HISTORY 327 



deals by preference with man as a thinking being, his 

 duties and his thoughts that is, Ethics and Logic. 



Certain teachers, of whom Protagoras, of Abdera 

 (about 490 B.C.), is a type, accepting and applying the 

 doctrine of Heraclitus "that all things are in a per- 

 petual flux," asserted man to be the measure of all 

 things, and that just as each thing appears to each man, 

 so is it for him. Thus all things are, he taught, but 

 relative; everything is uncertain in reality, even the 

 existence of the "Immortal Gods." What applies to 

 our perception of things, also applies to our perception 

 of their relations, and thus all morality becomes under- 

 mined, because nothing can be certainly affirmed to 

 be good save as it may appear to be good in the e}^es 

 of those who so regard it. Nevertheless .this very 

 moral revolt was an indirect assertion of the rights of 

 conscience ; for since that was certain to each man which 

 seemed to him so to be, he had a justification for refus- 

 ing to comply with behests he deemed wrong, and for 

 denying the ethical validity of commands on the part of 

 the State. Such teachers (since they were by profession 

 instructors in eloquence and polite learning) were termed 

 Sophists. In the teaching of later members of that school 

 the evil consequences which attended their teaching 

 became more conspicuous ; as, e.g., in Thrasymachus, who 

 identified "right" with the personal interest of a man 

 in power. A reaction against such doctrines was inevit- 

 able, and it came to a head in that immortal teacher 

 Socrates, who was born about 470 B.C. His supreme 

 claim to distinction and reverence consists in his having 

 ta aght that virtue does not consist in acts but in inten- 

 tions. He distinguished between merely external virtue 

 and its true essence, which he affirmed to be absolutely 

 dependent on moral perceptions. As our readers know, 



