32 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



home and gave to my father, to the great surprise and astonishment of 

 himself and his fellow-citizens. And I rather think I have made more 

 money than any two whatever of the other sophists. 



He then goes on to tell Socrates, that in Lacedaemon, where he had 

 been most frequently, he had made no money at all ; and when pressed 

 for a reason of this, he says, " It is not the custom of that country to 

 disturb the existing laws, nor to introduce any novel practice in the 

 education of their sons." He confesses that the Lacedaemonians would 

 not listen to any discourses on astronomy, geometry, nor arithmetic ; 

 nor upon grammatical questions ; but " concerning the genealogies of 

 heroes and men, and the original foundation and colonization of towns, 

 and upon antiquarian subjects. And I got great credit by discoursing 

 upon the different pursuits which a young man ought to follow. For 

 I have a very charming little work on this subject, well drawn up in 

 all respects, but particularly in point of language. The subject is 

 this. Troy being taken, I suppose Neoptolemus to ask of Nestor, 

 what are the most becoming pursuits for a young man who wishes to 

 gain credit by them ? Then Nestor speaks and suggests to him a 

 great many very orderly and honourable precepts. This discourse I 

 delivered there, and intend to do the same here the day after to-mor- 

 row, in the school of Pheidostratus, and to add to it a great deal more 

 worth hearing." 



Effects on These extracts afford a fair specimen of the vanity and ostentation 

 Sdef ro- ^ tne sophists, and of the effect which they produced upon the tone 

 duced by the of society at Athens, with respect both to literature and morality, 

 th^sopffets. Multitudes of young men attended these pernicious teachers, and 

 paid them every kind of honour; struck with astonishment at the 

 facility and splendour of their eloquence, as well as at the dialectic 

 subtlety of their reasoning ; and, what was far worse, captivated by 

 the easy morality which confounded all the limits of right and wrong, 

 and placed the summum bonum in the attainment of political distinc- 

 tion. We have given an account, somewhat minute, of these mis- 

 named philosophers, because it is impossible to understand the cha- 

 racter of Socrates, or to appreciate his excellencies, without being 

 previously acquainted with the state of society in which he found 

 himself upon his entrance into life. The example of Pericles had 

 inflamed the ambition of the youth of Athens ; and to obtain, like 

 him, an unlimited influence over the people, was the one great object 

 of their desires. To the pursuit of this, all other studies were made 

 subservient. The sophists saw this ruling passion, and took advan- 

 tage of it ; and in the course of their instruction, having run through 

 a certain system of natural philosophy, founded upon the principle of 

 materialism, they directed their chief attention to those arts of reason- 

 ing, or rather to that abuse of reason, which they called by the name 

 Dialectics, of dialectics. By the help of this instrument, the youthful catechumen 

 was enabled readily to perplex the understandings and judgments of a 

 popular auditory ; to argue plausibly on either side of a question, as 



