TO THE LACHES. 7
strong was the conviction among his friends, that he was a person of extraordinary insight respecting truth , that one of them , Chærophon, proposed to the Oracle at Delphi the question whether Socrates was not the wisest of men; and the oracle answered that he was. When this was told him, he said in explanation, that he supposed the oracle declared him wise because he knew nothing, and knew that he knew nothing; while other people knew as little as he, and thought that they knew a great deal. Every one is familiar with allusions to this story: such for instance as that in Lord Byron's verses :
“ Well didst thou speak, Athena's wisest son ;
All that we know is, Nothing can be known .”
I must however remark, that the poet's representation of this skepticism (a representation congenial to his own mind) is exaggerated and therefore erroneous. "Athena's wisest son" did not say that nothing could be known; but that he, Socrates, at that time, in his then present state of mind, knew nothing. He did not say even that those about him knew nothing; though certainly he implied it in his remark on the oracle; and the general tendency of his conversation was to prove that it was so — that those with whom talked knew as little as he did. But he did not say that he might not come to know something; far less did he assert or teach that nothing can be known:- that neither he nor any one else could, at any time, by any discipline, exertions, or advantages, come to know any thing — come into the
possession of any knowledge which could truly be called knowledge.
This he did not say or mean. On the contrary , he was so far from meaning or believing
