SOCRATES.[2]
1. HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER.—The new philosophical principle appears in
the personal character of Socrates. His philosophy is his mode of acting
as an individual; his life and doctrine cannot be separated. His
biography, therefore, forms the only complete representation of his
philosophy, and what the narrative of Xenophon presents us as the
definite doctrine of Socrates, is consequently nothing but an abstract
of his inward character, as it found expression from time to time in his
conversation. Plato yet more regarded his master as such an archetypal
personality, and a luminous exhibition of the historical Socrates is the
special object of his later and maturer dialogues, and of these again,
the Symposium is the most brilliant apotheosis of the Eros incarnated in
the person of Socrates, of the philosophical impulse transformed into
character.
Socrates was born in the year 469 B. C, the son of Sophroniscus, a
sculptor, and Phænarete, a midwife. In his youth he was trained by his
father to follow his own profession, and in this he is said not to have
been without skill. Three draped figures of the Graces, called the work
of Socrates, were seen by Pausanias, upon the Akropolis. Little farther
is known of his education. He may have profited by the instruction of
Prodicus and the musician, Damon, but he stood in no personal connection
with the proper philosophers, who flourished before, or cotemporaneously
with him. He became what he was by himself alone, and just for this
reason does he form an era in the old philosophy. If the ancients call
him a scholar of Anaxagoras, or of the natural philosopher, Archelaus,
the first is demonstrably false, and the second, to say the least, is
altogether improbable. He never sought other means of culture than those
afforded in his native city. With the exception of one journey to a
public festival, the military campaigns which led him as far as Potidæa,
Delion, and Amphipolis, he never left Athens.
The period when Socrates first began to devote himself to the education
of youth, can be determined only approximately from the time of the
first representation of the Clouds of Aristophanes, which was in the
year 423. The date of the Delphic oracle, which pronounced him the
wisest of men, is not known. But in the traditions of his followers, he
is almost uniformly represented as an old, or as a gray-headed man. His
mode of instruction, wholly different from the pedantry and boastful
ostentation of the Sophists, was altogether unconstrained,
conversational, popular, starting from objects lying nearest at hand and
the most insignificant, and deriving the necessary illustrations and
proofs from the most common matters of every day life; in fact, he was
reproached by his cotemporaries for speaking ever only of drudges,
smiths, cobblers and tanners. So we find him at the market, in the
gymnasia, in the workshops, busy early and late, talking with youth,
with young men, and with old men, on the proper aim and business of
life, convincing them of their ignorance, and wakening up in them the
slumbering desires after knowledge. In every human effort, whether
directed to the interests of the commonwealth, or to the private
individual and the gains of trade, to science or to art, this master of
helps to spiritual births could find fit points of contact for the
awakening of a true self-knowledge, and a moral and religions
consciousness. However often his attempts failed, or were rejected with
bitter scorn, or requited with hatred and unthankfulness, yet, led on by
the clear conviction that a real improvement in the condition of the
state could come only from a proper education of its youth, he remained
to the last true to his chosen vocation. Purely Greek in these relations
to the rising generation, he designated himself, by preference, as the
most ardent lover; Greek too in this, that with him, notwithstanding
these free relations of friendship, his own domestic life fell quite
into the background. He nowhere shows much regard for his wife and
children; the notorious, though altogether too much exaggerated
ill-nature of Xantippe, leads us to suspect, however, that his domestic
relations were not the most happy.
As a man, as a practical sage, Socrates is pictured in the brightest
colors by all narrators. “He was,” says Xenophon, “so pious, that he did
nothing without the advice of the gods; so just, that he never injured
any one even in the least; so completely master of himself, that he
never chose the agreeable instead of the good; so discerning, that he
never failed in distinguishing the better from the worse;” in short, he
was “just the best and happiest man possible.” (Xen. _Mem._ I. 1, 11.
IV. 8, 11.) Still that which lends to his person such a peculiar charm,
is the happy blending and harmonious connection of all its
characteristic traits, the perfection of a beautiful, plastic nature. In
all this universality of his genius, in this force of character, by
which he combined the most contradictory and incongruous elements into a
harmonious whole, in this lofty elevation above every human weakness,—in
a word, as a perfect model, he is most strikingly depicted in the
brilliant eulogy of Alcibiades, in the Symposium of Plato. In the
scantier representation of Xenophon, also, we find everywhere a classic
form, a man possessed of the finest social culture, full of Athenian
politeness, infinitely removed from every thing like gloomy asceticism,
a man as valiant upon the field of battle as in the festive hall,
conducting himself with the most unconstrained freedom, and yet with
entire sobriety and self-control, a perfect picture of the happiest
Athenian time, without the acerbity, the one-sidedness, and contracted
reserve of the later moralists, an ideal representation of the genuinely
human virtues.
2. SOCRATES AND ARISTOPHANES.—Socrates seems early to have attained
universal celebrity through the peculiarities attaching to his person
and character. Nature had furnished him with a remarkable external
physiognomy. His crooked, turned-up nose, his projecting eye, his bald
pate, his corpulent body, gave his form a striking similarity to the
Silenic, a comparison which is carried out in Xenophon’s “Feast,” in
sprightly jest, and in Plato’s Symposium, with as much ingenuity as
profoundness. To this was added his miserable dress, his going barefoot,
his posture, his often standing still, and rolling his eyes. After all
this, one will hardly be surprised that the Athenian comedy took
advantage of such a remarkable character. But there was another and
peculiar motive, which influenced Aristophanes. He was a most ardent
admirer of the good old times, an enthusiastic eulogist of the manners
and the constitution, under which the fathers had been reared. As it was
his great object to waken up anew in his people, and to stimulate a
longing after those good old times, his passionate hatred broke out
against all modern efforts in politics, art and philosophy, of that
increasing mock-wisdom, which went hand in hand with a degenerating
democracy. Hence comes his bitter railing at Cleon, the Demagogue (in
the _Knights_), at Euripides, the sentimental play-writer (in the
_Frogs_) and at Socrates, the Sophist (in the _Clouds_). The latter, as
the representative of a subtle, destructive philosophy, must have
appeared to him just as corrupt and pernicious, as the party of progress
in politics, who trampled without conscience upon every thing which had
come down from the past. It is, therefore, the fundamental thought of
the Clouds to expose Socrates to public contempt, as the representative
of the Sophistic philosophy, a mere semblance of wisdom, at once vain,
profitless, corrupting in its influence upon the youth, and undermining
all true discipline and morality. Seen in this light, and from a moral
standpoint, the motives of Aristophanes may find some excuse, but they
cannot be justified; and his representation of Socrates, into whose
character all the characteristic features of the Sophistic philosophy
are interwoven, even the most contemptible and hateful, yet so that the
most unmistakable likeness is still apparent, cannot be admitted on the
ground that Socrates did really have the greatest formal resemblance to
the Sophists. The Clouds can only be designated as a culpable
misunderstanding, and as an act of gross injustice brought about by
blinded passion; and Hegel, when he attempts to defend the conduct of
Aristophanes, forgets, that, while the comic writer may caricature, he
must do it without having recourse to public calumniation. In fact all
the political and social tendencies of Aristophanes rest on a gross
misunderstanding of historical development. The good old times, as he
fancies them, are a fiction. It lies just as little in the realm of
possibility, that a morality without reflection, and a homely
ingenuousness, such as mark a nation’s childhood, should be forced upon
a time in which reflection has utterly eaten out all immediateness, and
unconscious moral simplicity, as that a grown up man should became a
child again in the natural way. Aristophanes himself attests the
impossibility of such a return, when in a fit of humor, with cynic
raillery, he gives up all divine and human authority to ridicule, and
thereby, however commendable may have been the patriotic motive
prompting him to this comic extravagance, demonstrates, that he himself
no longer stands upon the basis of the old morality, that he too is the
son of his time.
3. THE CONDEMNATION OF SOCRATES.—To this same confounding of his efforts
with those of the Sophists, and the same tendency to restore by violent
means the old discipline and morality, Socrates, twenty-four years
later, fell a victim. After he had lived and labored at Athens for many
years in his usual manner, after the storm of the Peloponnesian war had
passed by, and this city had experienced the most varied political
fortunes, in his seventieth year he was brought to trial and accused of
neglecting the gods of the state, of introducing new deities, and also
of corrupting the youth. His accusers were Melitus, a young poet,
Anytus, a demagogue, and Lycon, an orator, men in every respect
insignificant, and acting, as it seems, without motives of personal
enmity. The trial resulted in his condemnation. After a fortunate
accident had enabled him to spend thirty days more with his scholars in
his confinement, spurning a flight from prison, he drank the poisoned
cup in the year 399 B. C.
The first motive to his accusation, as already remarked, was his
identification with the Sophists, the actual belief that his doctrines
and activity were marked with the same character of hostility to the
interests of the state, as those of the Sophists, which had already
occasioned so much mischief. The three points in the accusation, though
evidently resting on a misunderstanding, alike indicate this; they are
precisely those by which Aristophanes had sought to characterize the
Sophist in the person of Socrates. This “corruption of the youth,” this
bringing in of new customs, and a new mode of culture and education
generally, was precisely the charge which was brought against the
Sophists; moreover, in Plato’s Menon, Anytus, one of the three accusers,
is introduced as the bitter enemy of the Sophists and of their manner of
instruction. So too in respect to the denial of the national gods:
before this, Protagoras, accused of denying the gods, had been obliged
to flee, and Prodicus, to drink hemlock, a victim to the same distrust.
Even five years after the death of Socrates, Xenophon, who was not
present at the trial, felt himself called upon to write his Memorabilia
in defence of his teacher, so wide-spread and deep-rooted was the
prejudice against him.
Beside this there was also a second, probably a more decisive reason. As
the Sophistic philosophy was, in its very nature, eminently
aristocratic, and Socrates, as a supposed Sophist, consequently passed
for an aristocrat, his entire mode of life could not fail to make him
appear like a bad citizen in the eyes of the restored democracy. He had
never concerned himself in the affairs of the state, had never but once
sustained an official character, and then, as chief of the Prytanes, had
disagreed with the will of the people and the rulers. (_Plat. Apol._ §
32. Xen. _Mem._ I. 1, 18.) In his seventieth year, he mounted the
orator’s stand for the first time in his life, on the occasion of his
own accusation. His whole manner was somewhat cosmopolitan; he is even
said to have remarked, that he was not an Athenian, nor a Greek, but a
citizen of the world. We must also take into account, that he found
fault with the Athenian democracy upon every occasion, especially with
the democratic institution of choice by lot, that he decidedly preferred
the Spartan state to the Athenian, and that he excited the distrust of
the democrats by his confidential relations with the former leaders of
the oligarchic party. (Xen. _Mem._ I. 2, 9, sq.) Among others who were
of the oligarchic interest, and friendly to the Spartans, Critias in
particular, one of the thirty tyrants, had been his scholar; so too
Alcibiades—two men, who had been the cause of much evil to the Athenian
people. If now we accept the uniform tradition, that two of his accusers
were men of fair standing in the democratic party, and farther, that his
judges were men who had fled before the thirty tyrants, and later had
overthrown the power of the oligarchy, we find it much more easy to
understand how they, in the case before them, should have supposed they
were acting wholly in the interest of the democratic party, when they
pronounced condemnation upon the accused, especially as enough to all
appearance could be brought against him. The hurried trial presents
nothing very remarkable, in a generation which had grown up during the
Peloponnesian war, and in a people that adopted and repented of their
passionate resolves with the like haste. Yea, more, if we consider that
Socrates spurned to have recourse to the usual means and forms adopted
by those accused of capital crime, and to gain the sympathy of the
people by lamentations, or their favor by flattery, that he in proud
consciousness of his innocence defied his judges, it becomes rather a
matter of wonder, that his condemnation was carried by a majority of
only three to six votes. And even now he might have escaped the sentence
to death, had he been willing to bow to the will of the sovereign people
for the sake of a commutation of his punishment. But as he spurned to
set a value upon himself, by proposing another punishment, a fine, for
example, instead of the one moved by his accuser, because this would be
the same as to acknowledge himself guilty, his disdain could not fail to
exasperate the easily excited Athenians, and no farther explanation is
needed to show why eighty of his judges who had before voted for his
innocence, now voted for his death. Such was the most lamentable
result—a result, afterwards most deeply regretted by the Athenians
themselves—of an accusation, which at the outset was probably only
intended to humble the aristocratic philosopher, and to force him to an
acknowledgment of the power and the majesty of the people.
Hegel’s view of the fate of Socrates, that it was the result of the
collision of equally just powers—the Tragedy of Athens as he calls
it—and that guilt and innocence were shared alike on both sides, cannot
be maintained on historical grounds, since Socrates can neither be
regarded exclusively as the representative of the modern spirit, the
principle of freedom, subjectivity, the concrete personality; nor his
judges, as the representatives of the old Athenian unreflecting
morality. The first cannot be, since Socrates, if his principle was at
variance with the old Greek morality, rested nevertheless so far on the
basis of tradition, that the accusations brought against him in this
respect were false and groundless; and the last cannot be, since at that
time, after the close of the Peloponnesian war, the old morality and
piety had long been wanting to the mass of the people, and given place
to the modern culture, and the whole process against Socrates must be
regarded rather as an attempt to restore by violence, in connection with
the old constitution, the old defunct morality. The fault is not
therefore the same on both sides, and it must be held, that Socrates
fell a victim to a misunderstanding, and to an unjustifiable reaction of
public sentiment.
4. THE “GENIUS” δαιμόνιον OF SOCRATES.—Those traces of the old religious
sentiment, which have been handed down to us from so many different
sources, and are certainly not to be explained from a bare accommodation
to the popular belief, on the part of the philosopher, and which
distinguish him so decidedly from the Sophists, show how little Socrates
is really to be regarded as an innovator in discipline and morals. He
commends the art of divination, believes in dreams, sacrifices with all
proper care, speaks of the gods, of their omniscience, omnipresence,
goodness, and complete sufficiency in themselves, even with the greatest
reverence, and, at the close of his defence, makes the most solemn
asseveration of his belief in their existence. In keeping with his
attaching himself in this way to the popular religion, his new
principle, though in its results hostile to all external authority,
nevertheless assumed the form of the popular belief in “Demonic” signs
and symbols. These suggestions of the “Demon” are a knowledge, which is
at the same time connected with unconsciousness. They occupy the middle
ground between the bare external of the Greek oracle, and the purely
internal of the spirit. That Socrates had the conception of a particular
subject, a personal “Demon,” or “Genius,” is altogether improbable. Just
as little can these “Demonic” signs, this inward oracle, whose voice
Socrates professed to hear, be regarded after the modern acceptation,
simply as the personification of the conscience, or of the practical
instinct, or of the individual tact. The first article in the form of
accusation, which evidently refers to this very point, shows that
Socrates did not speak barely metaphorically of this voice, to which he
professed to owe his prophecies. And it was not solely in reference to
those higher questions of decided importance, that Socrates had these
suggestions, but rather and preeminently with respect to matters of mere
accident and arbitrary choice, as for example, whether, and when, his
friends should set out on a journey. It is no longer possible to explain
the “Demon” or “Genius” of Socrates on psychological grounds; there may
have been something of a magnetic character about it. It is possible
that there may be some connection between this and the many other
ecstatic or cataleptic states, which are related of Socrates in the
Symposium of Plato.
5. THE SOURCES OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES.—Well known is the old
controversy, whether the picture of Socrates, drawn by Xenophon or by
Plato, is the most complete and true to history, and which of the two
men is to be considered as the more reliable source for obtaining a
knowledge of his philosophy. This question is being decided more and
more in favor of Xenophon. Great pains has been taken in former as in
later times, to bring Xenophon’s Memorabilia into disrepute, as a
shallow and insufficient source, because their plain, and any thing
other than speculative contents, seemed to furnish no satisfactory
ground for such a revolution in the world of mind as is attributed to
Socrates, or for the splendor which invests his name in history, or for
the character which Plato assigns him; because again the Memorabilia of
Xenophon have especially an apologetic aim, and their defence does not
relate so much to the philosopher as to the man; and finally, because
they have been supposed to have the appearance of carrying the
philosophical over into the unphilosophical style of the common
understanding. A distinction has therefore been made between an exoteric
and an esoteric Socrates, obtaining the first from Xenophon, the latter
from Plato. But the preference of Plato to Xenophon has in the first
place no historical right in its favor, since Xenophon appears as a
proper historian and claims historical credibility, while Plato on the
other hand never professes to be an historical narrator, save in a few
passages, and will by no means have all the rest which he puts in the
mouth of Socrates understood as his authentic expressions and discourse.
There is, therefore, no historical reason for preferring the
representation of Socrates which is given by Plato. In the second place,
the under-valuation of Xenophon rests, for the most part, on the false
notion, that Socrates had a proper philosophy, _i. e._ a speculative
system, and on an unhistorical mistaking of the limits by which the
philosophical character of Socrates was conditioned and restricted.
There was no proper Socratic doctrine, but a Socratic life; and, just on
this ground, are the different philosophical tendencies of his scholars
to be explained.
6. THE UNIVERSAL CHARACTER OF THE PHILOSOPHIZING OF SOCRATES.—The
philosophizing of Socrates was limited and restricted by his opposition,
partly to the preceding, and partly to the Sophistic philosophy.
Philosophy before the time of Socrates had been in its essential
character investigation of nature. But in Socrates, the human mind, for
the first time, turned itself in upon itself, upon its own being, and
that too in the most immediate manner, by conceiving itself as active,
moral spirit. The positive philosophizing of Socrates, is exclusively of
an ethical character, exclusively an inquiry into the nature of virtue,
so exclusively, and so onesidedly, that, as is wont to be the case upon
the appearance of a new principle, it even expressed a contempt for the
striving of the entire previous period, with its natural philosophy, and
its mathematics. Setting every thing under the standpoint of immediate
moral law, Socrates was so far from finding any object in “irrational”
nature worthy of study, that he rather, in a kind of general
teleological manner, conceived it simply in the light of external means
for the attainment of external ends; yea, he would not even go out to
walk, as he says in the Phædrus of Plato, since one can learn nothing
from trees and districts of country. Self-knowledge, the Delphic γνῶθι
σαυτόν appeared to him the only object worthy of a man, as the
starting-point of all philosophy. Knowledge of every other kind, he
pronounced so insignificant and worthless, that he was wont to boast of
his ignorance, and to declare that he excelled other men in wisdom only
in this, that he was conscious of his own ignorance. (Plat. _Ap. S._ 21,
23.)
The other side of the Socratic philosophizing, is its opposition to the
philosophy of the time. His object, as is well understood, could have
been only this, to place himself upon the same position as that occupied
by the philosophy of the Sophists, and overcome it on its own ground,
and by its own principles. That Socrates shared in the general position
of the Sophists, and even had many features of external resemblance to
them—the Socratic irony, for instance—has been remarked above. Many of
his assertions, particularly these propositions, that no man knowingly
does wrong, and if a man were knowingly to lie, or to do some other
wrong act, still he would be better than he who should do the same
unconsciously, at first sight bear a purely Sophistic stamp. The great
fundamental thought of the Sophistic philosophy, that all moral acting
must be a conscious act, was also his. But whilst the Sophists made it
their object, through subjective reflection to confuse and to break up
all stable convictions, to make all rules relating to outward conduct
impossible, Socrates had recognized thinking as the activity of the
universal principle, free, objective thought as the measure of all
things, and, therefore, instead of referring moral duties, and all moral
action to the fancy and caprice of the individual, had rather referred
all to true knowledge, to the essence of spirit. It was this idea of
knowledge that led him to seek, by the process of thought, to gain a
conceivable objective ground, something real, abiding, absolute,
independent of the arbitrary volitions of the subject, and to hold fast
to unconditioned moral laws. Hegel expresses the same opinion, when he
says that Socrates put morality from ethical grounds, in the place of
the morality of custom and habit. Hegel distinguishes morality, as
conscious right conduct, resting on reflection and moral principles,
from the morality of unsophisticated, half-unconscious virtue, which
rests on the compliance with prevailing custom. The logical condition of
this ethical striving of Socrates, was the determining of conceptions,
the method of their formation. To search out the “what” of every thing
says Xenophon (_Mem._ IV. 6, 1.) was the uninterrupted care of Socrates,
and Aristotle says expressly that a twofold merit must be ascribed to
him, viz.: the forming of the method of induction and the giving of
strictly logical definitions,—the two elements which constitute the
basis of science. How these two elements stand connected with the
principle of Socrates we shall at once see.
7. THE SOCRATIC METHOD.—We must not regard the Socratic method as we are
accustomed to speak of method in our day, _i. e._ as something which, as
such, was distinctly in his consciousness, and which he abstracted from
every concrete content, but it rather had its growth in the very mode of
his philosophizing, which was not directed to the imparting of a system
but to the education of the subject in philosophical thinking and life.
It is only a subjective technicality for his mode of instruction, the
peculiar manner of his philosophical, familiar life.
The Socratic method has a twofold side, a negative and a positive one.
The negative side is the well known Socratic _irony_. The philosopher
takes the attitude of ignorance, and would apparently let himself be
instructed by those with whom he converses, but through the questions
which he puts, the unexpected consequences which he deduces, and the
contradictions in which he involves the opposite party, he soon leads
them to see that their supposed knowledge would only entangle and
confuse them. In the embarrassment in which they now find themselves
placed, and seeing that they do not know what they supposed, this
supposed knowledge completes its own destruction, and the subject who
had pretended to wisdom learns to distrust his previous opinions and
firmly held notions. “What we knew, has contradicted itself,” is the
refrain of the most of these conversations.
This result of the Socratic method was only to lead the subject to know
that he knew nothing, and a great part of the dialogues of Xenophon and
Plato go no farther than to represent ostensibly this negative result.
But there is yet another element in his method in which the irony loses
its negative appearance.
The positive side of the Socratic method is the so-called obstetrics or
art of intellectual midwifery. Socrates compares himself with his mother
Phænarete, a midwife, because his position was rather to help others
bring forth thoughts than to produce them himself, and because he took
upon himself to distinguish the birth of an empty thought from one rich
in its content. (Plato _Theætetus_, p. 149.) Through this art of
midwifery the philosopher, by his assiduous questioning, by his
interrogatory dissection of the notions of him with whom he might be
conversing, knew how to elicit from him a thought of which he had
previously been unconscious, and how to help him to the birth of a new
thought. A chief means in this operation was the method of _induction_,
or the leading of the representation to a conception. The philosopher,
thus, starting from some individual, concrete case, and seizing hold of
the most common notions concerning it, and finding illustrations in the
most ordinary and trivial occurrences, knew how to remove by his
comparisons that which was individual, and by thus separating the
accidental and contingent from the essential, could bring up to
consciousness a universal truth and a universal determination,—in other
words, could form conceptions. In order _e. g._ to find the conception
of justice or valor, he would start from individual examples of them,
and from these deduce the universal character or conception of these
virtues. From this we see that the direction of the Socratic induction
was to gain logical _definitions_. I define a conception when I develope
what it is, its essence, its content. I define the conception of justice
when I set up the common property and logical unity of all its different
modes of manifestation. Socrates sought to go no farther than this. “To
seek for the essence of virtue,” says an Aristotelian writing (_Eth._ I.
5), “Socrates regarded as the problem of philosophy, and hence, since he
regarded all virtue as a knowing, he sought to determine in respect of
justice or valor what they might really be, _i. e._ he investigated
their essence or conception.” From this it is very easy to see the
connection which his method of definitions or of forming conceptions had
with his practical strivings. He went back to the conception of every
individual virtue, _e. g._ justice, only because he was convinced that
the knowledge of this conception, the knowledge of it for every
individual case, was the surest guide for every moral relation. Every
moral action, he believed, should start as a conscious action from the
conception.
From this we might characterize the Socratic method as the skill by
which a certain sum of given, homogeneous and individual phenomena was
taken, and their logical unity, the universal principle which lay at
their base, inductively found. This method presupposes the recognition
that the essence of the objects must be comprehended in the thought,
that the conception is the true being of the thing. Hence we see that
the Platonic doctrine of ideas is only the objectifying of this method
which in Socrates appears no farther than a subjective dexterity. The
Platonic ideas are the universal conceptions of Socrates posited as real
individual beings. Hence Aristotle (_Metaph._ XIII. 4) most fittingly
characterizes the relation between the Socratic method and the Platonic
doctrine of ideas with the words, “Socrates posits the universal
conceptions not as separate, individual substances, while Plato does
this, and names them ideas.”
8. THE SOCRATIC DOCTRINE CONCERNING VIRTUE.—The single, positive
doctrinal sentence which has been transmitted us from Socrates is, that
virtue is a knowing,—that, consequently, nothing is good which happens
without discernment, and nothing bad which is done with discernment, or,
what is the same thing, that no man is voluntarily vicious, that the
base are such against their will, aye, even he who knowingly does wrong
is better than he who does it ignorantly, because in the latter case,
morality and true knowledge are both wanting, while in the former—if
such a case could happen—morality alone is violated. Socrates could not
conceive how a man should know the good and yet not do it; it was to him
a logical contradiction that the man who sought his own well being
should at the same time knowingly despise it. Therefore, with him the
good action followed as necessarily from the knowledge of the good as a
logical conclusion from its premise.
The sentence that virtue is a knowing, has for its logical consequence
the unity of virtue and for its practical consequence the teachableness
of it. With these three propositions, in which every thing is embraced
which we can properly term the Socratic philosophy, Socrates has laid
the first foundation stone for a scientific treatment of ethics, a
treatment which must be dated first from him. But he laid only the
foundation stone, for on the one side he attempted no carrying out of
his principle into details, nor any setting up of a concrete doctrine of
ethics, but only, after the ancient manner, referred to the laws of
states and the unwritten laws of the universal human order, and on the
other side, he has not seldom served himself with utilitarian motives to
establish his ethical propositions, in other words he has referred to
the external advantages and useful consequences of virtue, by which the
purity of his ethical point of view became tarnished.