Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/481

 DOCTRINE OF SOKRATES. 459 tions of virtue, is certain; and that too the most commanding portion, since there can be no assured moral conduct except under the supremacy of reason. But that it omits to notice, what is not less essential to virtue, the proper condition of the emo- tions, desires, etc., taking account only of the intellect, is also certain; and has been remarked by Aristotle 1 as well as by many others. It is fruitless, in my judgment, to attempt by any refined explanation to make out that Sokrates meant, by " knowl- edge," something more than what is directly implied in the word. He had present to his mind, as the grand depravation of the human being, not so much vice, as madness ; that state in which a man does not know what he is doing. Against the vicious man, securities both public and private may be taken, with considerable effect ; against the madman there is no security ex- cept perpetual restraint. He is incapable of any of the duties incumbent on social man, nor can he, even if he wishes, do good either to himself or to others. The sentiment which we feel to- wards such an unhappy being is, indeed, something totally differ ent from moral reprobation, such as we feel for the vicious man who does wrong knowingly. But Sokrates took measure of both with reference to the purposes of human life and society, and pronounced that the latter was less completely spoiled for those purposes than the former. Madness was ignorance at its extreme pitch, accompanied, too, by the circumstance that the madman himself was unconscious of his own ignorance, acting under a sincere persuasion that he knew what he was doing. But short of this extremity, there were many varieties and gradations in the scale of ignorance, which, if accompanied by false conceit of knowl- edge, differed from madness only in degree, and each of which disqualified a man from doing right, in proportion to the ground which it covered. The worst of all ignorance that which stood nearest to madness was when a man was ignorant of himself, fancying that he knew what he did not really know, and that he could do, or avoid, or endure, what was quite beyond his capacity ; when, for example, intending to speak the same truth, he some- times said one thing, sometimes another; or, casting up the same 1 Xennpli. Mem. iii. 9. 4; Aristot Ethic. Nikomach. vi. 13, 3-5; Kthic, Eudem. i, 5 ; Ethic. Mayn. i, 35.