own. But in addition to difference of amplitude, we may say that a great mind differs from a smaller just as a machine adapted for various purposes differs from one whose uses are more limited. To note this versatility in the case of Sokrates we have only to read the 'Dialogues of Search.' I have often thought that one of these dialogues might stand for a verbal portrait, so to speak, of the mind of Sokrates; that the tortuous windings and twistings we find in it represent the varied zigzag movements of his own mind; that his keenness to discover objections, to note ambiguities, mark the zest with which he was accustomed to pursue a controversial theme in his own thought. He is like a zealous hunter in pursuit of some exceedingly wild and cunning game. It is not merely the pursuit when the quarry is in sight that excites him, but the outmatching its stratagems and subterfuges, the hunting it out of secret and unlikely recesses, the unmasking all its tricks, disguises, and pretensions, the complete unveiling of its insidious character—it is in this that the excitement of the chase consists; it is this that constitutes the 'sport' of Sokrates the intellectual hunter, as it does of every genuine sportsman of whatever kind. Hence what appears to some an irreconcilable dissentience, an obstinate determination not to be convinced, may really have another character. It may be the insatiable craving for absolutely demonstrable and ideal truth-truth free of every sort of objection, or faintest ground of suspicion, truth untainted by imperfection either in itself or in its relation to other truth-that haunts, though, alas! vainly, many a noble human intellect. In other words, it is the yearning of the limited for the illimitable, of the relative for the absolute, of the finite for the infinite. But while Sokrates pursued the search with passionate earnestness, he recognized its futility. The prey was worth the catching, if it only could be caught and held. But still more was it worth the hunting, and the latter was in human power, if not the former. Sokrates himself returns from the chase in triumph, gravely announcing, as its most precious result, the discovery of his inability to achieve supreme success. I have already admitted that Sokrates was aware of the incongruous aspect this result presented to others. Nescience was not far removed from Nihilism. Might it not be possible to push it a stage further and plead his non-knowledge even of his Nescience-thus reducing his intellectual condition to a state of complete vacuity, like that which Hindus and Buddhists, by pursuing similar paths of negation, are wont to attain? Besides, Nescience conflicted with the sovereignty claimed by Dialectic. Sokrates, as we have seen, is so persuaded of the autonomy of Reason as to attribute to it a volition of its own. But on this point a brother Sophist might have replied, 'How can we be confident that our ratiocinations always point in the direction marked out by infallible reason? Who is to assure us that the path of the logician is under all circumstances a true path?' In controversy the course of the argument is often determined by accidental impulses and spontaneous suggestions. The paths of the intellect, like its desires, are many. How are we to know that a specific conclusion is the only one that true reason can approve? Besides, do not the Sophists continually make the worse appear the better cause?' And how would this be possible if all human ratiocination must infallibly evolve truth? Even Sokrates himself is continually warning those with whom he converses to watch him carefully, lest he should play tricks, thereby admitting the flexibility and fallibility of ratiocination. On all sides, therefore, human reason is shown to be illusory and deceptive. But it must be added, this untrustworthy character of human truth, though harmonizing with his own Nescience, does not destroy the confidence of Sokrates in absolute truth. That he still continues to contemplate with an eye of desire and imagination. That remains. undisturbed by human imperfection, just as the light of the sun is not affected by shadows thrown by terrestrial objects. Thus in idea Sokrates compensates for the actual imbecility of the human intellect. For if reason is self-annihilated by its product of absolute ignorance, if, being itself the instrument of thought, it destroys thinking, it must nevertheless be affirmed as an unconditional postulate, an intuitional verity transcending and despising demonstration. We are, at any rate, compelled to employ it, while recognizing that it yields us no truth, just as we are to acknowledge the Supreme Being, though his existence is indemonstrable; and to fulfil moral and social duties, though we know that in speculation all such duties and definitions pertaining to them are inconclusive We are now in a position to determine more accurately the relation which Sokrates bore to other Sophists; in other words, to the general philosophic culture of his time. Firstly, his startingpoint was altogether different. The objects of knowledge the Sophists aimed to teach were various-Grammar, Rhetoric, Geometry, &c.; but they were all objective sciences, dealing with supposed theories or facts of the universe. Sokrates, like our own Locke, took human nature as his starting-point. In order to know, he maintained, we must diligently scrutinize the mechanism for acquiring knowledge. Knowledge must direct its primary energies to knowing the knower, and this starting-point must be adopted unreservedly, and without prejudice to its result whatever it might be. 2. In harmony with this starting-point there was a distinction of method. The Sophists in their origin were allied with the Rhetoricians. The majority taught Rhetoric, and all practised it. They are alluded to in the Platonic Dialogues as being connected with Rhetoric and Poetry. Consequently their lessons were very largely didactic and persuasive. Setting forth their themes in glowing language, they endeavoured to convince their hearers of the truth so affirmed, as well as of the exceptional wisdom of the teacher. The art of Sokrates, on the contrary, consisted in awakening the individual consciousness, and stimulating reflection by raising doubts and forcing men either to solve them or honestly to admit their insolubility. 3. There was also a marked difference in the extent and appreciation of intellectual freedom. Doubtless the Sophists were, as I have already contended, free-teachers. They were far from considering themselves bound by the beliefs or methods they found already in existence. Still they professed to teach sciences, i.e. branches of knowledge possessing to a certain extent systematic arrangement and well-defined rules. Teaching as they did for pay, they must needs have professed, whether rightly or wrongly, to impart some definite and tangible attainment. Sokrates, on the other hand, proposed to teach nothing, and that for the best of reasons-he knew nothing. How great soever the value he himself placed on Nescience, he knew that the Athenian public would estimate 'Nothing' at its mere nominal worth. It was in entire consistency with his conviction on this point that he declined to receive even the smallest present if it were offered him in the shape of payment. Indeed, he says that his devotion to his mission, or as he phrases it to the commands of the god, had caused him to neglect his own affairs and had brought him to poverty. 4. On the score of disinterestedness, then, there was a very important distinction between Sokrates and the Sophists. The latter acquired riches and political and social power by their teachings, Sokrates obtained only poverty. The Sophists estimated truth, or what they chose to denominate truth, by its money or market value. Sokrates, who did not pretend to have any truth of his own to communicate, still held that truth and truth-teaching should be free. 5. But the difference just alluded to carried in its train other distinctions. The Sophists taught. generally attainments and so far dogmas. They professed to turn out their disciples accomplished debaters, rhetoricians, politicians, &c. Sokrates disclaimed all such pretensions. He who knew nothing was not likely to be able to mould these finished products of human knowledge. All that he inculcated was pure search for truth-investigation for its own sake without a morbid anxiety as to definitive results, still less a predetermination that they must be of a certain kind. By this teaching Sokrates necessarily took a fuller view of the rights of the individual conscience than was possible to other Sophists. His Eristic was quite free and independent, and he watched over its freedom with an extreme jealousy. Enlisted in the service of no special science, it was bound by no laws except such as were selfimposed; pledged to no dogma, it was able to exercise its activities, and even to indulge its caprices, as it thought fit. Sokrates thus assigned to individual liberty, the rights of self-consciousness, a fulness and vigour it had never as yet attained in Greek philosophy, and in that respect he is far in advance of the Sophists. 6. But as a per contra, the moral distinction between them was profound. Both the Sophists and the post-Sokratic Skeptics seem to have agreed that the only authoritative sanction for ethical action was the legal enactment or customary rule of the nation or people among whom the individual might chance to dwell. Sokrates, as we saw, took generally the higher and truer principle of absolute virtue, an eternal unconditional obligation binding alike on gods and men. That this sublime conception was not fully realized by the Athenian citizens is probably true, and even if it had been they would have regarded it as a confirmation of his atheism, as being the establishment of an extra-Olympian rule; but to Sokrates himself, perhaps also to the more profound of his disciples, it presented a moral anchorage, wherein he might find refuge from the political and social divergencies he saw in seething commotion around him. As a result of our comparison, then, we find that, in respect of Skeptical method and free-thought, Sokrates was far in advance of his brother Sophists. When the more unscrupulous among these teachers professed to be able to prove the opposite sides of any given thesis, their boast was rather a claim of personal versatility or argumentative power than an assertion that the contradictories were equally true. Nor were they forced, as Sokrates was, by such antinomies into a confession of Nescience. So far as appears, no Sophist either claimed the attribute of complete ignorance for himself, still less insisted on it as a desirable condition for others. Sokrates's true successor in this respect was Pyrrhôn. Moreover, no one of the Sophists carried Eristic, in the sense not of verbal quibbling but of a rational disputatiousness, to such an extent as Sokrates. Notwithstanding the sneers of some portions of the Platonic Dialogues at the captiousness and puerilities of the Sophists (which, however, may be caricatures), they themselves furnish instances of perverse ratiocination, of transparent fallacies, of deter mined logomachy, quite as glaring as any of those we find in the writings of the Sophists or even in the 'sophistical elenchi' of Aristotle. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that when Aristophanes wished to ridicule the teaching and pretensions of the Sophists (vxov σopûv) he chose Sokrates as a master Sophist,' the acknowledged chief of the new school of thinkers, the teacher whose doctrine appeared most dangerous to the well-being of the community. For I see no reason for believing that Aristophanes cherished any personal animosity towards Sokrates, as has been asserted; nor do I think that his caricature of Sokratic teaching exceeds the ordinary limits of dramatic licence. A careful comparison of 'The Clouds' with the Platonic Dialogues shows us that the primary characteristics of his doctrine are the same in both. The supposed natural-science pursuits of Sokrates are, no doubt, extravagantly caricatured in the comedy; but even this is met by his own admission in the 'Apology' of the passionate devotion with which he once pursued them. But the characteristic features of his later thought are also not wanting: e.g. his insistence on self-knowledge as a preliminary to conscious ignorance; his stress on contemplation; his fondness for discussion without much regard to its results; his undisguised neologianism; and most of all the Sokratic suspense, which is ridiculed in a variety of ways.2 Hence, if we are to accept the testimony of the only contemporary writer outside the pale of the Sokratic circle, Sokrates was regarded as a Skeptic and Sophist at least a quarter of a century before his death, and that on the strength of doctrinal peculiarities to which he himself laid claim. Nor do we find anything in the narrative of his trial and condemnation which proves that the popular estimate of him had at all altered since The Clouds' was first published. When he himself alludes in the Platonic 'Apology' to the indictment of Meletos and Anytos, and to the common fame on which it was grounded, he employs the precise terminology which an Athenian would have used in speaking of the Sophists. 'Sokrates is an evil-doer, and an inquisitive person, who searches into things 1 Clouds, line 94; comp. lines 360, 361, and passim. 2E.g. as a condition of being suspended in baskets, walking in the air, &c. So Sokrates recommends his disciple to let his mind loose into the air, like a cockchafer with his leg tied to a string. Indeed, the condition of suspended baskets is put forward by Aristophanes as the central teaching of the Sokratic thought-shop. Comp. e.g. lines 868, 869 Νηπύτιος γάρ ἐστ ̓ ἔτι καὶ τῶν κρεμαθρῶν οὐ τρίβων τῶν ἐνθάδε. |