140 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
old and venerable, they were, by the individual character of their 
philosophy, unable to formulate any new system of philosophy. 
Thus philosophy had now arrived at a point where it must either be 
consumed by its own activity, or search for some new source of light. 
This want was supplied by the dialectic of Socrates, or the art of 
forming conceptions. 
In placing mind above inatter the Sophists had identified truth 
with individual opinion. But in doing this objective reality was 
given to sensuous perception, which rendered impossible any 
uniform system of philosophy. Socrates, on the other hand, dis- 
tinguished between individual opinion and conceptions which, being 
purified by the principle of dialectic, are universally true. It was 
now required that all the properties of an object be taken into 
account before judgments were formed; and, by a system of ex- 
amination, to pass from the individual and accidental to what was 
universal and necessary. Like the Sophists, Socrates was at variance 
with the dogmatism of earlier systems; but in addition to this he 
taught that by a system of self-examination the contradictions of ex- 
perience might be corrected, until man should arrive at that true 
knowledge which already existed latent in the mind. 
This element in the philosophy of Socrates at once marked its 
character and its method. By looking upon the ordinary notions 
acquired in experience as untrustworthy, Socrates was led to suppose 
that conceptions of the real essence of things can be produced from 
within, that the soul ‘possesses from its birth the substance of 
ideas,” and that learning is able to bring these to light. | His object 
then was to aid in developing these germs of true knowledge. ‘This 
led him to war against all appearance of knowledge, and by ac- 
cepting the opinions of his pupils to entangle them in a maze of 
contradictions, until their supposed knowledge vanished. ‘They 
were then ready to proceed to the attainment of that true knowledge 
already existing confusedly in the mind. 
This phase of the Socratic philosophy also led him to identify 
virtue with true knowledge. For, since conceptions alone constitute 
true knowledge, they alone have true being, and are thus the only 
absolute moral authority. | With Socrates, then, no man knowingly 
does wrong, knowledge is the cause of all right action—delusion the 
cause of all vice. 
The following peculiarities at once present themselves in the 
Socratic philosophy : 
