Note 742 — Chapter LXVIII · SOKRATES. (continued 2)

Xenoph. Mem. ii, 6, 39. ὅσαι δ᾽ ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἀρεταὶ λέγονται ταύτας πάσας σκοπούμενος εὑρήσεις μαθήσει τε καὶ μελέτῃ αὐξανομένας. Again, the necessity of practise or discipline is inculcated, iii, 9, 1. When Sokratês enumerates the qualities requisite in a good friend, it is not merely superior knowledge which he talks of, but of moral excellence; continence, a self-sufficing temper, mildness, a grateful disposition (c. ii, 6, 1-5).

Moreover, Sokratês laid it down that continence, or self-control, was the very basis of virtue: τὴν ἐγκράτειαν ἀρετῆς κρηπῖδα (i, 5, 4). Also, that continence was indispensable in order to enable a man to acquire knowledge (iv, 5, 10, 11).

Sokratês here plainly treats ἐγκράτειαν (continence, or self-control) as not being a state of the intellectual man, and yet as being the very basis of virtue. He therefore does not seem to have applied consistently his general doctrine, that virtue consisted in knowledge, or in the excellence of the intellectual man, alone. Perhaps he might have said: Knowledge alone will be sufficient to make you virtuous; but before you can acquire knowledge, you must previously have disciplined your emotions and appetites. This merely eludes the objection, without saving the sufficiency of the general doctrine.

I cannot concur with Ritter (Gesch. der Philos. vol. ii, ch. 2, p. 78) in thinking that Sokratês meant by knowledge, or wisdom, a transcendental attribute, above humanity, and such as is possessed only by a god. This is by no means consistent with that practical conception of human life and its ends, which stands so plainly marked in his character.

Why should we think it wonderful that Sokratês should propose a defective theory, which embraces only one side of a large and complicated question? Considering that his was the first theory derived from data really belonging to the subject, the wonder is, that it was so near an approach to the truth.