Henry Jackson

“ For proof of the existence of “the divine,” he appealed to the providential arrangement of nature, to the universality of the belief, and to the revelations and warnings which are given to men through signs and oracles. Thinking that the soul of man partook of the divine, he maintained the doctrine of its immortality as an article of faith, but not of knowledge. While he held that, the gods alone knowing what is for man's benefit, man should pray, not for particular goods, but only for that which is good, he was regular in prayer and punctual in sacrifice. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ For, the paradoxes of Socrates's personality and the eccentricity of his behaviour, if they offended the many, fascinated the few. “It is not easy for a man in my condition,”Plato's Panegyric. says the intoxicated Alcibiades in Plato's Symposium, “to describe the singularity of Socrates's character. But I will try to tell his praises in similitudes. He is like the piping Silenes in the statuaries' shops, which, when you open them, are found to contain images of gods. ”

“ On the other hand, Plato, his aim being not so much to preserve Socrates's positive teaching as rather by written words to stimulate the reader to self-scrutiny, just as the spoken words of the master had stimulated the hearer, is compelled by the very nature of his task to keep the constructive element in the background, and, where Socrates would have drawn an unmistakable conclusion, to confine himself to enigmatical hints. ”

“ Even if, as often happened, the respondent, baffled and disgusted by the ἔλεγχος or destructive process, at this point withdrew from the inquiry, he had, in Socrates's judgment, gained something; for, whereas formerly, being ignorant, he had supposed himself to have knowledge, now, being ignorant, he was in some sort conscious of his ignorance, and accordingly would be for the future more circumspect in action. If, however, having been thus convinced of ignorance, the respondent did not shrink from a new effort, Socrates was ready to aid him by further questions of a suggestive sort. ”

“ Whilst in the previous period it had ranked as the first of sciences, it was now no longer a science; because, though Good absolute still occupied the first place, Good relative and all its various forms—justice, temperance, courage, wisdom—not being ideas, were incapable of being “known.” Hence it is that the ethical teaching of the later dialogues bears an intelligible, though perhaps unexpected, resemblance to the simple practical teaching of the unphilosophical Socrates.
Yet throughout these revolutions of doctrine Plato was ever true to the Socratic theory of education. ”

“ Socrates's theory of education had for its basis a profound and consistent scepticism; that is to say, he not only rejected the conflicting theories of the physicists—ofScepticism. whom “some conceived existence as a unity, others as a plurality; some affirmed perpetual motion, others perpetual rest; some declared becoming and perishing to be universal, others altogether denied such things”—but also condemned, as a futile attempt to transcend the limitations of human intelligence, their φιλοσοφία, their “pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.” ”

“ But he soon abandoned art and gave himself to what may best be called education, conceiving that he had a divine commission, witnessed by oracles, dreams and signs, not indeed to teach any positive doctrine, but to convict men of ignorance mistaking itself for knowledge, and by so doing to promote their intellectual and moral improvement. He was on terms of intimacy with some of the most distinguished of his Athenian contemporaries, and, at any rate in later life, was personally known to very many of his fellow citizens. ”

“ Accordingly, whereas Protagoras and others, abandoning physical speculation and coming forward as teachers of culture, claimed for themselves in this new field power to instruct and authority to dogmatize, Socrates, unable to reconcile himself to this inconsistency, proceeded with the investigation of principles until he found a resting-place, a ποῦ στῶ, in the distinction between good and evil. While all opinions were equally true, of those opinions which were capable of being translated into act some, he conceived, were as working hypotheses more serviceable than others. ”

“ Plato the Academic, accepting the whole of the Socratic teaching, first developed it harmoniously in the sceptical spirit of its author, and afterwards, conceiving that he had found in Socrates's agnosticism the germ of a philosophy, proceeded to construct a system which should embrace at once ontology, physics, and ethics. ”

“ Further, inasmuch as virtue is knowledge, it can be acquired by education and training, though it is certain that one soul has by nature a greater aptitude than another for such acquisition.
But, if virtue is knowledge, what has this knowledge for its object? To this question Socrates replies, Its object is the Good. What, then, is the Good?Theory of the Good. It is the useful, the advantageous. Utility, the immediate utility of the individual, thus becomes the measure of conduct and the foundation of all moral rule and legal enactment. ”

“ Consistent thinking with a view to consistent action being the end of the inquiry, Socrates would direct the respondent's attention to instances analogous to that in hand, and so lead him to frame for himself a generalization from which the passions and the prejudices of the moment were, as far as might be, excluded. ”

“ Of the graver difficulties of ethical theory Socrates has no conception, having, as it would seem, so perfectly absorbed, the lessons of what Plato calls “political virtue” that morality has become with him a second nature, and the scrutiny of its credentials from an external standpoint has ceased to be possible. ”

“ It was the non-Socratic element which made the weakness of this, the earlier, theory of ideas. Plato soon saw that the hypothesis of the idea's immanence in particulars entailed the sacrifice of its unity, whilst as a theory of predication that hypothesis was insufficient, because applicable to particulars only, not to the ideas themselves. But with clearer views about relations and negations the paradox of Zeno ceased to perplex ”

“ Thus, in Memorabilia, iv. 1, 3, Socrates argues from the known instances of horses and dogs that, the best natures stand most in need of training, and then applies the generalization to the instance under discussion, that of men; and in iv. 6, 13-14, he leads his interlocutor to a definition of “the good citizen,” and then uses it to decide between two citizens for whom respectively superiority is claimed. ”

“ If Socrates rejected portions of the conventional of the mythology, he accepted the established faith and performed its offices with exemplary regularity. If he talked of a δαιμόνιον, the δαιμόνιον was no new divinity, but a mantic sign divinely accorded to him, presumably by the gods of the state. If he questioned the propriety of certain of the institutions of Athens, he was prepared to yield an unhesitating obedience to all. ”

“ From the four schools thus established sprang subsequently four other schools,—the Epicureans being the natural successors of the Cyrenaics, the Stoics of the Cynics, the Sceptics of the Megarians, and the Peripatetics of the Academy. In this way the teaching of Socrates made itself felt throughout the whole of the post-Socratic philosophy. Of the influence which he exercised upon Aristippus, Antisthenes and Euclides, the “incomplete Socratics,” as they are commonly called, as well as upon the “complete Socratic,” Plato, something must now be said. ”

“ Whence it follows that the several virtues which are commonly distinguished are essentially one. “Piety,” “justice,” “courage” and “temperance” are the names which “wisdom” bears in different spheres of action: to be pious is to know what is due to the gods; to be just is to know what is due to men; to be courageous is to know what is to be feared and what is not; to be temperate is to know how to use what is good and avoid what is evil. ”

“ But to Socrates and his intimates the constructive process was the proper and necessary sequel. It is true that in the dialogues of Plato the destructive process is not always, or even often, followed by construction, and that in the Memorabilia of Xenophon construction is not always, or even often, preceded by the destructive process. ”

“ Thus, whereas in the earlier theory of ideas the ethical universals of Socrates had been held to have a first claim to hypostatization in the world of ideas, they are now peremptorily excluded, whilst the idealism which reconciles plurality and unity gives an entirely new significance to so much of the Socratic element as is still retained. ”

“ The exercise of the mental powers was, he conceived, no mere occupation of leisure hours, but rather a sacred and ever-present duty; because, moral error being intellectual error translated into act, he who would live virtuously must first rid himself of ignorance and folly. He had, it may be conjectured, but little turn for philosophical speculation; yet by the careful study of the ethical problems which met him in himself and in others he acquired a remarkable tact in dealing with questions of practical morality ”

“ If in this way we could pass from uncertified general notions, reflections of ideas, to the Good, so as to be able to say, not only that the Good causes the ideas to be what they are, but also that the Good causes the ideas to be what we conceive them, we might infer, he thought, that our definitions, hitherto provisional, are adequate representations of real existences. ”

“ Socrates being singled out for attack because, though not a professional politician, he was the very type of the malcontent party, and had done much, probably more than any man living, to make and to foster views which, if not in the strict sense of the term oligarchical, were confessedly hostile to the “unmixed democracy.” His eccentricity and heterodoxy, as well as the personal animosities which he had provoked, doubtless contributed, as his accusers had foreseen, to bring about the conviction ”

“ Accordingly, each precept of which Socrates delivers himself is recommended on the ground that obedience to it will promote the pleasure, the comfort, the advancement, the well-being of the individual ”

“ Virtue, he held, depended upon “works,” not upon arguments or lessons; all that was necessary to it was the strength of a Socrates (Diog. Laërt. vi. 11) . Yet here too the Socratic theory of φρόνησις had a qualifying effect; so that Cyrenaic hedonism and Cynic asceticism sometimes exhibit unexpected approximations. The teaching of Euclides, though the Good is still supposed to be the highest object of knowledge, can hardly be said to have an ethical element ”

“ But, though he was exceptionally obnoxious to the Thirty—as appears, not only in this incident, but also in their threat of punishment under a special ordinance forbidding “the teaching of the art of argument”—it was reserved for the reconstituted democracy to bring him to trial and to put him to death. In 399, four years after the restoration and the amnesty, he was indicted as an offender against public morality. His accusers were Meletus the poet, Anytus the tanner and Lycon the orator, all of them members of the democratic or patriot party who had returned from Phyle with Thrasybulus. ”

“ Plato, who in early manhood was an educator of the Socratic type, withholds the results that he may secure the advantages of the elenctic stimulus.
What, then, were the positive conclusions to which Socrates carried his hearers? and how were those positive conclusions obtained? Turning to XenophonInduction and Definition. for an answer to these questions, we note (1) that the recorded conversations are concerned with practical action, political, moral, or artistic; (2) that in general there is a process from the known to the unknown through a generalization, expressed or implied ”

“ It has been seen that the Eleatic Zeno had rested his denial of plurality upon certain supposed difficulties of predication, and that they continued to perplex Antisthenes as well as perhaps Euclides and others of Plato's contemporaries. These difficulties must be disposed of, if the new philosophy was to hold its ground ”