I 36 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
SOCRATES AND THE SOCRATIC SCHOOLS. 
Read before the Philosophical Section, November roth, 1892. 
BY S. A. MORGAN, B. A. 
As a preliminary to all scientific exposition two elements must 
be definitely present in the mind of the investigator. These consist 
in a clear apprehension of the logical limits of the subject matter, 
and a general idea of the sources and method of investigation. It 
may be well, therefore, before entering upon the consideration of an 
important epoch of the world’s philosophical history, to ask ourselves, 
what are we to understand by the term philosophy? In what does 
a knowledge of the world’s philosophy consist ? 
The study of philosophy is a study of man’s collective in- 
tellectual progress. Man’s mental unity and individuality does not 
constitute an isolation. Having received its life and light from the 
past, the present age in turn transmits these, stamped with its own 
individuality, to the ages that are yet tocome. ‘To trace the progress 
of this universal intelligence through its various epochs, as expressed 
in the life and spirit of the time; to investigate the ultimate 
principles underlying these various phases, is the special work of the 
student of philosophy. 
When then may philosophy be said to exist? When the human 
mind, not content with the facts of knowledge alone, begins to in- 
quire into their causes and conditions. When, both in mind and in 
matter, unity and harmony are seen to exist. 
That philosophic germ, which obtained its full development at 
the hands of the great Athenian philosophers, may be said to have 
had its origin in the Ionic colonies of Asia Minor, at the time when 
their freedom was being assailed by the arms of Persia. Contact 
with Oriental dogmatism at once furnished the analytic mind of the 
Greek colonist with food for speculative inquiry, the result of which 
was no less original than unique. This may the better be understood 
by briefly contrasting the natures of the Oriental and the Greek mind, 
The Greek mind was objective and critical, the Oriental subjec- 
tiveand emotional. With the Oriental, reason gave way to the despotic 
