There is one important difference, however, to note, between our time and that of Sokratês. In his day, the impressions not only respecting man and society, but also respecting the physical world, were of this same self-sown, self-propagating, and unscientific character. The popular astronomy of the Sokratic age was an aggregate of primitive, superficial observations and imaginative inferences, passing unexamined from elder men to younger, accepted with unsuspecting faith, and consecrated by intense sentiment. Not only men like Nikias, or Anytus and Melêtus, but even Sokratês himself, protested against the impudence of Anaxagoras, when he degraded the divine Helios and Selênê into a sun and moon of calculable motions and magnitudes. But now, the development of the scientific point of view, with the vast increase of methodized physical and mathematical knowledge, has taught every one that such primitive astronomical and physical convictions were nothing better than “a fancy of knowledge without the reality.”[709] Every one renounces them without hesitation, seeks his conclusions from the scientific teacher, and looks to the proofs alone for his guarantee. A man who has never bestowed special study on astronomy, knows that he is ignorant of it: to fancy that he knows it, without such preparation, would be held an absurdity. While the scientific point of view has thus acquired complete predominance in reference to the physical world, it has made little way comparatively on topics regarding man and society, wherein “fancy of knowledge without the reality” continues to reign, not without criticism and opposition, yet still as a paramount force. And if a new Sokratês were now to put the same questions in the market-place to men of all ranks and professions, he would find the like confident persuasion and unsuspecting dogmatism as to generalities; the like faltering, blindness, and contradiction, when tested by cross-examining details.
In the time of Sokratês, this last comparison was not open; since there did not exist, in any department, a body of doctrine scientifically constituted: but the comparison which he actually took, borrowed from the special trades and professions, brought him to an important result. He was the first to see, and the idea pervades all his speculations, that as in each art or profession there is an end to be attained, a theory laying down the means and conditions whereby it is attainable, and precepts deduced from that theory, such precepts collectively taken directing and covering nearly the entire field of practice, but each precept separately taken liable to conflict with others, and therefore liable to cases of exception; so all this is not less true, or admits not less of being realized, respecting the general art of human living and society. There is a grand and all-comprehensive End,—the security and happiness, as far as practicable, of each and all persons in the society:[710] there may be a theory, laying down those means and conditions under which the nearest approach can be made to that end: there may also be precepts, prescribing to every man the conduct and character which best enables him to become an auxiliary towards its attainment, and imperatively restraining him from acts which tend to hinder it; precepts deduced from the theory, each one of them separately taken being subject to exceptions, but all of them taken collectively governing practice, as in each particular art.[711] Sokratês and Plato talk of “the art of dealing with human beings,” “the art of behaving in society,” “that science which has for its object to make men happy:” and they draw a marked distinction between art, or rules of practice deduced from a theoretical survey of the subject-matter and taught with precognition of the end, and mere artless, irrational knack, or dexterity, acquired by simple copying, or assimilation, through a process of which no one could render account.[712]
Plato, with that variety of indirect allusion which is his characteristic, continually constrains the reader to look upon human and social life as having its own ends and purposes no less than each separate profession or craft; and impels him to transfer to the former that conscious analysis as a science, and intelligent practice as an art, which are known as conditions of success in the latter.[713] It was in furtherance of these rational conceptions, “Science and Art,” that Sokratês carried on his crusade against “that conceit of knowledge without reality,” which reigned undisturbed in the moral world around him, and was only beginning to be slightly disturbed even as to the physical world. To him the precept, inscribed in the Delphian temple, “Know Thyself,” was the holiest of all texts, which he constantly cited, and strenuously enforced upon his hearers; interpreting it to mean, Know what sort of a man thou art, and what are thy capacities, in reference to human use.[714] His manner of enforcing it was alike original and effective, and though he was dexterous in varying his topics[715] and queries according to the individual person with whom he had to deal, it was his first object to bring the hearer to take just measure of his own real knowledge or real ignorance. To preach, to exhort, even to confute particular errors, appeared to Sokratês useless, so long as the mind lay wrapped up in its habitual mist or illusion of wisdom: such mist must be dissipated before any new light could enter. Accordingly, the hearer being usually forward in announcing positive declarations on those general doctrines, and explanations of those terms, to which he was most attached and in which he had the most implicit confidence, Sokratês took them to pieces, and showed that they involved contradiction and inconsistency; professing himself to be without any positive opinion, nor ever advancing any until the hearer’s mind had undergone the proper purifying cross-examination.[716]
It was this indirect and negative proceeding, which, though only a part of the whole, stood out as his most original and most conspicuous characteristic, and determined his reputation with a large number of persons who took no trouble to know anything else about him. It was an exposure no less painful than surprising to the person questioned, and produced upon several of them an effect of permanent alienation, so that they never came near him again,[717] but reverted to their former state of mind without any permanent change. But on the other hand, the ingenuity and novelty of the process was highly interesting to hearers, especially youthful hearers, sons of rich men, and enjoying leisure; who not only carried away with them a lofty admiration of Sokratês, but were fond of trying to copy his negative polemics.[718] Probably men like Alkibiadês and Kritias frequented his society chiefly for the purpose of acquiring a quality which they might turn to some account in their political career. His constant habit of never suffering a general term to remain undetermined, but applying it at once to particulars; the homely and effective instances of which he made choice; the string of interrogatories each advancing towards a result, yet a result not foreseen by any one; the indirect and circuitous manner whereby the subject was turned round, and at last approached and laid open by a totally different face, all this constituted a sort of prerogative in Sokratês, which no one else seems to have approached. Its effect was enhanced by a voice and manner highly plausible and captivating, and to a certain extent by the very eccentricity of his silenic physiognomy.[719] What is termed “his irony,” or assumption of the character of an ignorant learner, asking information from one who knew better than himself, while it was essential[720] as an excuse for his practice as a questioner, contributed also to add zest and novelty to his conversation; and totally banished from it both didactic pedantry and seeming bias as an advocate; which, to one who talked so much, was of no small advantage. After he had acquired celebrity, this uniform profession of ignorance in debate was usually construed as mere affectation; and those who merely heard him occasionally, without penetrating into his intimacy, often suspected that he was amusing himself with ingenious paradox.[721] Timon the Satirist, and Zeno the Epicurean, accordingly described him as a buffoon, who turned every one into ridicule, especially men of eminence.[722]
It is by Plato that the negative and indirect vein of Sokratês has been worked out and immortalized; while Xenophon, who sympathized little in it, complains that others looked at his master too exclusively on this side, and that they could not conceive him as a guide to virtue, but only as a stirring and propulsive force.[723] One of the principal objects of his “Memorabilia” is, to show that Sokratês, after having worked upon novices sufficiently with the negative line of questions, altered his tone, desisted from embarrassing them, and addressed to them precepts not less plain and simple than directly useful in practice.[724] I do not at all doubt that this was often the fact, and that the various dialogues in which Xenophon presents to us the philosopher inculcating self-control, temperance, piety, duty to parents, brotherly love, fidelity in friendship, diligence, benevolence, etc., on positive grounds, are a faithful picture of one valuable side of his character, and an essential part of the whole. Such direct admonitory influence was common to Sokratês with Prodikus and the best of the sophists.
It is, however, neither from the virtue of his life, nor from the goodness of his precepts—though both were essential features in his character—that he derives his peculiar title to fame, but from his originality and prolific efficacy in the line of speculative philosophy. Of that originality, the first portion, as has been just stated, consisted in his having been the first to conceive the idea of an ethical science with its appropriate end, and with precepts capable of being tested and improved; but the second point, and not the least important, was, his peculiar method, and extraordinary power of exciting scientific impulse and capacity in the minds of others. It was not by positive teaching that this effect was produced. Both Sokratês and Plato thought that little mental improvement could be produced by expositions directly communicated, or by new written matter lodged in the memory.[725] It was necessary that mind should work upon mind, by short question and answer, or an expert employment of the dialectic process,[726] in order to generate new thoughts and powers; a process which Plato, with his exuberant fancy, compares to copulation and pregnancy, representing it as the true way, and the only effectual way, of propagating the philosophic spirit.
We should greatly misunderstand the negative and indirect vein of Sokratês, if we suppose that it ended in nothing more than simple negation. On busy or ungifted minds, among the indiscriminate public who heard him, it probably left little permanent effect of any kind, and ended in a mere feeling of admiration for ingenuity, or perhaps dislike of paradox: on practical minds like Xenophon, its effect was merged in that of the preceptorial exhortation: but where the seed fell upon an intellect having the least predisposition or capacity for systematic thought, the negation had only the effect of driving the hearer back at first, giving him a new impetus for afterwards springing forward. The Sokratic dialectics, clearing away from the mind its mist of fancied knowledge, and laying bare the real ignorance, produced an immediate effect like the touch of the torpedo:[727] the newly-created consciousness of ignorance was alike unexpected, painful, and humiliating,—a season of doubt and discomfort; yet combined with an internal working and yearning after truth, never before experienced. Such intellectual quickening, which could never commence until the mind had been disabused of its original illusion of false knowledge, was considered by Sokratês not merely as the index and precursor, but as the indispensable condition, of future progress. It was the middle point in the ascending mental scale; the lowest point being ignorance unconscious, self-satisfied, and mistaking itself for knowledge; the next above, ignorance conscious, unmasked, ashamed of itself, and thirsting after knowledge as yet unpossessed; while actual knowledge, the third and highest stage, was only attainable after passing through the second as a preliminary.[728] This second, was a sort of pregnancy; and every mind either by nature incapable of it, or in which, from want of the necessary conjunction, it had never arisen, was barren for all purposes of original or self-appropriated thought. Sokratês regarded it as his peculiar vocation and skill, employing another Platonic metaphor, while he had himself no power of reproduction, to deal with such pregnant and troubled minds in the capacity of a midwife; to assist them in that mental parturition whereby they were to be relieved, but at the same time to scrutinize narrowly the offspring which they brought forth; and if it should prove distorted or unpromising, to cast it away with the rigor of a Lykurgean nurse, whatever might be the reluctance of the mother-mind to part with its new-born.[729] There is nothing which Plato is more fertile in illustrating, than this relation between the teacher and the scholar, operating not by what it put into the latter, but by what it evolved out of him; by creating an uneasy longing after truth, aiding in the elaboration necessary for obtaining relief, and testing whether the doctrine elaborated possessed the real lineaments, or merely the delusive semblance, of truth.
There are few things more remarkable than the description given of the colloquial magic of Sokratês and its vehement effects, by those who had themselves heard it and felt its force. Its suggestive and stimulating power was a gift so extraordinary, as well to justify any abundance of imagery on the part of Plato to illustrate it.[730] On the subjects to which he applied himself, man and society, his hearers had done little but feel and affirm: Sokratês undertook to make them think, weigh, and examine themselves and their own judgments, until the latter were brought into consistency with each other, as well as with a known and venerable end. The generalizations embodied in their judgments had grown together and coalesced in a manner at once so intimate, so familiar, yet so unverified, that the particulars implied in them had passed out of notice: so that Sokratês, when he recalled these particulars out of a forgotten experience, presented to the hearer his own opinions under a totally new point of view. His conversations—even as they appear in the reproduction of Xenophon, which presents but a mere skeleton of the reality—exhibit the main features of a genuine inductive method, struggling against the deep-lying, but unheeded, errors of the early intellect acting by itself, without conscious march or scientific guidance,—of the intellectus sibi permissus,—upon which Bacon so emphatically dwells. Amidst abundance of instantiæ negativæ, the scientific value of which is dwelt upon in the “Novum Organon,”[731] and negative instances, too, so dexterously chosen as generally to show the way to new truth, in place of that error which they set aside,—there is a close pressure on the hearer’s mind, to keep it in the distinct tract of particulars, as conditions of every just and consistent generalization; and to divert it from becoming enslaved to unexamined formulæ, or from delivering mere intensity of persuasion under the authoritative phrase of reason. Instead of anxiety to plant in the hearer a conclusion ready-made and accepted on trust, the questioner keeps up a prolonged suspense with special emphasis laid upon the particulars tending both affirmatively and negatively; nor is his purpose answered, until that state of knowledge and apprehended evidence is created, out of which the conclusion starts as a living product, with its own root and self-sustaining power consciously linked with its premises. If this conclusion so generated be not the same as that which the questioner himself adopts, it will at least be some other, worthy of a competent and examining mind taking its own independent view of the appropriate evidence. And amidst all the variety and divergence of particulars which we find enforced in the language of Sokratês, the end, towards which all of them point, is one and the same, emphatically signified, the good and happiness of social man.
It is not, then, to multiply proselytes, or to procure authoritative assent, but to create earnest seekers, analytical intellects, foreknowing and consistent agents, capable of forming conclusions for themselves and of teaching others, as well as to force them into that path of inductive generalization whereby alone trustworthy conclusions can be formed, that the Sokratic method aspires. In many of the Platonic dialogues, wherein Sokratês is brought forward as the principal disputant, we read a series of discussions and arguments, distinct, though having reference to the same subject, but terminating either in a result purely negative, or without any definite result at all. The commentators often attempt, but in my judgment with little success, either by arranging the dialogues in a supposed sequence or by various other hypotheses, to assign some positive doctrinal conclusion as having been indirectly contemplated by the author. But if Plato had aimed at any substantive demonstration of this sort, we cannot well imagine that he would have left his purpose thus in the dark, visible only by the microscope of a critic. The didactic value of these dialogues—that wherein the genuine Sokratic spirit stands most manifest—consists, not in the positive conclusion proved, but in the argumentative process itself, coupled with the general importance of the subject, upon which evidence negative and affirmative is brought to bear.
This connects itself with that which I remarked in the [preceding chapter], when mentioning Zeno and the first manifestations of dialectics, respecting the large sweep, the many-sided argumentation, and the strength as well as forwardness of the negative arm, in Grecian speculative philosophy. Through Sokratês, this amplitude of dialectic range was transmitted from Zeno, first to Plato and next to Aristotle. It was a proceeding natural to men who were not merely interested in establishing, or refuting some given particular conclusion, but who also—like expert mathematicians in their own science—loved, esteemed, and sought to improve the dialectic process itself, with the means of verification which it afforded; a feeling, of which abundant evidence is to be found in the Platonic writings.[732] Such pleasure in the scientific operation,—though not merely innocent, but valuable both as a stimulant and as a guarantee against error, and though the corresponding taste among mathematicians is always treated with the sympathy which it deserves,—incurs much unmerited reprobation from modern historians of philosophy, under the name of love of disputation, cavilling, or skeptical subtlety.