=50.= It is with difficulty, and not without the risk of error, that we trace even in outline the positive teaching of Socrates. The severe self-repression with which he controlled his senses was exercised by him no less over his intelligence. In his expositions it took the shape of irony (εἰρωνεία), that is, the continual withholding of his personal convictions, and obstetrics (μαιευτική), the readiness to assist others in bringing their speculations to the birth. Thus he was a great educator rather than a great teacher. For whilst he held that virtue alone was worthy of investigation, and that virtue was essentially wisdom, he professed to be entirely at a loss where to find this wisdom for himself; he left it to his pupils to go out and discover the precious cup. Thus whilst men of all classes and with every variety of mental bias listened to his teaching, not one was content with his negative attitude. Of the various suggestions which Socrates threw out, without committing himself to any one, his pupils took up each in turn and endeavoured to construct out of it a system[79]. These systems were in the sharpest possible contrast one with another, but they have certain points in common. All the teachers retained a strong personal affection and loyalty towards their common master; each was convinced that he alone possessed the secret of his real convictions. All of them held aloof from the physical speculations of which the ripe fruit was already being gathered in by the Atomists. The portal of knowledge was to all of them the right use of the reasoning power; the shrine itself was the discipline of virtue, the attainment of happiness, the perfect ordering of social life. Such were the Socratic schools, in which philosophy was now somewhat sharply divided into the two branches of dialectics and ethics. Another century had yet to elapse before the rejected discipline of physics again established its importance. [Sidenote: The Cynics.] =51.= Of the Socratic schools three contributed directly to the Stoic system. Of these the Cynic school, founded by ANTISTHENES of Athens (circ. 440-365 B.C.) and developed by DIOGENES of Sinope, is its immediate precursor. The Cynic masters inherited most completely the moral earnestness[80] and the direct pietistic teaching of Socrates; and for this reason Antisthenes appears to have been the master’s favourite pupil. The lives both of these men and of their successors were marked by simplicity and self-abnegation, and they devoted themselves with true missionary zeal to the reformation of moral outcasts. The caricature of the figure of Diogenes which was promulgated by his opponents and still lives in literary tradition needs constantly to be corrected by the picture which Epictetus gives of him, and which (though not without an element of idealization and hero-worship) shews us the man as he appeared to his own disciples.