MEANING AND HISTORY OF THE LOGOS OF PHILOSOPHY. 255 
title to anything objective to itself, it proves indisputably 
that in that object it perceives a person. ‘The conception of 
personality may even, it is true, in such a case be feeble and 
loosely formed, and it may be quickly crowded out by notions 
amid which it cannot find a place ; but, respecting the thought 
which deliberately selected and appropriated the term, no 
doubt can be entertained. I therefore hold it idle to discuss the 
question whetherthe assumption, otherwise obviously reasonable, 
that the Nous, as conceived by Anaxagoras, denotes a personal 
Being, is warranted by the general tenor of his speculations. 
Physics, however, having engrossed his attention to the virtual 
exclusion of Ethics and the absorption of energies that might 
have been more usefully employed, his nascent theism remained 
undeveloped, and in the elaboration of a system of philosophy 
it availed him nothing. The region he essayed to cultivate he 
left, as he had found it, for the most part a desert. He had 
opened a mine without being aware of it; he had picked up 
and utilised a lump of precious ore, and, haying unconsciously 
facilitated future explorations, had departed, to be followed, 
in due time, by seekers destined to prove somewhat more 
successful in extracting treasure from the vein of hidden 
wisdom. 
Indeed, after no long interval; for in Greece a fruitful and 
ever-memorable development of the theistic conception soon 
began to manifest itself in philosophic thought. It received, 
however, its originating impulse, not from physical but from 
ethical investigations. Preceding inquirers, in so far as they 
experimented in metaphysical analysis, had, for want of due 
knowledgeof the conditions of thought, unwittingly constructed, 
for the bewilderment of themselves and of succeeding thinkers, 
labyrinths out of the terms they used, chiefly such words as 
represented elementary conceptions; they had failed to see 
their way to recognise philosophically both being and _ be- 
coming, and had lost their road amid such antitheses as rest 
and motion. In these wearisome mazes some minds wandered 
idly, aimlessly, and without seeking to escape; and here, 
moreover, charlatans professing the dialectical art exhibited 
their ingenuity in bringing to confusion earnest efforts to 
arrive at truth. The aim of Socrates was thoroughly honest, 
intensely earnest, and profoundly practical. That he himself 
and his hearers might be sufficiently enlightened to perceive, 
and effectually moved by the desire to become, what it was, in 
the nature of things, fitting they should be,—this was the 
worthy object, this was the noble ideal which gave consistency, 
authority, and force to his words and to his actions. Hence, 
tT 2 
