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SCIENCES IN CONNEXION WITH THE STATE. 203made easy and beenjoyed, but which doubtless assisted in.procuring for them pupils and followers, we can surveyallthe evil influence which they exercised. And yet thesevery aberrations of the human understanding may havebeen necessary, to awaken the minds which were to pointout better paths.The son of Sophroniscusis the firstamong these. Hebegan the opposition to the sophists. Just as Philip calledforth a Demosthenes, the sophists produced a Socrates.After all that antiquity has left us concerning him, and allthe observations of modern historians, he is one of the characters most difficult to be understood, and stands by himself, not only in his own nation, but in the whole history ofthe culture of our race. For what sage, who was neither apublic teacher, nor a writer, nor a religious reformer, hashad such an influence on his own age and on posterity, ashe ?We willingly concede, that his sphere of action has farexceeded his own expectations and designs. These hardlyhad reference to posterity. Every thing seems to indicate,that they were calculated for his contemporaries alone. Butitmay with justice be remarked, that this only increases thedifficulty of an explanation. For who will not ask ;Howcould this man, without intending it, have had an* influenceon all centuries after his time ? The chief reason is to befound in the nature of his philosophy yet external causes;came to his assistance.After so many have written upon his philosophy,it wouldbe superfluousto delineate it anew. It made its way, because itimmediately related to the higher matters of interestto man. While the sophists were brooding over merespeculations, and their contests were but contests of words,Socrates taught those who came near him, to look intothemselves ;man and his relations with the world were theobjects of his investigations. That we may not repeat whathas already been so well remarked by others, we will hereallow ourselves only some general observations respectingthe philosopher himself and his career.His influence was most closely connected with the formsof social life in Athens ;in a country where these are not tbesame, a second Socrates could never exercise the influenceof the first He gave instruction neither in Ms house, nor