Socrates, as we learn from the Memorabilia of Xenophon, first drew
attention to the consequences of actions. Mankind were said by him to act
rightly when they knew what they were doing, or, in the language of the
Gorgias, 'did what they would.' He seems to have been the first who
maintained that the good was the useful (Mem.). In his eagerness for
generalization, seeking, as Aristotle says, for the universal in Ethics
(Metaph.), he took the most obvious intellectual aspect of human action
which occurred to him. He meant to emphasize, not pleasure, but the
calculation of pleasure; neither is he arguing that pleasure is the chief
good, but that we should have a principle of choice. He did not intend to
oppose 'the useful' to some higher conception, such as the Platonic ideal,
but to chance and caprice. The Platonic Socrates pursues the same vein of
thought in the Protagoras, where he argues against the so-called sophist
that pleasure and pain are the final standards and motives of good and
evil, and that the salvation of human life depends upon a right estimate of
pleasures greater or less when seen near and at a distance. The testimony
of Xenophon is thus confirmed by that of Plato, and we are therefore
justified in calling Socrates the first utilitarian; as indeed there is no
side or aspect of philosophy which may not with reason be ascribed to him--
he is Cynic and Cyrenaic, Platonist and Aristotelian in one. But in the
Phaedo the Socratic has already passed into a more ideal point of view; and
he, or rather Plato speaking in his person, expressly repudiates the notion
that the exchange of a less pleasure for a greater can be an exchange of
virtue. Such virtue is the virtue of ordinary men who live in the world of
appearance; they are temperate only that they may enjoy the pleasures of
intemperance, and courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the philosopher
is seeking after wisdom and not after pleasure, whether near or distant:
he is the mystic, the initiated, who has learnt to despise the body and is
yearning all his life long for a truth which will hereafter be revealed to
him. In the Republic the pleasures of knowledge are affirmed to be