Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

xxxii INTRODUCTION SECT.
The Sophistic Age, signifying as it does the attainment
and realisation of self-consciousness in the Greek
mind, involved a necessary change in the direction of
philosophic interest. For the old problem, What is the
make and nature of the world? the less obvious and
deeper problem is substituted, What is the make and
nature of man ? When once questions of the analysis
of consciousness were broached, the prime interest
and it
inevitably shifted from the object to the subject,
became imperative to understand the nature, processes,
and relations of thought, perception, and emotion, before
attempting to deal with their subject-matters and contents.
Until the forms of consciousness were to some extent
understood and their worth determined,
it was useless
to discuss its reports or compare its testimonies. All
knowledge might (as Protagoras taught)
resolve itself
into successive acts of individual perception ; inner
criteria of truth, reality, and permanence must be estab-
lished before philosophy could carry conviction, or even
claim a hearing. Physics must wait till psychology
could formulate and justify its own validity. To frivolous
and irresponsible rhetoricians, ethics, logic, or physics
might furnish equally good sport for argument and
opportunity for self-display ; but to serious thinkers,
bent on establishing a stable harmony between thought
and life, the moral and psychological issues were supreme.
The philosopher claimed distinction from the Sophist.
For this reason Socrates, more resolutely than any
of his contemporaries, turned from hypotheses of physics
or metaphysics to study the nature of man. Just as the
older physicists, convinced of the reality of a cosmic