Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/417

 PLATO AND THK SOPHISTS. 395 don betrays itself as the offspring, and the consistent offspring, of systematic peculiarity of vision, the prejudice of a great and able mind. It would be not less unjust to appreciate the sophists or the statesmen of Athens from the point of view of Plato, than the present teachers and politicians of England or France from that of Mr. Owen or Fourier. Both the one and the other class labored for society as it stood at Athens : the statesmen carried on th* business of practical politics, the sophist trained up youth for practical life in all its departments, as family men, citizens, and leaders, to obey as well as to command. Both accepted the system as it stood, without contemplating the possibility of a new birth of society : both ministered to certain, exigences, held their anchorage upon certain sentiments, and bowed to a certain moral- ity, actually felt among the living men around them. That which Plato says of the statesmen of Athens is perfectly true, that they were only servants or ministers of the people. He, who tried the people and the entire society by comparison with an imagin- ary standard of his own, might deem all these ministers worthless in the lump, as carrying on a system too bad to be mended ; but, nevertheless, the difference between a competent and an in- competent minister, between Perikles and Nikias, was of un- speakable moment to the security and happiness of the Athenians. What the sophists on their part undertook was, to educate young men so as to make them better qualified for statesmen or minis- ters ; and Protagoras would have thought it sufficient honor to himself, as well as sufficient benefit to Athens, which assuredly it would have been, if he could have inspired any young Athenian with the soul and the capacities of his friend and com- panion Perikles. So far is Plato from considering the sophists as the corruptors of Athenian morality, that he distinctly protests against that KOI Toioiiruv o/.vapicJv 1-fineTr^Kaai T;)V TTO^IV (c. 74, p. 519, A). Qifiat (says Sokrates, c. 77, p. 521, D.) /ZET' oAzyuv 'Ai?7?vaJi>, Iva u;) tlitu fj.6vof, inixEtpEiv ry dif uXTjduf TTJ^ITIKIJ re^vy ical irpuTTtiv r<i nofariKi) uovof T<JV vw, lire oiiv ov rrpof yupiv hiyuv rot)f Aoyotif t'^f Aeyu litttoroTr. u^Au wpbf rO flefoiarov, ov TTfdf rd i] horov, etc.