Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/17

Rh the ancients to have been "the first man that ever took notes of conversations." He made a considerable collection of the conversations of Socrates thus noted down. These were afterwards published in the book commonly known as the 'Memorabilia,' for which all the intellectual world must be grateful to Xenophon. But personally he can only have been to a limited extent influenced by the teachings of Socrates, as he had no taste for the higher and more abstract parts of philosophy, and therefore he only assimilated the ethical and practical elements of the thought of his master. Other pupils of Socrates, such as Plato and Euclid, appear to have derived from their teacher an impulse towards metaphysical speculation, of which Xenophon shows no trace. He was throughout his life a practical sensible man of the world, imbued with the easier and more popular Socratic theories; rather too fond of omens and divination, for which taste he quoted the authority of his master; doubtless much cultivated and improved by all the Socratic discussions to which he had listened, but by no means to be reckoned as one of the philosophers of the Socratic "family."

He appears, at all events, to have regarded Socrates as his mentor and adviser in the affairs of life. We have from his own pen the following account of the share of Socrates in determining the step most important of all in the career of Xenophon. In the year 402 he received a letter from a Bœotian friend named Proxenus, urging him to come to Sardis and take