THE SOPHISTS
_Anarchic philosophy--Success not truth--Man the measure--All opinions
true--Reductio ad absurdum_
A certain analogy may perhaps be discerned between the progression of
philosophic thought in Greece as we have traced it, and the political
development which had its course in almost every Greek state during the
same period. The Ionic philosophy may be regarded as corresponding
with the _kingly_ era in Greek politics. Philosophy sits upon the
heights and utters its authoritative dicta for the resolution of the
seeming contradictions of things. One principle is master, but the
testimony of the senses is not denied; a harmony of thought and
sensation is sought in the interpretation of appearances by the light
of a ruling idea. In Pythagoras and his order we have an
_aristocratic_ organisation of philosophy. Its truths are for the few,
the best men are the teachers, equal as initiated partakers in the
mysteries, supreme over all outside their society. A reasoned and
reasonable order and method are {83} symbolised by their theory of
Number; their philosophy is political, their politics oligarchic. In
the Eleatic school we have a succession of personal attempts to
construct a _domination_ in the theory of Nature; some ideal conception
is attempted to be so elevated above the data of sensation as to
override them altogether, and the general result we are now to see
throughout the philosophic world, as it was seen also throughout the
world of politics, in a total collapse of the principle of forced
authority, and a development, of successively nearer approaches to
anarchic individualism and doubt. The notion of an ultimately true and
real, whatever form it might assume in various theorists' hands, being
in its essence apart from and even antagonistic to the perceptions of
sense, was at last definitely cast aside as a delusion; what remained
were the individual perceptions, admittedly separate, unreasoned,
unrelated; Reason was dethroned, Chaos was king. In other words, what
_seemed_ to any individual sentient being at any moment to be, that for
him was, and nothing else was. The distinction between the real and
the apparent was definitely attempted to be abolished, not as hitherto
by rejecting the sensually apparent in favour of the rationally
conceived real, but by the denial of any such real altogether.
The individualistic revolution in philosophy not {84} only, however,
had analogies with the similar revolution contemporaneously going on in
Greek politics, it was greatly facilitated by it. Each, in short,
acted and reacted on the other. Just as the sceptical philosophy of
the Encyclopaedists in France promoted the Revolution, and the
Revolution in its turn developed and confirmed the philosophic
scepticism, so also the collapse of contending philosophies in Greece
promoted the collapse of contending systems of political authority, and
the collapse of political authority facilitated the growth of that
individualism in thought with which the name of the Sophists is
associated.
[178]
Cicero (_Brut_. 12) definitely connects the rise of these teachers with
the expulsion of the tyrants and the establishment of democratic
republics in Sicily. From 466 to 406 B.C. Syracuse was democratically
governed, and a 'free career to talents,' as in revolutionary France,
so also in revolutionary Greece, began to be promoted by the
elaboration of a system of persuasive argument. Devices of method
called 'commonplaces' were constructed, whereby, irrespective of the
truth or falsehood of the subject-matter, a favourable vote in the
public assemblies, a successful verdict in the public courts, might
more readily be procured. Thus by skill of verbal rhetoric, the worse
might be made to appear the better reason; and philosophy, so far as it
continued its functions, {85} became a search, not for the real amidst
the confusions of the seeming and unreal, but a search for the seeming
and the plausible, to the detriment, or at least to the ignoring, of
any reality at all.
The end of philosophy then was no longer universal truth, but
individual success; and consistently enough, the philosopher himself
professed the individualism of his own point of view, by teaching only
those who were prepared to pay him for his teaching. All over Greece,
with the growth of democracy, this philosophy of persuasion became
popular; but it was to Athens, under Pericles at this time the centre
of all that was most vivid and splendid in Greek life and thought, that
the chief teachers of the new philosophy flocked from every part of the
Greek world.
[177]
The first great leader of the Sophists was _Protagoras_. He, it is
said, was the first to teach for pay; he also was the first to adopt
the name of Sophist. In the word Sophist there was indeed latent the
idea which subsequently attached to it, but as first used it seems to
have implied this only, that _skill_ was the object of the teaching
rather than _truth_; the new teachers professed themselves 'practical
men,' not mere theorists.
The Greek word, in short, meant an able cultivated man in any branch of
the arts; and the development of practical capacity was doubtless what
Protagoras {86} intended to indicate as the purpose of his teaching,
when he called himself a Sophist. But the ability he really undertook
to cultivate was ability to _persuade_, for Greece at this time was
nothing if not political; and persuasive oratory was the one road to
political success. And as Athens was the great centre of Greek
politics, as well as of Greek intellect, to Athens Protagoras came as a
teacher.
He was born at Abdera, in Thrace (birthplace also of Democritus), in
480 B.C., began to teach at Athens about 451 B.C., and soon acquired
great influence with Pericles, the distinguished leader of the Athenian
democracy at this time. It is even alleged that when in 445 the
Athenians were preparing to establish a colony at Thurii in Italy,
Protagoras was requested to draw up a code of laws for the new state,
and personally to superintend its execution.
After spending some time in Italy he returned to Athens, and taught
there with great success for a number of years. Afterwards he taught
for some time in Sicily, and died at the age of seventy, after [178]
about forty years of professional activity. He does not seem to have
contented himself with the merely practical task of teaching rhetoric,
but in a work which he, perhaps ironically, entitled _Truth_, he
enunciated the principles on which he based his teaching. Those
principles were summed up in the sentence, "Man (by which he meant
_each_ man) is {87} the measure of all things, whether of their
existence when they do exist, or of their non-existence when [179] they
do not." In the development of this doctrine Protagoras starts from a
somewhat similar analysis of things to that of Heraclitus and others.
Everything is in continual flux, and the apparently real objects in
nature are the mere temporary and illusory result of the in themselves
invisible movements and minglings of the elements of which they are
composed; and not only is it a delusion to attempt to give a factitious
reality to the things which appear, it is equally a delusion to attempt
to separate the (supposed) thing perceived from the perception itself.
A thing is only as and when it is perceived. And a third delusion is
to attempt to separate a supposed perceiving mind from the perception;
all three exist only in and through the momentary perception; the
supposed reality behind this, whether external in the object or
internal in the mind, is a mere imagination. Thus the Heraclitean flux
in Nature was extended to Mind also; only the sensation exists, and
that only at the moment of its occurrence; this alone is truth, this
alone is reality; all else is delusion.
[180]
It followed from this that as a man felt a thing to be, so for him it
veritably was. Thus abstract truth or falsity could not be; the same
statements could be indifferently true or false--to different {88}
individuals at the same time, to the same individual at different
times. It followed that all appearances were equally true: what seemed
to be to any man, that was alone the true for him. The relation of
such a doctrine as this to politics and to morals is not far to seek.
Every man's opinion was as good as another's; if by persuasion you
succeeded in altering a man's opinion, you had not deceived the man,
his new opinion was as true (to him) as the old one. Persuasiveness,
therefore, was the only wisdom. Thus if a man is ill what he eats and
drinks seems bitter to him, and it is so; when he is well it seems the
opposite, and is so. He is not a wiser man in the second state than in
the first, but the second state is pleasanter. If then you can
persuade him that what he thinks bitter is really sweet, you have done
him good. This is what the physician tries to do by his drugs; this is
what the Sophist tries to do by his words. Virtue then is teachable in
so far as it is possible to persuade a boy or a man by rhetoric that
that course of conduct which pleases others is a pleasant course for
him. But if any one happens not to be persuaded of this, and continues
to prefer his own particular course of conduct, this _is_ for him the
good course. You cannot blame him; you cannot say he is wrong. If you
punish him you simply endeavour to supply the dose of unpleasantness
which may {89} be needed to put the balance in his case on the same
side as it already occupies in the case of other people.
It may be worth while to anticipate a little, and insert here in
summary the refutation of this position put into the mouth of Socrates
by Plato in the _Theaetetus_: "But I ought not to conceal from you that
there is a serious objection which may be urged against this doctrine
of Protagoras. For there are states, such as madness and dreaming, in
which perception is false; and half our life is spent in dreaming; and
who can say that at this instant we are not dreaming? Even the fancies
of madmen are real at the time. But if knowledge is perception, how
can we distinguish between the true and the false in such cases? . . .
Shall I tell you what amazes me in your friend Protagoras? 'What may
that be?' I like his doctrine that what appears is; but I wonder that
he did not begin his great work on truth with a declaration that a pig,
or a dog-faced baboon, or any other monster which has sensation, is a
measure of all things; then while we were reverencing him as a god he
might have produced a magnificent effect by expounding to us that he
was no wiser than a tadpole. For if truth is only sensation, and one
man's discernment is as good as another's, and every man is his own
judge, and everything that he judges is right and true, then {90} what
need of Protagoras to be our instructor at a high figure; and why
should we be less knowing than he is, or have to go to him, if every
man is the measure of all things?" . . . Socrates now resumes the
argument. As he is very desirous of doing justice to Protagoras, he
insists on citing his own words: 'What appears to each man is to him.'
"And how," asks Socrates, "are these words reconcilable with the fact
that all mankind are agreed in thinking themselves wiser than others in
some respects, and inferior to them in others? In the hour of danger
they are ready to fall down and worship any one who is their superior
in wisdom as if he were a god. And the world is full of men who are
asking to be taught and willing to be ruled, and of other men who are
willing to rule and teach them. All which implies that men do judge of
one another's impressions, and think some wise and others foolish. How
will Protagoras answer this argument? For he cannot say that no one
deems another ignorant or mistaken. If you form a judgment, thousands
and tens of thousands are ready to maintain the opposite. The
multitude may not and do not agree in Protagoras' own thesis, 'that man
is the measure of all things,' and then who is to decide? Upon hip own
showing must not his 'truth' depend on the number of suffrages, and be
more or less true in proportion as he has more or fewer of them? And
{91} [the majority being against him] he will be bound to acknowledge
that they speak truly who deny him to speak truly, which is a famous
jest. And if he admits that they speak truly who deny him to speak
truly, he must admit that he himself does not speak truly. But his
opponents will refuse to admit this as regards themselves, and he must
admit that they are right in their refusal. The conclusion is, that
all mankind, including Protagoras himself, will deny that he speaks
truly; and his truth will be true neither to himself nor to anybody
else" (Jowett, _Plato_, iv. pp. 239 _sqq._)
The refutation seems tolerably complete, but a good deal had to happen
before Greece was ready to accept or Plato to offer such a refutation.
{92}