Page:The Ancient City- A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome.djvu/481

 CHAP. I. NEAV BELIEFS — PHILOSOPHY. 475 tempest of hatred and rancor. They were accused of having neither religion, nor morals, nor patriotism. The truth is, that they had not a very well settled doctrine, and thought they had done enough when they had attacked old prejudices. They moved, as Plato says, what before had been immovable. They placed the rule of religious sentiment, and that of politics, in the human conscience, and not in the cus- toms of ancestors, in immutable traditiou. They taught the Greeks that to govern a state it was not enough to appeal to old customs and sacred laws, but that men should be persuaded and their wills should be influenced. For the knowledge of ancient customs they substituted the art of reasoning and sjjeaking — dialectics and rhetoric. Their adversaries quoted tra- ditiou to them, while they, on the other hand, employed •eloquence and intellect. When reflection had thus been once awakened, man no longer wished to believe without giving a reason for his belief or to be governed without discussing his institutions. He doubted the justice of his old social laws, and other principles dawned upon his mind. Plato puts these remarkable words in the mouth of a Sophist: "All you who are here, I regard as related to each other. Nature, in default of law, has made you citizens. But the law, that tyrant of man, does violence to nature on many occasions." Thus to oppose nature to law and custom was to attack the ancient political system at its foundation. In vain did the Athenians banish Protagoras and burn his writings: the blow had been struck: the result of the teachings of the Sophists had been im- mense. The authority of the old institutions perished with the authority of the national gods, and the