ms nothing. After producing many
arguments, and examining a question on all sides, he leaves it
undetermined. At the close of the dialogue he is as far from a
declaration of opinions as at the commencement. His grand effort, like
that of Bacon's, is to furnish men a correct method of inquiry, rather
than to apply that method and give them results.

[Footnote 479: "Laches," "Charmides," "Lysis," "The Rivals," "First and
Second Alcibiades," "Theages," "Clitophon." See Whewell's translation,
vol. i.]

We must not, however, from thence conclude that Socrates did not himself
attain any definite conclusions, or reach any specific and valuable
results. When, in reply to his friends who reported the answer of the
oracle of Delphi, that "Socrates was the wisest of men," he said, "he
supposed the oracle declared him wise _because he knew nothing_," he did
not mean that true knowledge was unattainable, for his whole life had
been spent in efforts to attain it. He simply indicates the disposition
of mind which is most befitting and most helpful to the seeker after
truth. He must be conscious of his own ignorance. He must not exalt
himself. He must not put his own conceits in the way of the thing he
would know. He must have an open eye, a single purpose, an honest mind,
to prepare him to receive light when it comes. And that there is light,
that there is a source whence light comes, he avowed in every word and
act.

Socrates unquestionably believed in one Supreme God, the immaterial,
infinite Governor of all. He cherished that instinctive, spontaneous
faith in God and his Providence which is the universal faith of the
human heart. He saw this faith revealed in the religious sentiments of
all nations, and in the tendency to worship so universally
characteristic of humanity.[480] He appealed to the consciousness of
absolute dependence--the persuasion, wrought by God in the minds of all
men, that "He is able to make men happy or miserable," and the
consequent sense of obligation which teaches man he ought to obey God.
And he regarded with some degree of affectionate tenderness the common
sentiment of his countrymen, that the Divine Government was conducted
through the ministry of subordinate deities or generated gods. But he
sought earnestly to prevent the presence of these subordinate agents
from intercepting the clear view of the Supreme God.

The faith of Socrates was not, however, grounded on mere feeling and
sentiment. He end