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186 of mental activity and excitement. Material prosperity, if it ministered to sensual indulgences, inspired at the same time higher cravings, and afforded scope and leisure for the consideration of questions affecting man's moral and intellectual interests. It was felt that the old and simple modes of instruction were not adequate to the requirements of the time, and that the newly awakened spirit must work out its purposes by means of a more complex and artificial apparatus. What suited their forefathers did not suit the present Athenians, and still less the rising generation.

3. The Sophists took advantage of this movement; they arose out of it, they headed it, and proclaimed themselves ready and willing, for a handsome pecuniary consideration, to instruct the rising generation in all the accomplishments necessary to secure their advancement in the world. If they did not supersede the elementary discipline at that time in vogue, they undertook to engraft upon it a more complete and advanced system of instruction. Such was the proposed vocation of the Sophists. How they discharged it is a question on which much debate has been expended; probably not so well as they themselves imagined, and perhaps not so badly as their revilers are in the habit of asserting.

4. In considering the Sophists and their vocation, there are two characters in which they present