Chapter 24

CHAPTER XI

THE SEMI-SOCRATICS

Upon the death of Socrates there ensued a phenomenon
which is not infrequent in the history of thought. A great
and many-sided personality combines in himself many con-
flicting tendencies and ideas. Let us take an example, not,
however, from the sphere of intellect, but from the sphere
of practical life. We often say that it is difficult to reconcile
mercy and justice. Among the many small personalities,
one man follows only the ideal of mercy, and as his mercy
has not in it the stern stuff of justice, it degenerates into
mawkishness and sentimental humanitarianism. Another
man follows only the ideal of justice, forgetting mercy, and
he becomes harsh and unsympathetic. It takes a greater
man, a larger personality, harmoniously to combine the
two. And as it is in the sphere of practical life, so it is in
the arena of thought and philosophy. A great thinker is not
he who seizes upon a single aspect of the truth, and pushes

that to its extreme limit, but the man who combines, in one

many-sided system, all the varying and conflicting sides of

truth. By emphasizing one thought, by being obsessed by

a single idea and pushing it to its logical conclusion, re-

gardless of the other aspects of the truth, one may indeed

achieve a considerable local and {156} temporary reputa-

tion; because such a procedure often leads to striking para-

doxes, to strange and seemingly uncommon conclusions.

The reputations of such men as Nietzsche, Bernard Shaw,

Oscar Wilde, are made chiefly in this way. But upon the

death of a great all-embracing personality, just because his

thought is a combination of so many divergent truths, we

often find that it splits up into its component parts, each

of which gives rise to a one-sided school of thought. The

disciples, being smaller men, are not able to grasp the great

man’s thought in its wholeness and many-sidedness. Each

disciple seizes upon that portion of his master’s teaching

which has most in common with his own temperament,