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HISTORY OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY. No. IV. 



(Continued from page 574J 



SECOND PERIOD. 

 SOCRATES. 



WE have now arrived at the commencement of what may be consi- 

 dered the aera of the regeneration of philosophy. Hitherto its prin- 

 ciples had been for the most part veiled in mystic language, or com- 

 municated only to a chosen few under the seal of secrecy, so that 

 whatever advantages might be derived from the knowledge of its 

 precepts were confined to those few and not shared by the bulk of 

 mankind. Another prominent evil which resulted from the watch- 

 fulness with which its doctrines were hidden from the multitude was, 

 that designing men availed themselves of the power they derived 

 from it for nefarious purposes, by false and specious reasoning con- 

 verting its most valuable dogmas into instruments of wrong instead of 

 pillars of virtue. 



One of the most important services rendered by Socrates to the 

 world at large consists in the studious care, with which he divested 

 philosophy of the mystic garments in which its fair proportions had 

 before his time been enveloped. In many cases, and especially among 

 the Sophists, disputes or differences of opinion had arisen from pecu- 

 liar acceptations of the same terms, these terms being allegorical, 

 and therefore admitting of more than one interpretation. Socrates, 

 by a judicious and critical examination of the meaning, import, and 

 tendency of the terms employed to express particular ideas, by re- 

 jecting all factitious ornaments of style, the gaudy and fascinating 

 language of poetic imagery, and the mystery of symbolic formulae, 

 and so leaving the plain unencumbered sense of his words to express 

 his meaning without the remotest chance of misapprehension, se- 

 cured future disputants from this inconvenience. 



The mathematical accuracy of diction which he employed in his 

 discourse rendered his precepts intelligible to the least enlightened of 

 his hearers; and the plain sound sense of his reasoning made his in- 

 struction palatable to all whom nature had endowed with a compe- 

 tent share of understanding. This, however, is the smallest of his 

 merits. To have stripped the mask from the features of sophistry 

 and shown the worthlessness of the tinsel of mysticism when com- 

 pared with the sterling metal of truth and light, was no inconsiderable 

 point gained : but this was only the first step towards the reforms ef- 

 fected by the great Athenian in the rotten state of philosophic morality. 

 He soared at a far higher pitch above the ordinary level of mankind. 

 This change effected provided him only with tools for his labour. His 

 grand project was on a far more extensive scale. It was no less than 

 to weed the whole field of philosophy, and restore it to that sound 

 and healthy state in which only it can be of essential service to the 

 interests of the community. 



