Accustomed as we are to a life of constant and ceaseless activity with great emphasis on material success, such an existence as that of Skovoroda may seem to us the acme of uselessness and we may often regret that in him Ukraine lost a son who could have accomplished much for her regeneration. Perhaps the reverse was the truth. Skovoroda taught much and wrote a considerable amount, but his writings were intended for his close friends, especially a young student Kovalinsky, and were not published during his lifetime. He accomplished his work by oral instruction and still more by the powerful force of his example, for his life spoke more clearly than his words and proclaimed his utter indifference to the gradations of rank and honors that had been the means of bringing Ukraine to its fall. Here was the outstanding thinker of his day who dared to proclaim and act upon the principle that the great of the world were no more important than the small and who could not be hired or induced to do what he regarded as wrong and inexpedient. It might be possible to compare Skovoroda with Socrates, for the Greek philosopher also accomplished much in ancient Athens by his constant and provoking habit of asking questions about all matters of moral and ethical importance. Nevertheless Socrates was married and played his part in the Athenian democracy. Skovoroda did not marry and avoided all public functions. He was not a voice crying in the wilderness and uttering a prophetic message. He was merely a quiet and educated Kozak moving among men, living his own life with a quiet dignity that showed both his self-respect and his consideration for other people. He could smile as easily and as bitingly at the aristocratic pretensions of the nobles as he could be indulgent to the whims and superstitions of the people. Yet wherever he went and whatever he did, he impressed upon all around him his own attitude toward life and allowed them to understand of themselves what he meant. His great object in life was to know himself, to understand human nature and human capabilities, and that nature was as inherent in the serf as in the nobleman. As he once expressed it, “The wisdom of the lords that the simple man is ‘black,’ seems to me as amusing as the wisdom of the so-called philosopher that the earth is dead. How can a dead earth produce living children? And how from a ‘black’ people can there be born ‘white’ lords?” A well-trained classicist, Skovoroda echoed the quotation of Terence, the Latin comedian, “Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,” (I am a human being; I regard nothing human as alien to me.) All of life was his field and he studied in every situation how to obtain self-knowledge and self-happiness. His answer was very simple. “The necessary things for happiness are not difficult to secure. The difficult things are unnecessary.”