664 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE SOPHISTS 



good foundation. In weighing the testimony of Plato and Aristophanes also, 

 with regard to such a class of men as the Sophists are alleged to have been, we 

 must consider the presumptions and possibilities of the case. Is there anything 

 strange or improbable in the statement, that in a talking town like Athens, full 

 of all sorts of quick-witted and light- witted democratic people, there should have 

 arisen, in an age of intellectual transition, a set of shallow thinkers, who culti- 

 vated the faculty of expression at the expense of the faculty of thinking, and 

 exercised their understanding with a clever logical dexterity, rather than with 

 the earnest search after truth ? To myself it seems the most natural thing in 

 the world to suppose the existence of such a class of men — a class of men, in- 

 deed, almost certain to exist at all times wherever there is a demand for them ; 

 and particularly dangerous, as Hegel remarks, in a country where a sensuous 

 religion exists, altogether divorced from any serious training, either of the intel- 

 lect or the character. / 



Starting from these presumptions, I must confess I should be inclined to accept 

 the portrait of the Sophists in every feature, and with its full colouring, as given 

 by the god of the philosophers, and the king of the humorists, even if their 

 testimony in this matter stood alone. But the plain and admitted fact here 

 is, that neither the philosopher nor the humorist do stand alone; they are 

 supported by the consenting voice of antiquity. The heritage of Greek opinion 

 on this subject was transmitted to Cicero ; and he says (Acad. II. 23), " Sophistce 

 appellantur qui ostentationis aut qucestus causa philosophantur." Among 

 the Greeks themselves, those whose testimony was of the highest value, 

 and who lived nearest to the time, and who were most interested in the subject, 

 set their seal in the strongest language to the witness of the great idealist. Who 

 are the writers whom a wise judge would call into court, and hear with im- 

 partial eagerness in a trial of this kind ? Socrates and Xenophon, Isocrates 

 and Aristotle — any one of these would be sufficient, in my judgment, to nail 

 down, for an absolute certainty, whatever Plato and Aristophanes might have 

 previously combined to testify as a prominent fact in the history of Greek intel- 

 lectual life. Of these four, though the most remote in point of time, Aristotle 

 is the most weighty ; and this not only on account of the accurate, inductive, 

 and encyclopaedic character of his mind, but specially on account of his known 

 propensity to contradict everything that Plato says, when it comes in his way. 

 None of the products of that peculiarly Platonic idiosyncrasy, which Mr Grote 

 brings forward so prominently, does the Stagyrite show the slightest desire to 

 spare. Spartan women and Platonic ideas are two matters, in discussing which 

 he almost seems to lose for a moment the imperturbable judicial coolness of his 

 intellect. Eut the Sophists he describes in exactly the same language as 

 Plato, and in language which forms a sufficient justification for the peculiar use 

 of the name in modern times. In Soph. El. I. 6, he says, " Ea-n yap >j a-ocpiariKh 



