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188 case they may be said to belong to a profession; and, secondly, their character as philosophers, in which case they may be said to constitute a sect. I shall make a few remarks on the Sophists, considered under each of these points of view.

5. The general character of the teaching of the Sophists may be summed up by saying that they adapted themselves to the wants of the times. They took their age as they found it, and they did not attempt to improve it; at least, this was not their professed aim. They undertook to teach their pupils how to get on in the world, how to play a successful part in life; and rhetorical power being one great means, being, indeed, the one great means towards success, they strove above all things to impart oratorical accomplishments to those whom they instructed. But in such a system of instruction there is a strong temptation to sacrifice substance to show. Where rhetorical skill is regarded as paramount, the higher ends of education are apt to be overlooked, for readiness and fluency of speech may proceed out of emptiness, no less than out of fulness of mind; hence the questionable or equivocal character of the method of instruction attributed to the Sophists. That they were useful in their day and generation is not to be doubted. That their pupils frequently derived from them substantial knowledge, along with the flimsier acquisition of rhetoric, may be readily admitted. But the main stress of their teaching being based rather