ABSTRACT
Universal History" said Thomas Carlyle, "the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here." And Goethe has written that what is called the spirit of the age is the spirit of the man in whom the age is mirrored. Socrates was one of those historic personalities who reflect and summarise an epoch. It was a transition period in the history of Greek civilisation and therefore of world-civilisation, and Socrates looms out of it the figure of one who in the midst of the flux of nationalism in thought, sentiment, and outlook stood steady. Socrates, however, not only made disciples and lovers among his contemporaries, but he has made pupils and lovers ever since. It is the combination of a masculine Greek sainthood, in which the merely low and selfish were completely submerged, with extraordinary intellectual power.
