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 to mechanical employments―shoemaking, swordmaking, and the like), and from them he had got clear and satisfactory answers. But he found that if he asked a man what was his real work or object in life, or what was the meaning of the moral terms so frequently in his mouth, he got only vague answers or contradictions. Hence the questions which he examines in these 'Dialogues of Search' relate to the most familiar and obvious terms that meet us on the threshold of morality―Holiness, Courage, Temperance, and other cardinal virtues―qualities which many might possess themselves and easily recognise in others, but which they could not explain with any logical precision.

It is true that custom and tradition had given to these set phrases of morality a certain value and significance in the minds of those who used them; but few had learned to define or analyse their full meaning, and Socrates was the first who brought them under a logical scrutiny―examining their various uses, fixing their strict sense, and referring the individuals to their proper class, or, in the words of Aristotle, rallying the stragglers to the main body of the regiment.

In his arguments with the Sophists, as we have seen, Socrates shows his opponents no law. He proves himself a bitter and determined antagonist―turning where he can their own weapons against themselves, and leaving them to find out the fallacies in his statements; nor will he listen to any long defence from them, for, as he tells Protagoras, he has a short memory, and expects definite categorical answers. But when