Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/479

 ETHICAL DOCTRINE. 40? along with others and more than others, in consequence of their reputation to the analytical cross-examination of SokraU-s, and were quite as little able to defend themselves against it. Whatever may have been the success of Protagoras or any other among these sophists, the mighty originality of Sokrates achieved results not only equal at the time, but incomparably grander and more lasting in reference to the future. Out of his intellectual school sprang not merely Plato, himself a host, but all the other leaders of Grecian speculation for the next half- century, and all those who continued the great line of speculative philosophy down to later times. Eukleides and the Megario school of philosophers, Aristippus and the Kyrenaic, Antis- thenes and Diogenes, the first of those called the Cynics, all emanated more or less directly from the stimulus imparted by Sokrates, though each followed a different vein of thought. 1 Ethics continue to be what Sokrates had first made them, a dis- tinct branch of philosophy, alongside of which politics, rhetoric, logic, and other speculations relating to man and society, gradually arranged themselves ; all of them more popular, as well as more keenly controverted, than physics, which at that time presented comparatively little charm, and still less of attainable certainty. There can be no doubt that the individual influence of Sokrates permanently enlarged the horizon, improved the method, and multiplied the ascendent minds, of the Grecian speculative world, in a manner never since paralleled. Subsequent philosophers may have had a more elaborate doctrine, and a larger number of disciples who imbibed their ideas ; but none of them applied the same stimulating method with the same efficacy ; none of them struck out of other minds that fire which sets light to original thought ; none of them either produced in others the pains of intellectual pregnancy, or extracted from others the fresh and unborrowed offspring of a really parturient mind. Having thus touched upon Sokrates, both as first opener of 1 Cicero (de Orator, iii, 16, 61 ; Tuscul. Disput. v, 4, 11): " Cnjus (So- eratis) multiplex ratio disputandi. rcrmnque vtirictas, ct ingenii magnitude, i'latonis ingenio et literis consecrata, plura genera effecit dissenticntiam philosophorum." Ten distinct varieties of Sokratic philosophers are enu- merated ; but I lay litt'lc stress on the exact num v >r. VOL. TIII. 20