tues. What principle of correctness is there in
those charming words, wisdom, understanding, justice, and the rest?' To
explain all that will be a serious business; still, as I have put on
the lion's skin, appearances must be maintained. My opinion is, that
primitive men were like some modern philosophers, who, by always going
round in their search after the nature of things, become dizzy; and this
phenomenon, which was really in themselves, they imagined to take place
in the external world. You have no doubt remarked, that the doctrine of
the universal flux, or generation of things, is indicated in names. 'No,
I never did.' Phronesis is only phoras kai rou noesis, or perhaps phoras
onesis, and in any case is connected with pheresthai; gnome is gones
skepsis kai nomesis; noesis is neou or gignomenon esis; the word neos
implies that creation is always going on--the original form was
neoesis; sophrosune is soteria phroneseos; episteme is e epomene tois
pragmasin--the faculty which keeps close, neither anticipating nor
lagging behind; sunesis is equivalent to sunienai, sumporeuesthai ten
psuche, and is a kind of conclusion--sullogismos tis, akin therefore in
idea to episteme; sophia is very difficult, and has a foreign look--the
meaning is, touching the motion or stream of things, and may be
illustrated by the poetical esuthe and the Lacedaemonian proper name
Sous, or Rush; agathon is ro agaston en te tachuteti,--for all things
are in motion, and some are swifter than others: dikaiosune is clearly
e tou dikaiou sunesis. The word dikaion is more troublesome, and appears
to mean the subtle penetrating power which, as the lovers of motion say,
preserves all things, and is the cause of all things, quasi diaion going
through--the letter kappa being inserted for the sake of euphony. This
is a great mystery which has been confided to me; but when I ask for an
explanation I am thought obtrusive, and another derivation is proposed
to me. Justice is said to be o kaion, or the sun; and when I joyfully
repeat this beautiful notion, I am answered, 'What, is there no justice
when the sun is down?' And when I entreat my questioner to tell me his
own opinion, he replies, that justice is fire in the abstract, or heat
in the abstract; which is not very intelligible. Others laugh at such
notions, and say with Anaxagoras, that justice is the ordering mind. 'I
think that some one must have told you this.' And not the rest? Let me
proceed then, i