the condemnation and death of
his master, the man underwent a curious change of heart. He is taunted
more than once with the lateness of his discovery of truth,[87:2] and
with his childish subservience to the old _jeux d'esprit_ of the
Sceptics which professed to prove the impossibility of knowledge.[87:3]
It seems that he had lost faith in speculation and dialectic and the
elaborate superstructures which Plato and others had built upon them;
and he felt, like many moralists after him, a sort of hostility to all
knowledge that was not immediately convertible into conduct.

But this scepticism was only part of a general disbelief in the world.
Greek philosophy had from the first been concerned with a fundamental
question which we moderns seldom put clearly to ourselves. It asked
'What is the Good?' meaning thereby 'What is the element of value in
life?' or 'What should be our chief aim in living?' A medieval Christian
would have answered without hesitation 'To go to Heaven and not be
damned', and would have been prepared with the necessary prescriptions
for attaining that end. But the modern world is not intensely enough
convinced of the reality of Sin and Judgement, Hell and Heaven, to
accept this answer as an authoritative guide in life, and has not
clearly thought out any other. The ancient Greek spent a great part of
his philosophical activity in trying, without propounding supernatural
rewards and punishments, or at least without laying stress on them, to
think out what the Good of man really was.

The answers given by mankind to this question seem to fall under two
main heads. Before a battle if both parties were asked what aim they
were pursuing, both would say without hesitation 'Victory'. After the
battle, the conqueror would probably say that his purpose was in some
way to consolidate or extend his victory; but the beaten party, as soon
as he had time to think, would perhaps explain that, after all, victory
was not everything. It was better to have fought for the right, to have
done your best and to have failed, than to revel in the prosperity of
the unjust. And, since it is difficult to maintain, in the midst of the
triumph of the enemy and your own obvious misery and humiliation, that
all is well and you yourself thoroughly contented, this second answer
easily develops a third: 'Wait a little, till God's judgement asserts
itself; and see who has the best of it then!' There will be a rich
reward hereafter for