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To trace the history of the human mind in its efforts to arrive at wisdom, is a difficult, but a profitable task. In the most ancient Church wisdom was the birth-right of man. As he grew in stature he grew in wisdom and in favour with God and man. Wisdom sprang up as a well-spring within him; it was the light which shone forth from the elevated celestial love which animated him from the Lord. All the forms of his mind were tender, soft, pliant, yielding, and receptive of the influx of love and wisdom from the Lord. Man, then, had no need of external instruction in the same manner in which he now requires it: he was instructed from within and not from without. All that was necessary from without was supplied by the watchful care of the parent, whose eye was constantly directed to keep the natural principle in subordination to the spiritual and celestial. The mind was developed from within, and it grew up like a plant, to all the orderly conditions of its being. The fields of nature were the books which afforded all the materials for the lessons of wisdom. The faculty of perceiving the True, which is inherent in celestial love, at once imbibed those lessons of wisdom. Thus, so long as man was in the order of his being, all wisdom, both natural and spiritual, was involved in that order and inscribed upon his being. The great condition of all human perfection is the love of God above all things, and the love of our neighbour as ourselves. "Upon these two commands hang all the law and the prophets;" that is, all wisdom, both spiritual and natural, is inscribed upon these two great conditions of human existence, in its states of regeneration and perfection. There are few, comparatively very few, who can become wise in the estimation of the world; that is, wise in earthly science and philosophy, whether it be physical, or moral, or even political; only a few attain to that eminence. But all can become

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wise towards God; that is, all can become truly wise as to everything spiritual and eternal, by looking to the Lord, and shunning all evil as sinful in his sight. Thus, the rustic, who daily follows the plough and feeds the cattle, if he live in these precepts, is, as to his internal man, in heavenly wisdom, (which is the end in which all human science is intended to terminate,) although his external man may not be under the culture of human science and philosophy: whereas, such as have been celebrated for earthly science and philosophy, if, at the same time, they have not been principled in the holy fear and love of God, will eventually be reduced to the utmost stupidity, ignorance, and misery.

There is deeply implanted in the human soul a desire for knowledge. This desire is to the mind what appetite is to the body. In childhood and youth it manifests itself by numberless inquiries after the nature and use of all objects presented to the senses. In adult age it desires to acquire a knowledge of the causes of things, and to behold the relations which exist between them. The efforts which the mind has made to arrive at certain results in knowledge and intelligence, were denoted by the term to philosophize, and the results arrived at were called philosophy, a term which was first adopted by the Pythagoreans, and which means the love of wisdom, rather than wisdom itself.

We have selected for our present article, the Philosophy of Socrates, because of all ancient philosophers he is probably the most celebrated; and because his philosophy, in conjunction with the intellectual philosophy of Plato, did much to prepare the way for the reception of Christianity among the Gentile nations. Socrates was the first who, as Cicero says, "called down philosophy from heaven, and applied it to the concerns of human life." Thus, his efforts were directed to the life, and he laboured to make men wise, good, and happy in all the relations of life, both civil, moral, and religious. Herein chiefly consists his celebrity, and the reason why his name is covered with so much honour in the cause of humanity.

Socrates flourished about 400 years prior to the Christian era. His exclusive object, as a philosopher, was the attainment of correct ideas concerning moral and religious subjects, and our obligations to live according to those ideas. His philosophical inquiries had relation to the end of man's being, and the perfection of his nature, and also to the great field of human duty. These subjects he did not discuss in the dialectic manner of philosophers in general; but he associated himself more closely with the people, especially with

the young, drew them out in conversation, asked questions by which he elicited their own thoughts, and in this manner he became a truly popular teacher. His method of instruction has since been called the Socratic, and as it approaches nearest to conversation, it tends more to open the mind for the reception of instruction than any other.

The chief happiness of man, said Socrates, consists in knowing the good which it is his duty to do, and in acting accordingly. This is the highest exercise of his faculties, and in this consists (EUπpažia) or right-action. The means to this end are self-knowledge, and the habit of self-control. Wisdom (σopia) may be said to embrace all the virtues. This shews us that the ancients had a proper idea of wisdom, as being the complex of all the virtues of life. Whereas at the present time wisdom is often employed in a very inferior sense, as denoting mere learning and skill, whether connected with good principles in the life or not. Self-knowledge (yvwbɩ σɛavтov), "Know thyself," was universally a maxim of ancient philosophy, without which it was considered impossible to advance in wisdom. Although this maxim was so often repeated, it does not appear that much selfknowledge was acquired, or that much knowledge concerning man as a spiritual and a natural being,-as a subject of two worlds,—as possessing three distinct, or discrete degrees of life, natural, spiritual, and celestial, by the two latter of which he is distinguished from the merely animal kingdom, and associated in immortality and glory with the angelic kingdom;-it does not appear that all this knowledge, and very much more that might be stated, was known to the ancients concerning man. The true knowledge of what man really is in himself, in his relation to the Author of his being, to heaven, to his neighbour, to the world, to himself, and lastly to hell, is, we verily believe, now fully developed, and for the first time in the history of human knowledge and improvement, rationally exhibited to the human mind, in the doctrines and writings of the New Church. The maxim, therefore, "Know thyself," may now be more fully carried out, both intellectually and practically, than at any former period.

The duties of man towards himself, said Socrates, embrace chiefly temperance and courage, or true manliness, (avopea). Our duties towards others are comprised in justice, which is the fulfilment of all laws both human and divine. Virtue and true happiness he considered to be inseparably united ;-that in order to be happy man must be good, and that no goodness or virtue can arise in the mind unless the laws of justice are loved and practised. To this end

temperance and fortitude (or true manliness, alluded to above) are essentially necessary. By the former all corporeal desires and appetites are kept subdued, and preserved in that order which is essential to the virtuous exercise of the rational and intellectual mind. So that justice, virtue, and wisdom cannot possibly co-exist with intemperance, or with the want of order in the lower, sensual, and corporeal provinces of our nature. But to establish this, fortitude is necessary, which implies a vigorous resistance to all those temptations and influences by which virtuous principles are assailed in the attempt to bring them out into act. The term in Greek employed to express fortitude, or courage, corresponds, both in etymology and in its original meaning, to the Latin term virtus, from which our English word virtue is derived. There is a peculiar force in these terms; they are both derived from words which signify man in his rational capacity, and they involve this idea, that a man is only a man in proportion as he has the manliness and valor to resist and overcome that which is unworthy of a man, that is, all kinds of evil and vice; and the result of the contest and the struggle is virtue, or that which truly becomes a vir, that is, a man as a rational being.

Religion (Evσeßela) is the homage, said Socrates, rendered to the Divinity by the practice of virtue, and consists in a continual endeavour to effect all the good which our faculties permit us to do. Here Socrates endeavoured to effect the greatest good for his fellowmen. For, religion and moral good were not considered as inseparably united. The former consisted in the performance of certain rites and ceremonies, and in the offering of certain sacrifices, and was in most cases separated from that internal purity, humility, and virtue, without which all external forms are dead and useless. Such, indeed, was the general state of religion, not only among the Gentile nations, but also among the Jews, when an infinitely greater than Socrates appeared upon earth. Socrates, however, penetrated through these merely external rites and representations, and taught that religion was connected with the heart, and that men became truly religious in proportion as they became conformable to the divine nature. It was for maintaining sentiments of this kind that Socrates was accused, although most falsely, of denying the gods, because he endeavoured to withdraw the mind from the external observance of mythological rites and ceremonies, as the primary object, and to fix it on the essential principles of religion,-the love and practice of virtue. In the Memorabilia, or Memoirs concerning Socrates, written by Xenophon, from which most of the information

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