POSITIVE END OF SOKEATES. 49] the primitive suggestions of boyhood," not merely without jare or study, bu; without even consciousness of the process, and without any subsequent revision. Upon this basis th^ sophists, or professed teachers for active life, sought to erect a superstruc- ture of virtue and ability; but to Sokrates, such an attempt appeared hopeless and contradictory not less impracticable than Bacon in his time pronounced it to be, to carry up the tree of science into majesty and fruit-bearing, without first clearing away those fundamental vices which lay unmolested and in poisonous influence round its root. Sokrates went to work in the Baconian manner and spirit ; bringing his cross-examining process to bear, as the first condition to all further improvement, upon these rude, self-begotten, incoherent generalizations, which passed in men's minds for competent and directing knowledge. But he, not less than Bacon, performs this analysis, not with a view to finality in the negative, but as the first stage towards an ulterior profit ; as the preliminary purification, indispensable to future positive result. In the physical sciences, to which Bacon's attention was chiefly turned, no such result could be obtained without improved experimental research, bringing to light facts new and yet unknown ; but on those topics which Sokrates discussed, the elementary data of the inquiry were all within' the hearer's experience, requiring only to be pressed upon his notice, affirm- atively as well as negatively, together with the appropriate ethical and political end ; in such manner as to stimulate within him the rational effort requisite for combining them anew upon consistent principles. If, then, the philosophers of the New Academy considered Sokrates either as a skeptic, or as a partisan of systematic nega- tion, they misinterpreted his character, and mistook the first stage of his process that which Plato, Bacon, and Herschel call the purification of the intellect for the ultimate goal. The elenchus, as Sokrates used it, was animated by the truest spirit of positive science, and formed an indispensable precursor to its attainment. 1 There are two points, and two points only, in topics concerning man and society, with regard to which Sokrates is a skeptic ; or 1 Plato, Apol. Sok. c. 7, p. 22, A. del 61) vpv TI)V k/i^v ir^uvrjv ixidtiiai. rar TOl'OWC TTOVOtHTOf , CtC.
