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256 attempted to show that principles of pacification existed in the nature of man himself in his social instincts and benevolent affections. In this attempt Butler was merely treading in the footsteps of Socrates, although with a feebler and less scientific step. Socrates had, I conceive, a deeper insight into the nature of man than Bishop Butler. Instead of regarding, as Butler did, our social and benevolent affections as original parts of our nature, in the same sense in which hunger and thirst are original parts of our nature, Socrates regarded them as brought about through the intervention of thought. So, at least, I am inclined to interpret his philosophy. He regarded these social affections as having no place in the economy of man until after his self-consciousness had been called forth; and in this opinion Socrates seems to me to be unquestionably right. Butler, however, regards the social affections as standing on the same footing with hunger and thirst, affections which certainly declare themselves prior to any manifestation of self-consciousness. So far, therefore, I am of opinion that the Athenian sage was superior to the English bishop both in speculative depth and in scientific precision. But, without insisting on that point, what I wish you to observe is, that my reason for going at such length into the moral philosophy of Socrates is because I conceive that by laying down thought, or, more strictly, the free act of self-consciousness, as the groundwork of ethics, it supplies the truest of all foundations for a