In my youth he says I had a wonderful desire for the wisdom which people call natural science--peri physeôs historian.+ It seemed to me a proud thing to know the causes of every matter: how it comes to be; ceases to be; why it is. I lost my sight in this enquiry to the degree of un-learning what I had hitherto seemed to myself and others to know clearly enough. But having heard one reading from a book written, as he said, by Anaxagoras, which said that it is Reason that arranges and is the cause of all things, I was delighted with this cause; and thought to myself, if this be so, then it does with each what may be best for it. Thus considering, it was with joy I fancied I had found me a teacher about the cause--Anaxagoras: that he would show me for instance, first, whether the earth was round or flat; and then that it was best for it to be so: and if he made these points clear I was prepared to ask for no other sort of causes. Phaedo, 96. Well! Socrates proceeds to the great natural philosopher, and is immensely discouraged to find him after all making very little use of Reason in his explanation why natural things are thus and not otherwise; explaining everything, rather, by secondary and mechanical causes. "It was as if," he concludes, "some one had undertaken to prove that Socrates does everything through Reason; and had gone on to show that it was because my body is constructed in a certain way, of certain bones and muscles, that Socrates is now sitting here in the prison, voluntarily awaiting death."