was by conversation, in
which, according to the uniform testimony of all who heard him, he
singularly excelled. He resorted to definitions, and therefrom drew
deductions, conveying his argument under the form of a dialogue. Unlike
his predecessors, who sought for truth in the investigation of outward
things, he turned his attention inward, asserting the supremacy of
virtue and its identity with knowledge, and the necessity of an
adherence to the strict principles of justice. Considering the depraved
condition to which the Sophists had reduced society, he insisted on a
change in the manner of education of youth, so as to bring it in
accordance with the principle that happiness is only to be found in the
pursuit of virtue and goodness. Thus, therefore, he completely
substituted the moral for the physical, and in this essentially consists
the philosophical revolution he effected. He had no school, properly
speaking, nor did he elaborate any special ethical system; to those who
inquired how they should know good from evil and right from wrong, he
recommended the decisions of the laws of their country. It does not
appear that he ever entered on any inquiry respecting the nature of God,
simply viewing his existence as a fact of which there was abundant and
incontrovertible proof. Though rejecting the crude religious ideas of
his nation, and totally opposed to anthropomorphism, he carefully
avoided the giving of public offence by improper allusions to the
prevailing superstition; nay, even as a good citizen, he set an example
of conforming to its requirements. In his judgment, the fault of the
Sophists consisted in this, that they had subverted useless speculation,
but had substituted for it no scientific evidence. Nevertheless, if man
did not know, he might believe, and demonstration might be profitably
supplanted by faith. He therefore insisted on the great doctrines of the
immortality of the soul and the government of the world by Providence;
but it is not to be denied that there are plain indications, in some of
his sentiments, of a conviction that the Supreme Being is the soul of
the world. He professed that his own chief wisdom consisted in the
knowledge of his own ignorance, and dissuaded his friends from the
cultivation of mathematics and physics, since he affirmed that the
former leads to vain conclusions, the latter to atheism. In his system
everything turns on the explanation of terms; but his processes of
reasoning