=Socrates and the Lesser Socratics.= The death of Socrates proved to be his transfiguration. His influence, widespread and profound, came more from his personality than from his formulated theory. He was a revelator without a revelation. An absolutely true end of life, the Good, he firmly believed to exist; but it was an ideal to be won by each and all. After him, therefore, there was opportunity for various interpretations of his doctrine, and several schools were founded by his disciples. His truest and most discriminating pupil was Plato, who is in a class by himself as developing the philosophy of Socrates to a systematic perfectness. The philosophy of Plato stands with that of Democritus and Aristotle as one of the three systematic philosophies that Greek civilization produced. Besides Plato there were the Lesser Socratics: Euclid (not the mathematician), Phædo, Aristippus, and Antisthenes. Each of these was respectively the founder of a school. These four Lesser-Socratic schools were that at Megara founded by Euclid, the Elean-Eretrian founded by Phædo, the Cynic founded by Antisthenes, and the Cyrenaic founded by Aristippus. The influence of the Megarian and Elean-Eretrian schools was unimportant. It may suffice to dismiss them by saying that Phædo was the favorite pupil of Socrates, and that Plato was a member of the Megarian school for a short time after the death of Socrates. The two other Lesser-Socratic schools had an important influence upon contemporary and later civilization and will be mentioned here. These are the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools. In these two schools two great types of ethical theory that have since existed were formulated. All four of the Lesser Socratics pretended to be the true development of the teaching of Socrates; and these two, as well as the other two, differ in the accentuation that they place on some phase of the master’s doctrine. Socrates’ own definition of ideal excellence being incomplete, the Cynics and Cyrenaics tried to define it, to give it content and to show a practical way of reaching it. They attempted (1) to answer affirmatively that there is a universal validity; (2) to show in what it consists; (3) to show how man must prepare himself in order to reach it. Both schools are individualistic and eudæmonistic. They maintained that to affirm that the Good is good for its own sake is to leave the Good contentless; and to affirm that the Good is insight into the Good is to go in a circle. The one unambiguous answer to the question of Socrates, What is ideal excellence or the Good? is this: Goodness is happiness. This gives a content to the otherwise contentless ideal of Socrates. The difference between the two schools consists in the ethical way in which this happiness may be obtained.