TWO:Xenophon has recorded another dialogue in which a young man named Euthydmus, who was also in training for a statesman, and who, as he supposed, had learned a great deal more out of books than Socrates could teach him, is brought to see how little he knows about ethical science. He is asked, Can a man be a good citizen without being just? No, he cannot.Can Euthydmus tell what acts are just? Yes, certainly, and also what are unjust.Under which head does he put such actions as lying, deceiving, harming, enslaving?Under the head of injustice.But suppose a hostile people are treated in the various manners specified, is that unjust?No, but it was understood that only ones friends were meant.Well, if a general encourages his own army by false statements, or a father deceives his child into taking medicine, or your friend seems likely to commit suicide, and you purloin a deadly weapon from him, is that unjust?No, we must add for the purpose of harming to our definition. Socrates, however, does not stop here, but goes on cross-examining until the unhappy student is reduced to a state of hopeless bewilderment and shame. He is then brought to perceive the necessity of self-knowledge, which is explained to mean knowledge of ones own powers. As a further exercise Euthydmus is put through his facings on the subject of good and evil. Health, wealth, strength, wisdom and beauty are mentioned as unquestionable goods. Socrates shows, in the style long afterwards imitated by Juvenal, that141 they are only means towards an end, and may be productive of harm no less than good.Happiness at any rate is an unquestionable good.Yes, unless we make it consist of questionable goods like those just enumerated.91It remains to add a few words on the position which ancient and modern philosophy respectively occupy towards theology. Here their relation is one of contrast rather than of resemblance. The Greek thinkers start at an immense distance from religious belief, and their first allusions to it are marked by a scornful denial of its validity. Gradually, with the transition from physical to ethical enquiries, an approximation between the two is brought about, though not without occasional returns to their former attitude of hostility. Finally, in presence of a common danger they become interwoven and almost identified with one another; while the new religion against which they make common cause, itself presents the same spectacle of metaphysical and moral ideas entering into combination with the spontaneous products of popular mythology. And be it observed that throughout the whole of this process action and reaction were equal and contrary. The decline and corruption of philosophy was the price paid for the elevation and purification of religion. While the one was constantly sinking, the other was constantly rising, until they converged on the plane of dogmatic theology. By the very circumstances of the case, an opposite course has been imposed on the development of modern philosophy. Starting from an intimate union with religion, it slowly disengages itself from the compromising alliance; and, although, here also, the normal course of ideas has been interrupted by frequent reactions, the general movement of European thought has been no less decidedly towards a complete emancipation from the popular beliefs than the movement of Greek thought had been towards their conciliation and support.
