Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/181

 The Sophists. 171 trireme : as [read acnrep for ore] he also is, if the counter-state- ment be equally true." Confining ourselves thus to the words of Plato and Aristotle, "who had good means of judging the theory," we have, I think, shown that it was susceptible of a mischievous application both to philosophy and morals : it led, in fact, in the latter, to the antisocial doctrines condemned by Plato in the Laws, and advo- cated by Callicles in the Gorgias. In perfect consistency with his philosophical creed was the religious scepticism of its author; he commenced his famous treatise, the W^Qeia, with the words " Concerning the gods I cannot be sure whether they exist or not : for many are the things which prevent our obtaining cer- tainty on the point, the obscurity of the subject, and the short- ness of human life." The consequences of such a doctrine in religion may be illustrated to us by the opinions of a modern sceptical English writer, that each man has an internal revelation in himself, and that this is the only revelation possible. This is, in fact, Protagoras' position applied to our religious creed. Every man is by this made the measure of his own religion, and every standard of religious truth, external to himself, is hereby denied. The logical result of this would of course be the rejec- tion of revealed religion ; just as, in the case of the Sophists, the logical result of this teaching was the rejection of the existing basis of morality and social well being, the binding nature of the traditions and generally recognised principles of Ethics, and the laws and customs under which men lived. Supposing it were true that Protagoras himself deduced no such licentious anti- social consequences from his own theory ; yet surely a moral teacher, who assumes the office of educating young men for public life, must be held responsible for ill consequences so easily and obviously deducible from the doctrine which he incul- cated ; more especially as his pupils were of a class who had all the opportunity and temptation to pervert and misapply it. But I am more disposed to think that he was totally regardless of all moral consequences in general, and of those that might be de- rived from his own philosophical dogma in particular. It seems to me that his instructions in the art of rhetoric, as he under- stood it, may be taken as a proof of this. He taught his pupils the art of " making the worse appear the better cause," of de- feating the ends of justice, and making falsehood prevail over