Page:Philosophical Review Volume 2.djvu/361

Rh – we find, indeed, in the Memorabilia (III, 9) the assertion that Socrates did not distinguish between wisdom and the other virtues; but Xenophon knows nothing of the mighty import of the investigation of concepts, regarded by Aristotle as the unquestionable peculiar wont of Socrates, – though he concedes that the entire activity of Socrates consisted in the formation of concepts. Xenophon recognizes the connection between the formation of concepts and social converse, and hence the origin of dialectic. Beyond the definitions of the virtues, however, only a little fruit of the Socratic investigation of Concepts appears from the Memorabilia. The dialectic of Xenophon contradicts the definitory dialectic of Socrates (described by Aristotle) in three respects: (1) it deals with the how and not the what; (2) it is tendentially and parenetically argumentative; (3) it begins rather than ends with definitions. Xenophon makes the differentiation of concepts a part of the Socratic dialectic: but this is to be regarded as an erroneous idea, borrowed in all probability from a work of Antisthenes, not genuinely Socratic. Of the most characteristic aspect of the Socratic dialectic, the Elenchus, (which originated with him and not with the Sophists), Xenophon gives an inaccurate representation, also borrowed from Antisthenes. His report as to the eudaemonism of Socrates is not so much false as incomplete, one-sided.

As to the practical side of Socrates' work, Xenophon gives conflicting accounts. His statements regarding the 'profiting' or 'improving' effect of Socrates' dialectic are hardly of a historical character: there is no proof that Socrates employed parenetic or hortatory discourse as Xenophon implies. Xenophon corrupts the Socratic dialectic in various ways: e.g., by employing monologue to excess or by making 'Socrates' indulge in dogmatic, rhetorical discourse. The activity of Socrates was merely a continual inquiry or investigation, together with a confession of ignorance. If there were a 'protreptic' influence in his conversation, it concerned only knowledge, not virtue: he did not preach, – in his principles there was no such thing as preaching on the pedagogical arts of working upon the 'feelings' and thus reaching the 'will.' The representations in the Memorabilia in which Socrates appears as exhorting to virtue are therefore unhistorical, 'fictitious.'

It is hardly necessary to say that the volume of the contents of which the foregoing is but an imperfect summary, is a candid, careful, learned, and able study, so far as it goes, of the subject of which it treats. Of the philological learning of it, it is not necessary to