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THE EGO AND HIS OWN

against the world. This is why they lay such stress on
dialectic skill, command of language, the art of dispu-
tation, etc. They announce that mind is to be used
against everything; but they are still far removed
from the holiness of the Spirit, for to them it is a

means,

a weapon, as trickery and defiance serve chil-

dren for the same purpose; their mind is the unbriba-
ble

understanding:

To-day we should call that a one-sided culture of

the understanding, and add the warning, " Cultivate
not only your understanding, but also, and especially,
your heart." Socrates did the same. For, if the
heart did not become free from its natural impulses,
but remained filled with the most fortuitous contents
and, as an uncriticised avidity, altogether in the
power of things, i. e. nothing but a vessel of the most
Various appetites,--then it was unavoidable that the
free understanding must serve the " bad heart" and
was ready to justify everything that the wicked heart
desired.

Therefore Socrates says that it is not enough for one

to use his understanding in all things, but it is a
question of what cause one exerts it for. We should
now say, one must serve the " good cause." But
serving the good cause is--being moral. Hence
Socrates is the founder of ethics.

Certainly the principle of the Sophistic doctrine

must lead to the possibility that the blindest and most
dependent slave of his desires might yet be an excel-
lent sophist, and, with keen understanding, trim and
expound everything in favor of his coarse heart.
What could there be for which a " good reason "

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 21

might not be found, or which might not be defended
through thick and thin ?

Therefore Socrates says: " You must be ' pure-

hearted ' if your shrewdness is to be valued." At this
point begins the second period of Greek liberation of
the mind, the period of purity of heart. For the first
was brought to a close by the Sophists in their pro-
claiming the omnipotence of the understanding. But
the heart remained worldly-minded, remained a servant
of the world, always affected by worldly wishes. This
coarse heart was to be cultivated from now on--the
era of culture of the heart. But how is the heart to
be cultivated ? What the understanding, this One side
of the mind, has reached,--to wit, the capability of
playing freely with and over every concern,--awaits
the heart also; everything worldly must come to grief
before it, so that at last family, commonwealth, father-
land, and the like, are given up for the sake of the
heart, i. e. of blessedness, the heart's blessedness.

Daily experience confirms the truth that the under-

standing may have renounced a thing many years
before the heart has ceased to beat for it. So the
Sophistic understanding too had so far become mas-
ter over the dominant, ancient powers that they now
needed only to be driven out of the heart, in which
they dwelt unmolested, to have at last no part at all
left in man.

This war is opened by Socrates, and not till the

dying day of the old world does it end in peace.

The examination of the heart takes its start with

Socrates, and all the contents of the heart are sifted.
In their last and extremest struggles the ancients