Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/58

 and it was, perhaps, a recognition of the difficulties menacing attempts in this direction, aided by a feeling that "moral progress has not to wait till an unimpeachable system of Ethics has been elaborated," which led the early Greek Schools to confine their utterances on Morals to "rugged maxims hewn from life," which compensated for their lack of scientific precision by the inspiration they applied to the work of actual life.

It must, however, be admitted that with the Sophists the concerns of practical life began to assume that predominant place in philosophical speculations which they afterwards wholly usurped; and the claim of the Sophists (whether or not Socrates is to be reckoned among them) to be regarded as the founders of Ethical Philosophy is not weakened by the fact that, when Philosophy and Ethics were identified, the term Sophist was assigned to men whose lives were in diametrical opposition to everything connoted by the designation philosopher. The Sophists of the Socratic*