Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/480

 *58 HISTORY OF GREECE. the field of ethics to scientific study, and as author tf a method, little copied and never paralleled since his time, for stimulating in other man's minds earnest analytical inquiry, I speak last about his theoretical doctrine. Considering the fanciful, fur fetched ideas, upon which alone the Pythagoreans and other predecessors had shaped their theories respecting virtues and vices, the wonder is that Sokrates, who had no better guides (o follow, should have laid down an ethical doctrine which has the double merit of being true, as far as it goes, legitimate, and oC comprehensive generality : though it errs, mainly by stating a part of the essential conditions of virtue l sometimes also a part of the ethical end as if it were the whole. Sokrates resolved all virtue into knowledge or wisdom ; all vice, into ignorance or folly. To do right was the only way to impart happiness, or the least degree of unhappiness compatible with any given situation : now this was precisely what every one wished for and aimed at ; only that many persons, from ignorance, took the wrong road ; and no man was wise enough always to take the right. But as no man was willingly his own enemy, so no man ever did wrong willingly ; it was because he was not fully or correctly informed of the consequences of his own actions ; so that the proper remedy to apply was enlarged teaching of consequences and improved judgment. 2 To make him willing to be taught, the only condition required was to make him conscious of his own ignorance ; the want of which consciousness was the real cause both of indocility and of vice. That this doctrine sets forth one portion of the essential coiidi- 1 In setting forth the ethical end, the language of Sokrates, as far as we can judge from Xenophon and Plato, seems to have been not always con- sistent with itself. Ho sometimes stated it as if it included a reference to the happiness, not merely of the agent himself, but of others besides ; both P.S coordinate elements; at other times, he seems to speak as if the end was nothing more than the happiness of the agent himself, though the happiness of others was among the greatest and most essential means. The former view is rather countenanced by Xenophon, the best witness about his master, so that I have given it as belonging to Sokrates, though it is not always adhered to. The latter view appears most in Plato, who assimilates the health of the soul to the health of the body, an end easeo tially self-regarding. 3 Cicero, de Orator. i, 47, 204.