666 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE SOPHISTS 



Prodicus, and Gorgias, and the other members of this notable brotherhood, what- 

 ever weak points their philosophy might offer to a sharp logician, were men of 

 the world, and not likely to commence their teaching by plucking the beard of 

 their audience, whatever that might be. Neither is there the slightest reason to 

 suppose that all of them, or the majority of them, held immoral opinions with 

 the same grand consistency with which their spokesman proclaims them in the 

 Gorgias. The received doctrine with regard to the sophistical ethics which the 

 learned historian undertakes to refute, is simply this, that by referring our ideas 

 of right altogether to institution and convention, and in nowise to nature and 

 divine necessity, they sapped the foundations of all morality, and made a justi- 

 fication of every iniquity easy to those who chose to argue 'consistently on their 

 principles. And that there were plenty of men in Athens only too ready to carry 

 such a doctrine to its legitimate practical conclusion, the unprincipled character 

 of many public men in Athens, from Alcibiades to tEschines, sufficiently testifies. 

 The character of the Athenian &}/*<>? may be placed as high as Mr Grote. 

 according to a democratic ideal, finds himself warranted to plant it ; but it was 

 not the Sij/uos properly so-called, that is, the middle and lower strata of the 

 Athenian people, by whom the principles of the slippery sophistical ethics were 

 principally imbibed. It was the sons of the rich men, the oligarchy, the Svvaroi, 

 that had most leisure and most ability to frequent the lectures of such men as 

 Protagoras, and to pay their fees ; and how grandly they profited by their 

 instructions, the oligarchic conspiracy of the four hundred in the year 411 B.C., 

 and the government of the thirty tyrants, told to all the world with a signature 

 of blood, whose significance Mr Grote would be the very last man to misinterpret. 



(5.) Mr Grote 1 s fifth argument, that the Sophists were not a sect or body of 

 men like the Stoics and the Platonists, holding any particular set of opinions, but 

 only a profession, like our modern literary men, critics, and reviewers, may be 

 disposed of in a single sentence. Nobody ever said that they were a sect, but a 

 class of men following a particular profession, and who were distinguished gene- 

 rally by a certain common character and principles. Of this the French Encyclo- 

 paedists, to whom the Sophists have been aptly compared, were a notable example. 



(6.) The matter of the nio-Gos, or fee which the Sophists charged for their 

 instructions, must not be looked at from a merely modern point of view. The 

 Sophists were not, like our professors, public servants engaged to give a certain 

 special training to young men, either on receipt of a salary from the public, or of 

 single fees from individual students. They came forward voluntarily with broad 

 general professions, to fit men for public life, by teaching both the art of public- 

 speaking and all that effective speaking implies. They professed to teach the 

 wisdom of life, the art of getting on, and especially the art of governing men in 

 popular assemblies. This, it is evident, is a very serious matter, and very differ- 

 ent from the attitude that belongs to any modern teacher. What they professed 



