Socrates is said to have been the first who directed the entire
effort of philosophy to the correction and regulation of manners, all
who went before him having expended their greatest efforts in the
investigation of physical, that is, natural phenomena. However, it
seems to me that it cannot be certainly discovered whether Socrates
did this because he was wearied of obscure and uncertain things,
and so wished to direct his mind to the discovery of something
manifest and certain, which was necessary in order to the obtaining
of a blessed life,--that one great object toward which the labour,
vigilance, and industry of all philosophers seem to have been
directed,--or whether (as some yet more favourable to him suppose)
he did it because he was unwilling that minds defiled with earthly
desires should essay to raise themselves upward to divine things. For
he saw that the causes of things were sought for by them,--which
causes he believed to be ultimately reducible to nothing else than
the will of the one true and supreme God,--and on this account he
thought they could only be comprehended by a purified mind; and
therefore that all diligence ought to be given to the purification of
the life by good morals, in order that the mind, delivered from the
depressing weight of lusts, might raise itself upward by its native
vigour to eternal things, and might, with purified understanding,
contemplate that nature which is incorporeal and unchangeable light,
where live the causes of all created natures. It is evident, however,
that he hunted out and pursued, with a wonderful pleasantness of
style and argument, and with a most pointed and insinuating urbanity,
the foolishness of ignorant men, who thought that they knew this
or that,--sometimes confessing his own ignorance, and sometimes
dissimulating his knowledge, even in those very moral questions to
which he seems to have directed the whole force of his mind. And
hence there arose hostility against him, which ended in his being
calumniously impeached, and condemned to death. Afterwards, however,
that very city of the Athenians, which had publicly condemned him,
did publicly bewail him,--the popular indignation having turned
with such vehemence on his accusers, that one of them perished by
the violence of the multitude, whilst the other only escaped a like
punishment by voluntary and perpetual exile.
Illustrious, therefore, both in his life and in his death, Socrates
left very many disciples of his philosophy, who vied with one another
in desire for proficiency in handling those moral questions which
concern the chief good (_summum bonum_), the possession of which can
make a man blessed; and because, in the disputations of Socrates,
where he raises all manner of questions, makes assertions, and then
demolishes them, it did not evidently appear what he held to be the
chief good, every one took from these disputations what pleased him
best, and every one placed the final good[293] in whatever it appeared
to himself to consist. Now, that which is called the final good is
that at which, when one has arrived, he is blessed. But so diverse
were the opinions held by those followers of Socrates concerning this
final good, that (a thing scarcely to be credited with respect to the
followers of one master) some placed the chief good in pleasure, as
Aristippus, others in virtue, as Antisthenes. Indeed, it were tedious
to recount the various opinions of various disciples.