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LIMITS OF ATTAINABLE SCIENCE. 413 well as useless, to pry into their secrets.' His master Archelaus, though mainly occupied with physics, also speculated more or less concerning moral subjects ; concerning justice and injustice, the laws, etc. ; and is said to have maintained the tenet, that justice and injustice were determined by law or convention, not by nature. From him, perhaps, Sokrates may have been partly led to turn his mind in this direction. But to a man disappointed with physics, and having in his bosom a dialectical impulse power- ful, unemployed, and restless, the mere realities of Athenian life, even without Archelaus, would suggest human relations, duties, action and suffering, as the most interesting materials for contem plation and discourse. Sokrates could not go into the public assembly, the dikastery, or even the theatre, without hearing dis- cussions about what was just or unjust, honorable or base, expe- dient or hurtful, etc., nor without having his mind conducted to the inquiry, what was the meaning of these large words which opposing disputants often invoked with equal reverential confi- dence. Along with the dialectic and generalizing power of Sok- rates, which formed his bond of connection with such minds as Plato, there was at the same time a vigorous practicality, a large stock of positive Athenian experience, with which Xenophon chiefly sympathized, and which he has brought out in his " Mem- orabilia." Of these two intellectual tendencies, combined with a strong religious sentiment, the character of Sokrates is com- posed ; and all of them were gratified at once, when he devoted himself to admonitory interrogation on the rules and purposes of human life ; from which there was the less to divert him, as he had neither talents nor taste for public speaking. That " the proper study of mankind is man," 2 Sokrates was the first to proclaim : he recognized the security and happiness of man both as the single end of study, and as the limiting principle 1 Xenoph. Mem. iv, 7, 6. *OAwf 6e riJv ovpaviuv, y Ixaora 6 furai, $povTtoTJ)v yiyvea&at uKETpenev OVTE yap evpeTu uvVpunois avrH ivoui^ev elvat, ovre apc<n9a( tfeotf uv r/yelro rdv fyrovvTa, u litelvoi oa<j>t)- e^ov7^7] i &r]csav. Kivdvveioat <P uv l$rj nal TrapaQpovrjoai rbv ravra Ta, ovtitv tjTTov 7} 'Avafayopaf TrapfQpovrjaev, 6 TU ^cytora ^/xn^ffaf iri ruruf ruv deuv [iijxavilf kl; T}y elc tfat. 'Xenoph. Mem. i, 1, 16. Avrdf it trepl TUV uv&puneiuv atl etc. Compare the whole of this chapter.