OF THE FIFTH CENTURY, B.C. 661 



der Griechischen Philosophie for a reference to two of the earliest authorities, in 

 which this reaction in favour of the Sophists appears. The one is Meiners, in 

 his Geschichte der Wissenschaften, published at Lemgo in the year 1782, and the 

 other that of Hegel, in his lectures on the history of philosophy delivered on 

 various occasions soon after the commencement of the present century. Professor 

 Meiners (vol. ii. pp. 172-599) says, " The Sophists deserve not merely to be 

 despised and denounced, but in many views they claim respect and eulogy— a recog- 

 nition which even their most violent opponents have not refused. They were the 

 great public teachers and enlighteners of Greece ; they were a necessary link in the 

 chain of intellectual life in Greece." But while admitting this, the same author 

 says a little further on, that "their morality was right in the teeth of the Socratic 

 morality," and that, " on a review of the whole matter, we must agree with Xeno- 

 phon, Plato, Isocrates, and those who followed them, that the Sophists did their 

 country more harm than good, and that they corrupted more hearts than they 

 enlightened heads." This representation deserves special notice as contrasted 

 with Mr Grote's ; for, while it fully admits the extenuating circumstance, it does 

 not deny the general truth of the crime charged. Hegel places the palliative cir- 

 cumstance in a stronger light ; indeed, he purposely brings it into the foreground, 

 as being, in his phraseology, the one " positive and truly scientific side" of the 

 matter. But by this he means, not that the faults with which the Sophists are 

 generally charged did not really exist, but that whatever faults a faulty thing 

 may possess, its virtues are the only element in it which has any value to a philo- 

 sophic mind. From this point of view he says, that " the Sophists were the 

 teachers of Greece, by whom intellectual culture {Bildung) was brought into 

 existence. They came into the place of the poets and rhapsodists, who were 

 originally the only teachers. Religion in Greece did not teach. Priests offered 

 sacrifices, soothsayers divined the future, but instruction is something quite dif- 

 ferent." This is admirable ; but with this the Berlin notional transcendentalist 

 is far from shutting his eyes to the weak side of these teachers. He proceeds to 

 represent them as practising a logic both superficial and unprincipled. He shows, 

 also the peculiar danger which attached to such a logic when applied to practical 

 purposes in an atmosphere of sensual polytheism. " In our European world," he 

 writes, " intellectual culture appeared under the protection, so to speak, and on 

 the foundation, of a spiritual religion. But when intellectual dexterity had to 

 do only with a religion of the imagination, it readily shook itself loose from any 

 central holding-point, or, at all events, particular subordinate points of view 

 might easily be planted on the pedestal of an ultimate principle." And again, 

 " A man of education and experience always knows how to set things in a good 

 light for the momentary purpose. In the worst action something lies, which 

 being singled out and skilfully presented, makes it defensible. A person must 

 have gone a very short way in his intellectual education if he does not know how 



VOL. XXTV. PART III. 8 R 



