1 conduct is the best? that Xenophon took these preliminary and introductory discussions for the whole of the Socratic philosophy of life, and hence drew a picture of the latter, representing, it is true, his own but not the platform of the real Socrates? This view has no doubt its truth, but it is hardly the whole truth. We can readily believe that Xenophon found the more tangible foundation for moral precepts which judges them by their consequences both clearer and more intelligible than the deeper one which regards their working on the inner condition of man. We naturally, therefore, expect his description to give the preference to this to him more intelligible explanation even at the cost of the other; and to throw the other more into the background than the actual state of the case warrants. We must, therefore, allow double value to such Socratic utterances as he reports implying a deeper moral life. We cannot, however, consider him so bad a guide as to report utterances which Socrates never expressed, nor can we give to these utterances a meaning by means of which they can be brought into full accord with Plato's description of the Socratic ethics. Take for instance the dialogues with Aristippus, 2 where Socrates is asked to point out a thing good, 1 This is, in the main, the view of Brandis, Rhein. Mus. v. Niebuhr u. Brandis, i. b, 138; Gr. Röm. Phil. ii. a, 40; Gesch. d. Entwickl. i. 238; Ribbing, Sokrat. Stud. i. 115; Volquard sen, Dæmon d. Sokr. 4, who 2 Mem. iii. 8. СНАР. VII. CHAP. and afterwards a thing beautiful, and both times 4 1 See p. 149, 4. 2 As Mem. iv. 6, 8. Brandis, 1. c. 4 As Brandis, 1. c. asserts. Conf. Dissen, 1. c. 88; Ritter, Gesch. d. Phil. ii. 70. 5 What Brandis has elsewhere asserted appears to be less open to objection, viz. that Socrates distinguishes mere good fortune from really faring well, and that he only and Plato recognising this contradiction has avoided it. Still the question really is, whether and to what extent Socrates has avoided it, and nothing can justify our assuming, that he cannot possibly have been involved in it. For is there not a contradiction in Kant rejecting most decidedly for the moral estimate of our actions every standard based on allows happiness in its ordinary sense a place among things relatively good. The former statement is in Mem. iii. 9, 14; but this distinction even by a decided advocate of Eudæmonism, such as Aristippus, could be admitted, assuming that true and lasting happiness is to be attained not by the uncertain favour of chance, but by one's own activity and understanding, and that man must not make himself dependent on extreme circumstances, but ensure a lasting enjoyment of life by rising superior to himself and his surroundings. If Brandis (Entw. i. 237) declares this impossible, he need simply be referred to the fact that in the Cyrenaic and Epicurean schools such views are actually met with. See below, ch. xiv. B, 5, and Zeller's Stoics, Epicureans, &c., p. 44. For the latter statement Brandis appeals to Mem. iv. 2, 34. Here Euthydemus has to be convinced of his ignorance in respect of good and evil. After it has been proved that all things considered by Euthydemus to be goods, wisdom included, may, under certain circum stances, be disadvantageous, Euthydemus says: Kivduvevel— ἀναμφιλογώτατον ἀγαθὸν εἶναι τὸ evdaιuovev, to which Socrates replies: e YE μÝ TIS AUTÒ ¿§ ἀμφιλόγων ἀγαθῶν συντιθείη, or as it is immediately explained, εἴ γε μὴ προσθήσομεν αὐτῷ κάλλος ἢ ἰσχὺν ἢ πλοῦτον ἢ δόξαν ἢ καί τι ἄλλο τῶν τοιούτων, since among all these things there is none which is not the source of much evil. Far from denying, this proceeds on the distinct understanding that happiness is the highest goodwhich Greek ethics invariably presuppose; neither is it called simply an ἀμφίλογον ἀγαθὸν, except in the case that it is compounded of ἀμφίλογα ἀγαθὰ, i.β. of such things as under certain circumstances lead to evil, and are not simply ȧyalà, but sometimes кaká. Still less is this statement at variance with passages which estimate the value of every thing and of every action by its consequences, a standard being the very thing which Socrates is here laying down. 1 As Plato has already remarked, Rep. ii. 362, E.; Phædo, 68 D. CHAP. VII. CHAP. experience, and afterwards deciding the question as 1 See p. 147. what this consists, Socrates according to all accounts has not expressed with sufficient precision to avoid all ambiguity in his ethics. In passages of Plato from which we can gather the views of the Socrates of history, with some certainty, he does not even go beyond saying that intellectual culture, care for the soul, must be the most important end for man. Still to refer all human actions to this as their ultimate and final purpose is impossible for his unsystematic and casual ethical theories, unsupported by any comprehensive psychological research. Hence other ends having to do with man's well-being in the most varied ways come apparently independently to support that highest moral purpose, and moral activity itself appears as a means towards attaining these ends. If therefore Xenophon reports a number of Socratic dialogues in which things are so represented, we may still maintain that they do not exhaust the Socratic basis of ethics; but we have no right to question the accuracy of his description, supported as it is by many traces in Plato, nor yet to twist it into its opposite by assuming that we have here only the beginnings of dialogues the real object of which must be a very different one. Their accuracy on the contrary is vouched for by the circum in the passages quoted from Plato on p. 152, although the conception of the useful is somewhat extended there. Compare the sound remarks of Strümpell, Gesch. d. Prakt. Phil. d. Gr. 138, resulting in this: Socrates made no such distinction in kind in the con- CHAP. VII. |