and proceeds to erect this one incomplete idea into a phi-
losophy, treating the part as if it were the whole. This is
exactly what happened after the death of Socrates. Only
one man among his disciples was able to grasp the whole
of his teaching, and understand the whole of his personal-
ity, and that was Plato. Among the lesser men who were
the followers and personal friends of Socrates, there were
three who founded schools of philosophy, each partial and
one-sided, but each claiming to be the exponent of the true
Socraticism. Antisthenes founded the Cynic school, Aris-
tippus the Cyrenaic, and Euclid the Megaric.
Now, of the two aspects of the Socratic philosophy, the
theory of concepts, and the ethical theory, it is easy for us,
looking back upon history, to see which it was that influ-
enced the history of thought most, and which, therefore,
was the most important. But the men of his own time
could not see this. What they fastened upon was the obvi-
ous aspect of Socrates, his ethics, and above all the ethical
teaching which was expressed, not so {157} much in ab-
stract ideas, as in the life and personality of the master.
Both this life and this teaching might be summed up in the
thought that virtue is the sole end of life, that, as against
virtue, all else in the world, comfort, riches, learning, is
comparatively worthless. It is this, then, that virtue is the
sole end of life, which forms the point of agreement be-
tween all the three semi-Socratic schools. We have now to
see upon what points they diverge from one another.
If virtue is the sole end of life, what precisely is virtue?
Socrates had given no clear answer to this question. The
only definition he had given was that virtue is knowledge,
but upon examination it turns out that this is not a defi-
nition at all. Virtue is knowledge, but knowledge of what?
It is not knowledge of astronomy, of mathematics, or of
physics. It is ethical knowledge, that is to say, knowledge
of virtue. To define virtue as the knowledge of virtue is to
think in a circle, and gets us no further in the enquiry what
virtue is. But Socrates, as a matter of fact, did not think
in a circle. He did not mean that virtue is knowledge, al-
though his doctrine is often, somewhat misleadingly, stated
in that form. What he meant was—quite a different thing—
that virtuedepends uponknowledge. It is the first condi-
tion of virtue. The principle, accurately stated, is, not that
virtue is the knowledge of virtue, which is thinking in a cir-
cle, but that virtue depends upon the knowledge of virtue,
which is quite straight thinking. Only if you know what
virtue is can you be virtuous. Hence we have not here any
definition of virtue, or any attempt to define it. We are still
left with the question, “what is virtue?” unanswered.{158}No doubt this was due in part to the unmethodical and
unsystematic manner in which Socrates developed his
thought, and this, in its turn, was due to his conversational
style of philosophizing. For it is not possible to develop
systematic thinking in the course of casual conversations.
But in part, too, it was due to the very universality of the
man’s genius. He was broad enough to realize that it is
not possible to tie down virtue in any single narrow for-
mula, which shall serve as a practical receipt for action in
all the infinitely various circumstances of life. So that, in
spite of the fact that his whole principle lay in the method