第2章

Reading {os nomizoien}, or if {os enomizen}, translate "As to things with certain results, he advised them to do them in the way in which he believed they would be done best"; i.e. he did not say, "follow your conscience," but, "this course seems best to me underthe circumstances."

Again, Socrates ever lived in the public eye; at early morning he was to be seen betaking himself to one of the promenades, or wrestling- grounds; at noon he would appear with the gathering crowds in the market-place; and as day declined, wherever the largest throng might be encountered, there was he to be found, talking for the most part, while any one who chose might stop and listen. Yet no one ever heard him say, or saw him do anything impious or irreverent. Indeed, in contrast to others he set his face against all discussion of such high matters as the nature of the Universe; how the "kosmos," as the savants phrase it, came into being; or by what forces the celestial phenomena arise. To trouble one's brain about such matters was, he argued, to play the fool. He would ask first: Did these investigators feel their knowledge of things human so complete that they betook themselves to these lofty speculations? Or did they maintain that they were playing their proper parts in thus neglecting the affairs of man to speculate on the concerns of God? He was astonished they did not see how far these problems lay beyond mortal ken; since even those who pride themselves most on their discussion of these points differ from each other, as madmen do. For just as some madmen, he said, have no apprehension of what is truly terrible, others fear where no fear is; some are ready to say and do anything in public without the slightest symptom of shame; others think they ought not so much as to set foot among their fellow-men; some honour neither temple, nor altar, nor aught else sacred to the name of God; others bow down to stocks and stones and worship the very beasts:--so is it with those thinkers whose minds are cumbered with cares concerning the Universal Nature. One sect has discovered that Being is one and indivisible. Another that it is infinite in number. If one proclaims that all things are in a continual flux, another replies that nothing can possibly be moved at any time. The theory of the universe as a process of birth and death is met by the counter theory, that nothing ever could be born or ever will die.

Lit. "the sophists." See H. Sidgwick, "J. of Philol." iv. 1872; v. 1874.

Reading {ephu}. Cf. Lucian, "Icaromenip." xlvi. 4, in imitation of this passage apparently; or if {ekhei}, translate "is arranged." See Grote, "H. G." viii. 573.

See "Anab." V. iv. 30.

See Arist. "Clouds," 101, {merimnophrontistai kaloi te kagathoi}. e.g. Xenophanes and Parmenides, see Grote, "Plato," I. i. 16foll.

e.g. Leucippus and Democritus, ib. 63 foll. e.g. Heraclitus, ib. 27 foll.

e.g. Zeno, ib. ii. 96.