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The teachings of Aristotle are direct in speaking of the nobility of certain knowledge, assessing what kind of knowledge has more value to the soul than others. Socrates also demonstrates this in several cases, possibly the most noticable when concerning his loyalty to an oracle that procliamed him to be the wisest man in Greece. .
While put to trial, Socrates discusses the issue of his faith in the God of the oracle and what it had prophesized. It appeared that the option was available for Socrates to renounce his faith and go free, instead of continuing to practice philosophy and question Greece until he upset the wrong people and was put to death. When faced with the decision to either repent his sinister truth-seeking ways or meet his end, Socrates felt it was most important to stick with the oracle, the God power from beyond which forsaw his quest as an important one, the little voice within him which was not of this realm and made suggestions for him to pursue further questionings of fellow Greeks. .
This should be kept in mind when going over Aristotle's ideas about the cosmos and what he considers to be the most noble kind of knowledge. His standpoint is that to the human mind, there is no knowledge more valuable and worthy than the knowledge of the cosmos, of what is neither finite nor mortal. Socrates agrees with this notion by his sheer will to follow the oracle's tidings, even if it ultimately means his death. .
Though Aristotle and Plato both express similar ideas here, Plato demonstrates his feelings through Socrates' persistance in the face of his own mortality, while Aristotle expresses his conclusions to an audience of students of intellectual pursuits. .
Another way Socrates brings to life Aristotle's words through his character is by his embodiment of contradiction. In "On the Soul,"" Aristotle speaks of appearance contrasted with belief, where he says "we sometiems have false appearances about the same things at the same time as we have a true supposition about them.
