that must have attended its application, especially in the case of disingenuous or bigoted disciples. It was a process of self-instruction that for honest inquirers rendered conviction doubly convincing. Hence, no Skeptical method that ever existed can pretend to rival the Sokratic elenchus, and we may confidently assert that its complete representation, as we have it in the Platonic Dialogues of Search,' has made more Skeptics than any manual or method that the doubting ingenuity of man ever devised. Other thinkers-we shall pass in review most of them -have explained the processes by which they succeeded in testing their own knowledge, and, so doing, in ridding themselves of a large amount of bastard and supposititious knowledge; but no Skeptic, either ancient or modern, succeeded so well as Sokrates in undermining the convictions of others, in proving that popular opinion is oftentimes either unconsciously groundless or purposely mendacious.

But while proclaiming Sokrates a methodical and avowed Skeptic, it is but reasonable to set forth in detail the grounds on which I base my opinion, especially as it differs from the common theory on the subject.

I. Firstly, some stress must, I think, be placed on the deliberate renunciation of physical-science studies which Sokrates made in earlier life, and his final reliance for Truth upon introspection; not only because he thereby cut himself adrift from much of prior Greek speculation, but because it evinced a distrust of the knowledge acquired by physical means. We shall find repeatedly, during our researches, that doubt, like knowledge, often begins with the senses, and there is sufficient evidence that Sokrates at a critical point of his intellectual career had conceived a suspicion of all sense-derived knowledge. How far he carried that feeling in the direction of Idealism it would be difficult to say. I do not think myself that he would have agreed with Plato in the Phaidon that a philosopher would be better off without his bodily senses. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong in supposing that Sokrates arrived at the wicket-gate of idealism by adopting the principles implied in such maxims as 'Know thyself,' Dialectic is the Nature of Things,' without caring to push to their ideal consequences the logical issues of these propositions. Certainly the general method and standpoint of Sokrates are only reconcilable with a partial and limited Idealism-one that propounded introspection as the readiest path to Truth, but at the same time made Truth the synonym of Nescience. The main advantage that Sokrates derived from Idealism was its supplying him with a

metaphysical standpoint whence he might survey the nature of the human mind, its methods and processes, just as his physical position had enabled him to examine man's knowledge of the material universe. But his conclusion from the latter as from the former investigation, from the self-knowledge as from the Natureknowledge, was the same Nescience.

For it was not only the fallibility of human senses that his physicist-investigations served to reveal; the weakness of the Reason when brought to bear on the problems of Nature was another conviction derived from the same study. Sokrates discovered that the simplest and most obvious of natural phenomena refused to disclose all its secrets to the human inquirer. The passages in which he relates his experience on this point read like condensed summaries of chapters of Sextos Empeirikos. He says that he once inquired into the physical growth and decay of animals, but with the Skeptical result of doubting whether growth depended on eating and drinking. He had also investigated ordinary ideas of number and comparison, but ended by professing his inability to understand precisely how one and one made two. At last, baffled and disappointed, he took refuge in Introspection. Dialectic became to him the Nature of Things;' and though this path, like the other, ended in a conviction of Nescience, the unwelcome conclusion was presented in a more definitive if not more agreeable form, so as at least to induce an acquiescence in it. metaphysics had also the advantage of not deceiving him with a fictitious glamour of easy knowledge, as physical phenomena were apt to do.

His

But this supreme confidence in Dialectic, which is disclosed in its definition as the Nature of Things, seems to call for a passing remark. I incline to regard it as the most noteworthy feature in the intellectual character of Sokrates. That Introspection, selfanalysis, is the only road to Truth and Knowledge he is experimentally certain.' Indeed the Ratiocination of a wise man he declares to be the only conceivable method of Truth-search. But though satisfied with the way, he is not certain that he himself must attain Truth by pursuing it—we might say that he is not so anxious about the termination of his path as he is that it should follow the right direction. If Truth were the goal of all human effort, we could not be wrong in following undeviatingly that Unfettered Reasoning which was the only road leading to it. To

It should be noticed, as one of the many ties that connect Sokrates with the Sophists, that in the Sophistes he describes the Sophist as doubting of all phenomena, and knowing only the Idea.

Dialectic, therefore, he conceded, sometimes in playful irony, but often with sincere earnestness, a certain despotism over the Human Reason in general, and over the methods of his own inquiry in particular. It was a transference of the absolute supremacy of Truth to the sole method by which it was acquired. Whatever Dialectic or Reason taught must needs be true, no matter what it was or how much it conflicted with popular prejudices and convictions. He represents it as a kind of tyrant, in whose hands he himself is volitionless and helpless. Its dictum is the judgment of a superior court, which he has no power to disregard or gainsay. Suppose, e.g. it were to lead to a denial of the gods, he cannot help it. Assume it to involve a criticism of any other long acknowledged truth, that is not his fault. Suppose it terminate, as in his own case it actually did terminate, in Nescience, the result must be accepted if not gratefully, at least unrepiningly. At most, an inexpedient conclusion can only be avoided by the very road leading to it. Dialectic must, if possible, rebuild what it has itself overthrown.

It is easy to criticise the position of Sokrates. Modern Science and, in England, the Experience Philosophy have long claimed a victory over the metaphysical method. Nay more, it must be admitted that the position itself is suicidal, and it seems probable that Socrates recognized it as such. Dialectic, the Nature of all Things, is ultimately the Destroyer of all Things. Plato himself acknowledged its double-edged prowess,2 though without the full admission of Nescience which the discovery drew from his more candid master.

We thus arrive, by tracing the footsteps of Sokrates, at his final conclusion. As I have said, it is that of the Skeptic. On all matters of speculation, and in regard of absolute knowledge, he can only affirm his ignorance. He deliberately adopts, therefore, for himself a position of active neutrality, which is equivalent to the suspense of later Skeptics, and he claims for the standpoint he has chosen the sanction and commendation of the Delphic oracle. We shall presently have to consider certain implied unconditional obligations' in the direction of Practice-common to Sokrates

Comp., e.g. the latter part of Charmides (Jowett's trans. vol. i. pp. 33, 34), and see his discrimination between the philosopher and the partisan in the Phaidon. Under the same head also falls his expressed inability to resist the mingled force and fascination of Dialectic, in the Apology.

2 Republic, end of book vii., where the description of unlimited Eristic might almost seem to have a satirical reference to the Sokratic Dialogues of Search,

with other Skeptics-which we must regard as a set-off against what would else have been unlimited Nescience. Meanwhile we must not confound the pure Skepticism of Sokrates with the determined Negation of Pyrrhôn and his successors. The conscious ignorance of the former is more a personal property than a characteristic of humanity. Although, therefore, Sokrates professes continually that he knows nothing, he does not make his conclusion absolute and universal. He never denies the existence of Truth, nor does he deny the ultimate possibility of human effort to attain it. Such a denial would, indeed, have stultified his own position, and made all human inquiry a vain and fruitless folly. For whatever else is uncertain in the character of Sokrates, there can be no doubt as to his being not only a searcher for Truth himself, but one who made Truth-search the sole worthy employment of human life. Nor was this opinion merely the outcome of his view of the necessities of others; it was also the result of his own feelings and passions. Intellectual exercise in any and every direction was an absolute necessity for the great thinker. Extreme negation was therefore as abhorrent to him as the most supercilious and ill-founded assertion; and he wages his Dialectic warfare with the former as well as the latter.

As a Zetetic or searcher Sokrates is in accord with the highest spirit of Greek Skepticism. When Sextos Empeirikos defined the different classes of philosophic thinkers, he reserved for the Skeptics the attribute of pure, disinterested search. This is in truth one main characteristic of Sokrates. He is a born inquirer; a searcher whom no concession or discovery can satisfy, and no difficulty can deter. He himself represents his own vehement passion for reasoned discussion, his perpetual efforts to find, if not truth, yet the closest possible approximations to it, in a variety of images; sometimes in an ironical and uncouth fashion, as in the 'Phaidros,' where he compares himself, allured into the country by a promise of discussion, to a cow attracted by a bait of leaves and fruit, and says that a similar bait might have drawn him all round Attica. Nor was he content only with being a searcher, but he must make other men searchers as well. It was just this excitation of the dormant intellects of the Athenian populace, this abrupt and forceful impulsion of them along a path of mental activity and research, that he regarded as the greatest service he could do the State. He might have adopted the title which a fellow-Skeptic, Giordano Bruno, gave himself on account of the awakening effects of his teaching, Dormitantium animarum excubitor,' the awaker of sleepy souls. For a similar reason Sokrates compared the

startling effects of his elenchus to the shock of a torpedo-fish, or the bite of a gadfly. Nor do I think that there is, as some might aver, the least incongruity between his profession of Nescience and his untiring search for Science. On the other hand, it was his conviction of the former that induced and justified the latter. Had he boasted not ignorance but attainment, the possession of infallible truths, further search would have been superfluous. Sokrates saw and proclaimed far more clearly than most thinkers that it is not Skepticism but Dogmatism that operates as a drag on the human faculties, and induces intellectual sloth and torpor. It is the man who has caught and eaten his game, who perchance is heavy from the effects of the meal, that rests from the chase, not he who is still hungry and desirous to appease his appetite. The Athenians, no doubt, were fully satisfied with their dogmas and truth-discoveries, and did not wish them disturbed. It seemed to them, as it always does to dogmatists, impious to question or analyse long-venerated beliefs and conceptions, mythological, religious, political, or ethical. If examination must needs be instituted, if search must be undertaken, it should be confined to newer verities, not yet fully ascertained, or which have not as yet received the imprimatur of the past. But Sokrates was altogether of a different opinion. It was among these old truths that inquiry was most needful. They were in his opinion-and we shall see when we come to the Sokratic method as displayed in the 'Dialogues of Search' that that opinion was well founded-so many dead corpses waiting for and demanding an inquest. They were estates for which, though long in possession, it was needful to produce title-deeds. Prescription, antiquity, sacredness, were in his eyes no claim to exemption from investigation. Of all truths and systems indifferently he maintained that their first principles should from time to time be reviewed and tested, and that the higher the subject the greater should be the accuracy and verifiable character of the fundamental principles on which it was based. Sokrates was clearly convinced that truths might occasionally be too true; that their reception might even in their own interests be too much taken for granted. In the words of Coleridge-and few more pregnant truths were ever enounced by that great thinker-Truths of all others the most awful and mysterious, yet being at the same time of universal interest, are too often considered as so true that they lose all the life and efficiency of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.'2 1 Phaidon, 107 B.; Repub. vi. 504 E.

2 Coleridge's Friend, No. 5, p. 76.