Henry Jackson

“ Where there is knowledge—that is to say, practical wisdom (φρόνησις) , the only knowledge which he recognized—right action, he conceived, follows of itself; for no one knowingly prefers what is evil; and, if there are cases in which men seem to act against knowledge, the inference to be drawn is, not that knowledge and wrongdoing are compatible, but that in the cases in question the supposed knowledge was after all ignorance. Virtue, then, is knowledge, knowledge at once of end and of means, irresistibly realizing itself in act. ”

“ For, if the members of a natural kind had no common idea to unite them, scientific research, having nothing objective in view, could at best afford a λόγος or definition of the appropriate particulars; and, as the discrimination of the One and the Good implied the progression of particulars towards perfection, such a λόγος or definition could have only a temporary value. Hence, though, like Plato, Speusippus (4) studied the differences of natural products (5) with a view to classification, he did not agree with Plato in his conception of the significance of the results thus obtained ”

“ While the sophistry of rhetoric led to the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of culture led to the sophistry of disputation. It has been seen that the range of subjects recognized by Protagoras and Prodicus gradually extended itself, until Hippias professed himself a teacher of all branches of learning, including in his list subjects taught by artists and professional men, but handling them from a popular or non-professional point of view. ”

“ Unconsciously, or more probably consciously, Socrates rested his scepticism upon the Protagorean doctrine that man is the measure of his own sensations and feelings; whence he inferred, not only that knowledge such as the philosophers had sought, certain knowledge of nature and its laws, was unattainable, but also that neither he nor any other person had authority to overbear the opinions of another, or power to convey instruction to one who had it not. ”

“ We learn from Plato (Parmenides, 127 D) that “the first hypothesis of the first argument” of Zeno's book above mentioned ran as follows: “If existences are many, they must be both like and unlike [unlike, inasmuch as they are not one and the same, and like, inasmuch as they agree in not being one and the same, Proclus, On the Parmenides, ii. 143] . But this is impossible; for unlike things cannot be like, nor like things unlike. Therefore existences are not many.” ”

“ A foe to philosophy and a renegade from art, Socrates took his departure from the same point as Protagoras, and moved in the same direction, that of the education of youth. Finding in the cultivation of “virtue” or “excellence” a substitute for the pursuit of scientific truth, and in disputation the sole means by which “virtue” or “excellence” could be attained, he resembled at once the sophists of culture and the sophists of eristic. ”

“ Socrates was in all things an innovator—in religion, inasmuch as he sought to eliminate from the theology of his contemporaries “those lies which poets tell”; in politics, inasmuch as he distrusted several institutions dear to Athenian democracy; in education, inasmuch as he waged war against authority, and in a certain sense made each man the measure of his own actions. It is because Socrates was an innovator that we, who see in him the founder of philosophical inquiry, regard him as a great man ”

“ For three-quarters of a century, then, philosophy was at a standstill; and, when in the second decade of the 4th century the pursuit of truth was resumed, it was plain that Zeno's paradox of predication must be disposed of before the problems which had occupied the earlier thinkers—the problem of knowledge and the problem of being—could be so much as attempted. ”

“ Yet among the so-called sophists there were two who had philosophical leanings, as appears in their willingness to be called by the title of philosopher. First, Socrates, whilst he conceived that the physicists had mistaken the field of inquiry, absolute truth being unattainable, maintained, as has been seen, that one opinion was better than another, and that consistency of opinion, resulting in consistency of action, was the end which the human intellect properly proposes to itself. ”

“ Conceiving that the motions of the universe and its parts are due to the desire which it and they feel towards the supreme external mind and its several thoughts, so that the cosmical order planned by the divine mind is realized in the phenomenal universe, Aristotle thus secures the requisite unification, not indeed of mind and matter, for mind and matter are distinct, but of the governing mind, the prime unmoved movent, since it and its thoughts are one. ”

“ Content in the purely Socratic period to elaborate and to record ethical definitions such as Socrates himself might have propounded, Plato, as soon as the theory of ideas offered itself to his imagination, looked to it for the foundation of ethics as of all other sciences. Though in the earlier ages both of the individual and of the state a sound utilitarian morality of the Socratic sort was useful, nay valuable, the morality of the future should, he thought, rest upon the knowledge of the Good. ”

“ Happiness consists in the possession of virtue, and consequently is independent of personal and extraneous advantages. The virtuous man is pure, not in act only, but also in heart. To the attainment of virtue the best help is philosophy; for the philosopher does of his own accord what others do under the compulsion of law. Speculative wisdom and practical wisdom are to be distinguished. Meagre as these statements are, they suffice to show that in ethics, as elsewhere, Xenocrates worked upon Platonic lines. ”

“ Further, in the colonies, and especially the colonies of the West, philosophy and art had done something for higher education. Thus in Italy the Pythagorean school was, in the fullest sense of the term, an educational institution; and in Sicily the rhetorical teaching of Corax and Tisias was presumably educational in the same sense as the teaching of Gorgias. But in central Greece, where, at any rate down to the Persian Wars, politics, domestic and foreign, were all-engrossing, and left the citizen little leisure for self-cultivation, the need of a higher education had hardly made itself felt. ”

“ Hence Plato, finding in the school no capable representative of his ontological theory, might well choose to succeed him a favourite pupil whose scientific enthusiasm and attainment were beyond question; and Speusippus's rivals, having themselves abandoned the theory of ideas, would not be in a position to tax him with his philosophical apostasy. ”

“ The eccentricity of Socrates's life was not less remarkable than the oddity of his appearance and the irony of his conversation. Mode of Life. His whole time was spent in public—in the market-place, the streets, the gymnasia. Thinking with Dr Johnson that “a great city is the school for studying life,” he had no liking for the country, and seldom passed the gates. “Fields and trees,” Plato makes him say, “will not teach me anything; the life of the streets will.” ”

“ Hence the theory of the unity of nature is necessarily followed by a theory of its seeming plurality, that is to say, of the variety and mutation of things. The theory of plurality cannot indeed pretend to the certainty of the theory of unity, being of necessity untrustworthy, because it is the partial and inconstant representation of that which is partial and inconstant in nature. ”

“ In other words, they cultivated skill in disputation. Now skill in disputation is plainly a valuable accomplishment; and, as the Aristotelian logic grew out of the regulated discussions of the eristics and their pupils, the disputant sophistry of the 4th century deserves more attention and more respect than it usually receives from historians of Greek thought. But when men set themselves to cultivate skill in disputation, regarding the matter discussed not as a serious issue, but as a thesis upon which to practise their powers of controversy, they learn to pursue, not truth, but victory ”