Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/240

206 selfish morality. The better philosophers of the time despised them, and applied to them many harsh epithets, taunting them with selling wisdom, and accusing them of boasting that they could "make the worse appear the better reason."

Socrates.—Volumes would not contain what would be both instructive and interesting respecting the lives and works of the three great philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. We can, however, accord to each only a few words. Of these three eminent thinkers, Socrates (469–399 B.C.), though surpassed in grasp

and power of intellect by both Plato and Aristotle, has the firmest hold upon the affections of the world.

Nature, while generous to the philosopher in the gifts of soul, was unkind to him in the matter of his person. His face was ugly as a satyr's, and he had an awkward, shambling walk, so that he invited the shafts of the comic poets of his time. He loved to gather a little circle about him in the Agora or in the streets, and then to draw out his listeners by a series of ingenious questions. His method was so peculiar to himself that it has received the designation of the "Socratic dialogue." He has very happily been called an educator, as opposed to an instructor. In the young men of his time Socrates found many devoted pupils. The youthful Alcibiades declared that "he was forced to stop his ears and flee away, that he might not sit down by the side of Socrates and grow old in listening."

Socrates was unfortunate in his domestic relations. Xanthippe, his wife, seems to have been of a practical turn of mind, and unable to sympathize with the abstracted ways of her husband.

This great philosopher believed that the proper study of mankind is man, his favorite maxim being "Know Thyself"; hence