1 6 The Concept of Method 



necessary preliminary stage in the development of knowledge; 

 and the latter had for its aim the inductive formulation of con- 

 cepts or definitions, by means of a prolonged process of inter- 

 rogation of experience, in which master and pupil both take part 

 as mutually interacting forces. 



The earlier Greek thinkers had realised the difference between 

 sense-impression and the ideas of reason, and the Sophists had 

 attempted to show that both were untrustworthy, Socrates took 

 these two elements in knowledge and demonstrated that though 

 sense-impression and common opinion are only partial glimpses 

 of reality and need to be tested and regulated by criticism, yet 

 when they are organised according to logical method they do 

 ultimately give us true knowledge. This true knowledge when 

 adequately realised in human life is synonymous with virtue. It 

 is clear then that the interest of Socrates was primarily ethical. 

 He applied his method not to the phenomena of the physical 

 universe but to the sphere of man's moral activity, to the prob- 

 lem of the conduct of life. His significance as an early inter- 

 preter of the method of experience is, therefore, that he con- 

 nected the speculative activity of the mind with the practical 

 affairs of everyday Hfe, and that he analysed the teleological con- 

 ceptions that had been more or less unconsciously existent in 

 the background of earlier speculations. Happiness and virtue 

 which constituted the summmn honiim, he held to be not mere 

 cvTvxia, in which passivity was over-emphasised, but rather 

 €VTrpa$La, in which the subjective state was conditioned by the 

 quality of the activity which it manifested and which was essen- 

 tial to its functional reality as an ideal moral condition. 



It is an indication of the universality of Socrates' philosophic 

 interests that he should have been claimed as the intellectual 

 starting-point of three contrasted lines of philosophical develop- 

 ment: his habitual disregard of the luxuries and even of the 

 conveniences of physical existence was diversely embodied sub- 

 sequently in the theories of the Cynics and the Stoics; his habit 

 of suiting himself to his social environment and of being all 

 things to all men was reflected in the experiential philosophy 

 of both Cyrenaics and Epicureans; and his high moral purpose 

 and spiritual insight was idealised in Plato and interpreted in 

 Epictetus, Seneca, Dio Chrysostom, Marcus Aurelius, and others 



