GREEK PHILOSOPHY – II. RATIONALISM
§ 9 – The Followers of Socrates
It would be too much to expect that more than a very few of those who came under the influence of Socrates could understand experientially his personality or interpret the thought that lay underneath it; and, in fact, the immediate disciples and successors of Socrates may be divided into three classes: first, those who (like Xenophon) reproduced with little or no modification the Socratic doctrines but only incompletely the Socratic spirit and method; second, those who, according to their several personal temperaments and predilections, attributed special importance to some one feature of Socrates’s teaching or personality; and third, those, or, rather, that one who, combining the principles and doctrines of Socrates with principles and doctrines of other thinkers, and interpreting freely the personality of Socrates, was the first to give to philosophy, on a Socratic basis, something like completeness of content and form—namely Plato. Of the second class were the so-called Lesser Socratics, whom we have next to consider.