re respected; and nothing is
brought forward except to be submitted to reason and accepted or
rejected by the self-questioning heart. Indeed, when Socrates appeared
in Athens mutual respect had passed into democracy and liberty into
license; but the stalwart virtue of Socrates saved him from being a
sophist, much as his method, when not honestly and sincerely used, might
seem to countenance that moral anarchy which the sophists had expressed
in their irresponsible doctrines. Their sophistry did not consist in the
private _seat_ which they assigned to judgment; for what judgment is
there that is not somebody's judgment at some moment? The sophism
consisted in ignoring the living moment's _intent_, and in suggesting
that no judgment could refer to anything ulterior, and therefore that no
judgment could be wrong: in other words that each man at each moment was
the theme and standard, as well as the seat, of his judgment.

Socrates escaped this folly by force of honesty, which is what saves
from folly in dialectic. He built his whole science precisely on that
intent which the sophists ignored; he insisted that people should
declare sincerely what they meant and what they wanted; and on that
living rock he founded the persuasive and ideal sciences of logic and
ethics, the necessity of which lies all in free insight and in actual
will. This will and insight they render deliberate, profound,
unshakable, and consistent. Socrates, by his genial midwifery, helped
men to discover the truth and excellence to which they were naturally
addressed. This circumstance rendered his doctrine at once moral and
scientific; scientific because dialectical, moral because expressive of
personal and living aspirations. His ethics was not like what has since
passed under that name--a spurious physics, accompanied by commandments
and threats. It was a pliant and liberal expression of ideals, inwardly
grounded and spontaneously pursued. It was an exercise in
self-knowledge.

[Sidenote: Its opposition to sophistry and moral anarchy.]

Socrates' liberality was that of a free man ready to maintain his will
and conscience, if need be, against the whole world. The sophists, on
the contrary, were sycophants in their scepticism, and having inwardly
abandoned the ideals of their race and nation--which Socrates defended
with his homely irony--they dealt out their miscellaneous knowledge, or
their talent in exposition, at the beck and for the convenience of