Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/409

 KALLIKLES. 387 opinion, they could neither have been sufficiently audacious, nor sufficiently their own enemies, to make it a part of their public teaching ; but would have acted like Polus, and kept the doc- trine to themselves. Thirdly, this latter conclusion will be rendered doubly certain, when ve consider of what city we are now speaking. Of all places in the world, the democratical Athens is the last in which the doctrine advanced by Kallikles could possibly have been pro- fessed by a public teacher; or even by Kallikles himself, in any public meeting. It is unnecessary to remind the reader how pro- foundly democratical was the sentiment and morality of the Athenians, how much they loved their laws, their constitution, and their political equality, how jealous their apprehension was of any nascent or threatening despotism. All this is not simply admitted, but even exaggerated, by Mr. Mitford, "Wachsmuth, and other anti-democratical writers, who often draw from it materials for their abundant censures. Now the very point which Sokrates, in this dialogue, called " Gorgias," seeks to establish against Kallikles, against the rhetors, and against the sophists, is, that they courted, flattered, and truckled to the sentiment of the Athe- nian people, with degrading subservience ; that they looked to the immediate gratification simply, and not to permanent moral improvement of the people ; that they had not courage to ad- dress to them any unpalatable truths, however salutary, but would shift and modify opinions in every way, so as to escape giving offence j 1 that no man who put himself prominently forward at Athens had any chance of success, unless he became moulded and assimilated, from the core, to the people and their type of 1 This quality is imputed by Sokrates to Kallikles in n remarkable pas- sage of the Gorgias, c. 37, p. 481, D, E, the substance of which is thus stated by Stallbaum in bis note: "Carpit Socrates Calliclis Icvitatcm, mobili popnli turba; nunquam non blandientis ct adulantis." It is one of the main points of Sokrates in the dialogue, to make out that tbe practice, for he will not call it an art, of sophists, as well as rhetors, aims at nothing but the immediate gratification of the people, without any regard to their ultimate or durable benefit ; that they are branches of the widely-extended knack of flattery (Gorgias, c. 19, p. 464, D ; c. 20, p. 465| f! : c. 56, p. 501, C; c. 75, p. 520, BJ.