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THREE:With Socrates and Plato, scepticism exhibits itself under two new aspects: as an accompaniment of religious belief, and as an element of constructive thought. Thus they represent both the good and the bad side of this tendency: the aspect under which it is a help, and the aspect under which it is a hindrance to scientific investigation. With both philosophers, however, the restriction or negation of human knowledge was a consequence rather than a cause of their theological convictions; nor do they seem to have appreciated its value as a weapon in the controversy with religious unbelief. When Socrates represented the irreconcilable divergence in the explanations of Nature offered by previous thinkers as a sufficient condemnation of their several pretensions, he did not set this fact against the arguments by which a Xenophanes had similarly endeavoured to overthrow the popular mythology; but he looked on it as a fatal consequence of their insane presumption in meddling with the secrets of the gods. On one occasion only, when explaining to Euthyd��mus that the invisibility of the gods is no reason for doubting their existence, he argues, somewhat in Butler��s style, that our own minds, whose existence we cannot doubt, are equally invisible.222 And the Platonic Socrates makes it134 his business to demonstrate the universality of human ignorance, not as a caution against dogmatic unbelief, but as a glorification of the divine knowledge; though how we come to know that there is any such knowledge he leaves utterly unexplained."Sir, I do not understand German, but����"

THREE:The Epicurean philosophy was, in fact, the first to gain a footing in Rome; and it thereby acquired a position of comparative equality with the other schools, to which it was not really entitled, but which it has ever since succeeded in maintaining. The new doctrine fell like a spark on a mass of combustible material. The Romans were full of curiosity about Nature and her workings; full of contempt for the degrading Etruscan superstitions which hampered them at every turn, and the falsity of which was proving too much even for the official gravity of their state-appointed interpreters; full of impatience at the Greek mythology which was beginning to substitute itself for the severe abstractions of their own more spiritual faith;265 full of loathing for the Asiatic orgies which were being introduced into the highest society of their own city. Epicureanism offered them a complete and easily intelligible theory of the world, which at the same time came as a deliverance from supernatural terrors. The consequence was that its different parts were thrown out of perspective, and their relative importance almost reversed. Originally framed as an ethical system with certain physical and theological implications, it was interpreted by Lucretius, and apparently also by his Roman predecessors,266 as a scientific and anti-religious system, with certain references to conduct neither very prominently brought forward nor very distinctly conceived.168 And we know from the contents of the papyrus rolls discovered at Herculaneum, that those who studied the system in its original sources paid particular attention to the voluminous physical treatises of Epicurus, as well as to the theological works of his successors. Nor was this change of front limited to Epicureanism, if, as we may suspect, the rationalistic direction taken by Panaetius was due, at least in part, to a similar demand on the side of his Roman admirers.

THREE:During the month��s respite accidentally allowed him, Socrates had one more opportunity of displaying that stedfast obedience to the law which had been one of his great guiding principles through life. The means of escaping from prison were offered to him, but he refused to avail himself of them, according to Plato, that the implicit contract of loyalty to which his citizenship had bound him might be preserved unbroken. Nor was death unwelcome to him although it is not true that he courted it, any desire to figure as a martyr being quite alien from the noble simplicity of his character. But he had reached an age when the daily growth in wisdom which for him alone made life worth living, seemed likely to be exchanged for a gradual and melancholy decline. That this past progress was a good in itself he never doubted, whether it was to be continued in other worlds, or succeeded by the happiness of an eternal sleep. And we may be sure that he169 would have held his own highest good to be equally desirable for the whole human race, even with the clear prevision that its collective aspirations and efforts cannot be prolonged for ever.