Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/456

 434 HU10RY OF GREECE. tfitions ; the knowledge of which Sokrates called emphati- cally " human wisdom," and regarded as essential to the dignity of a freeman ; while he treated other branches of science as above the level of man, 1 and as a stretch of curiosity, not merely superfluous, but reprehensible. His warfare against such false persuasion of knowledge, in one man as well as another, upon those subjects for with him, I repeat, we must never disconnect the method from the subjects clearly marked even in Xeno- phon, is abundantly and strikingly illustrated by the fertile genius of Plato, and constituted the true missionary scheme whict pervaded the last half of his long life ; a scheme far more comprehensive, as well as more generous, than those anti- sophistic polemics which are assigned to him by so many authors as his prominent object. 2 In pursuing the thread of his examination, there was no topic upon which Sokrates more frequently insisted, than the contrast 1 Xenoph. Memor. i, 1, 12-16. Tiorepov vrore vofucavTe<; luavue ijdi} Tuv&puKEia ddevai epgovTai (the physical philosophers) iirl rd Kepi TUV TOIOVTUV $povri&i.v y Tti [iEV uv&puiTeia TtaplvTsc, TO. 6e daifiovia CKO-OVV- -npoafiKOVTa vrparmv Airdf <5e Tttpl ruv uv& pw- a el 6 lehey era GKOITUV, ri evaeflef, TL aoej3ef ital irepl ruv u/t/.u v, a Toi)f /*tv etdoTOf rjyelro /co/lovf K.u.ya.'dovf elvai, roiif 6s uyvoovvraf wvdpaTTOtJudeif av dma'iuf Kn2,7j ^f "P rt e^ej'ov, jteife TIVU rj nar" uv&puxov aotyiav oopoi slev, etc. Compare c. 9, p. 23, A. Platonicse, p. 999, E ; compare also Tennemann, Gteschicht. der Philos. part ii, art. i, vol. ii, p. 81. Amidst the customary outpouring of groundless censure against the sophists, which Tennemann here gives, one assertion is remarkable. He tells us that it was the more easy for Sokrates to put down the sophists, since their shallowness and worthlessness, after a short period of rogue, had already been detected by intelligent men, and was becoming discredited. It is strange to find such an assertion made, for a period between 420- 399 B.C., the era when Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias, etc., reached tho maximum of celebrity. And what are we tc say about the statement, that Sokrates put down the sophists, when we recollect that the Megaric school and Antisthenes, both emanating from Sokrates, are more frequently attacked than any one else in the dialogues of Plato, as having all those skeptical and disputation propensities with which the sophists are reproached ?
 * It is this narrow purpose that Plutarch ascribes to Sokrates, Quaestionea