662 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE SOPHISTS 



to advance fair reasons to justify the worst actions. All the evil that has 

 happened in the world since Adam has happened with the help of fair reasons." 

 From these passages, which I think could not possibly be better expressed, we 

 see how little the granting of Mr Grote's second argument has to do with the 

 conclusion at which he so sweepingly arrives. The most comprehensive philoso- 

 phical thinker of the most philosophic country in the world can see with the 

 utmost distinctness that the Sophists were not all black, and yet that they dealt 

 with the most important matters of human concernment in a loose and slippery 

 fashion, which completely justified the attitude of uncompromising hostility 

 constantly assumed towards them by both Socrates and Plato. 



(3.) Hitherto Mr Grote's arguments, so far as they present a mere plea in 

 palliation of the Sophists, have appeared not only plausible, but in the highest 

 degree reasonable ; and, had he stopped at this point, there would have been no 

 question at this moment before the learned world on this matter. But, unfortu- 

 nately, the democratic historian here, by over-pleading his case, betrays the 

 inherent weakness of his cause. He claims a verdict of acquittal for his clients, 

 and can only do so, as we shall now see, by attempting to override an array of 

 historical testimonies, such as, in the general case, would make any but a 

 thorough-paced German ideamonger shrink back in dismay. The witnesses in 

 this case are not few, and they are all on one side. Let us see how the learned his- 

 torian disposes of them. In the first place, he throws Plato and Aristophanes, 

 the greatest thinker, and the greatest humorist, of the age, simpliciter, out of 

 court ; and then, by either overlooking other testimonies, or referring them back 

 to the twin authors of the original calumny, he tells the jury, with a gay confi- 

 dence, that there is nothing more in the case. But there is a wholesale air about 

 this procedure, which, with a sober-minded man, only acts as a warning to use 

 caution. To commence with the two original framers of the indictment. No 

 doubt Aristophanes was a maker of jests, but he was no mere buffoon. He was 

 a great thinker as well as a great humorist ; and his comedies expressly deal with 

 all the principal literary, philosophical, and political questions of the age. Such 

 men are not apt to fling their humorous shafts at a mere imagination. On the 

 contrary, their strength lies in the fact, that the phenomenon which they ridicule 

 has a wide, popular recognition, and is everywhere felt to be a fact. A man of 

 the calibre of Aristophanes could not have written such a comedy as " The 

 Clouds," against such a class of persons as the Sophists, had not such a class of 

 persons existed, any more than the well-known scientific song of " The Origin of 

 Species, " attributed to a witty Scotch law- lord, could have existed without a 

 Darwin and a school of Darwins. The humorist's view of the case, indeed, is 

 not necessarily the scientific view ; but it may be, and often is, the true view, or, 

 at all events, represents strongly one true aspect of the case. Otherwise, not 

 only would the humour be pointless, but a great humorist certainly would not 



