another; but man in thinking is always free from their dominion. Self-preservation is the first of duties; but the preservation of our thinking, that is of our true, selves, can be effected only by laying a restraint on our sensations, appetites and desires, and by refusing to be their slaves. Thus alone is that self preserved which consciousness or conception reveals to us as our true self. It exists and maintains itself only through an antagonism perpetually waged against those otherwise enslaving and monopolising forces, our sensations, passions, and desires. Our nature is, as you say, the most authoritative of all things, and we are under the most stringent obligation to obey its commands. But we obey these commands not when we yield to the dictates of sensation, appetite, and desire, but when we antagonise these forces, and hold them at bay by means of that freedom of thought which is our birthright and our essence." So far we may suppose Socrates to speak.
32. I now remark, in my own name, that the ethics of nature, as expounded by Socrates, are shown to be in harmony, for the most part at least, with the ethics of society. Φύσις and νόμος are reconciled. Society merely enforces what nature has already prescribed. Thus the contradiction between the natural man and the conventional man, on which the Sophists were wont to lay so much stress, is overcome and appeased. The social man is merely the development of what man is in himself. The citizen is
