r.74 



SOPHISTS 



SOPHOCLES 



Socrates and Plato, conscious of their own intel- 

 lectual honesty and earnestness, and not teaching 

 for ' pay,' disowned the title. When the various 

 branches of the new learning came to be differen- 

 tiated, we find the rhetorician laocrotes (q.v.), to 

 whtini tin- term would certainly be applied by the 

 average Athenian and by Plato, applying the term 

 to Plato, 1'iit not to himself. Again, whereas 

 I'l.iio applies it to Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, 

 &c., we lind that Aristotle in a passage (Eth. Sir. 

 ix. 1 ) where he sneaks disparagingly of the 

 Sophists contrasts Protagoras with them. The 

 word had come to acquire an evil connotation, such 

 as survives in our use of the term 'sophistry.' 

 lint it is quite a delusion, as was conclusively 

 shown by (.rote (History of Greece, pt. ii. chap. 67), 

 to suppose that the Sophists were a sect of philo- 

 sophers, with pernicious principles, who syste- 

 matically undermined the morality of the Hellenic 

 world. They were not a sect, but a profession : 

 and on the whole they were neither oetter nor 

 worse than their age. Like the journalist or 

 litterateur of our own time, they succeeded by 

 supplying what the public wanted. The Platonic 

 Socrates, their adversary, himself savs, 'Our youth 

 are corrupted, not by the individual Sophists, but 

 by the public, which is the great Sophist, against 

 whose influence any private teacher wages an 

 unequal contest' (Repiiolir, \\. 492). 



There is no common 'Sophistic' doctrine. 

 Different Sophists were influenced by different 

 schools of philosophy. They were the popularisers of 

 older doctrines. Thus, Protagoras was influenced 

 by lid in-lit us (q.v.), whose doctrine of universal 

 flux gives a basis for Protagoras' assertion of the 

 absolute relativity of knowledge ('man is the 

 measure of all things ; ' nothing is true but the 

 sensation of the moment). The alleged influence 

 of his fellow-townsman, Democritus (q.v.), seems 

 less likely ; for Democritus was about twenty years 

 younger. Still the Atomist resolution of all things 

 into mere arrangements of the only real existences 

 (the atoms and the void) very likely helped to 

 supply a basis for the distinction between 'con- 

 vention ' and ' nature,' which was much used by 

 some Sophists and became a commonplace of the 

 period. Oorgias is said to have been a disciple 

 of Empedocles (q.v.), and was certainly influenced 

 by the Eleatics (q.v.). His paradoxical treatise on 

 ' S'ature or the non-existent ' is clearly a sceptical 

 working out of the Elcatic principle of the unreality 

 of t lie manifold. We have no sufficient knowledge 

 to justify the attempts made by some German 

 scholars to classify the Sophists according to 

 different philosophical schools ; and it is, moreover, 

 unlikely that /Hi/iii/nr philosophers should admit of 

 any very precise affiliation. We can only group 

 them in a very rough way, such as has been 

 attempted almve. Some historians of philosophy 

 (e.g. /eller and Ueberweg) lay stress on the dis- 

 tinction between the earlier and later Sophists, 

 considering the Mater Sophists ' (surh as Pol us of 

 Agrigentum, a pupil of Gorgias, Throsymachus 

 <>f Chalcedon, Euthydemus, &c.) to represent a 

 distinct degeneracy in the class. This, however, 

 seems doubtful, except in the sense that, as time 

 went on, ' rhetoricians ' and ' philosophers ' came to 

 be more clearly differentiated from among the 

 mam of the profession ; and the name Sophist 

 degenerated as we have seen. Professor Sidgwick 

 has argued that the ' Eristic ' or disputatious 

 Sophist* are really a degenerate offshoot of the 

 Socratic school ; hut against this hypothesis there 

 ar>> many objections. 



While Grata is perfectly correct in holding that 

 the Sophists are not a sect and have no common 

 doctrine, he errs in ignoring the fact that they 

 represent a common tendency, the new spirit of the 



age. The awakening of reflection on political and 

 institutions, on morals and religion, and 

 the wider diffusion of enlightenment produced in 

 Hellas the same spirit of 'freethinking, individual- 

 i-in, and sceptical criticism which we find among 

 the 'Humanists' of the Renaissance, and still 

 more among the English ' Deists ' and French 

 'Encyclopedists' of the 18th century. Of thi 

 intellectual movement the Sophists were at once 

 the outcome and the leaders. The differences 

 Ix'tween the Sophists might lie paralleled by the 

 differences l>etween Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, 

 Ac., and yet all these writers share a common 

 tendency. The very opinions maintained by 

 certain Sophists reappear in more fully developed 

 forms among English and French writers of the 

 17th and 18th centuries. Thus, Thrasynmchu>. in 

 Plato's Rejniblic, bases right simply on the com- 

 mand of the stronger, by which he means the 

 sovereign power in the state the theory of Hobbes, 

 developed afterwards in its legal aspects'by I '.en t ham 

 and Austin. From the second book of Plato's 

 Uriniblic it appears that the Social Contract theory 

 had already been propounded, almost certainly by 

 some Sophist. Aristotle (Politics, iii. 9) quotes 

 Lycophron the Sophist as holding that government 

 was only concerned with the protection of individual 

 rights. Alcidamas, the rhetorician, maintained 

 that ' God made all men free ; Nature has made 

 none a slave.' This and similar sentiments, which 

 we may call 'Sophistic,' in the sense that they 

 belong to the new nationalism, are to l>e found 

 frequently expressed in the extant plays and frag- 

 ments of Euripides. Even Herodotus, though his 

 style is unaffected by the rhetorical schools, has 

 also imbibed a certain tolerant scepticism, which 

 appears in his treatment of the diversity of customs 

 and religious beliefs ; and the debate about the l>est 

 form of government (iii. 80-82), which he unhistori- 

 cally puts into the mouth of Persians, is probably 

 due to a ' Sophistic ' source, and ma\ indeed be called 

 the earliest piece of Greek political philosophy that 

 has come down to us. Much of the teaching of the 

 Sophists was undoubtedly destructive of the old 

 fabric of Greek belief and of Greek society, which 

 rested on the narrow basis of an exclusive citi/en 

 caste with a substructure of slavery. The modern 

 student will not necessarily think the worse of the 

 Sophists on that account ; though the majority of 

 them were probably by no means conscious of the 

 significance of the critical weapons they handled. 

 By raising problems in almost every department of 

 thought, for which they could find no satisfactory 

 answers, they prepared the way for the great period 

 of Athenian philosophy (see SOCBATES). In later 

 times the term 'Sophist' came into reputation 

 again ; and some of the Greek professors of rhetoric 

 under the lioiimn empire were described as Sophists 

 on their tombs. 



Besides the histories of Greek philosophy referred to 

 under PLATO, and Grote's chapter mentioned above, may 

 be named two articles by Professor Henry Sidgwick, 

 defending Grotc's ricw, in the Journal of Fhiloliyii, veils. 

 iv. and v. In A. W. Benn's (Jreet Philotophtrt ( 2 vols. 

 Lond. 1883) chap. ii. deals with the Sophists, and is 

 entitled 'The Greek lluiiinnista,' The significance of the 

 Sophists in the development of Greek thought was first 

 put in a true light by Hegel in his History ofPhUotophy. 



Sopliorlrs, the Athenian tragic poet, was born 

 in 4!)6 B.C., and died in 405 at the ace of ninety- 

 one. His father's name was Sophillus, and his 

 native district was Colonus, a suburban quarter on 

 the banks of the Cephissus, much frequented by 

 the knights and wealthy citizens of Athens. He 

 partook in full measure of the highest education of 

 liis time, and was especially distinguished in musir, 

 which he learned from Lamprocles. At sixteen 

 he was chosen to lead the chorus of youths who 



