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GENERAL INTRODUCTION

thought; since, fortunately for us, the pupil Referring to Plato. not only became a teacher in his turn, but brought his artistic genius into play, and composed the memorials of philosophic talk which we know as the Dialogues. Xenophon, Antisthenes, and Aeschines were other disciples of Socrates who drew similar sketches of his teaching: the suggestion came from the "mimes" Short, dramatic scenes depicting everyday life and conversation. of the Syracusan Sophron—realistic studies of conversation between ordinary types of character. As Plato became more engrossed in the Socratic speculations, this artistic impulse was strengthened by the desire of recording each definite stage of thought as a basis for new discussion and advance.

✓ When Plato was twenty years old, Socrates was over sixty, and had long been notorious in Athens for his peculiar kind of sophistry—in this context, Socrates's unique method of questioning that often made experts look foolish. In the Phaedo A dialogue by Plato that recounts the final hours of Socrates and his arguments for the immortality of the soul. he tells how he tried, in his youth, the current scientific explanations of the universe, and found them full of puzzles. He then met with the theory of Anaxagoras A pre-Socratic philosopher who was the first to bring philosophy to Athens.—that the cause of everything is "mind" original: "nous" — the Greek term for intellect or ordering intelligence.. This was more promising: but it led nowhere after all, since it failed to rise above the conception of physical energy; this "mind" showed no intelligent aim. Disappointed of an assurance that the universe works for the best, Socrates betook himself to the plan of making definitions of "beautiful," "good," "large" and so on, as qualities observed in the several classes of beautiful, good and large material things, and then employing these propositions, if they appeared to be sound, for the erection of higher...