Xenophon's minor works - 1857 Author:Xenophon Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE (ECONOMICUS. INTBODTJCTOKY EEMAEKS. Of the philosophy of Socrates, as transmitted to us by Xenophon, it is not the object to investigate the causes, or... more » ascertain the origins, of divine and human things, but, by teaching what is good and honourable, to fit men, individually, for attaining happiness in life, and to instruct communities how to secure prosperity. There are, accordingly, two principal parts of the Socratic philosophy: the ethic, which shows what course of conduct every person must pursue in order to gain a character for virtue and honour; and the political, which teaches by what means individuals may advance a community to the highest state of excellence. But as the master of a family and his household constitute, as it were, a smaller community in the midst of a greater, and as the prosperity of the whole state depends on the proper management of each particular family, a third part, the iEconomic, is added. The first author that wrote of ethics, politics, and economies, in distinct and separate treatises, was Aristotle. As for Plato, who says that we cannot conceive of virtue or merit in a man or master of a family, unless as subject to the laws of his community, he has included all those three parts of moral philosophy in one book, which he has entitled his " Republic." But it was Xenophon that laid the foundation of this triple division ; for in his " Memorabilia " he makes it his object to show the whole scope of the moral teaching of Socrates (though in that workthere is much that relates rather to political or oeconomical science); in the " Cyropadia" he illustrates a part of political science; and in the present treatise he discusses (economy or domestic management. The dialogue in this book, unlike those in the " Memorabilia," is written in a c...« less