ecessor to copy, Socrates
fell as it were instinctively into that which Aristotle describes as the
double tract of the dialectic process, breaking up the one into the many,
and recombining the many into the one; though the latter or synthetical
process he did not often perform himself, but strove to stimulate his
hearer's mind so as to enable him to do it for himself.

The fault of the Socratic theory is well remarked by Grote to be, that
while he resolved all virtue into knowledge or wisdom, and all vice into
ignorance or folly, he omitted to notice what is not less essential to
virtue, the proper condition of the passions, desires, &c., and limited
his views too exclusively to the intellect; still while laying down a
theory which is too narrow, he escaped the erroneous consequences of it by
a partial inconsistency. For no one ever insisted more emphatically 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. He constantly pointed out that the
chief pleasures were such as inevitably arise from the performance of
one's duty, and that as to happiness, a very moderate degree of good
fortune is sufficient as to external things, provided the internal man be
properly disciplined.

Grote remarks further, (and this remark is particularly worth remembering
in the reading of Cicero's philosophical works,) that "Arcesilaus and the
New Academy thought that they were following the example of Socrates, (and
Cicero appears to have thought so too,) when they reasoned against
everything, and laid it down as a system, that against every affirmative
position an equal force of negative argument could be brought as a
counterpoise: now this view of Socrates is, in my judgment, not only
partial, but incorrect. He entertained no such doubts of the powers of the
mind to attain certainty. About physics he thought man could know nothing;
but respecting the topics which concern man and society, this was the
field which the Gods had expressly assigned, not merely to human practice,
but to human study and knowledge; and he thought that every man, not only
might know these things, but ought to know them; that he could not
possibly act well unless he did know them; and that it was his imperative
duty to learn them as he would learn a profession, otherwise he was
nothing better than a slave, unfit to be trusted as a free