Page 7
The disinterested self-sacrificing nobility of Socrates’ life, thus devoted
to awakening them that sleep out of their moral torpor; the enmities that
his keen and trenchant questionings of quacks and pretenders of every kind
induced; the devotion of some of his friends, the unhappy falling away of
others; the calumnies of interested enemies, the satires of poets; and
lastly, the story of the final attack by an ungrateful people on their one
great teacher, of his unjust condemnation and heroic death—all this we must
pass over here. The story is in outline, at least, a familiar one, and it is
one of the noblest in history. What is more to the purpose for us is to
ascertain how far his search for definitions was successful; how far he was
able to
Take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them;
how far, in short, he was able to evolve a law, a universal principle, out
of the confused babel of common life and thought and speech, strong enough
and wide enough on which to build a new order for this world, a new hope for
the world beyond.
We have said that Socrates made the individual and the concrete the field of
his search. And not only did he look to individuals for light, he looked to
each individual specifically in that aspect of his character and faculty
which was most particular to himself. That is to say, if he met a carpenter,
it was on his carpentering that he questioned him; if a sculptor, on his
practice as a sculptor; if a statesman, on his statesmanship. In short, he
did not want general vague theories on subjects of which his interlocutors
could not be supposed to have any special experience or knowledge; he
interrogated each on the subject which he knew best.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
SOCRATES
