THE SOPHISTS (_concluded_)
_Nothing knowable--The solitude of scepticism--The lawlessness of
scepticism--The good in scepticism_
[183]
Gorgias was perhaps even more eminent a Sophist than Protagoras. He
was a native of Leontini in Sicily, and came to Athens in the year 427
B.C. on a public embassy from his native city. The splendid reputation
for political and rhetorical ability, which preceded him to Athens, he
fully justified both by his public appearances before the Athenian
assembly, and by the success of his private instructions to the crowds
of wealthy young men who resorted to him. He dressed in magnificent
style, and affected a lofty and poetical manner of speech, which
offended the more critical, but which pleased the crowd.
[181]
He also, like Protagoras, published a treatise in which he expounded
his fundamental principles, and like Protagoras, he preceded it with a
striking if somewhat ironical title, and an apophthegm in which he
summarised his doctrine. The title of his work was _Of the
Non-Existent_, that is, _Of Nature_, and {93} his dictum, "Nothing
exists, or if anything exists, it cannot be apprehended by man, and
even if it could be apprehended, the man who apprehended it could not
expound or explain it to his neighbour." In support of this strange
doctrine, Gorgias adopted the quibbling method of argument which had
been applied with some success to dialectical purposes by Zeno,
Melissus, and others (see above, pp. 44 _sqq._)
[185]
His chief argument to prove the first position laid down by him
depended on a double and ambiguous use of the word _is_; "That which is
not, _is_ the non-existent: the word _is_ must, therefore, be
applicable to it as truly as when we say That which is, _is_;
therefore, being is predicable of that which is not." So conversely he
proved not-being to be predicable of that which is. And in like manner
he made away with any possible assertions as to the finite or infinite,
the eternal or created, nature of that which is. Logic could supply
him with alternative arguments from whatever point he started, such as
would seem to land the question in absurdity. Hence his first position
was (he claimed) established, that 'Nothing is.'
To prove the second, that even if anything is, it cannot be known to
man, he argued thus: "If what a man thinks is not identical with what
is, plainly what is cannot be thought. And that what a man thinks is
not identical with what is can be {94} shown from the fact that
thinking does not affect the facts. You may imagine a man flying, or a
chariot coursing over the deep, but you do not find these things to
occur because you imagine them. Again, if we assume that what we think
is identical with what is, then it must be impossible to think of what
is not. But this is absurd; for we can think of such admittedly
imaginary beings as Scylla and Chimaera, and multitudes of others.
There is therefore no necessary relation between our thoughts and any
realities; we may believe, but we cannot prove, which (if any) of our
conceptions have relation to an external fact and which have not."
[187]
Nor thirdly, supposing any man had obtained an apprehension of what is
real, could he possibly communicate it to any one else. If a man saw
anything, he could not possibly by verbal description make clear what
it is he sees to a man who has never seen. And so if a man has not
himself the apprehension of reality, mere words from another cannot
possibly give him any idea of it. He may imagine he has the same idea
as the speaker, but where is he going to get the common test by which
to establish the identity?
Without attempting to follow Gorgias further, we can see plainly enough
the object and purport of the whole doctrine. Its main result is to
_isolate_. It isolates each man from his fellows; he cannot tell {95}
what they know or think, they cannot reach any common ground with him.
It isolates him from nature; he cannot tell what nature is, he cannot
tell whether he knows anything of nature or reality at all. It
isolates him from himself; he cannot tell for certain what relation
exists (if any) between what he imagines he perceives at any moment and
any remembered or imagined previous experiences; he cannot be sure that
there ever were any such experiences, or what that self was (if
anything) which had them, or whether there was or is any self
perceiving anything.
Let us imagine the moral effect on the minds of the ablest youth of
Greece of such an absolute collapse of belief. The philosophic
scepticism did not deprive them of their appetites or passions; it did
not in the least alter their estimate of the prizes of success, or the
desirability of wealth and power. All it did was to shatter the
invisible social bonds of reverence and honour and truth and justice,
which in greater or less degree act as a restraining force upon the
purely selfish appetites of men. Not only belief in divine government
disappeared, but belief in any government external or internal; justice
became a cheating device to deprive a man of what was ready to his
grasp; good-faith was stupidity when it was not a more subtle form of
deceit; morality was at best a mere convention which a man might cancel
if {96} he pleased; the one reality was the appetite of the moment, the
one thing needful its gratification; society, therefore, was universal
war, only with subtler weapons.
Of course Protagoras and Gorgias were only notable types of a whole
horde of able men who in various ways, and with probably less clear
notions than these men of the drift or philosophic significance of
their activity, helped all over Greece in the promulgation of this new
gospel of self-interest. Many Sophists no doubt troubled themselves
very little with philosophical questions; they were 'agnostics,'
know-nothings; all they professed to do was to teach some practical
skill of a verbal or rhetorical character. They had nothing to do with
the nature or value of ideals; they did not profess to say whether any
end or aim was in itself good or bad, but given an end or aim, they
were prepared to help those who hired them to acquire a skill which
would be useful towards attaining it.
But whether a philosophy or ultimate theory of life be expressly stated
or realised by a nation or an individual, or be simply ignored by them,
there always is some such philosophy or theory underlying their action,
and that philosophy or theory tends to work itself out to its logical
issue in action, whether men openly profess it or no. And the theory
of negation of law in nature or in man which underlay {97} the
sophistic practice had its logical and necessary effect on the social
structure throughout Greece, in a loosening of the bonds of religion,
of family reverence and affection, of patriotism, of law, of honour.
Thucydides in a well-known passage (iii. 82) thus describes the
prevalent condition of thought in his own time, which was distinctively
that of the sophistic teaching: "The common meaning of words was turned
about at men's pleasure; the most reckless bravo was deemed the most
desirable friend; a man of prudence and moderation was styled a coward;
a man who listened to reason was a good-for-nothing simpleton. People
were trusted exactly in proportion to their violence and
unscrupulousness, and no one was so popular as the successful
conspirator, except perhaps one who had been clever enough to outwit
him at his own trade, but any one who honestly attempted to remove the
causes of such treacheries was considered a traitor to his party. As
for oaths, no one imagined they were to be kept a moment longer than
occasion required; it was, in fact, an added pleasure to destroy your
enemy if you had managed to catch him through his trusting to your
word."
These are the words not of Plato, who is supposed often enough to allow
his imagination to carry him beyond his facts about the Sophists as
about others, nor are they the words of a satiric poet such as {98}
Aristophanes. They are the words of the most sober and philosophic of
Greek historians, and they illustrate very strikingly the tendency,
nay, the absolute necessity, whereby the theories of philosophers in
the closet extend themselves into the market-place and the home, and
find an ultimate realisation of themselves for good or for evil in the
'business and bosoms' of the common crowd.
It is not to be said that the individualistic and iconoclastic movement
which the Sophists represented was wholly bad, or wholly unnecessary,
any more (to again quote a modern instance) than that the French
Revolution was. There was much, no doubt, in the traditional religion
and morality of Greece at that time which represented obsolete and
antiquated conditions, when every city lived apart from its neighbours
with its own narrow interests and local cults and ceremonials. Greece
was ceasing to be an unconnected crowd of little separate communities;
unconsciously it was preparing itself for a larger destiny, that of
conqueror and civiliser of East and West. This scepticism, utterly
untenable and unworkable on the lines extravagantly laid down by its
leading teachers, represented the birth of new conditions of thought
and action adapted to the new conditions of things. On the surface,
and accepted literally, it seemed to deny the possibility of knowledge;
it threatened to destroy humanity and {99} civilisation. But its
strength lay latent in an implied denial only of what was merely
traditional; it denied the finality of purely Greek preconceptions; it
was laying the foundations of a broader humanity. It represented the
claim of a new generation to have no dogma or assumption thrust on it
by mere force, physical or moral. "_I_ too am a man," it said; "_I_
have rights; _my_ reason must be convinced." This is the fundamental
thought at the root of most revolutions and reformations and revivals,
and the thought is therefore a necessary and a just one.
Unfortunately it seems to be an inevitable condition of human affairs
that nothing new, however necessary or good can come into being out of
the old, without much sorrow and many a birth-pang. The extravagant,
the impetuous, the narrow-minded on both sides seize on their points of
difference, raise them into battle-cries, and make what might be a
peaceful regeneration a horrid battlefield of contending hates. The
Christ when He comes brings not peace into the world, but a sword. And
men of evil passions and selfish ambitions are quick on both sides to
make the struggle of old and new ideals a handle for their own
indulgence or their own advancement; the Pharisees and the Judases
between them make the Advent in some of its aspects a sorry spectacle.
A reconciler was wanted who should wed what {100} was true in the new
doctrine of individualism with what was valuable in the old doctrine of
universal and necessary truth; who should be able to say, "Yes, I
acknowledge that your individual view of things must be reckoned with,
and mine, and everybody else's; and for that very reason do I argue for
a universal and necessary truth, because the very truth for you as an
individual is just this universal." The union and identification of
the Individual and Universal,--this paradox of philosophy is the
doctrine of Socrates.
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