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From, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. I, The early Presocratics and the Pythagoreans, Cambridge University Press, 1962, pp. 1-25.
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Page 12
The state of physical speculation itself must also have made the time seem ripe for a reaction against it of common sense. In the absence of precise experiment and the scientific instruments which make it possible, the natural philosophers appeared to be not so much explaining the world as explaining it away. Faced with the choice of believing either, with Parmenides, that motion and change were unreal, or else that reality consisted of atoms and void atoms which were not only invisible but lacking also the other sensible qualities of taste, smell and sound which mean everything to the human being it is not surprising if most men decided that the world of the philosophers had little to say to them.
At the same time, the contrast between certain things which were only 'conventional' and others which existed 'in nature' (whether it was borrowed from the physicists or merely shared with them as part of the general spirit of the age) was eagerly seized on by some as the basis for an attack on absolute values or divine sanctions in the ethical sphere. Virtue, like colour, was in the eye of the beholder, it did not exist 'by nature'. In the ensuing controversy, Socrates employed all his powers in the defence of absolute standards, through the implications of his paradoxes: 'Virtue is knowledge' and 'No man does wrong willingly'. His point was that if anyone understood the true nature of goodness its appeal would be irresistible, and failure to comply with its standards could only be due to a lack of full understanding. This full understanding he did not claim to have reached himself, but unlike others he was aware of his ignorance. Since this at least was a starting-point, and an unjustified confidence in ethical matters in his view the chief cause of wrongdoing, he conceived it his mission to convince men of their ignorance of the nature of goodness and so persuade them to seek, with him, to remedy it. In carrying out this task, he developed the dialectical and elenctic methods of argument to which later philosophers owed so much.
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/guthrie-history-intro.asp?pg=12
