"Socratic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... led by Plato himself to regard the Timaeus, not as the centre or inmost shrine of the edifice, but as a detached building in a different style, framed, not after the Socratic, but after some Pythagorean model. As in the Cratylus and Parmenides, we are uncertain whether Plato is expressing his own opinions, or appropriating and perhaps improving the philosophical speculations of others. In all ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... gentlemen approached soon passed, as none of them noticed the flowers she wore over a very happy heart. Demi meantime was escorting certain venerable personages about the college, and helping his grandfather entertain them with discussion of the Socratic method of instruction, Pythagoras, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and the rest, whom he devoutly wished at the bottom of the Red Sea, and no wonder, for his head and his heart were full of love and roses, hopes and fears. He piloted the 'potent, ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... antiquity; I read with new pleasure the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, a large portion of the tragic and comic theatre of Athens, and many interesting dialogues of the Socratic school. Yet in the luxury of freedom I began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit, which gave a value to every book, and an object to every inquiry; the preface of a new edition announced my design, and ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... Marlow, a "cloak to goe inbisabell" for Conrad himself. In "Chance" there are two separate stories, imperfectly welded together. Elsewhere there are hesitations, goings back, interpolations, interludes in the Socratic manner. And almost always there is heaviness in the getting under weigh. In "Heart of Darkness" we are on the twentieth page before we see the mouth of the great river, and in "Falk" we are on the twenty-fourth before we get a glimpse of Falk. "Chance" is nearly half done ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... duties, and useful to families, to their fatherland, and to humanity." [5] We are therefore in the ambit of secondary schools. The lesson we cite is a practical application of the principle of giving lessons by means of interrogation (Socratic method), and deals with ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... but he easily combined with his feats of strength and shrewdness some of the highest flights of taste. As we look back across the changes of his life,—see him passing over the high places and the low, and across the long stretches of the prairie; spending years in the Socratic arguments of the tavern, and anon holding the rudder of state in grim silence; choosing jests which have the freshness of earth, and principles of eternal right; judging potentates and laborers in the clear light of nature, and at ease with both; alone by virtue of a large and ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... with an emphatic stare after this triumphant specimen of Socratic argument, and then added, thumping the table rather fiercely, "Why, it's a sure thing—and there's them 'ull bear witness to't—as i' one regiment where there was one man a-missing, they put the regimentals on a big monkey, and they fit him as the shell fits the walnut, and ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... was—Fight fair; fall soft; know when you've got enough; and don't cry out when you've got it: but just go home; train again; and say—better luck next fight." And so old Mark's sermon ended (as most of them did) in somewhat Socratic allegory, savouring rather of the market than of the study; but Elsley understood him, and looked ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... we are laid aside and shall soon be forgotten; for why should the feast of asses come but once a year, when all the days are foaled of one mother? O world! world! The gods and fairies left thee, for thou wert too wise; and now, thou Socratic star, thy demon, the great Pan, Folly, is parting from thee. The oracles still talked in their sleep, shall our grandchildren say, till Master Merriman's kingdom was broken up: now is every man his own fool, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... chronological order. This order will in some measure be preserved in the following survey; but regard for the continuity of the tradition of the doctrine will entail certain deviations. It will, that is to say, be natural to divide the material into four groups: the pre-Socratic philosophy; the Sophists; Socrates and the Socratics; Hellenistic philosophy. Each of these groups has a philosophical character of its own, and it will be seen that this character also makes itself felt in the relation to the gods of the ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... speech as a general; a fine one; a spirit of athleticism breathes through it. Cf. Memorabilia for a similar rationalisation of virtuous self-restraint (e.g. Mem., Bk. I. c. 5, 6; Bk. III. c. 8). Paleyan somewhat, perhaps Socratic, not devoid of common sense. What is the end and aim of our training? Not only for an earthly aim, but for a high ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... these things are, in fact, hideous, the theory that shows they ought to be beautiful, is vain and ridiculous. But that theory contains this truth: that had the utility of Socratic features been so great that men of all other type must have perished, Socrates would have been beautiful. He would have represented the human type. The eye would have been then accustomed to that form, the imagination ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... as essential, but merely as suggestive and perhaps useful to teachers who prefer the Socratic method. They might also serve to call the attention of students to some point which they would ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Schiller's idea was, evidently, to blaze a private trail through the jungle of Kantian theory, with Koerner's critical assistance, and then to return and convert the trail into an agreeable road for the general reader. In the end he chose a different form than that of the Socratic dialogue for the literary presentation of his doctrine, but what he wrote subsequently was based partly at least upon conclusions that he had reached through his correspondence with Koerner; wherefore it will be well to look a little more closely, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... The fault of the Socratic theory is well remarked by Grote to be, that while he resolved all virtue into knowledge or wisdom, and all vice into ignorance or folly, he omitted to notice what is not less essential to virtue, the proper condition of the passions, desires, &c., and limited his views too exclusively to ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... he will without offense. There is something Attic and aerial in them; they mingle grave and gay, fiction and truth, with a light grace of touch such as neither La Fontaine nor Alcibiades would have been ashamed of. Socratic badinage like this presupposes a free and equal mind, victorious over physical ill and inward discontents. Such delicate playfulness is the exclusive heritage of those rare natures in whom subtlety is the disguise of superiority, and taste its revelation. "What balance of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... world in general, ideals as they may be more worthily called): (1) that to do is worse than to suffer evil; and (2) that when a man has done evil he had better be punished than unpunished; to which may be added (3) a third Socratic paradox or ideal, that bad men do what they think best, but not what they desire, for the desire of all is towards the good. That pleasure is to be distinguished from good is proved by the simultaneousness ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... under that influence the Greek world was very old and weary. It was Rome's misfortune and not her fault that when she was old enough to go to school, Alexandrianism with its pedantic detail was the order of the day in mythology, and the timorous post-Socratic schools were the teachers of philosophy. Naturally if Rome had been another Greece she would have worked back from these later forms to the truer, purer spirit, but Rome was not Greece, and no thoughtful man ever pretended that she was. In the third century ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... Fenelon, but who prepared the way for these slightly later builders of French literature by clearing the ground of shams. Segrais, whose recollections of him are among the most precious which have come down to us, says that La Rochefoucauld never argued. He had the Socratic manner, and led others on to expose and expound their views. His custom was, in the course of the endless talks about morals and the soul, "to conceal half of his own opinion, and to show tact with an obstinate opponent, so as to spare him the annoyance of having to yield." There is something ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... pre-Socratic philosophers, declared by the followers of Socrates to be childish, had freed themselves from theology, that is, the mythology of the poets, and constructed a philosophy from the observation of nature, without troubling themselves about ethics and religion. In the systems of Plato and Aristotle ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... dictate of inclination urged. Here was an opportunity to put to the test a most important theory of the old Socratic doctrine, that true knowledge is to be elicited from within and is to be sought for in ideas and not in particulars of sense. What a chance! A growing youth in seclusion. Such a magnificent seclusion! Where I could try him in my own alembic! ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood's), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... which he probably developed still more in his oral discourses than in his theological and physical writings. In philosophy, seeking deliverance from the skeletons of the current systems and abstractions, he recurred to the neglected fountain of the pre-Socratic philosophy, to whose ancient sages thought had still presented itself with sensuous vividness. The researches of physical science—which, suitably treated, afford even now so excellent a handle for mystic ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... in his wine, he decoyed this pedagogue into a debauch, during which his caution forsook him, and he exposed himself to the censure of the company. Sometimes, when the conversation turned upon intricate subjects, he practised upon him the Socratic method of confutation, and, under pretence of being informed, by an artful train of puzzling questions ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Shelley—Godwin was glad to see any one. Godwin was fifty-five, bald, had a Socratic forehead, was smooth-cheeked, shabby and genteel. Yes, Godwin was the author of "Political Justice"—but that was written quite a while before, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... in vain, for him the Veil of Isis could never be lifted. After a careful study of Shelley's works I can find nothing to warrant the execration formerly levelled at his head, not even in the "Refutation of Deism," that remarkable argument in the Socratic style between Eusebes and Theosophus in which, as in all his prose works, is displayed keen discernment, logical acuteness, and close analytical reasoning not surpassed by the greatest philosophers—most certainly ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... hear anything when she—" A bright idea occurred to Peter. "Don't you think, Clodd, as a practical man," suggested Peter insinuatingly, adopting the Socratic method, "that if we got her one of those dummy pianos—you know what I mean; it's just like an ordinary piano, only you ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... works and opinions of the master with those of his scholars. To a later Platonist, the difference between Plato and his imitators was not so perceptible as to ourselves. The Memorabilia of Xenophon and the Dialogues of Plato are but a part of a considerable Socratic literature which has passed away. And we must consider how we should regard the question of the genuineness of a particular writing, if this lost literature had been ...
— Lesser Hippias • Plato
... hast seen Satyron[A] the Socratic, think of either Eutyches or Hymen, and when thou hast seen Euphrates, think of Eutychion or Silvanus, and when thou hast seen Alciphron think of Tropaeophorus, and when thou hast seen Xenophon, think of Crito[B] ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... understood that this is merely a personal opinion of the writer and might well have been prefaced by the Socratic "it seems to me." Too much criticism reminds us of wine-tasting—Mr. So-and-So likes port, Mr. So-and-So sherry. The object of fair-minded appreciation is to understand clearly just what each composer set out to do, i.e., what was the natural tendency of ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... indifference of his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do not know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their calm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had noticed also that Queequeg never consorted at all, or but very little, with the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever; appeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances. All this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... not write me, there were two Platos; I carry in me all the flowers of Socratic talk. But Panaetius concluded me to be spurious; yes, he who concluded that the soul was mortal, would conclude me ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... academies. Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian Literature, has given a list of 171; and Jarkius, in his Specimen Historiae Academiarum Conditarum, enumerates nearly 700. Many of these, with a sort of Socratic irony, gave themselves ludicrous names, or names expressive of ignorance. Such were the Lunatici of Naples, the Estravaganti, the Fulminales, the Trapessati, the Drowsy, the Sleepers, the Anxious, the Confused, the Unstable, the Fantastic, the Transformed, the Ethereal. "The first academies ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... present it in as startling a shape as possible; in order that, the attention being thoroughly roused, the final assent may not be languid or easily forgotten. Suffer me, therefore, Phdrus, in a Socratic way, to extort an assent from your own arguments—allow me to drive you into ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... Maestro would step to the window and look into the hut from which came this Socratic dialogue. And on this wall-less platform which looked much like a primitive stage, a singular action was unrolling itself in the smoky glimmer of a two-cent lamp. The Third Assistant was not there at all; but Isidro was the Third Assistant. And the pupil was not Isidro, but the witless old ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... disciples, is represented as engaged in conversation on some one of the religious, or philosophic, or ethical points in that system which we now call Buddhism. In depth of philosophic insight, in the method of Socratic questioning often adopted, in the earnest and elevated tone of the whole, in the evidence they afford of the most cultured thought of the day, these dialogues constantly remind the reader of the dialogues of Plato. But not in style. They have indeed a style of their own; always dignified, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... might move and might have different and calculable dynamic values. The gist of this definition of matter was to clear the decks for scientific calculation, by removing from nature the moral density and moral magic with which the Socratic philosophy had encumbered it. Science would be employed in describing the movements of bodies, leaving it for the senses and feelings to appreciate the cross-lights that might be generated in the process. Though not following the technique of ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... abandon. I do not mean that he lost faith in democracy; this faith he constantly then and signally afterwards affirmed; but he certainly had no longer any faith in insubordination as a means of grace. He preached a quite Socratic reverence for law, as law, and I remember that once when I had got back from Canada in the usual disgust for the American custom- house, and spoke lightly of smuggling as not an evil in itself, and perhaps even a right ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the North; that Mrs. Atterbury had spent many of her recent summers there. Their devotion to the Confederacy must be shown by deeds. It was true they had given twenty thousand dollars to the cause, but what was that to threefold millionaires? General Lee, their kinsman, had shaken his Socratic head solemnly when Rosa, at the War Department, told him, as an excellent joke, the strange chance that had brought Vincent's college chum and his family under ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... Gorgias, the Protagoras, and the Republic. There is no author to whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he more frequently recommended to young students. I can bear similar testimony in regard to myself. The Socratic method, of which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the intellectus sibi permissus, ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... Hinduism" has been a real refreshment to me, in this investigation of the Indian consciousness of God in the world. The mastery of the Socratic-Platonic dialogue, the delicacy and freedom of the investigation, and the deep Christian and human spirit of this man, have attracted me more than all other new English books, and even filled me with astonishment. Muir, that good man, sent it me through Williams and Norgate, and I have not ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... But this latter {xxxii} bolder view of the inherent greatness of man's essential nature is the prevailing tendency of these men. They are thus the forerunners of the Quaker faith that there is something of God in man, and they continue the direct line, which goes back for ancestry to the Socratic movement in philosophy of those who find God involved and implicated in the nature of normal self-consciousness and in the idea of the Good toward ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... rebelled; but, with all her wit, how could she reason with Socrates, the most gifted and the wisest of all philosophers? He had a provoking way of practising upon her the exasperating methods of Socratic debate,—a system he had invented, and for which he still is revered. Never excited or angry himself, he would ply her with questions until she found herself entangled in a network of contradictions; and then she would be driven, willy-nilly, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... to speak popularly, is led. Yet the book is readable to that orderly application of the mind which such studies exact, and is the firmest and strictest guide now speaking our English tongue. Its steady attention to the business in hand, from the pre-Socratic philosphies down through the great age of the Greek revival, to Germany and Hegel at last, is most sustained and admirable. Indeed, few thinkers of Anglo-Saxon birth are able even to praise such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... other people's; he mounted no high horse; he was just a man and a citizen. He indulged in no Socratic irony. But his discourse was full of Attic grace; those who heard it went away neither disgusted by servility, nor repelled by ill-tempered censure, but on the contrary lifted out of themselves by charity, and encouraged to more orderly, contented, ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... edited, in early youth, his predecessor Thucydides, and composed the first two books of his historical continuation entitled "Hellenica." In his retreat at Skillus he composed a series of "Dialogues," in what is termed the Socratic vein; "Memorials" of his great master, a tract on household "Economy," another on a "Symposium," or feast, one called "Hiero," or on the Greek tyrant, and an account of the "Laconian Polity," which he had so long admired and known. The tract on "Hunting" also speaks the experience at Skillus. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... like it?" continued the Doctor. "(We are now pursuing the Socratic method.) Why do ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the ridiculous, joyous fooling; above all, that first essential of satire, to be himself amused by what he wrote to amuse others; all these he possessed in a high degree. Rabelais has been called the Homeric buffoon, Lucian is certainly the Socratic. ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... the members of the Socratic circle was Plato, a wealthy noble who abandoned a public career for the attractions of philosophy. After the death of Socrates, Plato traveled widely in the Greek world and even visited Egypt, where he interviewed the learned priests. On his return to Athens Plato began teaching ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... a fox new slain, quoth Pantagruel, what is that? This maketh nothing for your advantage; for he betokeneth thereby that your marriage will be inauspicious and unfortunate. This sneezing, according to the doctrine of Terpsion, is the Socratic demon. If done towards the right side, it imports and portendeth that boldly and with all assurance one may go whither he will and do what he listeth, according to what deliberation he shall be pleased to have thereupon taken; his entries in the beginning, progress in his proceedings, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... place. I saw a Frenchman's sneering shrug; A German countess, in one hand A sky-blue string which held a pug, With the other a fiery face she fanned; A Yankee with a soft felt hat; A Coptic priest from Ararat; An English girl with cheeks of rose; A Nihilist with Socratic nose; Paddy from Cork with baggage light And pockets stuffed with dynamite; A haughty Southern Readjuster, Wrapped in his pride and linen duster; Two noisy New York stockbrokers, And twenty British globe-trotters. ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events, it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... with their refined, infinitesimal, homeopathic 'developments' of deity; metaphysical wolves in Socratic cloaks. Oh, they have much to answer for! 'Spring of philosophy!' ha! ha! They have made a frog pond of it, in which to launch their flimsy, painted toy barks. Have done with them, Beulah, or ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... that Jerome referred to Q. Cicero the orator's brother, but for this there is no authority. The poem is entitled De Rerum Natura, an equivalent for the Greek peri physeos, the usual title of the pre-Socratic philosophers' works. The form, viz. a poem in heroic hexameters, containing a carefully reasoned exposition, in which regard was had above all to the claims of the subject-matter, was borrowed from the Sicilian thinker Empedocles [51] (460 B.C.). But while ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... one school of Christian Science? Christian Science is demonstrable. There can, there- fore, be but one method in its teaching. Those who de- 112:6 part from this method forfeit their claims to belong to its school, and they become adher- ents of the Socratic, the Platonic, the Spencerian, or some 112:9 other school. By this is meant that they adopt and ad- here to some particular system of human opinions. Al- though these opinions may have occasional gleams of 112:12 divinity, borrowed from that truly divine Science which ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... certain method of procedure in business, ran upon the same line, namely, the practical usefulness of the virtue, the knowledge, or the method, for increasing the probability of a practical success in worldly affairs. Among the articles inculcating morality which he used to put into his newspaper was a Socratic Dialogue, "tending to prove that whatever might be his parts and abilities, a vicious man could not properly be called a man ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... The Socratic mode of reasoning is frequently practised upon children. People arrange questions artfully, so as to bring them to whatever conclusion they please. In this mode of reasoning, much depends upon getting the first move; the child has very little chance of having it, his preceptor usually begins ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... that you may be delivered from evil," shouted the Doctor—(his was not the Socratic method)—"but remember this: that as sure as the sparks fly upward there will come a time when, however fast you run, you will be overtaken—cornered—no one to deliver you but yourself—the gods sitting round interested. It is a grim fight, for the Thing, you ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... conscious of being watched, the little man turned sharply, exhibiting his wrinkled forehead, broad at the brows, narrow and high in the middle, showing, too, a Socratic nose half buried in the midst of the gray hair which grew as high as the prominent cheek bones, and suggesting the idea of a polished ivory ball lying in a nest of grayish wool. Indeed all that was visible of the face above the beard might have been carved out of old ivory, so far ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the lower classes, and I told her I was persuaded, from various things I had noticed, that a lot of them were frightfully hard up. And with that she started off to show whose fault it was, by the Socratic method." ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... partisans should find themselves confronted with men, not personally involved, who control enough facts and have the dialectical skill to sort out what is real perception from what is stereotype, pattern and elaboration. It is the Socratic dialogue, with all of Socrates's energy for breaking through words to meanings, and something more than that, because the dialectic in modern life must be done by men who have explored the environment as well as the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... missed an evening at the "Chapter" for forty-five years. His strictures on the events of the day were thought severe but able, and as a friend of liberty he had argued all through the times of Wilkes and the French and American wars. His Socratic arguments were very amusing. Mr. Murray, the great referee of the Wittinagemot, was a Scotch minister, who generally sat at the "Chapter" reading papers from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. He was known to have read straight through every morning and evening paper published in London for thirty years. His ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the Symposium and Phaedrus, also bear witness to the fact that the Socratic conception of love resembled modern romantic love in its ideal of purity and its altruistic impulses. Especially notable in this respect are the speeches of Phaedrus and Pausanius in the Symposium (175-78), in which love is declared to be the source of the greatest benefits ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... wisest and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as an usurer, and the pedant Athenaeus as illiterate; the latter points out as a Socratic folly our philosopher disserting on the nature of justice before his judges, who were so many thieves. The malignant buffoonery of Aristophanes treats him much worse; but he, as Jortin says, was a great wit, but a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of burden and will bear notes though they may not bear reading. Besides, the comments in such cases are so little under the necessity of paying any servile deference to the text, that they may even adopt that Socratic, "quod supra nos ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... sometimes in the lightest-hearted way of conjugal relations which we should think most serious;[240] and we find him telling Atticus how he had met at dinner the actress Cytheris, a woman of notoriously bad character. "I did not know she was going to be there," he says, "but even the Socratic Aristippus himself did not blush when he was taunted about Lais."[241] Caesar's reputation in such matters was at all times bad, and though many of the stories about him are manifestly false, his conquest by Cleopatra was a fact, and we learn with regret that the Egyptian queen was living in a ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... that playfulness which sits upon him so gracefully, and which draws its resources from a reading so extensive that not even John Gilpin has escaped its research, puts his argument to the people in a form where the Socratic and arithmetic methods are neatly combined, and asks, "How many States are there in the Union?" He himself answers his own question for an audience among whom it might have been difficult to find any political adherent capable of so arduous a solution, by asking ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... but of the revolution. He corrected the slip with great rapidity, but he was not quick enough for his watchful enemies, and loudly—discordantly—triumphantly—they repeated the word after him—Revolution—Revolution. However, Mr. Gladstone, after his Socratic fashion, lowered his eyes for a moment and went off into one of those abstract reveries whither he always allows his fancy to wend its way whenever his opponents are particularly rancorous. Then he described the resolution—not the revolution—as in the interest of the convenience ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... to represent to my own feelings the inward contempt with which he would have abstracted his mind from worthless anecdotes and petty personalities; a contempt rising into indignation if ever an illustrious name were used as a thread to string them upon. If this recollection be my Socratic Demon, to warn and to check me, I shall, on the other hand, derive encouragement from the remembrance of the tender patience, the sweet gentleness, with which he was wont to tolerate the tediousness of well meaning men; and the inexhaustible attention, the unfeigned interest, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... have taken sides with Anytus and Meletus in the impeachment of Socrates. A popular author must, in a thorough-going way, take the accepted maxims for granted. He must suppress any whimsical fancy for applying the Socratic elenchus, or any other engine of criticism, scepticism, or verification, to those sentiments or current precepts of morals, which may in truth be very equivocal and may be much neglected in practice, but which the public opinion ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... passed between the father and the boy may be gathered from an incident or two which he narrated as having impressed themselves permanently on the memory of his youth. He once asked his father what he thought was the oldest of all things. The father replied, after the Socratic method, by putting another question: 'And what do you yourself suppose is the oldest of all things?' The boy was not successful in his answers, thereon the old astronomer took up a small stone from the garden walk: 'There, my child, there is the oldest of all the things that I certainly ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... of which was not comprehended. It was not by positive teaching, but by exciting scientific impulse in the minds of others, or stirring up the analytical faculties, which constitute his originality. "The Socratic dialectics, clearing away," says Grote, [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68; Maurice, Ancient Philosophy, p. 119.] "from the mind its mist of fancied knowledge, and, laying bare the real ignorance, produced an immediate effect like the touch of the torpedo; ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... detail, should form subjects of school instruction, the rules determining the selection of each and the methods of their construction not being preached in lectures, ex Cathedra, but evolved by a patient questioning of nature, by experiment and the Socratic method of inquiry. Exercise of the limbs under the direction of a skilled instructor, so that all the muscles of the body may be duly trained, and a healthy body built up to support a healthy mind. The kinds of recreation to be selected, whether bull-baiting, cock-fighting, ...
— The Philosophy of Teaching - The Teacher, The Pupil, The School • Nathaniel Sands
... that you have need of me before I pass by the Socratic method," he suggested, still with that pale smile set in granite "I shall depend on you to let me know at what precise hour you would like to order an epitaph written for me. Say the word at your convenience, and within five minutes your bulletin concerning the late governor ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... "At a droll suggestion of Mr. Huxley's, or a humorous doubt insinuated in the musical tones of the President of the Royal Society (Sir Joseph Hooker), the eyes twinkle under the massive overhanging brows, the Socratic head, as Professor Tyndall loves to call it, is thrown back, and over the long white beard rolls out such a laugh as we have ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... lurks. In order to detect the fallacy, the proposition thus silently assumed must be supplied; but the reasoner, most likely, has never really asked himself what he was assuming; his confuter, unless permitted to extort it from him by the Socratic mode of interrogation, must himself judge what the suppressed premise ought to be in order to support the conclusion. And hence, in the words of Archbishop Whately, "it must be often a matter of doubt, or, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... be suspected that in including them Mr Arnold, unconsciously perhaps, but more probably with some consciousness, was feeling his way towards that wide extension of the province of the critic, that resurrection of the general Socratic attitude, which he afterwards adventured. But it cannot be said that his experiments are on this particular occasion in any way disastrous. With both his subjects he had the very strongest sympathy—with Spinoza (as already with Heine) as a remarkable example of the Hebraic spirit and genius, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... peach wall,—sometimes silent, indeed, and already musing over the future, while he was busy with the past, but amply rewarded when, suspending his lecture, he would pour forth hoards of varied learning, rendered amusing by his quaint comments, and that Socratic satire which only fell short of wit because it never passed into malice. At some moments, indeed, the vein ran into eloquence; and with some fine heroic sentiment in his old books, his stooping form rose erect, his ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of tradition, in which his book and college training had placed him. His mind still had greater faith in things because Aristotle or Augustine said them, than because they are true.[124] If the end of education be to teach independence of mind, the Socratic temper, the love of pushing into unexplored areas—intellectual curiosity in a word—Oxford had done none of all this for him. In every field of thought and life he started from the principle of authority; it ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... to the best restaurant in the neighbourhood, and the three adventurers made a less Socratic dinner than might ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Socratic every dining-room was Attic (Which suggests an architecture of a topsy-turvy kind), There they'd satisfy their thirst on a recherche cold {Greek word} Which is what they called their lunch—and so may you if you're inclined. As they gradually got on, they'd {four Greek words) (Which ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... grandsons of that Canon Dallison, well known as friend, and sometime adviser, of a certain Victorian novelist. The Canon, who came of an old Oxfordshire family, which for three hundred years at least had served the Church or State, was himself the author of two volumes of "Socratic Dialogues." He had bequeathed to his son—a permanent official in the Foreign Office—if not his literary talent, the tradition at all events of culture. This tradition had in turn been handed on to Hilary ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Moorfields called upon him again the next evening. After some talk on the adventures of the preceding day: "I carried you yesterday," said he to Harley, "to visit the mad; let me introduce you to-night, at supper, to one of the wise: but you must not look for anything of the Socratic pleasantry about him; on the contrary, I warn you to expect the spirit of a Diogenes. That you may be a little prepared for his extraordinary manner, I will let you into ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... beginning when her mother, familiar with the Socratic nature of her daughter's conversation and its exhaustive effect upon the interlocutor, interposed a remark which guided the current of talk out of heavenly channels and ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... philtra te manthanousai par emon kai epodas.] Who were these [Greek: philai]? Had he meant the virtues or moral qualities, he would have spoken plainer, as was his wont; but here, where the subject is the personal beauty, the charms of Theodote, it is more in the Socratic vein that he refers to other personal charms, which engage his thoughts night and day, and keep him at home. Now, it appears too, that Socrates was taken to see her, on account of the fame of her beauty, and goes to her when she is sitting, or rather standing, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... of Socratic teaching was the idea that wisdom is the attribute of the Godhead, and Plato, for twenty years the companion and most favoured pupil of Socrates, was imbued with that doctrine, and, having arrived at the conclusion that the impulse to ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... misfortune, her mother would not willingly see her queen. Yet why not? I have a son, and would be glad to lay down my burden and kiss his hand as he sat on the throne. Are all fathers such as I? Nay, and are all mothers such as mine? I know not; and if there be any position that opens a man's mind to the Socratic wisdom of knowing his own ignorance it is that in which my life has been spent. But it can hardly be that the curious veiled opposition which from about this time began to exist between my mother and my sister was altogether singular. It was a feeling not inconsistent with duty, with punctilious ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... feud, which had begun when Socrates five centuries before had fought his battles with the sophists. Rhetoric appeals to the emotions and obscures the issues (such had been Socrates's position); the way to elicit truth is by short question and answer. The Socratic method, illustrated by Plato, had become, if not the only, the accredited instrument of philosophers, who, so far as they are genuine, are truth-seekers; Rhetoric had been left to the legal persons whose object is not truth but victory. Lucian's ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... possessed, according to the usual phrase, more wit than money, and no one will discount a check from the aforesaid wit on change, the zeal of Epictetus Moonshine, some time after the breaking up of the Socratic institution for benefitting the human race, so much got the better of self-love, that he committed several petty larcenies in hopes of being transported thither; but whether his courage or his luck failed him, certain it is that he never reached the proper degree of criminality, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... troubles to a friend whom we shall call Socratic. And Socratic helps them out for a consideration. His time is valuable and he bought his wisdom at ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... great contemporary of his, whom he never met, and whom, if he had met, he would probably have insulted—Benjamin Franklin, to wit—preferred winning the case to winning the argument. While still a boy, he tells us, he was fascinated by the Socratic method, and instead of expressing opinions asked leading questions. He ceased to use words like "certainly," "undoubtedly," or anything that gave the air of positiveness to an opinion, and said "I apprehend," or "I conceive," a thing to be so ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... the Organon of Aristotle ever have been written unless the Sophist and Statesman had preceded? The swarm of fallacies which arose in the infancy of mental science, and which was born and bred in the decay of the pre-Socratic philosophies, was not dispelled by Aristotle, but by Socrates and Plato. The summa genera of thought, the nature of the proposition, of definition, of generalization, of synthesis and analysis, of division and cross-division, are clearly described, and the processes ...
— Sophist • Plato
... he cared little about such things, but who could hear Rubinstein's touch without being benefited? I believe that in teaching touch the teacher should first give his model of the touch required and then proceed from this positive ideal, by means of the so-called Socratic method of inducing the pupil to produce a similar result through repeated questions. In this way the pupil will not be obliged to resign his individuality, as would be the case if he followed strict technical injunctions ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... important uses of this method is found in inductive teaching. The famous "Socratic method" was simply the question-and-answer method applied by Socrates to teaching new truths. This noted teacher would, by a series of skillful questions calculated to call forth what the pupil already knew, lead him on to new knowledge without actually telling the youth anything himself. ...
— The Recitation • George Herbert Betts
... spoke in a high, penetrating voice. It was a rich voice of wide compass. His gestures were quiet or animated, according to the circumstances, but always dignified and impressive; the expression on his short, Socratic face was never anything but fine. He had all the qualities of an orator; but there was no vanity in his display of them. He spoke in the plain, concise style that he had been obliged to acquire in his recent intercourse with men, in discussions ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... then for nearly a mile, when the man of the Socratic Method had an idea and burst out with, "But Lordy gracious, you do not need a mongoose to kill the snakes a fellow sees who has delirium tremens—for they are only imaginary snakes!" "I know," said the owner of the box, tapping his precious package gently, "I know that delirium-tremens snakes are ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... body: both of them faultily. Pythagoras, they say, followed a philosophy that was all contemplation, Socrates one that was all conduct and action; Plato found a mean betwixt the two; but they only say this for the sake of talking. The true temperament is found in Socrates; and, Plato is much more Socratic than Pythagoric, and it becomes him better. When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. Nay, when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are some part of the time taken up with external occurrences, I some part of the time call them back again to my walk, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... any feeling, but such a principle is really nothing else than an obscurely conceived metaphysic which inheres in every man's reasoning faculty; as the teacher will easily find who tries to catechize his pupils in the Socratic method about the imperative of duty and its application to the moral judgement of his actions. The mode of stating it need not be always metaphysical, and the language need not necessarily be scholastic, unless ...
— The Metaphysical Elements of Ethics • Immanuel Kant
... the stupidity of those who dwell in "homes," and into the arms of the submerged by the coldness and heartlessness of those who walk prosperously upon the surface; the figure of this fantastic child, this satyr-saint with the Socratic forehead, this tearful mummer among the armies of the outcasts, will rise up and write his prophecy ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... upon knowledge of the essential features of nature. His chief treatise, entitled the Republic, is at once a treatise on morals, on social organization, and on the metaphysics and science of nature. Since he accepts the Socratic doctrine that right achievement in the former depends upon rational knowledge, he is compelled to discuss the nature of knowledge. Since he accepts the idea that the ultimate object of knowledge is the discovery of the good or end of man, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... The Socratic and dogmatic dialogues—the Phaedo, the Gorgias, the Symposium, Protagoras, Ion, Phaedrus—abound in allegories, aphorisms, and in aspirations toward an ideal, more or less clearly defined, which end, however, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... taught by my ancestors to call him Aeditumus but the modern purist tells me I must say Aedituus). There I found assembled C. Fundanius, my father-in-law, C. Agrius, a Roman Knight and a disciple of the Socratic school, and P. Agrasius, of the Revenue service: they were gazing on a map of Italy painted on the wall. "What are you doing here?" said I. "Has the festival of the seed-sowing drawn you hither to spend your holiday after the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... his speech. Through his own questions he sought to arouse the questioning spirit, which should weigh the import of words, and be satisfied with nothing short of a definite and consistent judgment. In the Platonic dialogues the Socratic method obtains a place in literature. In the "Theaetetus," which is, perhaps, the greatest of all epistemological treatises, Socrates is represented as likening his vocation to that ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... natural history, and some simple experiments in natural philosophy, might fill up the day; but these pursuits should never encroach on gymnastic plays in the open air. The elements of religion, history, the history of man, and politics, might also be taught by conversations, in the socratic form. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... The Socratic attitude is better than the high-bred attitude; it is better than the stoical attitude; it is even better than the pious attitude, because it depends upon living life to the uttermost, rather than upon detaching oneself ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ( c. 540-480 BC) pre-Socratic philosopher, who believed in a cosmic justice where sinners would be punished and haunted by the Erinyes, (the furies) the handmaids of ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... wisdom. Hence, he who stopped short of this end was regarded no higher than a convenient machine, which could turn out poems and maxims at bidding. Thus, knowledge was conceived as identical with its practical application in life; and this Socratic doctrine found its greatest exponent in the Chinese philosopher, Wan Yang Ming, who never wearies of repeating, "To know and to act are one and ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... on a syllogism, or on any masterpieces of the Socratic, or on any thesis, as, for example, the immortality of the soul. He is more than an expert, or a school-man, or a geometer, or the prophet of a peculiar message. He represents the privilege of the intellect, the power, namely, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... up its fists to the Mayor, and the Mayor proposed a public hearing, with the Council in attendance. At this juncture the Reform League sent a questionnaire to each Councillor, and to each member of the Association. The phraseology was Socratic (it was the product of Mr. Mix's genius) and if any one answered Yes, he was snared: if he said No, he was ambushed, and if he said nothing he was cooked. It reminded the Mayor of the man who claimed that ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... part of a country doctor's duties to learn that view of things, may I ask, sir?" said Winterborne, adopting the Socratic {Greek word: irony} with such well-assumed simplicity ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... victory. The evils that afflict humanity are meted out with a marvellously accurate reference to the idiosyncrasies of character; and no weight is imposed which cannot by heroic effort be sustained. The Socratic belief that if all misfortunes were laid in a heap, whence every man and woman must draw an equal portion, each would select the burden temporarily laid down and walk away comforted, was merely an adumbration of the sublimer truth, "As thy day, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... occurred during his voyage to Egypt. The savants on board his ship, "L'Orient," were discussing one of those questions which Bonaparte often propounded, in order that, as arbiter in this contest of wits, he might gauge their mental powers. Mental dexterity, rather than the Socratic pursuit after truth, was the aim of their dialectic; but on one occasion, when religion was being discussed, Bonaparte sounded a deeper note: looking up into the midnight vault of sky, he said to the philosophizing atheists: ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... us, plaint or jest, Or passion and wild revelry, Or, like a gentle wine-jar, rest; Howe'er men call your Massic juice, Its broaching claims a festal day; Come then; Corvinus bids produce A mellower wine, and I obey. Though steep'd in all Socratic lore He will not slight you; do not fear. They say old Cato o'er and o'er With wine his honest heart would cheer. Tough wits to your mild torture yield Their treasures; you unlock the soul Of wisdom and its stores conceal'd, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... This Socratic reply made me see how misplaced my remark had been, and I felt some confusion. Finding a book to my hand I opened it to restore ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... its problem, and is as original as that is. Whoever accepts Bacon's doctrine of cause must accept at the same time his theory of the way in which the cause may be sifted out from among the phenomena. It is evident that the Socratic search for the essence by an analysis of instances—an induction ending in a definition—has a strong resemblance to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... important pre-Socratic philosophers of the Italic school was Empedocles, who was born about 494 B.C. and lived to the age of sixty. These dates make Empedocles strictly contemporary with Anaxagoras, a fact which we shall do well to bear in mind when ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... semi-geographical work called Near Home; or, Europe Described, published by Hatchards in the fifties (though my friend, Mr. Arthur Humphreys, denies all knowledge of it), I can recall many stereos of dialectic cast in a Socratic mould:— ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... occupation. When Xenophon, by numbers braved, Retreated, and a people saved, That laurel was not all his own; The plant by Socrates was sown; To Aristotle's greater name The Macedonian[10] owed his fame. 100 The Athenian bird, with pride replete, Their talents equalled in conceit; And, copying the Socratic rule, Set up for master of a school. Dogmatic jargon learnt by heart, Trite sentences, hard terms of art, To vulgar ears seemed so profound, They fancied learning in the sound. The school had fame: the crowded place With ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... dozen Aristophaneses. There was something, too, in its order, by which it resembled the gigantesque features of the old Greek master. I will illustrate my meaning by a single instance from each. In Aristophanes's "Clouds," Strepsiades is being initiated into the Socratic Phrontisterium, and in the course of the ceremony Socrates directs his pupil's attention to the moon for certain mysterious purposes. But the moon only reminds Strepsy of numerous imperturbable duns that storm about his ears with lunar exactness, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... formal lines, and there be a desire to arrive at a very clear understanding, he who states the proposition and wants to prove it may proceed against his opponent by question, in order to show the truth of the statement from his admissions. The erotematic, or Socratic, method was especially in use among the ancients; and this and some of the tricks following later on are ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... in the soul we need, The old Socratic justice in the heart, The golden rule become the people's creed When years of training have performed their part For thus alone in home and church and mart Can evil perish ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... eternitatis, the reception of a kind of absolute and independent knowledge [28] (independent, that is, of time and position, the accidents and peculiar point of view of the receiver) Plato is consciously under the influence of another great master of the Pre- Socratic thought, Parmenides, the centre of ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... The Socratic character of Darwin's mind appears in his wariness in drawing the last consequences of his doctrine, in contrast both with the audacious theories of so many of his followers and with the consequences which his antagonists were busy in drawing. Though he, as we have seen, saw from ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... is not an introspection, or a psychology, which writes journals or autobiography. It is an introspection which talks; a psychology which chatters, of all things small and great; asking its Socratic way through all the questions of the moment, the most trivial, and ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not popular in Boston in his last days there. New influences had come into his life. He had loved argument and disputation, and there is a subtile manner of discussion called the "Socratic method," which he had found in Xenophon, in which one confuses an opponent by asking questions and never making direct assertions himself, but using the subjunctive mood. It is an art of entanglement. The boy had ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth |
