Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/66

38 STATESMEN AND SAGES noble aspirations, and his heart was full of a noble love for the city and her citi- zens. Plutarch tells the story that, as he lay dying and apparently unconscious, his friends around his bed were passing in review the great achievements of his life, and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so many victories. The dying patriot quietly interrupted with the characteristic sentence : " What you praise in my life belongs partly to good fortune, and is, at best, common to me with many generals. But that of which I am proudest, you have )eft unnoticed no Athenian has ever put On mourning through any act of mine." SOCRATES From the French of FfiNELON (468-399 B.C.) QOCRATES, who, by the consent of all an- O tiquity, has been considered as the most virtuous and enlightened of Pagan philoso- phers, was a citizen of Athens, and belonged to the town of Alopece". He was born in the fourth year of the 77th Olympiad. His father, Sophroniscus, was a sculptor ; and his mother, Phanarete, a midwife. He first studied philosophy under Anax- agoras, and next under Archelaus, the natural philosopher. But finding that all these vain speculations concerning natural objects served no useful purpose, and had no influence in rendering the philosopher a better man, he devoted himself to the study of ethics ; and (as Cicero, in the third book of his Tusculan Questions, observes) may be said to be the founder of moral philosophy among the Greeks. In the first book, speaking of him still more particularly and more extensively, he expresses himself thus : " It is my opinion (and it is an opinion in which all are agreed) that Socrates was the first who, calling off the attention of philosophy from the investigation of secrets which nature has concealed (but to which alone all preceding philosophers had attached them- selves), engaged her in those things which concern the duties of common life ; his object was to investigate the nature of virtue and vice ; and to point out the characteristics of good and evil ; saying, that the investigation of celestial