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Socrates is said to have been the first who directed the entire effort
of philosophy to the correction and regulation of manners, all who went
before him having expended their greatest efforts in the investigation
of physical, that is, natural phenomena. However, it seems to me
that it cannot be certainly discovered whether Socrates did this
because he was wearied of obscure and uncertain things, and so wished
to direct his mind to the discovery of something manifest and certain,
which was necessary in order to the obtaining of a blessed life, that
one great object toward which the labor, vigilance, and industry of
all philosophers seem to have been directed, or whether (as some yet
more favorable to him suppose) he did it because he was unwilling that
minds defiled with earthly desires should essay to raise themselves
upward to divine things. For he saw that the causes of things were
sought for by them, which causes he believed to be ultimately reducible
to nothing else than the will of the one true and supreme God, and on
this account he thought they could only be comprehended by a purified
mind; and therefore that all diligence ought to be given to the
purification of the life by good morals, in order that the mind,
delivered from the depressing weight of lusts, might raise itself
upward by its native vigor to eternal things, and might, with purified
understanding, contemplate that nature which is incorporeal and
unchangeable light, where live the causes of all created natures. It
is evident, however, that he hunted out and pursued, with a wonderful
pleasantness of style and argument, and with a most pointed and
insinuating urbanity, the foolishness of ignorant men, who thought
that they knew this or that, sometimes confessing his own ignorance,
and sometimes dissimulating his knowledge, even in those very moral
questions to which he seems to have directed the whole force of his
mind. And hence there arose hostility against him, which ended in his
being calumniously impeached, and condemned to death. Afterwards,
however, that very city of the Athenians, which had publicly
condemned him, did publicly bewail him, the popular indignation having
turned With such vehemence on his accusers, that one of them perished
by the violence of the multitude, whilst the other only escaped a like
punishment by voluntary and perpetual exile.
Illustrious, therefore, both in his life and in his death, Socrates
left very many disciples of his philosophy, who vied with one another
in desire for proficiency in handling those moral questions which
concern the chief good (summum bonum), the possession of which can
make a man blessed; and because, in the disputations of Socrates,
where he raises all manner of questions, makes assertions, and then
demolishes them, it did not evidently appear what he held to be the
chief good, every one took from these disputations what pleased him
best, and every one placed the final good in whatever it appeared to
himself to consist. Now, that which is called the final good is that
at which, when one has arrived, he is blessed. But so diverse were
the opinions held by those followers of Socrates concerning this final
good, that (a thing scarcely to be credited with respect to the
followers of one master) some placed the chief good in pleasure, as
Aristippus, others in virtue, as Antisthenes. Indeed, it were
tedious to recount the various opinions of various disciples.
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