But over and above any love of the process, the subjects to which dialectics were applied, from Sokratês downwards,—man and society, ethics, politics, metaphysics, etc., were such as particularly called for this many-sided handling. On topics like these, relating to sequences of fact which depend upon a multitude of coöperating or conflicting causes, it is impossible to arrive, by any one thread of positive reasoning or induction, at absolute doctrine, which a man may reckon upon finding always true, whether he remembers the proof or not; as is the case with mathematical, astronomical, or physical truth. The utmost which science can ascertain, on subjects thus complicated, is an aggregate, not of peremptory theorems and predictions, but of tendencies;[733] by studying the action of each separate cause, and combining them together as well as our means admit. The knowledge of tendencies thus obtained, though falling much short of certainty, is highly important for guidance: but it is plain that conclusions of this nature, resulting from multifarious threads of evidence, true only on a balance, and always liable to limitation, can never be safely detached from the proofs on which they rest, or taught as absolute and consecrated formulæ.[734] They require to be kept in perpetual and conscious association with the evidences, affirmative and negative, by the joint consideration of which their truth is established; nor can this object be attained by any other means than by ever-renovated discussion, instituted from new and distinct points of view, and with free play to that negative arm which is indispensable as stimulus not less than as control. To ask for nothing but results, to decline the labor of verification, to be satisfied with a ready-made stock of established positive arguments as proof, and to decry the doubter or negative reasoner, who starts new difficulties, as a common enemy, this is a proceeding sufficiently common, in ancient as well as in modern times. But it is, nevertheless, an abnegation of the dignity, and even of the functions, of speculative philosophy. It is the direct reverse of the method both of Sokratês and Plato, who, as inquirers, felt that, for the great subjects which they treated, multiplied threads of reasoning, coupled with the constant presence of the cross-examining elenchus, were indispensable. Nor is it less at variance with the views of Aristotle,—though a man very different from either of them,—who goes round his subject on all sides, states and considers all its difficulties, and insists emphatically on the necessity of having all these difficulties brought out in full force, as the incitement and guide to positive philosophy, as well as the test of its sufficiency.[735]
Understanding thus the method of Sokratês, we shall be at no loss to account for a certain variance on his part—and a still greater variance on the part of Plato, who expanded the method in writing so much more—with the sophists, without supposing the latter to be corrupt teachers. As they aimed at qualifying young men for active life, they accepted the current ethical and political sentiment, with its unexamined commonplaces and inconsistencies, merely seeking to shape it into what was accounted a meritorious character at Athens. They were thus exposed, along with others—and more than others, in consequence of their reputation—to the analytical cross-examination of Sokratês, and were quite as little able to defend themselves against it.
Whatever may have been the success of Protagoras or any other among these sophists, the mighty originality of Sokratês achieved results not only equal at the time, but incomparably grander and more lasting in reference to the future. Out of his intellectual school sprang not merely Plato, himself a host, but all the other leaders of Grecian speculation for the next half-century, and all those who continued the great line of speculative philosophy down to later times. Eukleidês and the Megaric school of philosophers,—Aristippus and the Kyrenaic,—Antisthenês and Diogenês, the first of those called the Cynics, all emanated more or less directly from the stimulus imparted by Sokratês, though each followed a different vein of thought.[736] Ethics continue to be what Sokratês had first made them, a distinct branch of philosophy, alongside of which politics, rhetoric, logic, and other speculations relating to man and society, gradually arranged themselves; all of them more popular, as well as more keenly controverted, than physics, which at that time presented comparatively little charm, and still less of attainable certainty. There can be no doubt that the individual influence of Sokratês permanently enlarged the horizon, improved the method, and multiplied the ascendent minds, of the Grecian speculative world, in a manner never since paralleled. Subsequent philosophers may have had a more elaborate doctrine, and a larger number of disciples who imbibed their ideas; but none of them applied the same stimulating method with the same efficacy; none of them struck out of other minds that fire which sets light to original thought; none of them either produced in others the pains of intellectual pregnancy, or extracted from others the fresh and unborrowed offspring of a really parturient mind.
Having thus touched upon Sokratês, both as first opener of the field of ethics to scientific study, and as author of a method, little copied and never paralleled since his time, for stimulating in other men’s minds earnest analytical inquiry, I speak last about his theoretical doctrine. Considering the fanciful, far-fetched ideas, upon which alone the Pythagoreans and other predecessors had shaped their theories respecting virtues and vices, the wonder is that Sokratês, who had no better guides to follow, should have laid down an ethical doctrine which has the double merit of being true, as far as it goes, legitimate, and of comprehensive generality: though it errs, mainly by stating a part of the essential conditions of virtue[737]—sometimes also a part of the ethical end—as if it were the whole. Sokratês resolved all virtue into knowledge or wisdom; all vice, into ignorance or folly. To do right was the only way to impart happiness, or the least degree of unhappiness compatible with any given situation: now this was precisely what every one wished for and aimed at; only that many persons, from ignorance, took the wrong road; and no man was wise enough always to take the right. But as no man was willingly his own enemy, so no man ever did wrong willingly; it was because he was not fully or correctly informed of the consequences of his own actions; so that the proper remedy to apply was enlarged teaching of consequences and improved judgment.[738] To make him willing to be taught, the only condition required was to make him conscious of his own ignorance; the want of which consciousness was the real cause both of indocility and of vice.
That this doctrine sets forth one portion of the essential conditions of virtue, is certain; and that too the most commanding portion, since there can be no assured moral conduct except under the supremacy of reason. But that it omits to notice, what is not less essential to virtue, the proper condition of the emotions, desires, etc., taking account only of the intellect, is also certain; and has been remarked by Aristotle[739] as well as by many others. It is fruitless, in my judgment, to attempt by any refined explanation to make out that Sokratês meant, by “knowledge,” something more than what is directly implied in the word. He had present to his mind, as the grand depravation of the human being, not so much vice, as madness; that state in which a man does not know what he is doing. Against the vicious man, securities both public and private may be taken, with considerable effect; against the madman there is no security except perpetual restraint. He is incapable of any of the duties incumbent on social man, nor can he, even if he wishes, do good either to himself or to others. The sentiment which we feel towards such an unhappy being is, indeed, something totally different from moral reprobation, such as we feel for the vicious man who does wrong knowingly. But Sokratês took measure of both with reference to the purposes of human life and society, and pronounced that the latter was less completely spoiled for those purposes than the former. Madness was ignorance at its extreme pitch, accompanied, too, by the circumstance that the madman himself was unconscious of his own ignorance, acting under a sincere persuasion that he knew what he was doing. But short of this extremity, there were many varieties and gradations in the scale of ignorance, which, if accompanied by false conceit of knowledge, differed from madness only in degree, and each of which disqualified a man from doing right, in proportion to the ground which it covered. The worst of all ignorance—that which stood nearest to madness—was when a man was ignorant of himself, fancying that he knew what he did not really know, and that he could do, or avoid, or endure, what was quite beyond his capacity; when, for example, intending to speak the same truth, he sometimes said one thing, sometimes another; or, casting up the same arithmetical figures, made sometimes a greater sum, sometimes a less. A person who knows his letters, or an arithmetician, may doubtless write bad orthography or cast-up incorrectly, by design, but can also perform the operations correctly, if he chooses; while one ignorant of writing or of arithmetic, cannot do it correctly, even though he should be anxious to do so. The former, therefore, comes nearer to the good orthographer or arithmetician than the latter. So, if a man knows what is just, honorable, and good, but commits acts of a contrary character, he is juster, or comes nearer to being a just man, than one who does not know what just acts are, and does not distinguish them from unjust; for this latter cannot conduct himself justly, even if he desires it ever so much.[740]
The opinion here maintained illustrates forcibly the general doctrine of Sokratês. I have already observed that the fundamental idea which governed his train of reasoning, was, the analogy of each man’s social life and duty to a special profession or trade. Now what is principally inquired after in regard to these special men, is their professional capacity; without this, no person would ever think of employing them, let their dispositions be ever so good; with it, good dispositions and diligence are presumed, unless there be positive grounds for suspecting the contrary. But why do we indulge such presumption? Because their pecuniary interest, their professional credit, and their place among competitors, are staked upon success, so that we reckon upon their best efforts. But in regard to that manifold and indefinite series of acts which constitute the sum total of social duty, a man has no such special interest to guide and impel him, nor can we presume in him those dispositions which will insure his doing right, wherever he knows what right is. Mankind are obliged to give premiums for these dispositions, and to attach penalties to the contrary, by means of praise and censure; moreover, the natural sympathies and antipathies of ordinary minds, which determine so powerfully the application of moral terms, run spontaneously in this direction, and even overshoot the limit which reason would prescribe. The analogy between the paid special duty and the general social duty, fails in this particular. Even if Sokratês were correct as to the former,—and this would be noway true,—in making the intellectual conditions of good conduct stand for the whole, no such inference could safely be extended to the latter.
Sokratês affirmed that “well-doing” was the noblest pursuit of man. “Well-doing” consisted in doing a thing well after having learned it and practised it, by the rational and proper means; it was altogether disparate from good fortune, or success without rational scheme and preparation. “The best man (he said), and the most beloved by the gods, is he who, as an husbandman, performs well the duties of husbandry; as a surgeon, those of medical art; in political life, his duty towards the commonwealth. But the man who does nothing well, is neither useful, nor agreeable to the gods.”[741] This is the Sokratic view of human life; to look at it as an assemblage of realities and practical details; to translate the large words of the moral vocabulary into those homely particulars to which at bottom they refer; to take account of acts, not of dispositions apart from act (in contradiction to the ordinary flow of the moral sympathies); to enforce upon every one, that what he chiefly required was teaching and practice, as preparations for act; and that therefore ignorance, especially ignorance mistaking itself for knowledge, was his capital deficiency. The religion of Sokratês, as well as his ethics, had reference to practical human ends; nor had any man ever less of that transcendentalism in his mind, which his scholar Plato exhibits in such abundance.
It is indisputable, then, that Sokratês laid down a general ethical theory which is too narrow, and which states a part of the truth as if it were the whole. But, as it frequently happens with philosophers who make the like mistake, we find that he did not confine his deductive reasonings within the limits of the theory, but escaped the erroneous consequences by a partial inconsistency. For example; no man ever insisted more emphatically than he, on the necessity of control over the passions and appetites, of enforcing good habits, and on the value of that state of the sentiments and emotions which such a course tended to form.[742] In truth, this is one particular characteristic of his admonitions. He exhorted men to limit their external wants, to be sparing in indulgence, and to cultivate, even in preference to honors and advancement, those pleasures which would surely arise from a performance of duty, as well as from self-examination and the consciousness of internal improvement. This earnest attention, in measuring the elements and conditions of happiness, to the state of the internal associations as contrasted with the effect of external causes, as well as the pains taken to make it appear how much the latter depend upon the former for their power of conferring happiness, and how sufficient is moderate good fortune in respect to externals, provided the internal man be properly disciplined, is a vein of thought which pervades both Sokratês and Plato, and which passed from them, under various modifications, to most of the subsequent schools of ethical philosophy. It is probable that Protagoras or Prodikus, training rich youth for active life, without altogether leaving out such internal element of happiness, would yet dwell upon it less; a point of decided superiority in Sokratês.
The political opinions of Sokratês were much akin to his ethical, and deserve especial notice, as having in part contributed to his condemnation by the dikastery. He thought that the functions of government belonged legitimately to those who knew best how to exercise them for the advantage of the governed. “The legitimate king or governor was not the man who held the sceptre, nor the man elected by some vulgar persons, nor he who had got the post by lot, nor he who had thrust himself in by force or by fraud, but he alone who knew how to govern well.”[743] Just as the pilot governed on shipboard, the surgeon in a sick man’s house, the trainer in a palæstra; every one else being eager to obey these professional superiors, and even thanking and recompensing them for their directions, simply because their greater knowledge was an admitted fact. It was absurd, Sokratês used to contend, to choose public officers by lot, when no one would trust himself on shipboard under the care of a pilot selected by hazard,[744] nor would any one pick out a carpenter or a musician in like manner.
We do not know what provision Sokratês suggested for applying his principle to practice, for discovering who was the fittest man in point of knowledge, or for superseding him in case of his becoming unfit, or in case another fitter than he should arise. The analogies of the pilot, the surgeon, and professional men generally, would naturally conduct him to election by the people, renewable after temporary periods; since no one of these professional persons, whatever may be his positive knowledge, is ever trusted or obeyed except by the free choice of those who confide in him, and who may at any time make choice of another. But it does not appear that Sokratês followed out this part of the analogy. His companions remarked to him that his first-rate intellectual ruler would be a despot, who might, if he pleased, either refuse to listen to good advice, or even put to death those who gave it. “He will not act thus,” replied Sokratês, “for if he does, he will himself be the greatest loser.”[745]