This is frank intellectualism, of course; and the best-refuted doctrine in philosophy. It is amusing to observe the ease with which critics and historians despatch the Socratic ethic. It is “an extravagant paradox,” says Sidgwick,[8] “incompatible with moral freedom.” “Nothing is easier,” says Gomperz,[9] “than to detect the one-sidedness of this point of view.” “This doctrine,” says Grote,[10] “omits to notice, what is not less essential, the proper conditions of the emotions, desires, etc.” “It tended to make all conduct a matter of the intellect and not of the character, and so in a sense to destroy moral responsibility,” says Hobhouse.[11] “Himself blessed with a will so powerful that it moved almost without friction,” says Henry Jackson,[12] “Socrates fell into the error of ignoring its operations, and was thus led to regard knowledge as the sole condition of well-doing.” “Socrates was a misunderstanding,” says Nietzsche;[13] “reason at any price, life made clear, cold, cautious, conscious, without instincts, opposed to the instincts, was in itself only a disease, ... and by no means a return to ‘virtue,’ to ‘health,’ and to happiness.” And the worn-out dictum about seeing the better and approving it, yet following the worse, is quoted as the deliverance of a profound psychologist, whose verdict should be accepted as a final solution of the problem. Before refuting a doctrine it is useful to try to understand it. What could Socrates have meant by saying that all real virtue is intelligence? What is virtue?