Page:The academic questions, treatise de finibus, and Tusculan disputations.djvu/21

xiv studies all the abstruse sciences, and limiting his philosophy to those practical points which could have influence on human conduct. “He himself was always conversing about the affairs of men,” is the description given of him by Xenophon. Astronomy he pronounced to be one of the divine mysteries which it was impossible to understand and madness to investigate; all that man wanted was to know enough of the heavenly bodies to serve as an index to the change of seasons and as guides for voyages, etc.; and that knowledge might, he said, easily be obtained from pilots and watchmen. Geometry he reduced to its literal meaning of land-measuring, useful to enable one to act with judgment in the purchase or sale of land; but he looked with great contempt on the study of complicated diagrams and mathematical problems. As to general natural philosophy, he wholly discarded it; asking whether those who professed to apply themselves to that study knew human affairs so well as to have time to spare for divine; was it that they thought that they could influence the winds, rain, and seasons, or did they desire nothing but the gratification of an idle curiosity? Men should recollect how much the wisest of them who have attempted to prosecute these investigations differ from one another, and how totally opposite and contradictory their opinions are.

Socrates, then, looked at all knowledge from the point of view of human practice. He first, as Cicero says, (Tusc. Dis. v. 4,) “called philosophy down from heaven and established it in the cities, introduced it even into private houses, and compelled it to investigate life, and manners, and what was good and evil among men.” He was the first man who turned his thoughts and discussions distinctly to the subject of Ethics. Deeply imbued with sincere religious feeling, and believing himself to be under the peculiar guidance of the Gods, who at all times admonished him by a divine warning voice when he was in danger of doing anything unwise, inexpedient, or improper, he believed that the Gods constantly manifested their love of and care for all men in the most essential manner, in replying through oracles, and sending them information by sacrificial signs or prodigies, in