To understand the essential difference between the practical and

the theoretical point of view, we need only look to Isokratês,

the pupil of Gorgias, and himself a sophist. Though not a man of

commanding abilities, Isokratês was one of the most estimable men

of Grecian antiquity. He taught for money; and taught young men to

“think, speak, and act,” all with a view to an honorable life of

active citizenship; not concealing his marked disparagement[571] of

speculative study and debate, such as the dialogues of Plato and the

dialectic exercises generally. He defends his profession much in the

same way as his master Gorgias, or Protagoras, would have defended

it, if we had before us vindications from their pens. Isokratês at

Athens, and Quintilian, a man equally estimable at Rome, are, in

their general type of character and professional duty, the fair

counterpart of those whom Plato arraigns as the sophists.

[571] Isokratês, Orat. v (ad. Philip.), sect. 14; Orat. x (Enc.

Hel.), sect. 2; Orat. xiii (adv. Sophist.), sect. 9 (compare

Heindorf’s note ad Platon. Euthydem. sect. 79); Orat. xii

(Panath.), sect. 126; Orat. xv (Perm.), sect. 90.

Isokratês, in the beginning of his Orat. x, Encom. Helenæ,

censures all the speculative teachers; first, Antisthenês and

Plato (without naming them, but identifying them sufficiently

by their doctrines); next, Protagoras, Gorgias, Melissus, Zeno,

etc., by name, as having wasted their time and teaching on

fruitless paradox and controversy. He insists upon the necessity

of teaching with a view to political life and to the course of

actual public events, abandoning these useless studies (sect. 6).

It is remarkable that what Isokratês recommends is just what

Protagoras and Gorgias are represented as actually doing—each

doubtless in his own way—in the dialogues of Plato, who censures

them for being too practical, while Isokratês, commenting on them

from various publications which they left, treats them only as

teachers of useless speculations.

In the Oration De Permutatione, composed when he was eighty-two

years of age (sect. 10, the orations above cited are earlier

compositions, especially Orat. xiii, against the sophists, see

sect. 206), Isokratês stands upon the defensive, and vindicates

his profession against manifold aspersions. It is a most

interesting oration, as a defence of the educators of Athens

generally, and would serve perfectly well as a vindication of

the teaching of Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, etc., against the

reproaches of Plato.

This oration should be read, if only to get at the genuine

Athenian sense of the word sophists, as distinguished from the

technical sense which Plato and Aristotle fasten upon it. The

word is here used in its largest sense, as distinguished from

ἰδιώταις (sect. 159): it meant, literary men or philosophers

generally, but especially the professional teachers: it carried,

however, an obnoxious sense, and was therefore used as little as

possible by themselves; as much as possible by those who disliked

them.

Isokratês, though he does not willingly call himself by

this unpleasant name, yet is obliged to acknowledge himself

unreservedly as one of the profession, in the same category as

Gorgias (sects. 165, 179, 211, 213, 231, 256), and defends the

general body as well as himself; distinguishing himself of course

from the bad members of the profession, those who pretended to

be sophists, but devoted themselves to something different in

reality (sect. 230).

This professional teaching, and the teachers, are signified

indiscriminately by these words: οἱ σοφισταί—οἱ περὶ τὴν

φιλοσοφίαν διατρίβοντες—τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ἀδίκως διαβεβλημένην

(sects. 44, 157, 159, 179, 211, 217, 219)—ἡ τῶν λόγων παιδεία—ἡ

τῶν λόγων μελέτη—ἡ φιλοσοφία—ἡ τῆς φρονήσεως ἄσκησις—τῆς ἐμῆς,

εἴτε βούλεσθε καλεῖν δυνάμεως, εἴτε φιλοσοφίας, εἴτε διατρίβης

(sects. 53, 187, 189, 193, 196). All these expressions mean the

same process of training; that is, general mental training as

opposed to bodily (sects. 194, 199), and intended to cultivate

the powers of thought, speech, and action: πρὸς τὸ λέγειν καὶ

φρονεῖν—τοῦ φρονεῖν εὖ καὶ λέγειν—τὸ λέγειν καὶ πράττειν (sects.

221, 261, 285, 296, 330).

Isokratês does not admit any such distinction between the

philosopher and dialectician on the one side, and the sophist on

the other, as Plato and Aristotle contend for. He does not like

dialectical exercises: yet he admits them to be useful for youth,

as a part of intellectual training, on condition that all such

speculations shall be dropped, when the youth come into active

life (sects. 280, 287).

This is the same language as that of Kalliklês in the Gorgias of

Plato, c. 40, p. 484.

We know these latter chiefly from the evidence of Plato, their

pronounced enemy; yet even his evidence, when construed candidly and

taken as a whole, will not be found to justify the charges of corrupt

and immoral teaching, impostrous pretence of knowledge, etc., which

the modern historians pour forth in loud chorus against them. I know

few characters in history who have been so hardly dealt with as

these so-called sophists. They bear the penalty of their name, in

its modern sense; a misleading association, from which few modern

writers take pains to emancipate either themselves or their readers,

though the English or French word sophist is absolutely inapplicable

to Protagoras or Gorgias, who ought to be called rather “professors,

or public teachers.” It is really surprising to read the expositions

prefixed by learned men like Stallbaum and others, to the Platonic

dialogues entitled Protagoras, Gorgias, Euthydêmus, Theætêtus, etc.,

where Plato introduces Sokratês either in personal controversy with

one or other of these sophists, or as canvassing their opinions.

We continually read from the pen of the expositor, such remarks as

these: “Mark, how Plato puts down the shallow and worthless sophist;”

the obvious reflection, that it is Plato himself who plays both games

on the chess-board, being altogether overlooked. And again: “This or

that argument, placed in the mouth of Sokratês, is not to be regarded

as the real opinion of Plato: he only takes it up and enforces it

at this moment, in order to puzzle and humiliate an ostentatious

pretender;”[572] a remark which converts Plato into an insincere

disputant, and a sophist in the modern sense, at the very moment

when the commentator is extolling his pure and lofty morality as an

antidote against the alleged corruption of Gorgias and Protagoras.

[572] Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Platon. Protagor. p. 23: “Hoc vero

ejus judicio ita utitur Socrates, ut eum dehinc dialecticâ

subtilitate in summam consilii inopiam conjiciat. Colligit enim

inde _satis captiose_ rebus ita comparatis justitiam, quippe quæ

a sanctitate diversa sit, plane nihil sanctitatis habituram, ac

vicissim sanctitati nihil fore commune cum justitiâ. Respondet

quidem ad hæc Protagoras, justitiam ac sanctitatem non per omnia

sibi similes esse, nec tamen etiam prorsus dissimiles videri. Sed

etsi _verissima est hæc ejus sententia_, tamen comparatione illâ

a partibus faciei repetitâ, _in fraudem inductus_, et quid sit,

in quo omnis virtutis natura contineatur, ignarus, sese ex his

difficultatibus adeo non potest expedire,” etc.

Again, p. 24: “Itaque Socrates, missâ hujus rei disputatione,

_repente ad alia progreditur_, scilicet _similibus laqueis

hominem deinceps denuo irretiturus_.” ... “Nemini facile obscurum

erit, hoc quoque loco, Protagoram _argutis conclusiunculis deludi

atque callide eo permoveri_,” etc. ... p. 25: “Quanquam nemo

erit, quin videat _callide deludi Protagoram_,” etc. ... p. 34:

“Quod si autem ea, quæ in Protagorâ _Sophistæ ridendi causâ_

e vulgi atque sophistarum ratione disputantur, in Gorgiâ ex

ipsius philosophi mente et sententiâ vel brevius proponuntur vel

copiosius disputantur,” etc.

Compare similar observations of Stallbaum, in his Prolegom. ad

Theætet. pp. 12, 22; ad Menon. p. 16; ad Euthydemum, pp. 26, 30;

ad Lachetem, p. 11; ad Lysidem, pp. 79, 80, 87; ad Hippiam Major.

pp. 154-156.

“Facile apparet Socratem _argutâ_, quæ verbo φαίνεσθαι inest,

_diologiâ interlocutorem_ (Hippiam Sophistam) _in fraudem

inducere_.” ... “Illud quidem pro certo et explorato habemus, non

serio sed _ridendi verandique Sophistæ gratiâ gravissimam illam

sententiam in dubitationem vocari_, ideoque iis conclusiunculis

labefactari, quas quilibet paulo attentior facile intelligat non

ad fidem faciendam, sed ad lusum jocumque, esse comparatas.”

Plato has devoted a long and interesting dialogue to the inquiry,

What is a sophist?[573] and it is curious to observe that the

definition which he at last brings out suits Sokratês himself,

intellectually speaking, better than any one else whom we know.

Cicero defines the sophist to be one who pursues philosophy for the

sake of ostentation or of gain;[574] which, if it is to be held as

a reproach, will certainly bear hard upon the great body of modern

teachers, who are determined to embrace their profession and to

discharge its important duties, like other professional men, by the

prospect either of deriving an income or of making a figure in it,

or both, whether they have any peculiar relish for the occupation

or not. But modern writers, in describing Protagoras or Gorgias,

while they adopt the sneering language of Plato against teaching

for pay, low purposes, tricks to get money from the rich, etc., use

terms which lead the reader to believe that there was something

in these sophists peculiarly greedy, exorbitant, and truckling;

something beyond the mere fact of asking and receiving remuneration.

Now not only there is no proof that any of them were thus dishonest

or exorbitant, but in the case of Protagoras, even his enemy Plato

furnishes a proof that he was not so. In the Platonic dialogue

termed Protagoras, that sophist is introduced as describing the

manner in which he proceeded respecting remuneration from his pupils.

“I make no stipulation beforehand: when a pupil parts from me, I

ask from him such a sum as I think the time and the circumstances

warrant; and I add, that if he deems the demand too great, he has

only to make up his own mind what is the amount of improvement

which my company has procured to him, and what sum he considers

an equivalent for it. I am content to accept the sum so named by

himself, only requiring him to go into a temple and make oath that

it is his sincere belief.”[575] It is not easy to imagine a more

dignified way of dealing than this, nor one which more thoroughly

attests an honorable reliance on the internal consciousness of the

scholar, on the grateful sense of improvement realized, which to

every teacher constitutes a reward hardly inferior to the payment

that proceeds from it, and which, in the opinion of Sokratês,

formed the only legitimate reward. Such is not the way in which the

corruptors of mankind go to work.

[573] Plato, Sophistes, c. 52, p. 268.

[574] Cicero, Academ. iv, 23. Xenophon, at the close of his

treatise De Venatione (c. 13), introduces a sharp censure upon

the sophists, with very little that is specific or distinct. He

accuses them of teaching command and artifice of words, instead

of communicating useful maxims; of speaking for purposes of

deceit, or for their own profit, and addressing themselves to

rich pupils for pay; while the _philosopher_ gives his lessons to

every one gratuitously, without distinction of persons. This is

the same distinction as that taken by Sokratês and Plato, between

the sophist and the philosopher: compare Xenoph. De Vectigal. v,

4.

[575] Plato, Protagoras, c. 16, p. 328, B. Diogenes Laërtius (ix,

58) says that Protagoras demanded one hundred minæ as pay: little

stress is to be laid upon such a statement, nor is it possible

that he could have had one fixed rate of pay. The story told by

Aulus Gellius (v, 10) about the suit at law between Protagoras

and his disciple Euathlus, is at least amusing and ingenious.

Compare the story of the rhetor Skopelianus, in Philostratus,

Vit. Sophist. i, 21, 4.

Isokratês (Or. xv, de Perm. sect. 166) affirms that the gains

made by Gorgias, or by any of the eminent sophists, had never

been very high; that they had been greatly and maliciously

exaggerated; that they were very inferior to those of the great

dramatic actors (sect. 168).

That which stood most prominent in the teaching of Gorgias and the

other sophists, was, that they cultivated and improved the powers

of public speaking in their pupils; one of the most essential

accomplishments to every Athenian of consideration. For this, too,

they have been denounced by Ritter, Brandis, and other learned

writers on the history of philosophy, as corrupt and immoral.

“Teaching their pupils rhetoric (it has been said), they only enabled

them to second unjust designs, to make the worse appear the better

reason, and to delude their hearers, by trick and artifice, into

false persuasion and show of knowledge without reality. Rhetoric

(argues Plato, in the dialogue called Gorgias) is no art whatever,

but a mere unscientific knack, enslaved to the dominant prejudices,

and nothing better than an impostrous parody on the true political

art.” Now though Aristotle, following the Platonic vein, calls this

power of making the worse appear the better reason, “the promise

of Protagoras,”[576] the accusation ought never to be urged as if

it bore specially against the teachers of the Sokratic age. It is

an argument against rhetorical teaching generally; against all the

most distinguished teachers of pupils for active life, throughout

the ancient world, from Protagoras, Gorgias, Isokratês, etc., down

to Quintilian. Not only does the argument bear equally against all,

but it was actually urged against all. Isokratês[577] and Quintilian

both defend themselves against it: Aristotle replies to it in the

beginning of his treatise on rhetoric: nor was there ever any

man, indeed, against whom it was pressed with greater bitterness

of calumny than Sokratês, by Aristophanês, in his comedy of the

“Clouds,” as well as by other comic composers. Sokratês complains

of it in his defence before his judges;[578] characterizing such

accusations in their true point of view, as being “the stock

reproaches against all who pursue philosophy.” They are indeed only

one of the manifestations, ever varying in form though the same in

spirit, of the antipathy of ignorance against dissenting innovation

or superior mental accomplishments; which antipathy, intellectual men

themselves, when it happens to make on their side in a controversy,

are but too ready to invoke. Considering that we have here the

materials of defence, as well as of attack, supplied by Sokratês and

Plato, it might have been expected that modern writers would have

refrained from employing such an argument to discredit Gorgias or

Protagoras; the rather, as they have before their eyes, in all the

countries of modern Europe, the profession of lawyers and advocates,

who lend their powerful eloquence without distinction to the cause

of justice or injustice, and who, far from being regarded as the

corrupters of society, are usually looked upon, for that very reason

among others, as indispensable auxiliaries to a just administration

of law.

[576] Aristot. Rhetoric. ii, 26. Ritter (p. 582) and Brandis

(p. 521) quote very unfairly the evidence of the “Clouds”

of Aristophanês, as establishing this charge, and that of

corrupt teaching generally, against the sophists as a body.

If Aristophanês is a witness against any one, he is a witness

against Sokratês, who is the person singled out for attack in the

“Clouds.” But these authors, not admitting Aristophanês as an

evidence against Sokratês, whom he _does_ attack, nevertheless

quote him as an evidence against men like Protagoras and Gorgias,

whom he _does not_ attack.

[577] Isokratês, Or. xv, (De Permut.) sect. 16, νῦν δὲ λέγει μὲν

(the accuser) ὡς ἐγὼ τοὺς ἥττους λόγους κρείττους δύναμαι ποιεῖν,

etc.

Ibid. sect. 32. πειρᾶταί με διαβάλλειν, ὡς διαφθείρω τοὺς

νεωτέρους, λέγειν διδάσκων καὶ παρὰ τὸ δίκαιον ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι

πλεονεκτεῖν, etc.

Again, sects. 59, 65, 95, 98, 187 (where he represents himself,

like Sokratês in his Defence, as vindicating philosophy generally

against the accusation of corrupting youth), 233, 256.

[578] Plato, Sok. Apolog. c. 10, p. 23, D. τὰ κατὰ πάντων τῶν

φιλοσοφούντων πρόχειρα ταῦτα λέγουσιν, ὅτι τὰ μετέωρα καὶ τὰ ὑπὸ

γῆς, καὶ θεοὺς μὴ νομίζειν, καὶ τὸν ἥττω λόγον κρείττω ποιεῖν

(διδάσκω). Compare a similar expression in Xenophon, Memorab. i,

2, 31. τὸ κοινῇ τοῖς φιλοσόφοις ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν ἐπιτιμώμενον, etc.

The same unfairness, in making this point tell against the

sophists exclusively, is to be found in Westermann, Geschichte

der Griech. Beredsamkeit sects. 30, 64.

Though writing was less the business of these sophists than personal

teaching, several of them published treatises. Thrasymachus

and Theodôrus both set forth written precepts on the art of

rhetoric;[579] precepts which have not descended to us, but which

appear to have been narrow and special, bearing directly upon

practice, and relating chiefly to the proper component parts of an

oration. To Aristotle, who had attained that large and comprehensive

view of the theory of rhetoric which still remains to instruct

us in his splendid treatise, the views of Thrasymachus appeared

unimportant, serving to him only as hints and materials. But their

effect must have been very different when they first appeared,

and when young men were first enabled to analyze the parts of an

harangue, to understand the dependence of one upon the other, and

call them by their appropriate names; all illustrated, let us

recollect, by oral exposition on the part of the master, which was

the most impressive portion of the whole.

[579] See the last chapter of Aristotle De Sophisticis Elenchis.

He notices these early rhetorical teachers, also, in various

parts of the treatise on rhetoric.

Quintilian, however, still thought the precepts of Theodôrus and

Thrasymachus worthy of his attention (Inst. Orat. iii, 3).

Prodikus, again, published one or more treatises intended to

elucidate the ambiguities of words, and to point out the different

significations of terms apparently, but not really, equivalent.

For this Plato often ridicules him, and the modern historians of

philosophy generally think it right to adopt the same tone. Whether

the execution of the work was at all adequate to its purpose, we have

no means of judging; but assuredly the purpose was one preëminently

calculated to aid Grecian thinkers and dialecticians; for no man

can study their philosophy without seeing how lamentably they were

hampered by enslavement to the popular phraseology, and by inferences

founded on mere verbal analogy. At a time when neither dictionary

nor grammar existed, a teacher who took care, even punctilious care,

in fixing the meaning of important words of his discourse, must

be considered as guiding the minds of his hearers in a salutary

direction; salutary, we may add, even to Plato himself, whose

speculations would most certainly have been improved by occasional

hints from such a monitor.

Protagoras, too, is said to have been the first who discriminated and

gave names to the various modes and forms of address, an analysis

well calculated to assist his lessons on right speaking:[580] he

appears also to have been the first who distinguished the three

genders of nouns. We hear further of a treatise which he wrote on

wrestling, or most probably on gymnastics generally, as well as a

collection of controversial dialogues.[581] But his most celebrated

treatise was one entitled “Truth,” seemingly on philosophy generally.

Of this treatise, we do not even know the general scope or purport.

In one of his treatises, he confessed his inability to satisfy

himself about the existence of the gods, in these words:[582]

“Respecting the gods, I neither know whether they exist, nor what

are their attributes: the uncertainty of the subject, the shortness

of human life, and many other causes, debar me from this knowledge.”

That the believing public of Athens were seriously indignant at

this passage, and that it caused the author to be threatened with

prosecution, and forced to quit Athens, we can perfectly understand;

though there seems no sufficient proof of the tale that he was

drowned in his outward voyage. But that modern historians of

philosophy, who consider the pagan gods to be fictions, and the

religion to be repugnant to any reasonable mind, should concur in

denouncing Protagoras on this ground as a corrupt man, is to me less

intelligible. Xenophanês,[583] and probably many other philosophers,

had said the same thing before him. Nor is it easy to see what a

superior man was to do, who could not adjust his standard of belief

to such fictions; or what he could say, if he said anything, less

than the words cited above from Protagoras; which appear, as far as

we can appreciate them, standing without the context, to be a brief

mention, in modest and circumspect phrases, of the reason why he

said nothing about the gods, in a treatise where the reader would

expect to find much upon the subject.[584] Certain it is that in the

Platonic dialogue, called “Protagoras,” that sophist is introduced

speaking about the gods exactly in the manner that any orthodox pagan

might naturally adopt.

[580] Quintilian, Inst. Orat. iii. 4, 10; Aristot. Rhetor. iii,

5. See the passages cited in Preller, Histor. Philos. ch. iv, p.

132, note _d_, who affirms respecting Protagoras: “alia inani

grammaticorum principiorum ostentatione novare conabatur,” which

the passages cited do not prove.

[581] Isokratês, Or. x, Encom. Helen. sect. 3; Diogen. Laërt. ix,

54.

[582] Diogen. Laërt. ix. 51; Sext. Empir. adv. Math. ix. 56. Περὶ

μὲν θεῶν οὐκ ἔχω εἰπεῖν, οὔτε εἴ εἰσιν, οὐθ᾽ ὁποίοι τινές εἰσι·

πολλὰ γὰρ τὰ κωλύοντα εἰδέναι, ἥ τε ἀδηλότης, καὶ βραχὺς ὢν ὁ

βίος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.

I give the words partly from Diogenes, partly from Sextus, as I

think they would be most likely to stand.

[583] Xenophanês ap. Sext. Emp. adv. Mathem. vii, 49.

[584] The satyrical writer Timon (ap. Sext. Emp. ix, 57),

speaking in very respectful terms about Protagoras, notices

particularly the guarded language which he used in this sentence

about the gods; though this precaution did not enable him to

avoid the necessity of flight. Protagoras spoke:—

~Πᾶσαν ἔχων φυλακὴν ἐπιεικείης~· τὰ μὲν οὐ οἱ

Χραίσμησ᾽, ἀλλὰ φυγῆς ἐπεμαίετο ὄφρα μὴ οὕτως

Σωκρατικὸν πίνων ψυχρὸν πότον Ἀΐδα δύῃ.

It would seem, by the last line as if Protagoras had survived

Sokratês.

The other fragment preserved of Protagoras, relates to his view of

the cognitive process, and of truth generally. He taught, that “Man

is the measure of all things; both of that which exists, and of that

which does not exist:” a doctrine canvassed and controverted by

Plato, who represents that Protagoras affirmed knowledge to consist

in sensation, and considered the sensations of each individual man

to be, to him, the canon and measure of truth. We know scarce

anything of the elucidations or limitations with which Protagoras may

have accompanied his general position: and if even Plato, who had

good means of knowing them, felt it ungenerous to insult an orphan

doctrine whose father was recently dead, and could no longer defend

it,[585] much more ought modern authors, who speak with mere scraps

of evidence before them, to be cautious how they heap upon the same

doctrine insults much beyond those which Plato recognizes. In so far

as we can pretend to understand the theory, it was certainly not

more incorrect than several others then afloat, from the Eleatic

school and other philosophers; while it had the merit of bringing

into forcible relief, though in an erroneous manner, the essentially

relative nature of cognition,[586] relative, not indeed to the

sensitive faculty alone, but to that reinforced and guided by the

other faculties of man, memorial and ratiocinative. And had it been

even more incorrect than it really is, there would be no warrant

for those imputations which modern authors build upon it, against

the morality of Protagoras. No such imputations are countenanced

in the discussion which Plato devotes to the doctrine: indeed, if

the vindication which he sets forth against himself on behalf of

Protagoras be really ascribable to that sophist, it would give an

exaggerated importance to the distinction between Good and Evil, into

which the distinction between Truth and Falsehood is considered by

the Platonic Protagoras as resolvable. The subsequent theories of

Plato and Aristotle respecting cognition, were much more systematic

and elaborate, the work of men greatly superior in speculative genius

to Protagoras: but they would not have been what they were, had not

Protagoras, as well as others gone before them, with suggestions more

partial and imperfect.

[585] Plato, Theætet. 18, p. 164, E. Οὔτι ἄν, οἶμαι, ὦ φίλε,

εἴπερ γε ὁ πατὴρ τοῦ ἑτέρου μύθου ἔζη—ἀλλὰ πολλὰ ἂν ἤμυνε· νῦν

δὲ ὄρφανον αὐτὸν ὄντα ἡμεῖς προπηλακίζομεν ... ἀλλὰ δὴ ~αὐτοὶ

κινδυνεύσομεν τοῦ δικαίου ἕνεκ᾽~ αὐτῷ βοηθεῖν.

This theory of Protagoras is discussed in the dialogue called

Theætetus, p. 152, _seq._, in a long but desultory way.

See Sextus Empiric. Pyrrhonic. Hypol. i. 216-219, et contra

Mathematicos, vii, 60-64. The explanation which Sextus gives

of the Protagorean doctrine, in the former passage, cannot be

derived from the treatise of Protagoras himself; since he makes

use of the word ὕλη in the philosophical sense, which was not

adopted until the days of Plato and Aristotle.

It is difficult to make out what Diogenes Laërtius states about

other tenets of Protagoras, and to reconcile them with the

doctrine of “man being the measure of all things,” as explained

by Plato (Diog. Laërt. ix, 51, 57).

[586] Aristotle (in one of the passages of his Metaphysica,

wherein he discusses the Protagorean doctrine, x, i, p. 1053, B.)

says that this doctrine comes to nothing more than saying, that

man, so far as cognizant, or so far as percipient, is the measure

of all things; in other words, that knowledge, or perception,

is the measure of all things. This, Aristotle says, is trivial,

and of no value, though it sounds like something of importance:

Πρωταγόρας δ᾽ ἄνθρωπόν φησι πάντων εἶναι μέτρον, ὥσπερ ἂν εἰ τὸν

ἐπιστήμονα εἰπὼν ἢ τὸν αἰσθανόμενον· τούτους δ᾽ ὅτι ἔχουσιν ὁ μὲν

αἴσθησιν ὁ δὲ ἐπιστήμην· ἅ φαμεν εἶναι μέτρα τῶν ὑποκειμένων.

Οὐθὲν δὴ λέγων περιττὸν φαίνεταί τι λέγειν.

It appears to me, that to insist upon the essentially relative

nature of cognizable truth, was by no means a trivial or

unimportant doctrine, as Aristotle pronounces it to be;

especially when we compare it with the unmeasured conceptions

of the objects and methods of scientific research which were so

common in the days of Protagoras.

Compare Metaphysic. iii, 5, pp. 1008, 1009, where it will be seen

how many other thinkers of that day carried the same doctrine,

seemingly, further than Protagoras.

Protagoras remarked that the observed movements of the heavenly

bodies did not coincide with that which the astronomers

represented them to be, and to which they applied their

mathematical reasonings. This remark was a criticism on the

mathematical astronomers of his day—ἐλέγχων τοὺς γεωμέτρας

(Aristot. Metaph. iii, 2, p. 998, A). We know too little how far

his criticism may have been deserved, to assent to the general

strictures of Ritter, Gesch. der Phil. vol. i, p. 633.

From Gorgias there remains one short essay, preserved in one of

the Aristotelian, or Pseudo-Aristotelian treatises,[587] on a

metaphysical thesis. He professes to demonstrate that nothing exists:

that if anything exist, it is unknowable; and granting it even to

exist and to be knowable by any one man, he could never communicate

it to others. The modern historians of philosophy here prefer the

easier task of denouncing the skepticism of the sophist, instead of

performing the duty incumbent on them of explaining his thesis in

immediate sequence with the speculations which preceded it. In our

sense of the words, it is a monstrous paradox: but construing them in

their legitimate filiation from the Eleatic philosophers immediately

before him, it is a plausible, not to say conclusive, deduction

from principles which they would have acknowledged.[588] The word

existence, as they understood it, did not mean phenomenal, but

ultra-phenomenal existence. They looked upon the phenomena of sense

as always coming and going, as something essentially transitory,

fluctuating, incapable of being surely known, and furnishing at best

grounds only for conjecture. They searched by cogitation for what

they presumed to be the really existent something or substance—the

noumenon, to use a Kantian phrase—lying behind or under the

phenomena, which noumenon they recognized as the only appropriate

subject of knowledge. They discussed much, as I have before

remarked, whether it was one or many; noumenon in the singular, or

noumena in the plural. Now the thesis of Gorgias related to this

ultra-phenomenal existence, and bore closely upon the arguments of

Zeno and Melissus, the Eleatic reasoners of his elder contemporaries.

He denied that any such ultra-phenomenal something, or noumenon,

existed, or could be known, or could be described. Of this tripartite

thesis, the first negation was neither more untenable, nor less

untenable, than that of those philosophers who before him had argued

for the affirmative: on the two last points, his conclusions were

neither paradoxical nor improperly skeptical, but perfectly just,

and have been ratified by the gradual abandonment, either avowed or

implied, of such ultra-phenomenal researches among the major part of

philosophers. It may fairly be presumed that these doctrines were

urged by Gorgias for the purpose of diverting his disciples from

studies which he considered as unpromising and fruitless: just as we

shall find his pupil Isokratês afterwards enforcing the same view,

discouraging speculations of this nature, and recommending rhetorical

exercise as preparation for the duties of an active citizen.[589]

Nor must we forget that Sokratês himself discouraged physical

speculations even more decidedly than either of them.

[587] See the treatise entitled De Melisso, Xenophane et Gorgiâ

in Bekker’s edition of Aristotle’s Works, vol. i, p. 979, _seq._;

also the same treatise, with a good preface and comments, by

Mullach, p. 62 _seq._: compare Sextus Emp. adv. Mathemat. vii,

65, 87.

[588] See the note of Mullach, on the treatise mentioned in the

preceding note, p. 72. He shows that Gorgias followed in the

steps of Zeno and Melissus.

[589] Isokratês De Permutatione, Or. xv, s. 287; Xenoph. Memorab.

i, 1, 14.

If the censures cast upon the alleged skepticism of Gorgias and

Protagoras are partly without sufficient warrant, partly without any

warrant at all, much more may the same remark be made respecting

the graver reproaches heaped upon their teaching on the score of

immorality or corruption. It has been common with recent German

historians of philosophy to translate from Plato and dress up a

fiend called “Die Sophistik,” (Sophistic,) whom they assert to

have poisoned and demoralized, by corrupt teaching, the Athenian

moral character, so that it became degenerate at the end of the

Peloponnesian war, compared with what it had been in the time of

Miltiadês and Aristeidês.

Now, in the first place, if the abstraction “Die Sophistik” is to

have any definite meaning, we ought to have proof that the persons

styled sophists had some doctrines, principles, or method, both

common to them all and distinguishing them from others. But such

a supposition is untrue: there were no such common doctrines, or

principles, or method, belonging to them; even the name by which

they are known did not belong to them, any more than to Sokratês

and others; they had nothing in common except their profession, as

paid teachers, qualifying young men “to think, speak, and act,”

these are the words of Isokratês, and better words it would not

be easy to find, with credit to themselves as citizens. Moreover,

such community of profession did not at that time imply near so

much analogy of character as it does now, when the path of teaching

has been beaten into a broad and visible high road, with measured

distances and stated intervals: Protagoras and Gorgias found

predecessors, indeed, but no binding precedents to copy; so that

each struck out more or less a road of his own. And accordingly, we

find Plato, in his dialogue called “Protagoras,” wherein Protagoras,

Prodikus, and Hippias, are all introduced, imparting a distinct

type of character and distinct method to each, not without a strong

admixture of reciprocal jealousy between them; while Thrasymachus,

in the Republic, and Euthydêmus, in the dialogue so called, are

again painted each with colors of his own, different from all the

three above named. We have not the least reason for presuming that

Gorgias agreed in the opinion of Protagoras: “Man is the measure

of all things;” and we may infer, even from Plato himself, that

Protagoras would have opposed the views expressed by Thrasymachus

in the first book of the Republic. It is impossible therefore to

predicate anything concerning doctrines, methods, or tendencies,

common and peculiar to all the sophists. There were none such; nor

has the abstract word, “Die Sophistik,” any real meaning, except

such qualities, whatever they may be, as are inseparable from the

profession or occupation of public teaching. And if, at present,

every candid critic would be ashamed to cast wholesale aspersions

on the entire body of professional teachers, much more is such

censure unbecoming in reference to the ancient sophists, who were

distinguished from each other by stronger individual peculiarities.

If, then, it were true that in the interval between 480 B.C. and the

end of the Peloponnesian war, a great moral deterioration had taken

place in Athens and in Greece generally, we should have to search for

some other cause than this imaginary abstraction called sophistic.

But—and this is the second point—the matter of fact here alleged is

as untrue, as the cause alleged is unreal. Athens, at the close of

the Peloponnesian war, was not more corrupt than Athens in the days

of Miltiadês and Aristeidês. If we revert to that earlier period,

we shall find that scarcely any acts of the Athenian people have

drawn upon them sharper censure—in my judgment, unmerited—than their

treatment of these very two statesmen; the condemnation of Miltiadês,

and the ostracism of Aristeidês. In writing my history of that time,

far from finding previous historians disposed to give the Athenians

credit for public virtue, I have been compelled to contend against

a body of adverse criticism, imputing to them gross ingratitude and

injustice. Thus the contemporaries of Miltiadês and Aristeidês, when

described as matter of present history, are presented in anything but

flattering colors; except their valor at Marathon and Salamis, which

finds one unanimous voice of encomium. But when these same men have

become numbered among the mingled recollections and fancies belonging

to the past,—when a future generation comes to be present, with its

appropriate stock of complaint and denunciation,—then it is that men

find pleasure in dressing up the virtues of the past, as a count in

the indictment against their own contemporaries. Aristophanês,[590]

writing during the Peloponnesian war, denounced the Demos of his day

as degenerated from the virtue of that Demos which had surrounded

Miltiadês and Aristeidês: while Isokratês,[591] writing as an old

man, between 350-340 B.C., complains in like manner of his own

time, boasting how much better the state of Athens had been in his

youth: which period of his youth fell exactly during the life of

Aristophanês, in the last half of the Peloponnesian war.

[590] Aristophan. Equit. 1316-1321.

[591] Isokratês, Or. xv, De Permutation. s. 170.

Such illusions ought to impose on no one without a careful comparison

of facts; and most assuredly that comparison will not bear out the

allegation of increased corruption and degeneracy, between the age

of Miltiadês and the end of the Peloponnesian war. Throughout the

whole of Athenian history, there are no acts which attest so large

a measure of virtue and judgment pervading the whole people, as

the proceedings after the Four Hundred and after the Thirty. Nor

do I believe that the contemporaries of Miltiadês would have been

capable of such heroism; for that appellation is by no means too

large for the case. I doubt whether they would have been competent

to the steady self-denial of retaining a large sum in reserve

during the time of peace, both prior to the Peloponnesian war and

after the Peace of Nikias; or of keeping back the reserve fund of

one thousand talents, while they were forced to pay taxes for the

support of the war; or of acting upon the prudent, yet painfully

trying, policy recommended by Periklês, so as to sustain an annual

invasion without either going out to fight or purchasing peace by

ignominious concessions. If bad acts such as Athens committed during

the later years of the war, for example, the massacre of the Melian

population, were not done equally by the contemporaries of Miltiadês,

this did not arise from any superior humanity or principle on their

part, but from the fact that they were not exposed to the like

temptation, brought upon them by the possession of imperial power.

The condemnation of the six generals after the battle of Arginusæ,

if we suppose the same conduct on their part to have occurred in 490

B.C., would have been decreed more rapidly and more unceremoniously

than it was actually decreed in 406 B.C. For at that earlier date

there existed no psephism of Kannônus, surrounded by prescriptive

respect; no graphê paranomôn; no such habits of established deference

to a dikastery solemnly sworn, with full notice to defendants and

full time of defence measured by the clock; none of those securities

which a long course of democracy had gradually worked into the public

morality of every Athenian, and which, as we saw in a former chapter,

interposed a serious barrier to the impulse of the moment, though

ultimately overthrown by its fierceness. A far less violent impulse

would have sufficed for the same mischief in 490 B.C., when no such

barriers existed. Lastly, if we want a measure of the appreciating

sentiment of the Athenian public, towards a strict and decorous

morality in the narrow sense, in the middle of the Peloponnesian war,

we have only to consider the manner in which they dealt with Nikias.

I have shown, in describing the Sicilian expedition, that the gravest

error which the Athenians ever committed, that which shipwrecked

both their armament at Syracuse and their power at home, arose from

their unmeasured esteem for the respectable and pious Nikias, which

blinded them to the grossest defects of generalship and public

conduct. Disastrous as such misjudgment was, it counts at least as

a proof that the moral corruption alleged to have been operated in

their characters, is a mere fiction. Nor let it be supposed that

the nerve and resolution which once animated the combatants of

Marathon and Salamis, had disappeared in the latter years of the

Peloponnesian war. On the contrary, the energetic and protracted

struggle of Athens, after the irreparable calamity at Syracuse,

forms a worthy parallel to her resistance in the time of Xerxes, and

maintained unabated that distinctive attribute which Periklês had set

forth as the main foundation of her glory, that of never giving way

before misfortune.[592] Without any disparagement to the armament at

Salamis, we may remark that the patriotism of the fleet at Samos,

which rescued Athens from the Four Hundred, was equally devoted

and more intelligent; and that the burst of effort, which sent a

subsequent fleet to victory at Arginusæ, was to the full as strenuous.

[592] Thucyd. ii, 64. γνῶτε δ᾽ ὄνομα μέγιστον αὐτὴν (τὴν πόλιν)

ἔχουσαν ἐν πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, διὰ τὸ ταῖς ξυμφοραῖς μὴ εἴκειν.

If, then, we survey the eighty-seven years of Athenian history,

between the battle of Marathon and the renovation of the democracy

after the Thirty, we shall see no ground for the assertion, so often

made, of increased and increasing moral and political corruption. It

is my belief that the people had become both morally and politically

better, and that their democracy had worked to their improvement.

The remark made by Thucydidês, on the occasion of the Korkyræan

bloodshed,—on the violent and reckless political antipathies,

arising out of the confluence of external warfare with internal

party-feud,[593]—wherever else it may find its application, has no

bearing upon Athens: the proceedings after the Four Hundred and

after the Thirty prove the contrary. And while Athens may thus be

vindicated on the moral side, it is indisputable that her population

had acquired a far larger range of ideas and capacities than they

possessed at the time of the battle of Marathon. This, indeed, is the

very matter of fact deplored by Aristophanês, and admitted by those

writers, who, while denouncing the sophists, connect such enlarged

range of ideas with the dissemination of the pretended sophistical

poison. In my judgment, not only the charge against the sophists as

poisoners, but even the existence of such poison in the Athenian

system, deserves nothing less than an emphatic denial.

[593] Thucydidês (iii, 82) specifies very distinctly the cause to

which he ascribes the bad consequences which he depicts. He makes

no allusion to sophists or sophistical teaching; though Brandis

(Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philos. i, p. 518, not. f.) drags in “the

sophistical spirit of the statesmen of that time,” as if it were

the cause of the mischief, and as if it were to be found in the

speeches of Thucydidês, i, 76, v, 105.

There cannot be a more unwarranted assertion; nor can a learned

man like Brandis be ignorant, that such words as “the sophistical

spirit,” (Der sophistische Geist,) are understood by a modern

reader in a sense totally different from its true Athenian sense.

Let us examine again the names of these professional teachers,

beginning with Prodikus, one of the most renowned. Who is there that

has not read the well-known fable called “The Choice of Hercules,”

which is to be found in every book professing to collect impressive

illustrations of elementary morality? Who does not know that its

express purpose is, to kindle the imaginations of youth in favor of

a life of labor for noble objects, and against a life of indulgence?

It was the favorite theme on which Prodikus lectured, and on which he

obtained the largest audience.[594] If it be of striking simplicity

and effect even to a modern reader, how much more powerfully must

it have worked upon the audience for whose belief it was specially

adapted, when set off by the oral expansions of its author! Xenophon

wondered that the Athenian dikasts dealt with Sokratês as a corruptor

of youth,—Isokratês wondered that a portion of the public made the

like mistake about him,—and I confess my wonder to be not less, that

not only Aristophanês,[595] but even the modern writers on Grecian

philosophy, should rank Prodikus in the same unenviable catalogue.

This is the only composition[596] remaining from him; indeed, the

only composition remaining from any one of the sophists, excepting

the thesis of Gorgias, above noticed. It served, not merely as a

vindication of Prodikus against such reproach, but also as a warning

against implicit confidence in the sarcastic remarks of Plato,—which

include Prodikus as well as the other sophists,—and in the doctrines

which he puts into the mouth of the sophists generally, in order

that Sokratês may confute them. The commonest candor would teach us,

that if a polemical writer of dialogue chooses to put indefensible

doctrine into the mouth of the opponent, we ought to be cautious of

condemning the latter upon such very dubious proof.

[594] Xenoph. Memor. ii, 1, 21-34. Καὶ Πρόδικος δὲ ὁ σοφὸς

ἐν τῷ συγγράμματι τῷ περὶ Ἡρακλέους, ~ὅπερ δὴ καὶ πλείστοις

ἐπιδείκνυται~, ὡσαύτως περὶ τῆς ἀρετῆς ἀποφαίνεται, etc.

Xenophon here introduces Sokratês himself as bestowing much

praise on the moral teaching of Prodikus.

[595] See Fragment iii, of the Ταγηνισταὶ of Aristophanês,

Meineke, Fragment. Aristoph. p. 1140.

[596] Xenophon gives only the substance of Prodikus’s lecture,

not his exact words. But he gives what may be called the whole

substance, so that we can appreciate the scope as well as the

handling of the author. We cannot say the same of an extract

given (in the Pseudo-Platonic Dialogue Axiochus, c. 7, 8) from a

lecture said to have been delivered by Prodikus, respecting the

miseries of human life, pervading all the various professions

and occupations. It is impossible to make out distinctly, either

how much really belongs to Prodikus, or what was his scope and

purpose, if any such lecture was really delivered.

Welcker and other modern authors treat Prodikus as “the most

innocent” of the sophists, and except him from the sentence which

they pass upon the class generally. Let us see, therefore, what Plato

himself says about the rest of them, and first about Protagoras. If

it were not the established practice with readers of Plato to condemn

Protagoras beforehand, and to put upon every passage relating to

him not only a sense as bad as it will bear, but much worse than

it will fairly bear, they would probably carry away very different

inferences from the Platonic dialogue called by that sophist’s

name, and in which he is made to bear a chief part. That dialogue

is itself enough to prove that Plato did not conceive Protagoras

either as a corrupt, or unworthy, or incompetent teacher. The

course of the dialogue exhibits him as not master of the theory of

ethics, and unable to solve various difficulties with which that

theory is expected to grapple; moreover, as no match for Sokratês

in dialectics, which Plato considered as the only efficient method

of philosophical investigation. In so far, therefore, as imperfect

acquaintance with the science or theory upon which rules of art, or

the precepts bearing on practice, repose, disqualifies a teacher

from giving instruction in such art or practice, to that extent

Protagoras is exposed as wanting. And if an expert dialectician, like

Plato, had passed Isokratês or Quintilian, or the large majority

of teachers past or present, through a similar cross-examination

as to the theory of their teaching, an ignorance not less manifest

than that of Protagoras would be brought out. The antithesis which

Plato sets forth, in so many of his dialogues, between precept or

practice, accompanied by full knowledge of the scientific principles

from which it must be deduced, if its rectitude be disputed,—and

unscientific practice, without any such power of deduction or

defence, is one of the most valuable portions of his speculations: he

exhausts his genius to render it conspicuous in a thousand indirect

ways, and to shame his readers, if possible, into the loftier and

more rational walk of thought. But it is one thing to say of a

man, that he does not know the theory of what he teaches, or of

the way in which he teaches; it is another thing to say, that he

actually teaches that which scientific theory would not prescribe

as the best; it is a third thing, graver than both, to say that

his teaching is not only below the exigences of science, but even

corrupt and demoralizing. Now of these three points, it is the first

only which Plato in his dialogue makes out against Protagoras: even

the second, he neither affirms nor insinuates; and as to the third,

not only he never glances at it, even indirectly, but the whole

tendency of the discourse suggests a directly contrary conclusion.

As if sensible that when an eminent opponent was to be depicted as

puzzled and irritated by superior dialectics, it was but common

fairness to set forth his distinctive merits also, Plato gives a

fable, and expository harangue, from the mouth of Protagoras,[597]

upon the question whether virtue is teachable. This harangue is,

in my judgment, very striking and instructive; and so it would

have been probably accounted, if commentators had not read it with

a preëstablished persuasion that whatever came from the lips of a

sophist must be either ridiculous or immoral.[598] It is the only

part of Plato’s works wherein any account is rendered of the growth

of that floating, uncertified, self-propagating body of opinion, upon

which the cross-examining analysis of Sokratês is brought to bear, as

will be seen in the following chapter.

[597] Plato, Protagoras, p. 320, D. c. 11, _et seq._, especially

p. 322, D, where Protagoras lays it down that no man is fit to

be a member of a social community, who has not in his bosom both

δίκη and αἰδὼς,—that is, a sense of reciprocal obligation and

right between himself and others,—and a sensibility to esteem or

reproach from others. He lays these fundamental attributes down

as what a good ethical theory must assume or exact in every man.

[598] Of the unjust asperity and contempt with which the Platonic

commentators treat the sophists, see a specimen in Ast, Ueber

Platons Leben und Schriften, pp. 70, 71, where he comments on

Protagoras and this fable.

Protagoras professes to teach his pupils “good counsel” in their

domestic and family relations, as well as how to speak and act in the

most effective manner for the weal of the city. Since this comes from

Protagoras, the commentators of Plato pronounce it to be miserable

morality; but it coincides, almost to the letter, with that which

Isokratês describes himself as teaching, a generation afterwards,

and substantially even with that which Xenophon represents Sokratês

as teaching; nor is it easy to set forth, in a few words, a larger

scheme of practical duty.[599] And if the measure of practical

duty, which Protagoras devoted himself to teach, was thus serious

and extensive, even the fraction of theory assigned to him in his

harangue, includes some points better than that of Plato himself. For

Plato seems to have conceived the ethical end, to each individual,

as comprising nothing more than his own permanent happiness and

moral health; and in this very dialogue, he introduces Sokratês

as maintaining virtue to consist only in a right calculation of a

man’s own personal happiness and misery. But here we find Protagoras

speaking in a way which implies a larger, and, in my opinion, a

juster, appreciation of the ethical end, as including not only

reference to a man’s own happiness, but also obligations towards

the happiness of others. Without at all agreeing in the harsh terms

of censure which various critics pronounce upon that theory which

Sokratês is made to set forth in the Platonic Protagoras, I consider

his conception of the ethical end essentially narrow and imperfect,

not capable of being made to serve as basis for deduction of the best

ethical precepts. Yet such is the prejudice with which the history

of the sophists has been written, that the commentators on Plato

accuse the sophists of having originated what they ignorantly term,

“the base theory of utility,” here propounded by Sokratês himself;

complimenting the latter on having set forth those larger views which

in this dialogue belong only to Protagoras.[600]

[599] Protagoras says: Τὸ δὲ μάθημά ἐστιν, εὐβουλία περὶ τε τῶν

οἰκείων ὅπως ἂν ἄριστα τὴν αὑτοῦ οἰκίαν διοικοῖ, καὶ περὶ τῶν

τῆς πόλεως, ὅπως τὰ τῆς πόλεως δυνατώτατος εἴη καὶ πράττειν καὶ

λέγειν. (Plato, Protagoras, c. 9, p. 318, E.)

A similar description of the moral teaching of Protagoras and the

other sophists, yet comprising a still larger range of duties,

towards parents, friends, and fellow-citizens in their private

capacities, is given in Plato, Meno. p. 91, B, E.

Isokratês describes the education which he wished to convey,

almost in the same words: Τοὺς τὰ τοιαῦτα μανθάνοντας καὶ

μελετῶντας ἐξ ὧν καὶ τὸν ἴδιον οἶκον καὶ τὰ κοινὰ τὰ τῆς πόλεως

καλῶς διοικήσουσιν, ὧνπερ ἕνεκα καὶ πονητέον καὶ φιλοσοφητέον καὶ

πάντα πρακτέον ἐστί (Or. xv, De Permutat. s. 304; compare 289).

Xenophon also describes, almost in the same words, the teaching

of Sokratês. Kriton and others sought the society of Sokratês:

οὐκ ἵνα δημηγορικοὶ ἢ δικανικοὶ γένοιντο, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα καλοί τε

κἀγαθοὶ γενόμενοι, καὶ οἴκῳ καὶ οἰκέταις καὶ οἰκείοις καὶ φίλοις

καὶ πόλει καὶ πολίταις δύναιντο καλῶς χρῆσθαι (Memor. i, 2,

48). Again, i, 2, 64: Φανερὸς ἦν Σωκράτης τῶν συνόντων τοὺς

πονηρὰς ἐπιθυμίας ἔχοντας, τούτων μὲν παύων, ~τῆς δὲ καλλίστης

καὶ μεγαλοπρεπεστάτης ἀρετῆς, ᾗ πόλεις τε καὶ οἴκοι εὖ οἰκοῦσι~,

προτρέπων ἐπιθυμεῖν. Compare also i, 6, 15; ii, 1, 19; iv, 1, 2;

iv, 5, 10.

When we perceive how much analogy Xenophon establishes—so far as

regards practical precept, apart from theory or method—between

Sokratês, Protagoras, Prodikus, etc., it is difficult to

justify the representations of the commentators respecting the

sophists; see Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Platon Menon. p. 8. “Etenim

virtutis nomen, cum propter ambitûs magnitudinem valde esset

ambiguum et obscurum, sophistæ interpretabantur sic, ut, missâ

veræ honestatis et probitatis vi, unice de prudentiâ civili

ac domesticâ cogitari vellent, eoque modo totam virtutem _ad

callidum quoddam utilitatis vel privatim vel publice consequendæ

artificium_ revocarent.” ... “Pervidit hanc _opinionis istius

perversitatem, ejusque turpitudinem_ intimo sensit pectore, vir

sanctissimi animi, Socratês, etc.” Stallbaum speaks to the same

purpose in his Prolegomena to the Protagoras, pp. 10, 11; and to

the Euthydemus, pp. 21, 22.

Those who, like these censors on the sophists, think it _base_

to recommend virtuous conduct by the mutual security and comfort

which it procures to all parties, must be prepared to condemn

on the same ground a large portion of what is said by Sokratês

throughout the Memorabilia of Xenophon, Μὴ καταφρόνει τῶν

οἰκονομικῶν ἀνδρῶν, etc. (ii, 4, 12); see also his Œconomic. xi,

10.

[600] Stallbaum, Prolegomena ad Platonis Menonem, p. 9: “Etenim

sophistæ, quum virtutis exercitationem et ad utilitates externas

referent, et facultate quâdam atque consuetudine ejus, quod utile

videretur, reperiendi, absolvi statuerent,—Socrates ipse, rejectâ

_utilitatis turpitudine_, vim naturamque virtutis unice ad id

quod bonum honestumque est, revocavit; voluitque esse in eo, ut

quis recti bonique sensu ac scientâ polleret, ad quam tanquam ad

certissimam normam atque regulam actiones suas omnes dirigeret

atque poneret.”

Whoever will compare this criticism with the Protagoras of Plato,

c. 36, 37, especially p. 357, B, wherein Sokratês identifies

good with pleasure and evil with pain, and wherein he considers

right conduct to consist in justly calculating the items of

pleasure and pain one against the other, ἡ μετρητικὴ τέχνη, will

be astonished how a critic on Plato could write what is above

cited. I am aware that there are other parts of Plato’s dialogues

in which he maintains a doctrine different from that just alluded

to. Accordingly, Stallbaum (in his Prolegomena to the Protagoras,

p. 30) contends that Plato is here setting forth a doctrine

not his own, but is reasoning on the principles of Protagoras,

for the purpose of entrapping and confounding him: “Quæ hic

de fortitudine disseruntur, ea item cavendum est ne protenus

pro decretis mere Platonicis habeantur. Disputat enim Socrates

pleraque omnia ad mentem ipsius Protagoræ, ita quidem ut eum per

suam ipsius rationem in fraudem et errorem inducat.”

I am happy to be able to vindicate Plato against the disgrace of

so dishonest a spirit of argumentation as that which Stallbaum

ascribes to him. Plato most certainly does not reason here upon

the doctrines or principles of Protagoras; for the latter begins

by positively denying the doctrine, and is only brought to admit

it in a very qualified manner, c. 35, p. 351, D. He says, in

reply to the question of Sokratês: Οὐκ οἶδα ἁπλῶς οὕτως, ὡς σὺ

ἐρωτᾷς, εἰ ἐμοὶ ἀποκριτέον ἐστὶν, ὡς τὰ ἡδέα τε ἀγαθά ἐστιν

ἅπαντα καὶ τὰ ἀνιαρὰ κακά· ἀλλὰ μοι δοκεῖ οὐ μόνον πρὸς τὴν νῦν

ἀπόκρισιν ἐμοὶ ἀσφαλέστερον εἶναι ἀποκρίνασθαι, ~ἀλλὰ καὶ πρὸς

πάντα τὸν ἄλλον βίον τὸν ἐμὸν~, ὅτι ἐστὶ μὲν ἃ τῶν ἡδέων οὔκ

ἐστιν ἀγαθὰ, ἐστὶ δὲ αὖ καὶ ἃ τῶν ἀνιαρῶν οὐκ ἐστι κακὰ, ἐστὶ δὲ

ἃ ἐστι, καὶ τρίτον ἃ οὐδέτερα, οὔτε κακὰ οὔτ᾽ ἀγαθά.

There is something peculiarly striking in this appeal of

Protagoras to his whole past life, as rendering it impossible for

him to admit what he evidently looked upon as a _base theory_,

as Stallbaum pronounces it to be. Yet the latter actually

ventures to take it away from Sokratês, who not only propounds

it confidently, but reasons it out in a clear and forcible

manner, and of fastening it on Protagoras, who first disclaims

it and then only admits it under reserve! I deny the theory to

be _base_, though I think it an imperfect theory of ethics.

But Stallbaum, who calls it so, was bound to be doubly careful

in looking into his proof before he ascribed it to any one.

What makes the case worse is, that he fastens it not only on

Protagoras, but on the sophists collectively, by that monstrous

fiction which treats them as a doctrinal sect.

So far as concerns Protagoras, therefore, the evidence of Plato

himself may be produced to show that he was not a corrupt teacher,

but a worthy companion of Prodikus; worthy also of that which we

know him to have enjoyed, the society and conversation of Periklês.

Let us now examine what Plato says about a third sophist, Hippias

of Elis; who figures both in the dialogue called “Protagoras,”

and in two distinct dialogues known by the titles of “Hippias

Major and Minor.” Hippias is represented as distinguished for the

wide range of his accomplishments, of which in these dialogues he

ostentatiously boasts. He could teach astronomy, geometry, and

arithmetic, which subjects Protagoras censured him for enforcing

too much upon his pupils; so little did these sophists agree in any

one scheme of doctrine or education. Besides this, he was a poet,

a musician, an expositor of the poets, and a lecturer with a large

stock of composed matter,—on subjects moral, political, and even

legendary,—treasured up in a very retentive memory. He was a citizen

much employed as envoy by his fellow-citizens: to crown all, his

manual dexterity was such that he professed to have made with his

own hands all the attire and ornaments which he wore on his person.

If, as is sufficiently probable, he was a vain and ostentatious

man,—defects not excluding an useful and honorable career,—we must

at the same time give him credit for a variety of acquisitions such

as to explain a certain measure of vanity.[601] The style in which

Plato handles Hippias is very different from that in which he treats

Protagoras. It is full of sneer and contemptuous banter, insomuch

that even Stallbaum,[602] after having repeated a great many times

that this was a vile sophist, who deserved no better treatment,

is forced to admit that the petulance is carried rather too far,

and to suggest that the dialogue must have been a juvenile work of

Plato. Be this as it may, amidst so much unfriendly handling, not

only we find no imputation against Hippias, of having preached a low

or corrupt morality, but Plato inserts that which furnishes good,

though indirect, proof of the contrary. For Hippias is made to say

that he had already delivered, and was about to deliver again, a

lecture composed by himself with great care, wherein he enlarged

upon the aims and pursuits which a young man ought to follow. The

scheme of his discourse was, that after the capture of Troy, the

youthful Neoptolemus was introduced as asking the advice of Nestor

about his own future conduct; in reply to which, Nestor sets forth to

him what was the plan of life incumbent on a young man of honorable

aspirations, and unfolds to him the full details of regulated

and virtuous conduct by which it ought to be filled up.[603] The

selection of two such names, among the most venerated in all Grecian

legend, as monitor and pupil, is a stamp clearly attesting the vein

of sentiment which animated the composition. Morality preached by

Nestor for the edification of Neoptolemus, might possibly be too

high for Athenian practice; but most certainly it would not err on

the side of corruption, selfishness, or over-indulgence. We may

fairly presume that this discourse composed by Hippias would not be

unworthy, in spirit and purpose, to be placed by the side of “The

Choice of Hercules,” nor its author by that of Prodikus as a moral

teacher.

[601] See about Hippias, Plato, Protagoras, c. 9, p. 318, E.;

Stallbaum, Prolegom. ad Platon. Hipp. Maj. p. 147, _seq._;

Cicero, de Orator. iii, 33; Plato, Hipp. Minor, c. 10, p. 368, B.

[602] Stallbaum, Proleg. ad Plat. Hipp. Maj. p. 150.

[603] Plato, Hippias Major, p. 286, A, B.

The dialogue entitled “Gorgias,” in Plato, is carried on by Sokratês

with three different persons one after the other,—Gorgias, Pôlus, and

Kalliklês. Gorgias of Leontini in Sicily, as a rhetorical teacher,

acquired greater celebrity than any man of his time, during the

Peloponnesian war: his abundant powers of illustration, his florid

ornaments, his artificial structure of sentences distributed into

exact antithetical fractions, all spread a new fashion in the art of

speaking, which for the time was very popular, but afterwards became

discredited. If the line could be clearly drawn between rhetors and

sophists, Gorgias ought rather to be ranked with the former.[604]

In the conversation with Gorgias, Sokratês exposes the fallacy

and imposture of rhetoric and rhetorical teaching, as cheating an

ignorant audience into persuasion without knowledge, and as framed

to satisfy the passing caprice, without any regard to the permanent

welfare and improvement of the people. Whatever real inculpation

may be conveyed in these arguments against a rhetorical teacher,

Gorgias must bear in common with Isokratês and Quintilian, and under

the shield of Aristotle. But save and except rhetorical teaching,

no dissemination of corrupt morality is ascribed to him by Plato;

who, indeed, treats him with a degree of respect which surprises the

commentators.[605]

[604] Plato, Menon, p. 95, A.; Foss, De Gorgiâ Leontino, p. 27,

_seq._

[605] See the observations of Groen van Prinsterer and Stallbaum,

Stallbaum ad Platon. Gorg. c. 1.

The tone of the dialogue changes materially when it passes to

Pôlus and Kalliklês, the former of whom is described as a writer

on rhetoric, and probably a teacher also.[606] There is much

insolence in Pôlus, and no small asperity in Sokratês. Yet the

former maintains no arguments which justify the charge of immorality

against himself or his fellow-teachers. He defends the tastes and

sentiments common to every man in Greece, and shared even by the most

estimable Athenians, Periklês, Nikias, and Aristokratês;[607] while

Sokratês prides himself on standing absolutely alone, and having

no support except from his irresistible dialectics, whereby he is

sure of extorting reluctant admission from his adversary. How far

Sokratês may be right, I do not now inquire: it is sufficient that

Pôlus, standing as he does amidst company at once so numerous and

so irreproachable, cannot be fairly denounced as a poisoner of the

youthful mind.

[606] Plato, Gorgias, c. 17, p. 462, B.

[607] Plato, Gorgias, c. 27, p. 472, A. Καὶ νῦν (say Sokratês)

περὶ ὧν σὺ λέγεις ὀλίγου σοι πάντες συμφήσουσι ταῦτα Ἀθηναῖοι καὶ

ξένοι—μαρτυρήσουσί σοι, ἐὰν μὲν βούλῃ, Νικίας ὁ Νικηράτου καὶ οἱ

ἀδελφοὶ μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ—ἐὰν δὲ βούλῃ, Ἀριστοκράτης ὁ Σκελλίου—ἐὰν δὲ

βούλῃ, ἡ Περικλέους ὅλη οἰκία, ἢ ἄλλη συγγένεια, ἥντινα ἂν βούλῃ

τῶν ἐνθάδε ἐκλέξασθαι. ~Ἀλλ᾽ ἐγώ σοι εἷς ὢν οὐχ ὁμολογῶ.... Ἐγὼ

δὲ ἂν μὴ σὲ αὐτὸν ἕνα ὄντα~ μάρτυρα παράσχωμαι ὁμολογοῦντα περὶ

ὧν λέγω, οὐδὲν οἶμαι ἄξιον λόγου μοι πεπεράνθαι περὶ ὧν ἂν ἡμῖν ὁ

λόγος ᾖ.

Pôlus presently hands over the dialogue to Kalliklês, who is here

represented, doubtless, as laying down doctrines openly and avowedly

anti-social. He distinguishes between the law of nature and the

law—both written and unwritten, for the Greek word substantially

includes both—of society. According to the law of nature, Kalliklês

says, the strong man—the better or more capable man—puts forth

his strength to the full for his own advantage, without limit or

restraint; overcomes the resistance which weaker men are able to

offer; and seizes for himself as much as he pleases of the matter

of enjoyment. He has no occasion to restrain any of his appetites

or desires; the more numerous and pressing they are, so much the

better for him, since his power affords him the means of satiating

them all. The many, who have the misfortune to be weak, must be

content with that which he leaves them, and submit to it as best

they can. This, Kalliklês says, is what actually happens in a state

of nature; this is what is accounted just, as is evident by the

practice of independent communities, not included in one common

political society, towards each other; this is _justice_, by nature,

or according to the law of nature. But when men come into society,

all this is reversed. The majority of individuals know very well that

they are weak, and that their only chance of security or comfort

consists in establishing laws to restrain this strong man, reinforced

by a moral sanction of praise and blame devoted to the same general

end. They catch him, like a young lion, whilst his mind is yet

tender, and fascinate him by talk and training into a disposition

conformable to that measure and equality which the law enjoins.

Here, then, is justice according to the law of society; a factitious

system, built up by the many for their own protection and happiness,

to the subversion of the law of nature, which arms the strong man

with a right to encroachment and license. Let a fair opportunity

occur, and the favorite of Nature will be seen to kick off his

harness, tread down the laws, break through the magic circle of

opinion around him, and stand forth again as lord and master of the

many; regaining that glorious position which nature has assigned to

him as his right. Justice by nature, and justice by law and society,

are thus, according to Kalliklês, not only distinct, but mutually

contradictory. He accuses Sokratês of having jumbled the two together

in his argument.[608]

[608] This doctrine asserted by Kalliklês will be found in Plato,

Gorgias, c. 39, 40, pp. 483, 484.

It has been contended by many authors that this anti-social

reasoning—true enough, in so far as it states simple[609] matter of

fact and probability; immoral, in so far as it erects the power of

the strong man into a right; and inviting many comments, if I could

find a convenient place for them—represents the morality commonly

and publicly taught by the persons called sophists at Athens.[610] I

deny this assertion emphatically. Even if I had no other evidence

to sustain my denial, except what has been already extracted, from

the unfriendly writings of Plato himself, respecting Protagoras and

Hippias,—with what we know from Xenophon about Prodikus,—I should

consider my case made out as vindicating the sophists generally from

such an accusation. If refutation to the doctrine of Kalliklês were

needed, it would be obtained quite as efficaciously from Prodikus and

Protagoras as from Sokratês and Plato.

[609] See the same matter of fact strongly stated by Sokratês in

the Memorab. of Xenophon, ii, 1, 13.

[610] Schleiermacher (in the Prolegomena to his translation

of the Theætetus, p. 183) represents that Plato intended to

refute Aristippus in the person of Kalliklês; which supposition

he sustains, by remarking that Aristippus affirmed that there

was _no such thing as justice by nature_, but only by law and

convention. But the affirmation of Kalliklês is the direct

contrary of that which Schleiermacher ascribes to Aristippus.

Kalliklês not only does not deny justice by nature, but affirms

it in the most direct manner,—explains what it is, that it

consists in the right of the strongest man to make use of his

strength without any regard to others,—and puts it above the

justice of law and society, in respect to authority.

Ritter and Brandis are yet more incorrect in their accusations of

the sophists, founded upon this same doctrine. The former says

(p. 581): “It is affirmed as a common tenet of the sophists,

there is no right by nature, but only by convention;” compare

Brandis, p. 521. The very passages to which these writers refer,

as far as they prove anything, prove the contrary of what they

assert; and Preller actually imputes the contrary tenet to the

sophists (Histor. Philosoph. c. 4, p. 130, Hamburg, 1838) with

just as little authority. Both Ritter and Brandis charge the

sophists with wickedness for this alleged tenet; for denying that

there was any right by nature, and allowing no right except by

convention; a doctrine which had been maintained before them by

Archelaus (Diogen. Laërt. ii, 16). Now Plato (Legg. x, p. 889),

whom these writers refer to, charges certain wise men—σοφοὺς

ἰδιώτας τε καὶ ποιητὰς (he does not mention sophists)—with

wickedness, but on the ground directly opposite; because _they

did acknowledge a right by_ nature, _of greater authority

than the right laid down by_ the legislator; and because they

encouraged pupils to follow this supposed right of nature,

disobeying the law; interpreting the right of nature as Kalliklês

does in the Gorgias!

Teachers are thus branded as wicked men by Ritter and Brandis,

for the negative, and by Plato, if he here means the sophists,

for the affirmative doctrine.

But this is not the strongest part of the vindication.

First, Kalliklês himself is not a sophist, nor represented by Plato

as such. He is a young Athenian citizen, of rank and station,

belonging to the deme Acharnæ; he is intimate with other young men

of condition in the city, has recently entered into active political

life, and bends his whole soul towards it; he disparages philosophy,

and speaks with utter contempt about the sophists.[611] If, then,

it were even just, which I do not admit, to infer from opinions put

into the mouth of one sophist, that the same were held by another

or by all of them, it would not be the less unjust to draw the like

inference from opinions professed by one who is not a sophist, and

who despises the whole profession.

[611] Plato, Gorgias, c. 37, p. 481, D; c. 41, p. 485, B, D; c.

42, p. 487, C; c. 50, p. 495, B; c. 70, p. 515, A. σὺ μὲν αὐτὸς

ἄρτι ἄρχει πράττειν τὰ τῆς πόλεως πράγματα; compare c. 55, p.

500, C. His contempt for the sophists, c. 75, p. 519, E, with the

note of Heindorf.

Secondly, if any man will read attentively the course of the

dialogue, he will see that the doctrine of Kalliklês is such as no

one dared publicly to propound. So it is conceived both by Kalliklês

himself, and by Sokratês. The former first takes up the conversation,

by saying that his predecessor Pôlus had become entangled in a

contradiction, because he had not courage enough openly to announce

an unpopular and odious doctrine; but he, Kalliklês, was less

shamefaced, and would speak out boldly that doctrine which others

kept to themselves for fear of shocking the hearers. “Certainly (says

Sokratês to him) your audacity is abundantly shown by the doctrine

which you have just laid down; you set forth plainly that which other

people think, but do not choose to utter.”[612] Now, opinions of

which Pôlus, an insolent young man, was afraid to proclaim himself

the champion, must have been revolting indeed to the sentiments

of hearers. How then can any reasonable man believe, that such

opinions were not only openly propounded, but seriously inculcated as

truth upon audiences of youthful hearers, by the sophists? We know

that the teaching of the latter was public in the highest degree;

publicity was pleasing as well as profitable to them; among the many

disparaging epithets heaped upon them, ostentation and vanity are two

of the most conspicuous. Whatever they taught, they taught publicly;

and I contend, with full conviction, that, had they even agreed with

Kalliklês in this opinion, they could neither have been sufficiently

audacious, nor sufficiently their own enemies, to make it a part of

their public teaching; but would have acted like Pôlus, and kept the

doctrine to themselves.

[612] Plato, Gorgias, c. 38, p. 482, E. ἐκ ταύτης γὰρ αὖ τῆς

ὁμολογίας αὐτὸς ὑπὸ σοῦ συμποδισθεὶς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις ἐπεστομίσθη

(Polus), ~αἰσχυνθεὶς ἃ ἐνόει εἰπεῖν~· σὺ γὰρ τῷ ὄντι, ὦ Σώκρατες,

εἰς τοιαῦτα ἄγεις φορτικὰ καὶ δημηγορικὰ, φάσκων τὴν ἀλήθειαν

διώκειν ... ἐὰν οὖν τις ~αἰσχύνηται καὶ μὴ τολμᾷ λέγειν ἅπερ

νοεῖ~, ἀναγκάζεται ἐναντία λέγειν.

Καὶ μὴν (says Sokratês to Kalliklês, c. 42, p. 487, D.) ὅτι γε

οἷος ~παῤῥησιάζεσθαι~ καὶ μὴ αἰσχύνεσθαι, αὐτός τε φῂς, καὶ ὁ

λόγος, ὃν ὀλίγον πρότερον ἔλεγες, ὁμολογεῖ σοι. Again, c. 47,

p. 492, D. Οὐκ ἀγεννῶς γε, ὦ Καλλικλεῖς, ἐπεξέρχει τῷ λόγῳ

παῤῥησιαζόμενος· ~σαφῶς γὰρ σὺ νῦν λέγεις ἃ οἱ ἄλλοι διανοοῦνται

μὲν, λέγειν δὲ οὐκ ἐθέλουσι~.

Again, from Kalliklês, ὃ ἐγώ σοι νῦν ~παῤῥησιαζόμενος~ λέγω, c.

46, p. 491, E.

Thirdly, this latter conclusion will be rendered doubly certain,

when we consider of what city we are now speaking. Of all places in

the world, the democratical Athens is the last in which the doctrine

advanced by Kalliklês could possibly have been professed by a public

teacher; or even by Kalliklês himself, in any public meeting. It is

unnecessary to remind the reader how profoundly democratical was the

sentiment and morality of the Athenians,—how much they loved their

laws, their constitution, and their political equality,—how jealous

their apprehension was of any nascent or threatening despotism. All

this is not simply admitted, but even exaggerated, by Mr. Mitford,

Wachsmuth, and other anti-democratical writers, who often draw from

it materials for their abundant censures. Now the very point which

Sokratês, in this dialogue, called “Gorgias,” seeks to establish

against Kalliklês, against the rhetors, and against the sophists,

is, that they courted, flattered, and truckled to the sentiment of

the Athenian people, with degrading subservience; that they looked

to the immediate gratification simply, and not to permanent moral

improvement of the people; that they had not courage to address to

them any unpalatable truths, however salutary, but would shift and

modify opinions in every way, so as to escape giving offence;[613]

that no man who put himself prominently forward at Athens had any

chance of success, unless he became moulded and assimilated, from the

core, to the people and their type of sentiment[614]. Granting such

charges to be true, how is it conceivable that any sophist, or any

rhetor, could venture to enforce upon an Athenian public audience the

doctrine laid down by Kalliklês? To tell such an audience: “Your laws

and institutions are all violations of the law of nature, contrived

to disappoint the Alkibiadês or Napoleon among you of his natural

right to become your master, and to deal with you petty men as his

slaves. All your unnatural precautions, and conventional talk, in

favor of legality and equal dealing, will turn out to be nothing

better than pitiful impotence[615], as soon as _he_ finds a good

opportunity of standing forward in his full might and energy, so as

to put you into your proper places, and show you what privileges

Nature intends for her favorites!” Conceive such a doctrine

propounded by a lecturer to assembled Athenians! A doctrine just as

revolting to Nikias as to Kleon, and which even Alkibiadês would be

forced to affect to disapprove; since it is not simply anti-popular,

not simply despotic, but the drunken extravagance of despotism. The

Great man, as depicted by Kalliklês, stands in the same relation to

ordinary mortals, as Jonathan Wild the Great, in the admirable parody

of Fielding.

[613] This quality is imputed by Sokratês to Kalliklês in a

remarkable passage of the Gorgias, c. 37, p. 481, D, E, the

substance of which is thus stated by Stallbaum in his note:

“Carpit Socrates Calliclis levitatem, mobili populi turbæ nunquam

non blandientis et adulantis.”

It is one of the main points of Sokratês in the dialogue, to

make out that the practice, for he will not call it an art, of

sophists, as well as rhetors, aims at nothing but the immediate

gratification of the people, without any regard to their ultimate

or durable benefit; that they are branches of the widely-extended

knack of flattery (Gorgias, c. 19, p. 464, D; c. 20, p. 465, C;

c. 56, p. 501, C; c. 75, p. 520, B).

[614] Plato, Gorgias, c. 68, p. 513. Οὐ γὰρ μιμητὴν δεῖ εἶναι,

ἀλλ᾽ αὐτοφυῶς ὅμοιον τούτοις, εἰ μέλλεις τι γνήσιον ἀπεργάζεσθαι

εἰς φιλίαν τῷ Ἀθηναίων δήμῳ.... Ὅστις οὖν σε τούτοις ὁμοιότατον

ἀπεργάσεται, οὗτός σε ποιήσει, ὡς ἐπιθυμεῖς πολιτικὸς εἶναι,

πολιτικὸν καὶ ῥητορικόν· τῷ αὐτῶν γὰρ ἤθει λεγομένων τῶν λόγων

ἕκαστοι χαίρουσι, τῷ δὲ ἀλλοτρίῳ ἄχθονται.

[615] Plato, Gorgias, c. 46, p. 492, C (the words of Kalliklês).

Τὰ δὲ ἄλλα ταῦτ᾽ ἐστὶ τὰ καλλωπίσματα, τὰ παρὰ φύσιν ξυνθήματα,

ἀνθρώπων φλυαρία καὶ οὐδενὸς ἄξια.

That sophists, whom Plato accuses of slavish flattery to the

democratical ear, should gratuitously insult it by the proposition of

such tenets, is an assertion not merely untrue, but utterly absurd.

Even as to Sokratês, we know from Xenophon how much the Athenians

were offended with him, and how much it was urged by the accusers

on his trial, that in his conversations he was wont to cite with

peculiar relish the description, in the second book of the Iliad,

of Odysseus following the Grecian crowd, when running away from the

agora to get on shipboard, and prevailing upon them to come back, by

gentle words addressed to the chiefs, but by blows of his stick,

accompanied with contemptuous reprimand, to the common people. The

indirect evidence thus afforded, that Sokratês countenanced unequal

dealing and ill usage towards the many, told much against him in

the minds of the dikasts. What would they have felt then towards a

sophist who publicly professed the political morality of Kalliklês?

The truth is, not only was it impossible that any such morality, or

anything of the same type even much diluted, could find its way into

the educational lectures of professors at Athens, but the fear would

be in the opposite direction. If the sophist erred in either way,

it would be in that which Sokratês imputes, by making his lectures

over-democratical. Nay, if we suppose any opportunity to have arisen

of discussing the doctrine of Kalliklês, he would hardly omit to

flatter the ears of the surrounding democrats by enhancing the

beneficent results of legality and equal dealing, and by denouncing

this “natural despot,” or undisclosed Napoleon, as one who must

either take his place under such restraints, or find a place in some

other city.

I have thus shown, even from Plato himself, that the doctrine

ascribed to Kalliklês neither did enter, nor could have entered, into

the lectures of a sophist or professed teacher. The same conclusion

may be maintained respecting the doctrine of Thrasymachus in the

first book of the “Republic.” Thrasymachus was a rhetorical teacher,

who had devised precepts respecting the construction of an oration

and the training of young men for public speaking. It is most

probable that he confined himself, like Gorgias, to this department,

and that he did not profess to give moral lectures, like Protagoras

and Prodikus. But granting him to have given such, he would not

talk about justice in the way in which Plato makes him talk, if he

desired to give any satisfaction to an Athenian audience. The mere

brutality and ferocious impudence of demeanor even to exaggeration,

with which Plato invests him, is in itself a strong proof that the

doctrine, ushered in with such a preface, was not that of a popular

and acceptable teacher, winning favor in public audiences. He defines

justice to be “the interest of the superior power; that rule, which,

in every society, the dominant power prescribes, as being for its own

advantage.” A man is just, he says, for the advantage of another,

not for his own: he is weak, cannot help himself, and must submit

to that which the stronger authority, whether despot, oligarchy, or

commonwealth, commands.

This theory is essentially different from the doctrine of Kalliklês,

as set forth a few pages back; for Thrasymachus does not travel out

of society to insist upon anterior rights dating from a supposed

state of nature; he takes societies as he finds them, recognizing the

actual governing authority of each as the canon and constituent of

justice or injustice. Stallbaum and other writers have incautiously

treated the two theories as if they were the same; and with something

even worse than want of caution, while they pronounce the theory

of Thrasymachus to be detestably immoral, announce it as having

been propounded not by him only, but by _The Sophists_; thus, in

their usual style, dealing with the sophists as if they were a

school, sect, or partnership with mutual responsibility. Whoever has

followed the evidence which I have produced respecting Protagoras and

Prodikus, will know how differently these latter handled the question

of justice.

But the truth is, that the theory of Thrasymachus, though incorrect

and defective, is not so detestable as these writers represent. What

makes it seem detestable, is the style and manner in which he is

made to put it forward; which causes the just man to appear petty

and contemptible, while it surrounds the unjust man with enviable

attributes. Now this is precisely the circumstance which revolts

the common sentiments of mankind, as it revolts also the critics

who read what is said by Thrasymachus. The moral sentiments exist

in men’s minds in complex and powerful groups, associated with

some large words and emphatic forms of speech. Whether an ethical

theory satisfies the exigencies of reason, or commands and answers

to all the phenomena, a common audience will seldom give themselves

the trouble to consider with attention; but what they imperiously

exact, and what is indispensable to give the theory any chance

of success, is, that it shall exhibit to their feelings the just

man as respectable and dignified, and the unjust man as odious

and repulsive. Now that which offends in the language ascribed to

Thrasymachus is, not merely the absence, but the reversal, of this

condition; the presentation of the just man as weak and silly, and

of injustice in all the _prestige_ of triumph and dignity. And for

this very reason, I venture to infer that such a theory was never

propounded by Thrasymachus to any public audience in the form in

which it appears in Plato. For Thrasymachus was a rhetor, who had

studied the principles of his art: now we know that these common

sentiments of an audience, were precisely what the rhetors best

understood, and always strove to conciliate. Even from the time of

Gorgias, they began the practice of composing beforehand declamations

upon the general heads of morality, which were ready to be introduced

into actual speeches as occasion presented itself, and in which

appeal was made to the moral sentiments foreknown as common, with

more or less of modification, to all the Grecian assemblies. The real

Thrasymachus, addressing any audience at Athens, would never have

wounded these sentiments, as the Platonic Thrasymachus is made to do

in the “Republic.” Least of all would he have done this, if it be

true of him, as Plato asserts of the rhetors and sophists generally,

that they thought about nothing but courting popularity, without any

sincerity of conviction.

Though Plato thinks fit to bring out the opinion of Thrasymachus

with accessories unnecessarily offensive, and thus to enhance

the dialectical triumph of Sokratês by the brutal manners of the

adversary, he was well aware that he had not done justice to the

opinion itself, much less confuted it. The proof of this is, that

in the second book of the “Republic,” after Thrasymachus has

disappeared, the very same opinion is taken up by Glaukon and

Adeimantus, and set forth by both of them, though they disclaim

entertaining it as their own, as suggesting grave doubts and

difficulties which they desire to hear solved by Sokratês. Those

who read attentively the discourses of Glaukon and Adeimantus, will

see that the substantive opinion ascribed to Thrasymachus, apart

from the brutality with which he is made to state it, does not even

countenance the charge of immoral teaching against _him_, much

less against the sophists generally. Hardly anything in Plato’s

compositions is more powerful than those discourses. They present,

in a perspicuous and forcible manner, some of the most serious

difficulties with which ethical theory is required to grapple. And

Plato can answer them only in one way, by taking society to pieces,

and reconstructing it in the form of his imaginary republic. The

speeches of Glaukon and Adeimantus form the immediate preface to

the striking and elaborate description which he goes through, of

his new state of society, nor do they receive any other answer than

what is implied in that description. Plato indirectly confesses that

he cannot answer them, assuming social institutions to continue

unreformed: and his reform is sufficiently fundamental.[616]

[616] I omitted to notice the Dialogue of Plato entitled

Euthydemus, wherein Sokratês is introduced in conversation with

the two persons called sophists, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus,

who are represented as propounding a number of verbal quibbles,

assertions of double sense, arising from equivocal grammar or

syntax,—fallacies of mere diction, without the least plausibility

as to the sense,—specimens of jests and hoax, p. 278, B. They are

described as extravagantly conceited, while Sokratês is painted

with his usual affectation of deference and modesty. He himself,

during a part of the dialogue, carries on conversation in his

own dialectical manner with the youthful Kleinias; who is then

handed over to be taught by Euthydemus and Dionysodorus; so that

the contrast between their style of questioning, and that of

Sokratês, is forcibly brought out.

To bring out this contrast, appears to me the main purpose

of the dialogue, as has already been remarked by Socher and

others (see Stallbaum, Prolegom. ad Euthydem. pp. 15-65): but

its construction, its manner, and its result, previous to the

concluding conversation between Sokratês and Kriton separately,

is so thoroughly comic, that Ast, on this and other grounds,

rejects it as spurious and unworthy of Plato (see Ast, über

Platons Leben und Schriften, pp. 414-418).

Without agreeing in Ast’s inference, I recognize the violence

of the caricature which Plato has here presented under the

characters of Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. And it is for this

reason, among many others, that I protest the more emphatically

against the injustice of Stallbaum and the commentators

generally, who consider these two persons as disciples of

Protagoras, and samples of what is called “Sophistica,” the

sophistical practice, the sophists generally. There is not the

smallest ground for considering these two men as disciples of

Protagoras, who is presented to us, even by Plato himself, under

an aspect as totally different from them as it is possible

to imagine. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus are described, by

Plato himself in this very dialogue, as old men who had been

fencing-masters, and who had only within the last two years

applied themselves to the eristic or controversial dialogue

(Euthyd. c. 1, p. 272, C.; c. 3, p. 273, E). Schleiermacher

himself accounts their personal importance so mean, that he

thinks Plato could not have intended to attack them, but meant

to attack Antisthenês and the Megaric school of philosophers

(Prolegom. ad Euthydem. vol. iii, pp. 403, 404, of his

translation of Plato). So contemptible does Plato esteem them,

that Krito blames Sokratês for having so far degraded himself as

to be seen talking with them before many persons (p. 305, B, c.

30).

The name of Protagoras occurs only once in the dialogue, in

reference to the doctrine, started by Euthydemus, that false

propositions or contradictory propositions were impossible,

because no one could either think about or talk about _that

which was not_, or _the non-existent_ (p. 284, A; 286, C). This

doctrine is said by Sokratês to have been much talked of “by

Protagoras, and by men yet earlier than he.” It is idle to

infer from such a passage, any connection or analogy between

these men and Protagoras, as Stallbaum labors to do throughout

his Prolegomena; affirming (in his note on p. 286, C,) most

incorrectly, that Protagoras maintained this doctrine about τὸ μὴ

ὂν, or the non-existent, because he had _too great faith_ in the

evidence of the senses; whereas we know from Plato that it had

its rise with Parmenidês, who rejected the evidence of the senses

entirely (see Plato, Sophist. 24, p. 237, A, with Heindorf and

Stallbaum’s notes). Diogenes Laërtius (ix, 8, 53) falsely asserts

that Protagoras was the _first_ to broach the doctrine, and even

cites as his witness Plato in the Euthydemus, where the exact

contrary is stated. Whoever broached it first, it was a doctrine

following plausibly from the then received Realism, and Plato was

long perplexed before he could solve the difficulty to his own

satisfaction (Theætet. p. 187, D).

I do not doubt that there were in Athens persons who abused the

dialectical exercise for frivolous puzzles, and it was well for

Plato to compose a dialogue exhibiting the contrast between these

men and Sokratês. But to treat Euthydemus and Dionysodorus as

samples of “The Sophists,” is altogether unwarranted.

I call particular attention to this circumstance, without which

we cannot fairly estimate the sophists, or practical teachers of

Athens, face to face with their accuser-general, Plato. He was a

great and systematic theorist, whose opinions on ethics, politics,

cognition, religion, etc., were all wrought into harmony by his own

mind, and stamped with that peculiarity which is the mark of an

original intellect. So splendid an effort of speculative genius is

among the marvels of the Grecian world. His dissent from all the

societies which he saw around him, not merely democratical, but

oligarchical and despotic also, was of the deepest and most radical

character. Nor did he delude himself by the belief, that any partial

amendment of that which he saw around could bring about the end which

he desired: he looked to nothing short of a new genesis of the man

and the citizen, with institutions calculated from the beginning to

work out the full measure of perfectibility. His fertile scientific

imagination realized this idea in the “Republic.” But that very

systematic and original character, which lends so much value and

charm to the substantive speculations of Plato, counts as a deduction

from his trustworthiness as critic or witness, in reference to the

living agents whom he saw at work in Athens and other cities, as

statesmen, generals, or teachers. His criticisms are dictated by

his own point of view, according to which the entire society was

corrupt, and all the instruments who carried on its functions were

of essentially base metal. Whoever will read either the “Gorgias” or

the “Republic,” will see in how sweeping and indiscriminate a manner

he passes his sentence of condemnation. Not only all the sophists

and all the rhetors,[617] but all the musicians and dithyrambic

or tragic poets; all the statesmen, past as well as present, not

excepting even the great Periklês, receive from his hands one common

stamp of dishonor. Every one of these men are numbered by Plato among

the numerous category of flatterers, who minister to the immediate

gratification and to the desires of the people, without looking to

their permanent improvement, or making them morally better. “Periklês

and Kimon (says Sokratês in the “Gorgias”) are nothing but servants

or ministers who supply the immediate appetites and tastes of the

people; just as the baker and the confectioner do in their respective

departments, without knowing or caring whether the food will do

any real good, a point which the physician alone can determine. As

ministers, they are clever enough: they have provided the city amply

with tribute, walls, docks, ships, and _such other follies_: but I

(Sokratês) am the only man in Athens who aim, so far as my strength

permits, at the true purpose of politics, the mental improvement of

the people.”[618] So wholesale a condemnation betrays itself as the

offspring, and the consistent offspring, of systematic peculiarity of

vision, the prejudice of a great and able mind.

[617] Plato, Gorgias, c. 57, 58; pp. 502, 503.

[618] Plato, Gorgias, c. 72, 73, p. 517 (Sokratês speaks):

Ἀληθεῖς ἄρα οἱ ἔμπροσθεν λόγοι ἦσαν, ὅτι οὐδένα ἡμεῖς ἴσμεν ἄνδρα

ἀγαθὸν γεγονότα τὰ πολιτικὰ ἐν τῇδε τῇ πόλει.

Ὦ δαιμόνιε, οὐδ᾽ ἐγὼ ψέγω τούτους (Periklês and Kimon) ὥς

γε ~διακόνους~ εἶναι πόλεως, ἀλλά μοι δοκοῦσι τῶν γε νῦν

~διακονικώτεροι~ γεγονέναι καὶ μᾶλλον οἷοί τε ἐκπορίζειν τῇ

πόλει ὧν ἐπεθύμει. Ἀλλὰ γὰρ μεταβιβάζειν τὰς ἐπιθυμίας καὶ μὴ

ἐπιτρέπειν, πείθοντες καὶ βιαζόμενοι ἐπὶ τοῦτο, ὅθεν ἔμελλον

ἀμείνους ἔσεσθαι οἱ πολῖται, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, οὐδὲν τούτων

διέφερον ἐκεῖνοι· ὅπερ μόνον ἔργον ἐστὶν ἀγαθοῦ πολίτου.

Ἄνευ γὰρ σωφροσύνης καὶ δικαιοσύνης, λιμένων καὶ νεωρίων καὶ

τειχῶν καὶ φόρων καὶ ~τοιούτων φλυαριῶν~ ἐμπεπλήκασι τὴν πόλιν

(c. 74, p. 519, A).

Οἶμαι (says Sokratês, c. 77, p. 521, D.) μετ᾽ ὀλίγων Ἀθηναίων,

ἵνα μὴ εἴπω μόνος, ἐπιχειρεῖν τῇ ὡς ἀληθῶς πολιτικῇ τέχνῃ καὶ

πράττειν τὰ πολιτικὰ μόνος τῶν νῦν, ἅτε οὖν οὐ πρὸς χάριν λέγων

τοὺς λόγους οὓς λέγω ἑκάστοτε, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸ βέλτιστον, οὐ πρὸς τὸ

ἥδιστον, etc.

It would be not less unjust to appreciate the sophists or the

statesmen of Athens from the point of view of Plato, than the

present teachers and politicians of England or France from that

of Mr. Owen or Fourier. Both the one and the other class labored

for society as it stood at Athens: the statesmen carried on the

business of practical politics, the sophist trained up youth for

practical life in all its departments, as family men, citizens, and

leaders, to obey as well as to command. Both accepted the system as

it stood, without contemplating the possibility of a new birth of

society: both ministered to certain exigences, held their anchorage

upon certain sentiments, and bowed to a certain morality, actually

felt among the living men around them. That which Plato says of the

statesmen of Athens is perfectly true, that they were only servants

or ministers of the people. He, who tried the people and the entire

society by comparison with an imaginary standard of his own, might

deem all these ministers worthless in the lump, as carrying on a

system too bad to be mended; but, nevertheless, the difference

between a competent and an incompetent minister, between Periklês

and Nikias, was of unspeakable moment to the security and happiness

of the Athenians. What the sophists on their part undertook was, to

educate young men so as to make them better qualified for statesmen

or ministers; and Protagoras would have thought it sufficient honor

to himself,—as well as sufficient benefit to Athens, which assuredly

it would have been,—if he could have inspired any young Athenian with

the soul and the capacities of his friend and companion Periklês.

So far is Plato from considering the sophists as the corruptors

of Athenian morality, that he distinctly protests against that

supposition, in a remarkable passage of the “Republic.” It is,

he says, the whole people, or the society, with its established

morality, intelligence, and tone of sentiment, which is intrinsically

vicious; the teachers of such a society must be vicious also,

otherwise their teaching would not be received; and even if their

private teaching were ever so good, its effect would be washed away,

except in some few privileged natures, by the overwhelming deluge

of pernicious social influences.[619] Nor let any one imagine,

as modern readers are but too ready to understand it, that this

poignant censure is intended for Athens so far forth as a democracy.

Plato was not the man to preach king-worship, or wealth-worship, as

social or political remedies: he declares emphatically that not one

of the societies then existing was such that a truly philosophical

nature could be engaged in active functions under it.[620] These

passages would be alone sufficient to repel the assertions of those

who denounce the sophists as poisoners of Athenian morality, on the

alleged authority of Plato.

[619] This passage is in Republ. vi, 6, p. 492, _seq._ I put the

first words of the passage (which is too long to be cited, but

which richly deserves to be read, entire) in the translation

given by Stallbaum in his note.

Sokratês says to Adeimantus: “An tu quoque putas esse quidem

sophistas, homines privatos, qui corrumpunt juventutem in

quâcunque re mentione dignâ; nec illud tamen animadvertisti et

tibi persuasisti, quod multo magis debebas, ipsos Athenienses

turpissimos esse aliorum corruptores?”

Yet the commentator who translates this passage, does not scruple

(in his Prolegomena to the Republic, pp. xliv, xlv, as well as to

the Dialogues) to heap upon the sophists aggravated charges, as

the actual corruptors of Athenian morality.

[620] Plato, Repub. vi, 11, p. 497, B. μηδεμίαν ἀξίαν εἶναι τῶν

νῦν κατάστασιν πόλεως φιλοσόφου φύσεως, etc.

Compare Plato, Epistol. vii, p. 325, A.

Nor is it at all more true that they were men of mere words, and made

their pupils no better,—a charge just as vehemently pressed against

Sokratês as against the sophists,—and by the same class of enemies,

such as Anytus,[621] Aristophanês, Eupolis, etc. It was mainly from

sophists like Hippias that the Athenian youth learned what they knew

of geometry, astronomy, and arithmetic: but the range of what is

called special science, possessed even by the teacher, was at that

time very limited; and the matter of instruction communicated was

expressed under the general title of “Words, or Discourses,” which

were always taught by the sophists, in connection with thought, and

in reference to a practical use. The capacities of thought, speech,

and action, are conceived in conjunction by Greeks generally, and by

teachers like Isokratês and Quintilian especially; and when young men

in Greece, like the Bœotian Proxenus, put themselves under training

by Gorgias or any other sophist, it was with a view of qualifying

themselves, not merely to speak, but to act.[622]

[621] Anytus was the accuser of Sokratês: his enmity to the

sophists may be seen in Plato, Meno. p. 91, C.

[622] Xenoph. Anabas. ii, 6. Πρόξενος—εὐθὺς μὲν μειράκιον ὢν

ἐπεθύμει γενέσθαι ἀνὴρ ~τὰ μεγάλα πράττειν ἱκανός~· καὶ διὰ

ταύτην τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν ἔδωκε Γοργίᾳ ἀργύριον τῷ Λεοντίνῳ....

Τοσούτων δ᾽ ἐπιθυμῶν, σφόδρα ἔνδηλον αὖ καὶ τοῦτο εἶχεν, ὅτι

τούτων οὐδὲν ἂν θέλοι κτᾶσθαι μετὰ ἀδικίας, ἀλλὰ σὺν τῷ δικαίῳ

καὶ καλῷ ᾤετο δεῖν τούτων τυγχάνειν, ἄνευ δὲ τούτων μή.

Proxenus, as described by his friend Xenophon, was certainly a

man who did no dishonor to the moral teaching of Gorgias.

The connection between thought, speech, and action, is seen even

in the jests of Aristophanês upon the purposes of Sokratês and

the sophists:—

Νικᾷν πράττων καὶ βουλεύων καὶ τῇ γλώττῃ πολεμίζων (Nubes, 418).

Most of the pupils of the sophists, as of Sokratês[623] himself,

were young men of wealth; a fact, at which Plato sneers, and others

copy him, as if it proved that they cared only about high pay. But I

do not hesitate to range myself on the side of Isokratês,[624] and

to contend that the sophist himself had much to lose by corrupting

his pupils,—an argument used by Sokratês in defending himself

before the dikastery, and just as valid in defence of Protagoras or

Prodikus,[625]—and strong personal interest in sending them forth

accomplished and virtuous; that the best-taught youth were decidedly

the most free from crime and the most active towards good; that

among the valuable ideas and feelings which a young Athenian had

in his mind, as well as among the good pursuits which he followed,

those which he learned from the sophists counted nearly as the best;

that, if the contrary had been the fact, fathers would not have

continued so to send their sons, and pay their money. It was not

merely that these teachers countervailed in part the temptations to

dissipated enjoyment, but also that they were personally unconcerned

in the acrimonious slander and warfare of party in his native city;

that the topics with which they familiarized him were, the general

interests and duties of men and citizens; that they developed the

germs of morality in the ancient legends, as in Prodikus’s fable,

and amplified in his mind all the undefined cluster of associations

connected with the great words of morality; that they vivified in

him the sentiment of Pan-Hellenic brotherhood; and that, in teaching

him the art of persuasion,[626] they could not but make him feel the

dependence in which he stood towards those who were to be persuaded,

together with the necessity under which he lay of so conducting

himself as to conciliate their good-will.

[623] Plato, Apol. Sokr. c. 10, p. 23, C; Protagoras, p. 328, C.

[624] See Isokr. Or. xv, De Perm. sects. 218, 233, 235, 245, 254,

257.

[625] Plato, Apol. Sokrat. c. 13, p. 25, D.

[626] See these points strikingly put by Isokratês, in the Orat.

xv, De Permutatione, throughout, especially in sects. 294, 297,

305, 307; and again by Xenoph. Memorab. i, 2. 10, in reference to

the teaching of Sokratês.

The intimations given in Plato, of the enthusiastic reception

which Protagoras, Prodikus, and other sophists[627] met with in

the various cities; the description which we read, in the dialogue

called Protagoras, of the impatience of the youthful Hippokratês,

on hearing of the arrival of that sophist, insomuch that he awakens

Sokratês before daylight, in order to obtain an introduction to

the new-comer and profit by his teaching; the readiness of such

rich young men to pay money, and to devote time and trouble, for

the purpose of acquiring a personal superiority apart from their

wealth and station; the ardor with which Kallias is represented

as employing his house for the hospitable entertainment, and his

fortune for the aid, of the sophists; all this makes upon my mind an

impression directly the reverse of that ironical and contemptuous

phraseology with which it is set forth by Plato. Such sophists had

nothing to recommend them except superior knowledge and intellectual

force, combined with an imposing personality, making itself felt in

their lectures and conversation. It is to this that the admiration

was shown; and the fact that it was so shown, brings to view the

best attributes of the Greek, especially the Athenian mind. It

exhibits those qualities of which Periklês made emphatic boast in

his celebrated funeral oration;[628] conception of public speech as

a practical thing, not meant as an excuse for inaction, but combined

with energetic action, and turning it to good account by full and

open discussion beforehand; profound sensibility to the charm of

manifested intellect, without enervating the powers of execution

or endurance. Assuredly, a man like Protagoras, arriving in a city

with all this train of admiration laid before him, must have known

very little of his own interest or position, if he began to preach

a low or corrupt morality. If it be true generally, as Voltaire

has remarked, that “any man who should come to preach a relaxed

morality would be pelted,” much more would it be true of a sophist

like Protagoras, arriving in a foreign city with all the prestige

of a great intellectual name, and with the imagination of youths on

fire to hear and converse with him, that any similar doctrine would

destroy his reputation at once. Numbers of teachers have made their

reputation by inculcating overstrained asceticism; it will be hard to

find an example of success in the opposite vein.

[627] See a striking passage in Plato’s Republic, x, c, 4, p.

600, C.

[628] Thucyd. ii. 40. φιλοσοφοῦμεν ἄνευ μαλακίας—οὐ τοὺς λόγους

τοῖς ἔργοις βλαβὴν ἡγούμενοι—διαφερόντως δὲ καὶ τόδε ἔχομεν, ὥστε

τολμᾷν τε οἱ αὐτοὶ μάλιστα καὶ περὶ ὧν ἐπιχειρήσομεν ἐκλογίζεσθαι.