I.—­He gave a foundation and a shape to Ethical Science, by insisting on its practical character, and by showing that, like the other arts of life, it had an End, and a Theory from which flows the precepts or means.  The End, which would be the STANDARD, was not stated by him, and hardly even by Plato, otherwise than in general language; the Summum Bonum had not as yet become a matter of close debate.  ’The art of dealing with human beings,’ ‘the art of behaving in society,’ ’the science of human happiness,’ were various modes of expressing the final end of conduct.[5] Sokrates clearly indicated the difference between an unscientific and a scientific art; the one is an incommunicable knack or dexterity, the other is founded on theoretical principles.

II.—­Notwithstanding his professing ignorance of what virtue is, Sokrates had a definite doctrine with reference to Ethics, which we may call his PSYCHOLOGY of the subject.  This was the doctrine that resolves Virtue into Knowledge, Vice into Ignorance or Folly.  ’To do right was the only way to impart happiness, or the least degree of unhappiness compatible with any given situation:  now, this was precisely what every one wished for and aimed at—­only that many persons, from ignorance, took the wrong road; and no man was wise enough always to take the right.  But as no man was willingly his own enemy, so no man ever did wrong willingly; it was because he was not fully or correctly informed of the consequences of his own actions; so that the proper remedy to apply, was enlarged teaching of consequences and improved judgment.  To make him willing to be taught, the only condition required was to make him conscious of his own ignorance; the want of which consciousness was the real cause both of indocility and of vice’ (Grote).  This doctrine grew out of his favourite analogy between social duty and a profession or trade.  When the artizan goes wrong, it is usually from pure ignorance or incapacity; he is willing to do good work if he is able.

III.—­The SUMMUM BONUM with Sokrates was Well-doing.  He had no ideal of pursuit for man apart from virtue, or what he esteemed virtue—­the noble and the praiseworthy.  This was the elevated point of view maintained alike by him and by Plato, and common to them with the ideal of modern ages.

Well-doing consisted in doing well whatever a man undertook.  ’The best man,’ he said, ’and the most beloved by the gods, is he that, as a husbandman, performs well the duties of husbandry; as a surgeon, the duties of the medical art; in political life, his duty towards the commonwealth.  The man that does nothing well is neither useful nor agreeable to the gods.’  And as knowledge is essential to all undertakings, knowledge is the one thing needful.  This exclusive regard to knowledge was his one-sidedness as a moral theorist; but he did not consistently exclude all reference to the voluntary control of appetite and passion.