Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/282

 264 SOPHISTS the Academy, next of the Lyceum the philosophers took the place of the sophists as the educators of Greece. The sophistical movement was then primarily an attempt to provide a general or liberal education which should supplement the customary instruction in reading, writing, gymnastic, and music. But, as the sophists of the first period chose for their instruments grammar, style, literature, and oratory, while those of the second and third developments were professed rhetoricians, sophistry exercised an important influence upon literature. Then again, as the movement, taking its rise in the philoso- phical agnosticism which grew out of the early physical systems, was itself persistently sceptical, sophistry may be regarded as an interlude in the history of philo- sophy. Finally, the practice of rhetoric and eristic, which presently became prominent in sophistical teaching, had, or at any rate seemed to have, a mischievous effect upon conduct ; and the charge of seeking, whether in exposition or in debate, not truth but victory which charge was impressively urged against the sophists by Plato grew into an accusation of holding and teaching immoral and unsocial doctrines, and in our own day has been the subject of eager controversy. In the present article the matters above indicated will be dealt with under the following heads : (1) the genesis and development of sophistry; (2) the relations of sophistry to education, literature, and philosophy ; (3) the theory of Grote. (1) Genesis and Development of Sophistry. Sophistry arose out of a crisis in philosophy. The earlier Ionian physicists, Thales, Anaximauder, and Anaximenes, in their attempts to trace the multiplicity of things to a single material element, had been troubled by no misgivings about the possibility of knowledge. But, when Heraclitus to the assumption of fire as the single material cause added the doctrine that all things are in perpetual flux, he found himself obliged to admit that things cannot be known. Thus, though, in so far as he asserted his funda- mental doctrine without doubt or qualification, he was a dogmatist, in all else he was a sceptic. Again, the Eleatic Parmenides, deriving from the theologian Xenophanes the distinction between cTricm^,?; and Soa, conceived that, whilst the One exists, and is the object of knowledge, the Multiplicity of things becomes, and is the object of opinion ; but, when his successor Zeno provided the system with a logic, the consistent application of that logic resolved the fundamental doctrine into the single proposi- tion " One is One," or, more exactly, into the single identity " One One." Thus Eleaticism, though professedly dogmatic, was inconsistent in its theory of the One and its attributes, and openly sceptical in regard to the world of nature. Lastly, the philosophers of the second physical succession, Empedocles and Anaxagoras, not directly attacking the great mystery of the One and the Many, but in virtue of a scientific instinct approaching it through the investigation of phenomena, were brought by their study of sensation to perceive and to proclaim the inade- quacy of the organs of sense. Thus they too, despite their air of dogmatism, were in effect sceptics. In short, from different standpoints, the three philosophical succes- sions had devised systems which were in reality sceptical, though they had none of them recognized the sceptical inference. Towards the middle of the 5th century, however, Protagoras of Abdera, taking account of the teaching of the first, and possibly of the second, of the physical successions, and Gorgias of Leontini, starting from the teaching of the metaphysical succession of Elea, drew that sceptical inference from which the philosophers had shrunk. If, argued Protagoras in a treatise entitled Truth, all things are in flux, so that sensation is subjective, it follows that " Man is the measure of all things, of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not"; in other words, there is no such thing as objective truth. Simi- larly, Gorgias, in a work On Nature, or on the Nonent, maintained (a) that nothing is, (b) that, if anything is, it cannot be known, (c) that, if anything is and can be known, it cannot be expressed in speech ; and the sum- maries which have been preserved by Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math., vii. 65-87) and by the author of the De Melissa, &c. (cc. 5, 6), show that, in defending these pro- positions, Gorgias availed himself of the arguments which Zeno had used to discredit the popular belief in the exist- ence of the Many; in other words, that Gorgias turned the destructive logic of Zeno against the constructive ontology of Parmenides, thereby not only reducing Eleaticism to nothingness, but also, until such time as a better logic than that of Zeno should be provided, precluding all philosophical inquiry whatsoever. Thus, whereas the representatives of the three successions had continued to regard themselves as philosophers or seekers after truth, Protagoras and Gorgias, plainly acknowledging their defeat, withdrew from the ungrateful struggle. Meagre as were the results which the earlier thinkers had obtained, the extinction of philosophy just at the time when the liberal arts became more technical, and consequently less available as employments of leisure, threatened to leave a blank in Hellenic life. Accordingly Protagoras, while with the one hand he put away philo- sophy, with the other offered a substitute. Emphasizing the function of the teacher, which with the philosophers had been subordinate, and proclaiming the right end of intellectual endeavour to be, not "truth" (dA^eta) or " wisdom " (ia), which was unattainable, but " virtue " or " excellence " (dperr/), he sought to communicate, not a theory of the universe, but an aptitude for civic life. " The lesson which I have to teach," Plato makes him say (Prot., 318 E), "is prudence or good counsel, both in respect of domestic matters, that the man may manage his household aright, and in respect of public affairs, that he may be thoroughly qualified to take part, both by deed and by word, in the business of the state. In other words, I profess to make men good citizens." As instruments of education Protagoras used grammar, style, poetry, and oratory. Thus, whereas hitherto the young Greek, having completed his elementary training in the schools of the ypa.fAp.a.Ticrrri'S, the Ki^apioT^s, and the TraiSor/at/^s, was left to prepare himself for his life's work as best he might, by philosophical speculation, by artistic practice, or otherwise, one who passed from the elementary schools to the lecture-room of Protagoras received from him a "higher education." The programme was exclusively literary, but for the moment it enabled Protagoras to satisfy the demand which he had discovered and evoked. Wherever he went, his lecture-room was crowded with admiring pupils, whose homage filled his purse and enhanced his reputation. After Protagoras the most prominent of the literary sophists was Prodicus of Ceos. Establishing himself at Athens, he taught " virtue " or " excellence," in the sense attached to the word by Protagoras, partly by means of literary subjects, partly in discourses upon practical ethics. It is plain that Prodicus was an affected pedant. Yet his simple conventional morality found favour, and Plato (Rep., 600 C) couples him with Protagoras in his testi- mony to the popularity of the sophists and their teaching. At Athens, the centre of the intellectual life of Greece, there was soon to be found a host of sophists : some of them strangers, others citizens ; some of them bred under Protagoras and Prodicus, others self-taught. In the teaching of the sophists of this younger generation