self-consciousness has declared itself, whereas the others exist before that idea has been called forth. And hence Hobbes, although, as I said, to some extent right, is also so far wrong, inasmuch as he scarcely seems to admit that sympathy is in any sense natural to the human heart, or a natural attribute of man. He is, however, right in his opinion that sympathy is not so original, so natural to man, or at least so immediately manifested, as those appetites and desires which show themselves in the earliest period of his existence, and spring up without the intermediation of thought, or of any idea being required for the manifestation.
31. But these latter remarks are somewhat digressive. I return to the subject with which we are more properly engaged. You should now perceive how directly the results which we have reached strike at the root of Sophistical argumentation. Socrates meets the Sophists on their own grounds, and foils them with their own weapons. Assenting to their leading principle, he may be supposed to address himself to them thus, "Whatever is natural, you say, is more authoritative than anything which is conventional; νόμος must always give way to φύσις. I grant it; but what is φύσις? What is man's nature? You say it is sensation; and if that be true, all your deductions follow in a sequence, the logic of which, I admit, is irresistible. But that is not true. It is not true that man is merely a sensational being; he is, moreover,
