Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/469

 MIND WORKING ON MIND. 447 goodness of his precepts though both were essential features in his character that he derives his peculiar title to fame, but from his originality and prolific efficacy in the line of speculative philosophy. Of that originality, the first portion, as has been just stated, consisted in his having been the first to conceive the idea of an ethical science with its appropriate end, and with pre- cepts capable of being tested and improved ; but the second point, and not the least important, was, his peculiar method, and extia- ordinary power of exciting scientific impulse and capacity in the minds of others. It was not by positive teaching that this effect was produced. Both Sokrates and Plato thought that little men- tal improvement could be produced by expositions directly com- municated, or by new written matter lodged in the memory. 1 It was necessary that mind should work upon mind, by short ques- tion and answer, or an expert employment of the dialectic pro- cess, 2 in order to generate new thoughts and powers ; a process which Plato, with his exuberant fancy, compares to copulation and pregnancy, representing it as the true way, and the only effectual way, of propagating the philosophic spirit. We should greatly misunderstand the negative and indirect vein of Sokrates, if we suppose that it ended in nothing more than simple negation. On busy or ungifted minds, among the indiscriminate public w r ho heard him, it probably left little per- manent effect of any kind, and ended in a mere feeling of admira- tion for ingenuity, or perhaps dislike of paradox : on practical minds like Xenophon, its effect was merged in that of the pre- ceptorial exhortation : but where the seed fell upon an intellect having the least predisposition or capacity for systematic thought, the negation had only the effect of driving the hearer back at first, giving him a new impetus for afterwards springing forward. The Sokratic dialectics, clearing away from the mind its mist of 1 Plato, Sophistus, c. 17, p. 230, A. pera. de TroAAou irovov rb nuv eltiof ivy? Traideiac fffiticpbv uvvreiv, etc. Compare a fragment of Demo- kritus, in Mullnch's edition of the Fragm. Deraokrit. p. 175. Fr. Moral 59. Tdv oioficvov voov t'%Etv 6 VOV&ETCUV naraioitoviei. Compare Plato, Epistol. vii, pp. 343, 344. 1 Compare two passages in Plato's Protagoras, c. 49, p. 329, A, nod c. M, p. 348. "") ; and the Phae Iras, c. 138-140, p. 276, A, E.