Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/114

 b HISTORY OF GREECE. temporary the fabulist ^Esop, though not employing the same mode of illustration. Their appearance forms an epoch in Gre- cian history, inasmuch as they are the first persons who ever acquired an Hellenic reputation grounded on mental competency apart from poetical genius or effect, a proof that political and social prudence was beginning to be appreciated and admired on its own account. Solon, Pittakus, Bias, and Thales, were all men of influence the first two even men of ascendency, 1 in their respective cities. Kleobulus was despot of Lindus, and Pcriander (by some numbered among the seven) of Corinth. Thales stands distinguished as the earliest name in physical phi- losophy, with which the other contemporary wise men are not said to have meddled ; their celebrity rests upon moral, social, and political wisdom exclusively, which came into greater honor as the ethical feeling of the Greeks improved and as their expe- rience became enlarged. In these celebrated names we have social philosophy in its early and infantine state, in the shape of homely sayings or admo- nitions, either supposed to be self-evident, or to rest upon some preat authority divine or human, but neither accompanied by reasons nor recognizing any appeal to inquiry and discussion as the proper test of their rectitude. From such unsuspecting ac- quiescence, the sentiment to which these admonitions owe their force, we are partially liberated even in the poet Simonides of Keos, who (as before alluded to) severely criticizes the song of Kleobulus as well as its author. The half-century which fol- lowed the age of Simonides (the interval between about 480-430 B.C.) broke down that sentiment more and more, by familiarizing the public with argumentative controversy in the public assembly, the popular judicature, and even on the dramatic stage. And the increased self-working of the Grecian mind, thus created, mani- fested itself in Sokrates, who laid open all ethical and social doc- trines to the scrutiny of reason, and who first awakened among J.is countrymen that love of dialectics which never left them, an analytical interest in the mental process of inquiring out, ver- ifying, proving, and expounding truth. To this capital item of iriss CT Griechischen Litteratur, vol. i, sect. 66, not. 3.
 * Cicero, De Republ. i, 7 ; Plutarch, in Delph. p. 385 ; Bernhardy, Gran-