3. Socrates makes moral insight the same as virtuous activity, and he says that its inevitable accompaniment is happiness. Does he also make moral insight the same as utility? According to Xenophon, Socrates regards moral excellence as that which is most useful. Indeed, in some of the Platonic dialogues Socrates seems to define insight as the art of measuring or prudence, and it is pointed out that Socrates developed no virtue so fully as self-control. In the exigencies of the argument Socrates also often resorted to the useful to define the good. The question, What is the good? often resolves itself into the other question, What is the thing good for? Indeed, the form of the argument often assumes the vicious circle: Why is the act just? Because it is useful? Why is it useful? Because it is just. For the purposes of disputation, in which Socrates was always shrewd and not always scrupulous, he so frequently refers the good to what is suitable to men’s happiness and profit that his philosophy does not seem to rise above the relativism of the Sophists. But it is certain that Socrates strove to transcend this relativism, although not with full success and although his formulated teaching does not always go beyond it. However, that he believed in an absolute rather than a relative good appears in many ways: in his doctrine that it is better to suffer wrong than to do it; in his strict conformity to law rather than to save himself from death by breaking the law; in his constant interpretation of life as right-doing, ethical improvement, and participation in the good. The utility that is always in the background of his thought is _the usefulness for the soul_. We may conclude, therefore, that it was only superficially for the purposes of argumentation that Socrates made the useful an equivalent of moral insight. The purpose of Socrates was, after all, not to teach men to think correctly nor to become cultured but to become happy and useful Athenians. Moral excellence is the Socratic goal; and knowledge, happiness, and usefulness are only aspects of that goal. Knowledge is the essential means, happiness the essential result, and usefulness the essential sign of moral excellence. It follows as a corollary from Socrates’ philosophical ideal that he should also teach: (1) that virtue is teachable, and (2) that the virtues are one. Virtue is obviously teachable if it is knowledge. It follows also, although not so obviously, that all the virtues are fundamentally the same, and that a man cannot be virtuous in one thing without being virtuous in all. The really temperate man is also courageous, wise, and just.