In the course of the fifth century B.C. Sophists appear, and begin to concern themselves critically with the accepted standards of value current for social life and individual activities._(_3_)_ The result is annihilating. The more moderate of these “Enlighteners” proclaim the overwhelming majority of these standards which pass for moral to be merely claims made by society on its members, leaving open thereby the possibility that a small remainder may be able to prove themselves to rational consideration as moral in [pg 033] themselves. But the younger radical sophists maintain the position that all morality, like all current law, has been invented by organized society in its own interest. Hence the thinking man who is freeing himself from this tutelage will make his own moral standards, and will follow in them nothing but his own pleasure and interests. Thus Western philosophical thought about the problem of ethics and civilisation starts with a shrill dissonance. What was Socrates (470-399 B.C.) able to contribute, when he came forward to oppose this tendency? In the place of the simply pleasurable he put the rationally pleasurable. By rational consideration, he asserts, it is possible to establish a standard of action in which the happiness of the individual, rightly understood, is in harmony with the interests of society. Virtue consists in right knowledge. That the rationally moral is that which procures for the agent true pleasure, or, what means the same thing, true profit, Socrates draws out into the most diverse applications in the simple everyday discussions which Xenophon has transmitted to us in his _Memorabilia_._(_4_)_ The dialogues of Plato show him going beyond this primitive utilitarianism, and seeking a conception of the good which has been made something inward and aims at the well-being of the soul; which stands, too, in relationship with the beautiful._(_5_)_ How much of these more advanced views are the Master’s own, and how much of his own thoughts his pupil has in this way put into his mouth, cannot now be decided. That Socrates spoke of an inner, mysterious voice, the “daimonion”, as being the highest moral authority in man is indeed certain, for it is mentioned in his indictment. His [pg 034] utilitarian rationalism is therefore completed by a kind of mysticism. An empirical ethic, that is, one established out of past experience and with a view to future experience, and an intuitive ethic live in him side by side and undistinguished from one another, to be separated later and developed in contrast to one another in his pupils, the Cynics and Cyrenaics on the one hand, and Plato on the other.