and close by it there stood a gallows. The condition on which people were allowed to cross the bridge was, that they should speak the truth in regard to whither they were going. If they lied, they were to be tied up to the gibbet. Now on one occasion a traveller came to the bridge, and on being asked whither he was going, he replied that he was going to be hanged on that gallows. This answer threw the toll-keepers into great perplexity. For supposing that they hanged the man, in that case he had spoken the truth, and it was their duty to have let him pass. But again, supposing that they let him pass, in that case he had told a lie, and it was their duty to have hanged him. In these perplexing circumstances they appealed to the wisdom of the governor Sancho, and he pronounced the judicious verdict, that in so doubtful and difficult a case it was better to lean to the side of mercy, and allow the traveller to go free, even at the expense of logical consistency.
17. To say a word in conclusion, and by way of summing up these three systems. I remarked at the outset that Socrates had left the conception of the good very vague and indeterminate. He had strong utilitarian, even eudaimonistic, tendencies. But it is equally true that he strove to promulgate a profounder morality than that of mere utility or eudaimonism. He wavered, however, between the two; at one time he appears as a mere utilitarian, who makes happiness all in all; at another time he incul-
