26 The Higher Usefulness of Science 



ing the charge that "Socrates is an evil-doer, who 

 meddles with inquiries into things beneath the earth, 

 and in heaven," he insisted that it was false and unjust 

 for Aristophanes to represent him as suspending him- 

 self in a basket and pretending that he was walking on 

 air when, the truth is, he had nothing to do with these 

 matters as all knew who had conversed with him. No 

 one, he said, ever heard him talk about anything 

 earthy. 



Now for the fatal practical weakness in the Socratic 

 interpretation of man. Did its doctrine of self impli- 

 cate nothing but a theory of concepts and cognition, 

 while it would be of much interest to psychologists and 

 logicians and epistemologists, it would not vitally con- 

 cern the great rank and file of men. But owing to the 

 fact, which Socrates recognized, that a theory of 

 knowledge does finally and inevitably implicate a theory 

 of morality, and to the further fact that a theory of 

 morality finally and inevitably implicates morality 

 itself, it has turned out that this philosophy has been 

 and still is of the utmost importance to the whole 

 world affected by it, that is, to what we call the West- 

 ern World. The kernel of the matter is that Soc- 

 rates' doctrine of self was a doctrine of myself and 

 not of yourself. It gives an assumed reality and fun- 

 damentality to me that it does not give to you. It 

 does not recognize that other selves are as essential 

 to my existence as is myself. 



The ethical system launched by Socrates and con- 



