=The Ideal of Socrates.= The goal of the quest of Socrates is an ideal, and in the nature of things had the vagueness of any ideal. The content of an ideal has to remain undefined until it has been gained by experience, and then of course it is no longer an ideal. Any ideal, however, can be stated formally, and the formal and deductive side of knowledge has had an important place both in practical conduct and in the history of science. Socrates could state his ideal formally and to some extent he could give it content; but it always remained for him an object to be sought. He believed that the ideal lay in conceptions and could be found if he got the truth of any one conception. So he undertook to define such conceptions as friendship, courage, prudence, etc., but his search was never satisfied. Nevertheless, the search itself was scarcely less important to him than its accomplishment. The ideal of Socrates was _Knowledge_ or _Wisdom_, and his formal statement of the ideal was _Knowledge is Virtue_. The primal end to be striven for is wisdom, that is, in conceptions and by conceptions. But where are these conceptions to be found but in one’s own mind? Therefore the region of the quest of Socrates was his own mind, and his motto was, “Know thyself.” And what is this Virtue of which knowledge or wisdom is the equivalent? It does not mean virtue in the narrow modern meaning of the term, nor yet in the narrow original meaning, of warlike prowess or valor. The Greek word which Socrates used was ἀρετή, and is best translated excellence or ability. In the history of the word it had a variety of meanings, like the Latin word _virtus_, whose equivalent it is. It is derived from the same root as the word Ἄρης, Ares (or Mars), the name of the god of war. While therefore originally it meant military valor, it came to mean any kind of excellence. In modern times there appeared a book called _The Greatest Thing in the World_, which had as its aim to show that Christian love is the “greatest thing in the world.” To Socrates not “Love” but “Wisdom” is the “greatest thing in the world,” and Greek civilization is thus contrasted with that of Christianity.