Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/170

 160 Journal of Philology. Having thus endeavoured to ascertain what was Plato's opinion of the class in general, we will now pass on to Aristotle, and return by and by to examine the special statements and descriptions of particular members of it scattered through the Platonic and other writings. In speaking of the general characteristics by which they were distinguished from their predecessors and contemporaries in the art of teaching, I have already alluded to that combina- tion of qualities, effrontery and imposture summed up in the word da(ovcla } which is the main ingredient in their character as they are depicted by Plato; is expressed by Aristotle in the phrase aivonevrj aov 2o<p. 1. Mr Grote treats the evidence of Aristotle, to whose state- ments we have now to direct our attention, in a very summary way. " Aristotle following the example of his master," p. 484, in the second member of the sentence, unless it were conveyed by the first, that the Sophists are mischievous in- structors, only in an inferior degree ? Clauses such as Siacpdeipofih'ovs. . . dYi teal &iov yov, which are introduced by way of contrast or comparison with the rest of the sentence, are usually prefaced by ih> ; the apodosis, which is, as Butt- mann expresses it, the "caput rei" (see his notes on Mid. 7. a, 49. c, 56. d ; Men. 34. a; Gr. Gr. 149) being commonly introduced by Si. Deviations from this usage however sometimes oc- cur, and the sentence is left to explain itself, as it were, without the help of the particles. The only example that oc- curs to me at present is Rom. vi. 19, Xd/>i$ Si T<p Gecp 6ti r/re SovXoi rrjt dfiap- t/oj, vTTTjKoOaaTe Si iic KapStas, k.t.X. The peculiarity of this construction is, that the first clause has either no mean- ing, or is untrue, when taken by itself without the apodosis. As in the instance above quoted, St Paul thanks God that the Romans were the servants of sin, only upon consideration of the present happy change in their condition. 10 The treatise t. 2. i., as the au- thor himself implies, c. 2, and the Scho- liast Alexander Aphrodisiensis informs us, was written as a supplement to the Books of the Analytics : in the latter Aristotle teaches the true art of reason- ing, and the theory of the syllogism ; in this work he takes to pieces the false or sham art which apes it for the purpose of imposition, and exposes its many tricks, see c. 5. Mr Grote says that the Sophists pay the penalty of the modern signification of their name : on the con- trary, it was their practice which first gave the name its invidious sense ; and it is likely enough that this very treatise of Aristotle contributed mainly to fix upon sophistry that peculiar signification which it bears in modern languages, fal- lacious deceitful reasoning ; at any rate it appears from this work, that such reasoning was the peculiar and acknow- ledged characteristic of the Sophists.