=The Method of Socrates.=--This mediating effort was begun by Socrates (469-399 B. C.). While he started with the formula of Protagoras, he maintained that the ‘man’ indicated thereby was not the individual, but mankind as a whole. It is not the peculiar view of any individual that represents the truth, but the knowledge that is the same for everyone. The former, which the sophists considered ‘knowledge,’ Socrates held to be only ‘opinion,’ and declared that the reason men think so differently is because each sees but one side of the truth. He believed that everyone could get at universal knowledge by stripping off individual differences and laying bare the essentials upon which all men are agreed. He conceived it to be the mission of the philosopher or teacher to enable the individual to do this, and he endeavored to deal with the mind of all those with whom he came in contact, so that they would form valid conclusions. By his method, known as the _dialectic_, or ‘conversational,’ he first encouraged the individual to make a definite statement of his belief, and then, through a set of clever questions, caused the person to develop his thought, until he became so involved in manifest contradictions that he was forced to admit that his view had been imperfectly formed. He thus caused the individual to see that the view he had first expressed was mere ‘opinion’ and but a single phase of the universal truth. As Socrates further held that morality consists in right knowledge and made no distinction between the knowledge of an action and the impulse to perform it, he strove through his methods of developing knowledge to harmonize the individual welfare with that of the social group. [Sidenote: In the _Republic_ government was to be by the intellectual class.] [Sidenote: Early education.] [Sidenote: Cadet training.]