" becomes henceforth the fundamental maxim of
philosophy.

[Footnote 474: The Daemon of Socrates has been the subject of much
discussion among learned men. The notion, once generally received, that
his _daimon_ was "a familiar genius," is now regarded as an exploded
error. "Nowhere does Socrates, in Plato or Xenophon, speak of _a_ genius
or demon, but always of a _doemoniac something (to daimonion_, or
_daimonin ti_), or of a _sign_, a _voice_, a _divine sign_, a _divine
voice_" (Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy," p. 166).
"Socrates always speaks of a _divine or supernatural somewhat_ ('divinum
quiddam,' as Cicero has it), the nature of which he does not attempt to
divine, and to which he never attributes personality" (Butler's
"Lectures on Ancient Philosophy," vol. i. p. 357). The scholar need not
to be informed that _to daimonion_, in classic literature, means the
divine Essence (Lat. _numen_), to which are attributed events beyond
man's power, yet not to be assigned to any special god.]

[Footnote 475: Maurice's "Ancient Philosophy," p. 124.]

Truth has a rational, _a priori_ foundation in the constitution of the
human mind. There are _ideas_ connatural to the human reason which are
the copies of those archetypal ideas which belong to the Eternal Reason.
The grand problem of philosophy, therefore, now is--_What are these
fundamental_ IDEAS _which are unchangeable and permanent, amid all the
diversifies of human opinion, connecting appearance with reality, and
constituting a ground of certain knowledge or absolute truth_? Socrates
may not have held the doctrine of ideas as exhibited by Plato, but he
certainly believed that there were germs of truth latent in the human
mind--principles which governed, unconsciously, the processes of
thought, and that these could be developed by reflection and by
questioning. These were embryonate in the womb of reason, coming to the
birth, but needing the "maieutic" or "obstetric" art, that they might be
brought forth.[476] He would, therefore, become the accoucheur of ideas,
and deliver minds of that secret truth which lay in their mental
constitution. And thus _Psychology_ becomes the basis of all legitimate
metaphysics.

[Footnote 476: Plato's "Theaetetus," Sec. 22.]

By the general consent of antiquity, as well as by the concurrent
judgment of all modern historians of philosophy, Socrates is regarded as
having effected a complete revolution in philosophic thought, a