Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/575

 574 CRITICAL NOTICES: though of great merit, errs by attaching too much weight to the character of the Sophists as teachers of virtue (a pretension which only some of them made), instead of treating them as the heralds of that general culture, which Athens called for in con- sequence of the political results of the Persian invasion. It is not likely that Greeks ever became " persuaded that good conduct was something which could be learned from lectures," but they might reasonably suppose that lectures could give some ' tips ' on the ways to success in public life and on the new ideas of polite letters which the stress of circumstances had withdrawn from the circumference to the centre of Hellas. All through this part of the book some confusion arises by treating 'Aperi'/ as another name for good conduct : and this is especially to be regretted as Mr. Sidgwick well points out that the knowledge of the good is not at all the same thing as knowledge of our duty. [The words on p. 24, "those who knew lioir to do just," &c., is a mistranslation which obscures the point in question.] What Socrates was anxious to enforce was that 'A/jcr/y was not, according to the old conservative doctrine (e.g., of Pindar), a hereditary gift, but a capacity depending upon instruction, not indeed on purely verbal instruction (as Mr. Sidgwick, falling into what Dr. Bain calls the fallacy of suppressed correlative, seems to think). And it is going too far when on p. 26 an attempt is made by an interpretation of a dubious authority like the 7th book of Eth. Xic. to represent Socrates as neglectful of the need of firmness of purpose. What Socrates taught was, as is well said, in p. 31, the "duty of living by consistent theory". What seems to characterise him is the immense fund of realism, which appears in a dislike to abstract generalities and sentimentalism, and makes him bring the Beautiful and Eight to the touchstone of the Good, and insist on the relativity of the latter in each particular case. So that when (pp. 29, 30) it is said that he sought for " man's ultimate and abstract good," it may be questioned whether this is not introducing a conception first broached by Euclides and worked out by Plato. The account of Plato labours (as indeed the limits of a manual almost necessitate) under the effects of the attempt to co-ordinate the several dialogues and thus import into him a greater symmetry of system than is possible for a writer, who (and in saying so, I differ from Mr. Sidgwick) never allows philosophy to pass defini- tively into the lecture-room. It is an unfortunate and misleading version of the very or real good to call it "good in the abstract " : and the same may be said of the phrase " abstract thought'' on p. 39. It is doubtfully right to call the "utilitarianism" of the 1'i-iitnijnrn.t a transition-stage of Plato's thought, only temporarily held. The conclusion of the dialogue that virtue, both general and special, lies in knowledge, is repeated in the Plm-'ln, guarded however by the addition that it is not an exchange of pleasure for pleasure, but the presence of knowledge which makes the ' right