The philosophers are of course the decadents of Hellas, the counter movement directed against the old and noble taste (against the agonal instinct, against the Polls, against the value of the race, against the authority of tradition), Socratic virtues were preached to the Greeks, because the Greeks had lost virtue: irritable, cowardly, unsteady, and all turned to play actors, they had more than sufficient reason to submit to having morality preached to them.