MEANING AND HISTORY OF THE LOGOS OF PHILOSOPHY. 271 
sents him as abandoning the moral line of reasoning which he 
introduced. for the physical, and that in this he lost the oppor- 
tunity of doing the good which he might have done by fol- 
lowing up the ethical line of teaching. The author says:—‘‘I, 
therefore, hold it idle to discuss the question whether the assump- 
tion, 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.” 
It is very remarkable that we can put our finger on a statement of 
Plutarch’s that the celebrated statesman, Pericles, owed a great 
deal of his influence over the people to his acquaintance with and 
study of Anaxagoras. Plutarch distinctly states that he meditated 
on the teaching of Anaxagoras on the absolute reason, and that in 
that way he was able to bring his ideas before the people with such 
impressiveness and dignity in speaking that he was said to lighten 
and thunder like Jupiter. It, therefore, had its influence on this 
great statesman, and, through him, on the people, this philosophy of 
Anaxagoras, which, according to the author of the paper, was so 
fruitless of practical results. Then, at the foot of the same page, the 
author says, “The aim of Socrates was thoroughly honest, intensely 
earnest, and profoundly practical.” I am glad to see that he does 
something like justice to Socrates. I think Carlyle, in dealing 
with Socrates, does not quite do him justice. He does not blame 
Socrates, but he seems to think that he did harm by attempting to 
break down old religious notions ; but he could not avoid such a 
result. A man such as he was, when he spoke at all, must speak 
according to his own view, and I think the author, in what 
he has said of Socrates, has done him no more than justice. 
Speaking of Plato, he says, at p. 256, “He thereby furnishes 
a weighty testimony to the immense superiority of the ethical 
method of carrying an investigation up to the fundamental cause. 
Yet it must not be overlooked that the epithet he thus applies does 
but reflect the notion he himself had formed of goodness.” Of 
course no one can apply that epithet, “the good,” except in such a 
way as would but reflect the notion he himself had formed of 
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