SONMIANI 



SOPHISTS 



573 



Soilllliani. a miserable town and port of 4000 

 inhabitants on the coast of Beluchistan, 52 miles 

 NW. of Knrracliee. 



Sonora. a frontier state in the north-west of 

 Mexico, on the Gulf of California. It is the 

 second largest in the republic. Area, 77,526 sq. m. ; 

 pop. (1888) 105,391. The coast is flat and sandy, 

 the interior filled with wooded mountains and 

 fertile valleys. Malaria is mostly confined to one 

 part of the coast. Here the climate is hot, but in 

 the mountains there is frost for five months in the 

 year. The chief livers are the Sonora, Yaqui, and 

 Mayo. The principal wealth of the state is in its 

 minerals, especially gold, silver, mercury, and 

 iron. Agriculture, wine-growing, and cattle- rearing 

 are also successful, and cottons, hats, shoes, ana 

 soap are manufactured. Capital, Hermosillo ; 

 chief port, Guaymas. 



Sonsonatr. a town of Salvador, on the Rio 

 Grande, 15 miles by rail N. of Acajutla. It was 

 founded by Alvarado in 1524. Pop. 8000. 



Son t air. HENRIETTA, COUNTESS Rossi, a Ger- 

 man singer, was born at Coblenz on 3d January 

 1806, and was educated by her parents to their 

 own profession of the stage. She learned singing 

 at Prague, and made her debut there when only 

 fifteen. After a brilliant operatic career at Vienna, 

 Berlin, and Paris, she married Count Rossi in 1828, 

 and shortly afterwards left the stage. Compelled 

 by pecuniary difficulties to reappear in 1849, she 

 met with renewed success both in Europe and 

 America, but died in Mexico on 17th June 1854. 



Sontlials. See SANTALS. 



Soochoo, or SUCHAU, previous to the Taiping 

 rebellion one of the largest cities in China, is 

 situated on the Imperial Canal, 50 miles WNW. 

 of Shanghai, in the province of Kiang-su. It 

 stands on numerous islands separated by canals, 

 and since 1896 has been accessible as a treaty-port. 

 The city walls have a circuit of 10 miles. Soochoo 

 has for generations been a noted centre of the silk 

 manufacture and of the printing of cheap Chinese 

 classics. It was captured by the Taipmgs, but 

 recovered by ' Chinese ' Gordon in 1863, on which 

 occasion the city with its many handsome buildings 

 was almost wholly destroyed. Pop. 500,000. 



Sooloo Islands. See Sum ISLANDS. 



Soot. The soot both of wood and of coal is 

 serviceable as Manure (q.v.) on account of the sul- 

 phate of ammonia it contains, especially for young 

 cereals, for grasses, and for carrots. See SMOKE. 



Sophia, the capital of Bulgaria. See SOFIA. 



Sophia. Electress of Hanover, born on 13th 

 October 1&30, was the youngest of the thirteen 

 children of Elizabeth (q.v.), queen of Bohemia. 

 In 1658 she married Ernest Augustus, Duke of 

 Brunswick- Luneburg, and afterwards Elector of 

 Hanover, and by him she was the mother of 

 George I. She 'died 8th June 1714. See her 

 Memoirs (Eng. trans, by H. Forester, 1888). For 

 Sophia Dorothea, the wife of George I., see 

 KONIGSMARK. 



Sophia, ST (Greek Hayirt Sophia, 'Holy 

 "Wisdom ' i.e. the eternal wisdom of God or the 

 Logos, and not a human saint), to whom Greek 

 churches were often dedicated ; especially the 

 great church of Constantinople (q.v.), erected by 

 Justinian in 538-568 A.D. Its dimensions and a 

 sectional plan are given at BYZANTINE ARCHI- 



TECTURK. 



Sophists. The Greek word sophistes (from 

 tophos= 'skilled,' 'wise') meant originally any 

 one of acknowledged or professed skill ; thus, the 

 term was applied to the seven sages (whether 

 philosophers, like Thales, or statesmen, like Solon ), 



to poets, musicians, &c. In the 5th and 4th 

 centuries B.C. it came to be applied specially to 

 those who made a profession of teaching all or any 

 of the higher branches of learning. The great 

 intellectual awakening of Athens after the Persian 

 war, and the growth of democracy in Sicily and 

 elsewhere, as well as at Athens, which gave skill 

 in public speaking a new importance, led to the 

 demand for an education which should go beyond 

 the old training in ' gymnastic ' and 'music '(i.e. 

 reading, writing, singing, and reciting from the 

 poets). To meet this demand there arose a class 

 of professional teachers, wandering scholars, who 

 undertook to provide what we should call ' higher 

 education.' This new movement presents certain 

 resemblances to the rise of the universities in thi^ 

 13th century, to the popularising of learning and 

 science in the 18th and 19th centuries, to the 

 ' University Extension ' movement of to-day. 

 Some of these ' Sophists ' were more specially 

 teachers of rhetoric i.e. they gave particular 

 attention to the form of public speaking, and as 

 such they are the beginners of Greek prose style. 

 Originally artistic expression takes the form of 

 verse. The poet is the 'maker,' the artist in 

 language: prose is simply 'ordinary speech.' But 

 from the time of the rhetoricians, such as Gorgias 

 (q.v.) of Leontini, prose also becomes an art. The 

 first effect of the deliberate pursuit of artistic form 

 in prose was to produce a pedantic and artificial 

 style. ( \\e can trace the evil influence of Gorgias 

 in the 'speeches' in Thucydides.) But this atten- 

 tion to language was the preparatory training for 

 the simple beauty of the best Attic prose. Other 

 Sophists gave more attention to the matter of 

 public speech the questions of right and wron" 

 which come before law-courts and political 

 assemblies and in this way they were the beginners 

 of moral and political philosophy. The earlier 

 Greek philosophers, with the partial exception of 

 the Pythagorean^, had hardly treated of human 

 matters : they had been ontologists and cosmo- 

 logists. Protagoras (q.v.) of Abdera and ProJicus 

 of Ceos may be taken as famous and favourable 

 examples of the prof essors of ' virtue. ' It must be 

 remembered that the teacher of conduct and the 

 moral philosopher were not distinguished even by 

 Plato and Aristotle. Other Sophists, like Hippias 

 of Elis, professed to teach universal knowledge 

 what we call 'general culture.' Others again, 

 like Euthydemus and Dionysiodorus ( who appear 

 in Plato's dialogue named after the first of them ), 

 devoted themselves specially to the art of disputa- 

 tion, and thus prepared the way for the science of 

 logic. 



The ambitious youth of Athens flocked to a 

 fashionable Sophist from intellectual interest in the 

 new learning and in order to acquire an education 

 which would fit them to obtain success in the law- 

 courts and in the popular assembly, or to acquit 

 themselves with distinction in a discussion on any 

 subject whatever. The various Sophists naturally 

 differed much from each other in ability, in char- 

 acter, and in the degree of seriousness with which 

 they regarded their function as teachers ; and some 

 may very well have deserved the censure expressed 

 in Aristotle's definition of the Sophist as ' a man 

 who makes money by sham wisdom ' ( in Soph. 

 Elench. i). In the eyes of old-fashioned persona 

 the whole class was regarded with suspicion : the 

 skill of the clever orator or disputant seemed to 

 have something immoral about it, because it might 

 enable the worse cause to appear the better. And 

 to discuss the nature of right and wrong, or to 

 theorise about the foundations of society, was then, 

 as in other ages, regarded as dangerous. In the 

 eyes of such persons Socrates and Plato were 

 ' Sophists ' just as much as the rest, although 



