or only a different aspect of the same thing, {50} there is nothing more certain than that Socrates was a utilitarian. The word _useful_ (χρήσιμον or ὠφέλιμον) is constantly occurring in his conversations; utility in fact was the starting-point of his whole movement, and gives the key-note to all his discussions; for his grand objection, as we saw above, to the physical speculations of his predecessors, was that they were useless, as opposed to which the doctrine which he preached was recommended on the ground of its practical utility. Of this utilitarian principle he was indeed so fond, that, like his doctrine of virtue being founded on knowledge, he was inclined to push it too far, and certainly did run it, in some cases, to absolute falsity. This appears most strikingly in two dialogues in the Memoirs, where, in opposition to the idol-worship of mere beauty, so dear to the Greeks, he flatly lays down the counter proposition that nothing can be beautiful except in so far as it serves the purpose for which it was intended; in other words, that beauty consists in that suitability or fitness of an article to effect its purpose which makes it a useful article. But every one sees that there is a jump in the logic here, which, if Socrates had been as anxious to establish a scientific theory of beauty as he was to present rational morals, he certainly could not have made. For though every article, as the imperative condition of its existence, ought to answer the purpose for which it was made, and the article which answers this purpose best is the best article; and though beauty of structure is a something superadded, and which will always offend if it is plainly at war with the design, fitness, and utility of the structure--for which reason, as architects say, the ornamentation {51} ought always to grow out of the construction,--it is quite a different thing to say that beauty and fitness or utility are identical. The railway companies in our day have thrown across not a few beautiful rivers and picturesque gorges the ugliest iron bridges that can be conceived; but no doubt they are as useful, and perhaps may be more permanent, than stone structures of a more elegant and graceful design. We shall therefore say that Socrates, in his remarks on the τὸ καλόν, pushed his utilitarian principles and the extreme practicality of his nature into the domain of the absurd and the false. But within his proper province of morals, one cannot see that he was led by his doctrine of utility into any speculative or practical mistake. For the word _useful_ in itself is a word which really has no meaning; it is always only a stepping-stone to something beyond itself, and receives significance only when from some independent source the end is exhibited which the useful object subserves. When, therefore, Socrates talks about morality being identical with utility, he is not asserting a philosophical principle like the modern writers who use that term; he