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By contrast with this practical pessimism, Socrates is the prototype of the theoretical optimist who, with his faith that the nature of things can be fathomed, ascribes to knowledge and insight the power of a panacea, while understanding error as the evil par excellence.
针对这种实践的悲观主义而言，苏格拉底是理论上的乐观主义者的原型；他自谓相信万物的本质皆可以洞悉，认为知识与认识具有万应灵丹的能力，而错误本身就是一种邪恶。
To fathom the depths and to separate true knowledge from appearance and error, seemed to Socratic man the noblest, even the only truly human vocation.
在苏格拉底式的人们看来，深入万物的秘奥，辨别真知灼见与假象错觉，乃是最高尚的，甚至唯一真正的人类天职。
And since Socrates, this mechanism of concepts, judgments, and inferences has been esteemed as the highest occupation and the most admirable gift of nature, above all other capacities.
所以，自苏格拉底时代以来，建立概念、判断、结论等等手段，就被重视为在一切才能之上的最高尚的事业和最值得赞美的天赋。
Even the most sublime ethical deeds, the stirrings of pity, self-sacrifice, heroism, and that calm sea of the soul, so difficult to attain, which the Apollinian Greek called sophrosune, were derived from the dialectic knowledge by Socrates and his like-minded successors, down to the present, and accordingly designated as teachable.
甚至最崇高的道德行为，恻忍之心，自我牺牲，英雄主义，乃至极难达到的“心如止水”，即梦神式希腊人所谓“涵养”的境界；——在苏格拉底以及直至今日赞同他见解的后继者看来，这一切都导源于知识的辩证法，从而是可以传授的。
