metaphors, and uncommon words, and a mass of hitherto unheard of figures of speech, to dazzle and delude the mind. As a philosopher he adhered to the Eleatics, especially to Zeno, and attempts to prove upon the basis of their dialectic schematism, that universally nothing is, or if there could be a being, it would not be cognizable, or if cognizable it would not be communicable Hence his writing bore characteristically enough the title-" Concerning Not-being or Nature." The proof of the first proposition that universally nothing is, since it can be established neither as being nor as not-being, nor yet as at the same time both being and not-being, rests entirely upon the position that all existence is a space-filling existence (has place and body), and is in fact the final consequence which overturns itself, in other words the self-destruction of the hitherto physical method of philosophizing.

The later Sophists with reckless daring carried their conclusions far beyond Gorgias and Protagoras. They were for the most part free thinkers, who pulled to the ground the religion, laws, and customs of their birth. Among these should be named, prominently, the tyrant Critias, Polus, Callicles, and Thrasymachus. The two latter openly taught the right of the stronger as the law of nature, the unbridled satisfaction of desire as the natural right of the stronger, and the setting up of restraining laws as a crafty invention of the weaker; and Critias, the most talented but the most abandoned of the thirty tyrants, wrote a poem, in which he represented the faith in the gods as an invention of crafty statesmen. Hippias of Elis, a man of great knowledge, bore an honorable character, although he did not fall behind the rest in bombast and boasting; but before all, was Prodicus, in reference to whom it became a proverb to say-" as wise as Prodicus," and concerning whom Plato himself and even Aristophanes never spoke without veneration. Especially famous among the ancients were his parenetical (persuasive) lectures concerning the choice of a mode of life (Xenophon's Memorabilia, II. 1), concerning external good and its use, concerning life and death, &c., discourses in which he manifests a refined moral feeling, and his observation of life, although through the want of a higher ethical

and scientific principle, he must be placed behind Socrates, whose forerunner he has been called. The later generations of Sophists, as they are shown in the Euthydemus of Plato, sink to a common level of buffoonery and disgraceful strife for gain, and comprise their whole dialectic art in certain formulæ for entangling fallacies.

6. TRANSITION TO SOCRATES AND CHARACTERISTIC OF THE FOLLOWING PERIOD.-That which is true in the Sophistic philosophy is the truth of the subjectivity, of the self-consciousness, i. e. the demand that every thing which I am to admit must be shown as rational before my own consciousness-that which is false in it is its apprehension of this subjectivity as nothing farther than finite, empirical egoistic subjectivity, i. e. the demand that my accidental will and opinion should determine what is rational; its truth is that it set up the principle of freedom, of self-certainty; its untruth is that it established the accidental will and notion of the individual upon the throne. To carry out now the principle of freedom and self-consciousness to its truth, to gain a true world of objective thought with a real and distinct content, by the same mcans of reflection which the Sophists had only used to destroy it, to establish the objective will, the rational thinking, the absolute or ideal in the place of the empirical subjectivity was the problem of the next advent in philosophy, the problem which Socrates took up and solved. To make the absolute or ideal subjectivity instead of the empirical for a principle, is to affirm that the true measure of all things is not my (i. e. the individual person's) opinion, fancy and will; that what is true, right and good, does not depend upon my caprice and arbitrary determination, or upon that of any other empirical subject; but while it is my thinking, it is my thinking, the rational within me, which has to decide upon all these points. But my thinking, my reason, is not something specially belonging to me, but something common to every rational being; something universal, and in so far as I am a rational and thinking being, is my subjectivity a universal one. But every thinking individual has the consciousness that what he holds as right, as duty, as good or evil, does not appear as such to him alone but

to every rational being, and that consequently his thinking has the character of universality, of universal validity, in a word-of objectivity. This then in opposition to the Sophistic philosophy is the stand-point of Socrates, and therefore with him the philosophy of objective thought begins. What Socrates could do in opposition to the Sophists was to show that reflection led to the same results as faith or obedience, hitherto without reflection, had done, and that the thinking man guided by his free consciousness and his own conviction, would learn to form the same judgments and take the same course to which life and custom had already and unconsciously induced the ordinary man. The position, that while the man is the measure of all things, it is the man as universal, as thinking, as rational, is the fundamental thought of the Socratic philosophy, which is, by virtue of this thought, the positive complement of the Sophistic principle.

With Socrates begins the second period of the Grecian philosophy. This period contains three philosophical systems, whose authors, standing to each other in the personal relation of teacher and pupil, represent three successive generations,-SOCRATES, PLATO, ARISTOTLE.

SECTION XII.

SOCRATES.**

1. HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER.-The new philosophical princi ple 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

*The article on Socrates, from page 52 to page 64, was translated by Prof. N. G Clark, of the University of Vermont.

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 phi⚫losopher, 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, and 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 osten tation 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 religious 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