Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/439

 HIS NOVELTY OF SUBJECi. 417 be taugbt separately to youth. Such appears to have been tliH state of science when SokratGs received his education. He received at least the ordinary amount of instruction in all : l he devoted himself as a young man to the society and lessons of the physical philosopher Archelaus, 2 the disciple of Anaxagoras, whom he accompanied from Athens to Samos ; and there is even reason to believe that, during the earlier part of his life, he was much devoted to what was then understood as the general study of Nature. 3 A man of his earnest and active intellect was likely first to manifest his curiosity as a learner : " to run after and track the various discourses of others, like a Laconian hound," if I may borrow an expression applied to him by Plato, 4 before he 1 Xcnoph. Memor. iv, 7, 3-5. ii, 16-19. Eittcr (Gcsch. der Philos. vol, ii, ch. 2, p. 19) calls in question the asser- tion that Sokrates received instruction from Archelaus ; in my judgment, without the least reason, since Ion of Chios is a good contemporary witness He even denies that Sokrates received any instruction in philosophy at all, on the authority of a passage in the Symposion of Xenophon, where Sok rates is made to speak of himself as i)ua(6s 6puf aiirovp-yovf nvaf rf/f i%oao$iac ovraf (1, 5). But it appears to me that that expression implies nothing more than a sneering antithesis, so frequent both in Plato and Xenophon, with the costly lessons given by Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodi- kus. It cannot be understood to deny instruction given to Sokrates in the earlier portion of his life. 3 I think that the expression in Plato's Phoedo, c. 102, p. 96, A, applies to Sokrates himself, and not to Plato : TU ye euu Trudy, means the mental ten dencies of Sokratus when a young man. Respecting the physical studies probably sought and cultivated by Sokratea in the earlier years of his life, see the instructive Dissertation of Tychsen, Ueber den Prozess dcs Sokrates, in the Bibliothek der Alien Literatur und Kunst ; Erstes Stuck, p. 43. 4 Plato, Parmenid. p. 128, C. naiTOi uairep ys al AuKatvai GKvhaKtf, ei HfTadelf Kal IXVEVEIS TU faxdevTa, etc. Whether Sokrates can be properly said to have been the pupil of Anaxag- oras and Archelaus, is a question of little moment, which hardly merited the skepticism of Baylc (Anaxagoras, note R; Archelaus, note A : com- pare Schanbach, Anaxagoras Fragmenta, pp. 23, 27). That he would seek to acquaint himself with their doctrines, and improve himself by commu- nicating personally with them, is a matter so probable, that the slenderest testimony suffices to make us believe it Moreover, as I have befor VOL. viir. 18* 27oc.
 * Ion, Chius, Fragm. 9. ap. Didot. Fragm. Historic. Grascor. Diogcn. Laert