Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/195

 The Sophists. 185 teaching in the Nubes, to the prosecution of Anaxagoras, the banishment of Protagoras, the charge of impiety against Diagoras and his consequent flight, and finally to the trial and death of Socrates : and all philosophers and philosophy shared for a time in the general odium. The middle of this century was the period of the general awakening of the reflective powers in Greece ; the age of poetry and of simple faith was passing away, and the age of reason commencing ; and as usually happens at a time of revolution, intellectual as well as political, the unwonted exercise of new powers, and the exulting sense of a new freedom, led men into error and excess. An audacious and undiscriminating criticism of things divine and human aroused an undefined feel- ing of alarm, and provoked an equally undiscriminating oppo- sition. The Athenians saw their religious creed and their moral and social code exposed to unsparing attacks, and threatened, as they believed, with subversion : what wonder that they did not make any very nice distinctions between the different orders of speculators and the different objects they had in view, and in- volved them all alike in one sweeping condemnation ? But may we infer from this that there were no such distinctions, or that the sophistical method of instruction philosophical and moral might fairly be placed in the same category with that of Socra- tes ? And this brings me to the last point which we are required to examine, the distinction between Socrates and the Sophists. I should hardly have supposed that any discussion was needed on such a point ; nor can I see that any thing in Mr Grote's own chapter warrants the statement of the Quarterly Reviewer (p. 550) "that, according to Mr Grote, Socrates was the great representative of the Sophists." If the Reviewer only means by this that they acted alike as public instructors, that is undoubtedly a fact only if that be the meaning it is expressed somewhat obscurely in any other sense I can see no ground whatever for such an assertion. The Reviewer adds to be sure " that Socrates was distinguished from them by his higher eminence, and by the peculiarity of his life and teaching." If "teaching" includes phi- losophy, as it no doubt did in Socrates' case, this is a tolerably liberal admission of a distinction between them; for Socrates was a philosopher and a teacher, and nothing else: but then what becomes of the difference between Mr Grote's and the " common view ?" I can hardly suppose that Mr Grote himself,