658 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE SOPHISTS 



in his recent work on Plato. Here also we are regularly given to understand 

 that Plato was a much overrated man, and that the true objects of human ad- 

 miration are rather the men whom it was the constant object of his philosophy 

 to refute. This is even a bolder stroke of what, borrowing a phrase from mathe- 

 maticians, I may call the invertendo style of criticism, than any with which the 

 world has been favoured from the disintegrating school of Lachman, Kochly, 

 and other trans-Rhenane commentators on the Homeric poems. They, at least, 

 while they annihilated the poet, left us the poem to admire. Here, the divine 

 objects of old reverence are thrown away as idols, and the old recognised idols 

 are set up as the true God. 



The great authority of Mr Grote in all matters of Greek history, and the wide 

 circulation of his work, render it expedient that a public contradiction should be 

 given to his errors from as many independent quarters as possible ; and, though 

 I am perfectly satisfied with what I find written on this subject by an excellent 

 scholar, Mr Cope of ' ; Cambridge, in the Cambridge Philological Journal," 

 vol. i., as also by Professor Zeller, in his Philosophic der Griechen, Tubingen, 1856 ; 

 yet, as my own opinions have been formed altogether independently, and are 

 based on a careful study of Plato, extending through a series of years, I have 

 thought that a succinct statement of the bearings of this important historical ques- 

 tion would not prove unacceptable to the members of this Society. I proceed, 

 therefore, to make a short statement of Mr Grote' s views of this matter, followed 

 by an equally short statement of how, from my point of view, his arguments ought 

 to be met. 



Mr Grote ushers in the statement of his views by this general declaration — 

 " I know few characters in history who have been so hardly dealt with as the 

 Sophists; they bear the penalty of their name in its modern sense;" and the 

 modern sense of the word, according to the whole tenor of the learned gentleman's 

 argument, is about as far removed from the original and genuine sense, as the 

 English word demon is from the Homeric word Salfxcop. To restore the proper 

 meaning, as he conceives, to this sadly misunderstood word, the learned historian 

 brings forward, according to my analysis, five arguments. 



(1 ) It is plain from Plato himself — in this case we must suppose an unwill- 

 ing witness— that many of the Sophists were excellent and sensible men, and in 

 every way capable of being the instructors of youth. 



(2.) In fact, the Sophists were the great teachers of the age to which they be- 

 longed ; and Socrates owed his position and his influence altogether to being one 

 of them. The great exhibition of young democratic energy which had culmi- 

 nated at Marathon, was now riding onward triumphantly to another and a higher 

 development. Ofthispenod of transition between the youth and the manhood 

 of the Athenian intellect the Sophists were the natural, the necessary represen- 

 tatives, and the worthy spokesmen. 



