degenerating
into coarse sensuality, a thriftiness, and an inclination to grasp at
any source of profit, coupled with extreme credulity where hopes of
profit were excited, together forming an element of prose-comedy which
mingles strangely with the tragic grandeur of Athens in her imperial
age, and emerges into greater prominence after her fall, until it
becomes the predominant characteristic of her later days. It is, we may
observe, the contrast between these two aspects of Athenian life which
gives the plays of Aristophanes their unparalleled comic effect, and
it is their very awkward conjunction which makes Euripides so unequal
and disappointing a poet. We find, then, that the original Athenian
character is marked by reasonable reflection, by patriotism, and by a
tendency towards self-seeking materialism. Let us take note of these
three qualities, for we shall meet with them again in the philosophy of
Socrates.
Empire, when it came to Athens, came almost unsought. The Persian
invasions had made her a great naval power; the free choice of her
allies placed her at the head of a great maritime confederacy. The
sudden command of vast resources and the tension accumulated during
ages of repose, stimulated all her faculties into preternatural
activity. Her spirit was steeled almost to the Dorian temper, and
entered into victorious rivalry with the Dorian Muse. Not only did
her fleet sweep the sea, but her army, for once, defeated Theban
hoplites in the field. The grand choral harmonies of Sicilian song,
the Sicyonian recitals of epic adventure, were rolled back into a
framework for the spectacle of individual souls meeting one another in
argument, expostulation, entreaty, and defiance; a nobler Doric edifice
rose to confront the Aeginetan temple of Athênê; the strained energy
of Aeginetan combatants was relaxed into attitudes of reposing power,
and the eternal smile on their faces was deepened into the sadness of
unfathomable thought. But to the violet-crowned city, Athênê was a
giver of wealth and wisdom rather than of prowess; her empire rested on
the contributions of unwilling allies, and on a technical proficiency
which others were sure to equal in time; so that the Corinthian
orators could say with justice that Athenian skill was more easily
acquired than Dorian valour. At once receptive and communicative,
Athens absorbed all that Greece could teach her, and then returned it
in a more elaborate form, but without the freshness of its earliest
inspiration. Yet there was one field that still afforded scope for
creative originality. Habits of analysis, though fatal to spontaneous
production, were favourable, or rather were necessary, to the growth
of a new philosophy. After the exhaustion of every limited idealism,
there remained that highest idealisation which is the reduction of all
past experience to a method available for the guidance of all future
action. To accomplish this last enterprise it was necessary that a
single individual should gather up in himself the spirit diffused
through a whole people, bestowing on it by that very concentration
the capability of an infinitely wider extension when its provisional
representative should have passed away from the scene.
Socrates represents the popular Athenian character much as Richardson,
in a different sphere, represents the English middle-class
character—represents it, that is to say, elevated into transcendent
genius. Except this elevation, there was nothing anomalous about him.
If he was exclusively critical, rationalising, unadventurous, prosaic;
in a word, as the German historians say, something of a Philistine;
so, we may suspect, were the mass of his countrymen. His illustrations
were taken from such plebeian employments as cattle-breeding, cobbling,
weaving, and sailoring. These were his ‘touches of things common’
which at last ‘rose to touch the spheres.’ He both practised and
inculcated virtues, the value of which is especially evident in humble
life—frugality and endurance. But he also represents the Dêmos in its
sovereign capacity as legislator and judge. Without aspiring to be an
orator or statesman, he reserves the ultimate power of arbitration
and election. He submits candidates for office to a severe scrutiny,
and demands from all men an even stricter account of their lives than
retiring magistrates had to give of their conduct, when in power, to
the people. He applies the judicial method of cross-examination to the
detection of error, and the parliamentary method of joint deliberation
to the discovery of truth. He follows out the democratic principles
of free speech and self-government, by submitting every question
that arises to public discussion, and insisting on no conclusion
that does not command the willing assent of his audience. Finally,
his conversation, popular in form, was popular also in this respect,
that everybody who chose to listen might have the benefit of it
gratuitously. Here we have a great change from the scornful dogmatism
of Heracleitus, and the virtually oligarchic exclusiveness of the
teachers who demanded high fees for their instruction.
To be free and to rule over freemen were, with Socrates, as with
every Athenian, the goals of ambition, only his freedom meant
absolute immunity from the control of passion or habit; government
meant superior knowledge, and government of freemen meant the power
of producing intellectual conviction. In his eyes, the possessor of
any art was, so far, a ruler, and the only true ruler, being obeyed
under severe penalties by all who stood in need of his skill. But the
royal art which he himself exercised, without expressly laying claim
to it, was that which assigns its proper sphere to every other art,
and provides each individual with the employment which his peculiar
faculties demand. This is Athenian liberty and Athenian imperialism
carried into education, but so idealised and purified that they can
hardly be recognised at first sight.
The philosophy of Socrates is more obviously related to the practical
and religious tendencies of his countrymen. Neither he nor they had
any sympathy with the cosmological speculations which seemed to be
unconnected with human interests, and to trench on matters beyond the
reach of human knowledge. The old Attic sentiment was averse from
adventures of any kind, whether political or intellectual. Yet the new
spirit of enquiry awakened by Ionian thought could not fail to react
powerfully on the most intelligent man among the most intelligent
people of Hellas. Above all, one paramount idea which went beyond the
confines of the old philosophy had been evolved by the differentiation
of knowledge from its object, and had been presented, although under a
materialising form, by Anaxagoras to the Athenian public. Socrates took
up this idea, which expressed what was highest and most distinctive in
the national character, and applied it to the development of ethical
speculation. We have seen, in the last chapter, how an attempt was made
to base moral truth on the results of natural philosophy, and how that
attempt was combated by the Humanistic school. It could not be doubtful
which side Socrates would take in this controversy. That he paid any
attention to the teaching of Protagoras and Gorgias is, indeed, highly
problematic, for their names are never mentioned by Xenophon, and the
Platonic dialogues in which they figure are evidently fictitious.
Nevertheless, he had to a certain extent arrived at the same conclusion
with them, although by a different path. He was opposed, on religious
grounds, to the theories which an acute psychological analysis
had led them to reject. Accordingly, the idea of Nature is almost
entirely absent from his conversation, and, like Protagoras, he is
guided solely by regard for human interests. To the objection that
positive laws were always changing, he victoriously replied that it
was because they were undergoing an incessant adaptation to varying
needs.[88] Like Protagoras, again, he was a habitual student of old
Greek literature, and sedulously sought out the practical lessons in
which it abounded. To him, as to the early poets and sages, Sôphrosynê,
or self-knowledge and self-command taken together, was the first and
most necessary of all virtues. Unlike them, however, he does not simply
accept it from tradition, but gives it a philosophical foundation—the
newly-established distinction between mind and body; a distinction
not to be confounded with the old Psychism, although Plato, for his
reforming purposes, shortly afterwards linked the two together. The
disembodied spirit of mythology was a mere shadow or memory, equally
destitute of solidity and of understanding; with Socrates, mind meant
the personal consciousness which retains its continuous identity
through every change, and as against every passing impulse. Like the
Humanists, he made it the seat of knowledge—more than the Humanists,
he gave it the control of appetite. In other words, he adds the idea
of will to that of intellect; but instead of treating them as distinct
faculties or functions, he absolutely identifies them. Mind having
come to be first recognised as a knowing power, carried over its
association with knowledge into the volitional sphere, and the two
were first disentangled by Aristotle, though very imperfectly even by
him. Yet no thinker helped so much to make the confusion apparent as
the one to whom it was due. Socrates deliberately insisted that those
who knew the good must necessarily be good themselves. He taught that
every virtue was a science; courage, for example, was a knowledge
of the things which should or should not be feared; temperance, a
knowledge of what should or should not be desired, and so forth. Such
an account of virtue would, perhaps, be sufficient if all men did what,
in their opinion, they ought to do; and, however strange it may seem,
Socrates assumed that such was actually the case.[89] The paradox,
even if accepted at the moment by his youthful friends, was sure to
be rejected, on examination, by cooler heads, and its rejection would
prove that the whole doctrine was essentially unsound. Various causes
prevented Socrates from perceiving what seemed so clear to duller
intelligences than his. First of all, he did not separate duty from
personal interest. A true Athenian, he recommended temperance and
righteousness very largely on account of the material advantages they
secured. That the agreeable and the honourable, the expedient and the
just, frequently came into collision, was at that time a rhetorical
commonplace; and it might be supposed that, if they were shown to
coincide, no motive to misconduct but ignorance could exist. Then,
again, being accustomed to compare conduct of every kind with the
practice of such arts as flute-playing, he had come to take knowledge
in a rather extended sense, just as we do when we say, indifferently,
that a man knows geometry and that he knows how to draw. Aristotle
himself did not see more clearly than Socrates that moral habits are
only to be acquired by incessant practice; only the earlier thinker
would have observed that knowledge of every kind is gained by the same
laborious repetition of particular actions. To the obvious objection
that, in this case, morality cannot, like theoretical truth, be
imparted by the teacher to his pupils, but must be won by the learner
for himself, he would probably have replied that all truth is really
evolved by the mind from itself, and that he, for that very reason,
disclaimed the name of a teacher, and limited himself to the seemingly
humbler task of awakening dormant capacities in others.
An additional influence, not the less potent because unacknowledged,
was the same craving for a principle of unity that had impelled early
Greek thought to seek for the sole substance or cause of physical
phenomena in some single material element, whether water, air, or fire;
and just as these various principles were finally decomposed into the
multitudinous atoms of Leucippus, so also, but much more speedily,
did the general principle of knowledge tend to decompose itself into
innumerable cognitions of the partial ends or utilities which action
was directed to achieve. The need of a comprehensive generalisation
again made itself felt, and all good was summed up under the head
of happiness. The same difficulties recurred under another form. To
define happiness proved not less difficult than to define use or
practical knowledge. Three points of view offered themselves, and all
three had been more or less anticipated by Socrates. Happiness might
mean unmixed pleasure, or the exclusive cultivation of man’s higher
nature, or voluntary subordination to a larger whole. The founder of
Athenian philosophy used to present each of these, in turn, as an end,
without recognising the possibility of a conflict between them; and it
certainly would be a mistake to represent them as constantly opposed.
Yet a truly scientific principle must either prove their identity, or
make its choice among them, or discover something better. Plato seems
to have taken up the three methods, one after the other, without coming
to any very satisfactory conclusion. Aristotle identified the first
two, but failed, or rather did not attempt to harmonise them with the
third. Succeeding schools tried various combinations, laying more or
less stress on different principles at different periods, till the will
of an omnipotent Creator was substituted for every human standard.
With the decline of dogmatic theology we have seen them all come to
life again, and the old battle is still being fought out under our
eyes. Speaking broadly, it may be said that the method which we have
placed first on the list is more particularly represented in England,
the second in France, and the last in Germany. Yet they refuse to be
separated by any rigid line of demarcation, and each tends either to
combine with or to pass into one or both of the rival theories. Modern
utilitarianism, as constituted by John Stuart Mill, although avowedly
based on the paramount value of pleasure, in admitting qualitative
differences among enjoyments, and in subordinating individual to
social good, introduces principles of action which are not, properly
speaking, hedonistic. Neither is the idea of the whole by any means
free from ambiguity. We have party, church, nation, order, progress,
race, humanity, and the sum total of sensitive beings, all putting in
their claims to figure as that entity. Where the pursuit of any single
end gives rise to conflicting pretensions, a wise man will check them
by reference to the other accredited standards, and will cherish a not
unreasonable expectation that the evolution of life is tending to bring
them all into ultimate agreement.
Returning to Socrates, we must further note that his identification
of virtue with science, though it does not express the whole truth,
expresses a considerable part of it, especially as to him conduct was
a much more complex problem than it is to some modern teachers. Only
those who believe in the existence of intuitive and infallible moral
perceptions can consistently maintain that nothing is easier than
to know our duty, and nothing harder than to do it. Even then, the
intuitions must extend beyond general principles, and also inform us
how and where to apply them. That no such inward illumination exists
is sufficiently shown by experience; so much so that the mischief done
by foolish people with good intentions has become proverbial. Modern
casuists have, indeed, drawn a distinction between the intention and
the act, making us responsible for the purity of the former, not for
the consequences of the latter. Though based on the Socratic division
between mind and body, this distinction would not have commended itself
to Socrates. His object was not to save souls from sin, but to save
individuals, families, and states from the ruin which ignorance of fact
entails.
If we enlarge our point of view so as to cover the moral influence of
knowledge on society taken collectively, its relative importance will
be vastly increased. When Auguste Comte assigns the supreme direction
of progress to advancing science, and when Buckle, following Fichte,
makes the totality of human action depend on the totality of human
knowledge, they are virtually attributing to intellectual education an
even more decisive part than it played in the Socratic ethics. Even
those who reject the theory, when pushed to such an extreme, will admit
that the same quantity of self-devotion must produce a far greater
effect when it is guided by deeper insight into the conditions of
existence.
The same principle may be extended in a different direction if we
substitute for knowledge, in its narrower significance, the more
general conception of associated feeling. We shall then see that
belief, habit, emotion, and instinct are only different stages of
the same process—the process by which experience is organised and
made subservient to vital activity. The simplest reflex and the
highest intellectual conviction are alike based on sensori-motor
mechanism, and, so far, differ only through the relative complexity and
instability of the nervous connexions involved. Knowledge is life in
the making, and when it fails to control practice fails only by coming
into conflict with passion—that is to say, with the consolidated
results of an earlier experience. Physiology offers another analogy
to the Socratic method which must not be overlooked. Socrates
recommended the formation of definite conceptions because, among other
advantages, they facilitated the diffusion of useful knowledge. So,
also, the organised associations of feelings are not only serviceable
to individuals, but may be transmitted to offspring with a regularity
proportioned to their definiteness. How naturally these deductions
follow from the doctrine under consideration, is evident from their
having been, to a certain extent, already drawn by Plato. His plan
for the systematic education of feeling under scientific supervision
answers to the first; his plan for breeding an improved race of
citizens by placing marriage under State control answers to the second.
Yet it is doubtful whether Plato’s predecessor would have sanctioned
any scheme tending to substitute an external compulsion, whether felt
or not, for freedom and individual initiative, and a blind instinct for
the self-consciousness which can give an account of its procedure at
every step. He would bring us back from social physics and physiology
to psychology, and from psychology to dialectic philosophy.
IV.
To Socrates himself the strongest reason for believing in the
identity of conviction and practice was, perhaps, that he had made
it a living reality. With him to know the right and to do it were
the same. In this sense we have already said that his life was the
first verification of his philosophy. And just as the results of his
ethical teaching can only be ideally separated from their application
to his conduct, so also these results themselves cannot be kept apart
from the method by which they were reached; nor is the process by
which he reached them for himself distinguishable from the process
by which he communicated them to his friends. In touching on this
point, we touch on that which is greatest and most distinctively
original in the Socratic system, or rather in the Socratic impulse
to systematisation of every kind. What it was will be made clearer
by reverting to the central conception of mind. With Protagoras mind
meant an ever-changing stream of feeling; with Gorgias it was a
principle of hopeless isolation, the interchange of thoughts between
one consciousness and another, by means of signs, being an illusion.
Socrates, on the contrary, attributed to it a steadfast control over
passion, and a unifying function in society through its essentially
synthetic activity, its need of co-operation and responsive assurance.
He saw that the reason which overcomes animal desire tends to draw
men together just as sensuality tends to drive them into hostile
collision. If he recommended temperance on account of the increased
egoistic pleasure which it secures, he recommended it also as making
the individual a more efficient instrument for serving the community.
If he inculcated obedience to the established laws, it was no doubt
partly on grounds of enlightened self-interest, but also because union
and harmony among citizens were thereby secured. And if he insisted
on the necessity of forming definite conceptions, it was with the
same twofold reference to personal and public advantage. Along with
the diffusive, social character of mind he recognised its essential
spontaneity. In a commonwealth where all citizens were free and equal,
there must also be freedom and equality of reason. Having worked out
a theory of life for himself, he desired that all other men should,
so far as possible, pass through the same bracing discipline. Here we
have the secret of his famous erotetic method. He did not, like the
Sophists, give continuous lectures, nor profess, like some of them,
to answer every question that might be put to him. On the contrary,
he put a series of questions to all who came in his way, generally in
the form of an alternative, one side of which seemed self-evidently
true and the other self-evidently false, arranged so as to lead the
respondent, step by step, to the conclusion which it was desired that
he should accept. Socrates did not invent this method. It had long been
practised in the Athenian law-courts as a means for extracting from
the opposite party admissions which could not be otherwise obtained,
whence it had passed into the tragic drama, and into the discussion of
philosophical problems. Nowhere else was the analytical power of Greek
thought so brilliantly displayed; for before a contested proposition
could be subjected to this mode of treatment, it had to be carefully
discriminated from confusing adjuncts, considered under all the various
meanings which it might possibly be made to bear, subdivided, if it was
complex, into two or more distinct assertions, and linked by a minute
chain of demonstration to the admission by which its validity was
established or overthrown.
Socrates, then, did not create the cross-examining elenchus, but he
gave it two new and very important applications. So far as we can make
out, it had hitherto been only used (again, after the example of the
law-courts) for the purpose of detecting error or intentional deceit.
He made it an instrument for introducing his own convictions into the
minds of others, but so that his interlocutors seemed to be discovering
them for themselves, and were certainly learning how, in their turn,
to practise the same didactic interrogation on a future occasion. And
he also used it for the purpose of logical self-discipline in a manner
which will be presently explained. Of course, Socrates also employed
the erotetic method as a means of confutation, and, in his hands, it
powerfully illustrated what we have called the negative moment of
Greek thought. To prepare the ground for new truth it was necessary
to clear away the misconceptions which were likely to interfere with
its admission; or, if Socrates himself had nothing to impart, he could
at any rate purge away the false conceit of knowledge from unformed
minds, and hold them back from attempting difficult tasks until they
were properly qualified for the undertaking. For example, a certain
Glauco, a brother of Plato, had attempted to address the public
assembly, when he was not yet twenty years of age, and was naturally
quite unfitted for the task. At Athens, where every citizen had a
voice in his country’s affairs, obstruction, whether intentional or
not, was very summarily dealt with. Speakers who had nothing to say
that was worth hearing were forcibly removed from the bêma by the
police; and this fate had already more than once befallen the youthful
orator, much to the annoyance of his friends, who could not prevail
on him to refrain from repeating the experiment, when Socrates took
the matter in hand. One or two adroit compliments on his ambition drew
Glauco into a conversation with the veteran dialectician on the aims
and duties of a statesman. It was agreed that his first object should
be to benefit the country, and that a good way of achieving this end
would be to increase its wealth, which, again, could be done either
by augmenting the receipts or by diminishing the expenditure. Could
Glauco tell what was the present revenue of Athens, and whence it was
derived?—No; he had not studied that question.—Well then, perhaps, he
had some useful retrenchments to propose.—No; he had not studied that
either. But the State might, he thought, be enriched at the expense of
its enemies.—A good idea, if we can be sure of beating them first!
Only, to avoid the risk of attacking somebody who is stronger than
ourselves, we must know what are the enemy’s military resources as
compared with our own. To begin with the latter: Can Glauco tell how
many ships and soldiers Athens has at her disposal?—No, he does not
at this moment remember.—Then, perhaps, he has it all written down
somewhere?—He must confess not. So the conversation goes on until
Socrates has convicted his ambitious young friend of possessing no
accurate information whatever about political questions.[90]
Xenophon has recorded another dialogue in which a young man named
Euthydêmus, who was also in training for a statesman, and who, as he
supposed, had learned a great deal more out of books than Socrates
could teach him, is brought to see how little he knows about ethical
science. He is asked, Can a man be a good citizen without being
just? No, he cannot.—Can Euthydêmus tell what acts are just? Yes,
certainly, and also what are unjust.—Under which head does he put
such actions as lying, deceiving, harming, enslaving?—Under the
head of injustice.—But suppose a hostile people are treated in the
various manners specified, is that unjust?—No, but it was understood
that only one’s friends were meant.—Well, if a general encourages
his own army by false statements, or a father deceives his child into
taking medicine, or your friend seems likely to commit suicide, and
you purloin a deadly weapon from him, is that unjust?—No, we must add
‘for the purpose of harming’ to our definition. Socrates, however,
does not stop here, but goes on cross-examining until the unhappy
student is reduced to a state of hopeless bewilderment and shame. He
is then brought to perceive the necessity of self-knowledge, which
is explained to mean knowledge of one’s own powers. As a further
exercise Euthydêmus is put through his facings on the subject of good
and evil. Health, wealth, strength, wisdom and beauty are mentioned
as unquestionable goods. Socrates shows, in the style long afterwards
imitated by Juvenal, that they are only means towards an end, and may
be productive of harm no less than good.—Happiness at any rate is an
unquestionable good.—Yes, unless we make it consist of questionable
goods like those just enumerated.[91]