Wo need not wonder that Socrates* was dissatisfied with 
such inquiries as these. He sought, he says, for some other 
line of speculation. And he happened to hear some one read 
from a book of Anaxagoras that Mind or Intelligence was 
what had ordered everything, and was the cause of everything. 
With this notion he was delighted. 
But when he inquired further, “ I was dashed down,” he 
says, “ from these lofty hopes, when, as I weut on, I found 
that my author made no use of his ‘ Mind/ nor referred to it 
as the source of the arrangements of the world, but assigned 
as causes, airs, and ethers, and fluids, and the like. It seemed 
to me as if any one after saying that Socrates does all that 
he does in virtue of his mind, and then proceeding to assign 
the cause why I am sitting here, should sa}^ that my body is 
composed of bones and muscles; that the bones are solid and 
separate, and that the muscles can be contracted and extended, 
and are all enclosed in the flesh and skin ; and that the bones, 
being jointed, can be drawn by the muscles, and that this is 
the reason why I am sitting here.” 
“ And as if again he were to assign the like causes for the 
fact that I am now talking with you ” (i.e. his friends on the 
day of his execution) “making the causes to be air, and voice, 
and hearing, and the like, and were not to mention the true 
cause — that the Athenians thought it best to condemn me, 
and that I thought it best to remain here and to suffer the 
sentence which they have pronounced. For most assuredly 
these bones and muscles would long ago have carried me to 
Megara, or to Bceotia, moved by my opinion of what was best, 
if I had not thought it more right and honourable to submit 
to the sentence pronounced by the State than to run away 
from it. To call such things causes is absurd. If indeed any 
one were to say that without having bones and muscles, and 
the like, I could not do what I wish, he would say truly ; but 
that I do what I do because of these, and not because of my 
choice of what is best, would be a gross abuse of language. 
“ For there is a great difference between that which is the 
cause and that without which the cause would not produce its 
effect. And yet many men, groping in the dark, call this,+ 
which is a mere condition, a cause. And hence one man 
surrounds the earth with a vortex which revolves while the 
earth is at rest ; another puts a large bowl over the air ; but 
they never attempt to show that it is best that it should bo 
* The Platonic Dialogues, Whewell, vol. i. pp. 412 — 416, 
t g. “ Force,” or “ Laws of Nature.”] 
