OF THE FIFTH CENTURY, B.C. 667 



to do could not be done scientifically without discussing the principles of right 

 and wrong, and teaching virtue, apery in fact as well as pyropiKy. This is the 

 point so ably brought out in the Gorgias. Now, the receiving of a fee for a large 

 profession of this kind is a very different thing from paying a price for a pair of 

 boots to a shoemaker, or for so many lessons in grammar to a language master. 

 The question might be raised on the very threshold — Can virtue he taught? the 

 famous question, e? SiSuktov y apery, discussed in the Menon and the Protagoras ; 

 and the strongest arguments were at hand to prove that, if it was teachable at 

 all, it certainly was not to be taught in the same way that dancing may be 

 learned from a dancing master, or music from a music master. A man goes to 

 a teacher of Sanscrit, for instance, gets so many hours' grammatical exposition, 

 appropriates the cram, passes his examination, gets an Indian appointment, and 

 reposes comfortably upon more than the value of his fee. Here there is a de- 

 finite quid for a definite quo, in the most distinct and mercantile sense. But the 

 moral teacher must go to work in a different fashion. He does not offer a 

 marketable article, and therefore cannot expect or demand a market price. For 

 a mere course of lectures on the virtues, with which the scholar is to be duly 

 crammed, will not do the business; it may prove worse than useless. A moral 

 teacher must commence with teaching the student to see his faults, to confess his 

 errors, and to amend his way. No man comes forward with a guinea in his hand 

 to get instruction of this kind. No man expects to be paid for giving good but 

 disagreeable advice to a conceited coxcomb, or a pompous pretender. And, 

 accordingly, in our Christian churches clergymen are paid, not the value of their 

 sermons, but, like the Platonic (pv\aKe$, they receive a general salary for their 

 maintenance. A sermon has no market value. No man paid the Hebrew prophets 

 for their patriotic denunciations. The Athenians paid Socrates for his life-long 

 speaking of all truth, and exposing of all sham, with a dungeon and a cup of 

 hemlock. I therefore think that Socrates was right in refusing to receive a fee 

 for teaching virtue. Besides, there is an element of convention in this matter 

 which must not be overlooked. No public man in this country is paid, or would 

 receive payment, for serving his country as a member of Parliament; and if 

 Protagoras, or any other accomplished speaker, came forward in Athens pro- 

 fessing to teach virtue for a fee, the public conscience was entitled to be 

 offended by the novelty, and to make a strict cross-examination of the individual 

 who made such pretentious professions. One thing is certain, that not only in 

 Athens, but in modern England and everywhere, the public teacher who de- 

 mands no fee for his services, and can be suspected of not the slightest admixture 

 of mercenary motives, must always stand upon a moral vantage ground that 

 the paid teacher cannot occupy. This is the secret, or part of the secret at least, 

 of the great influence exercised by Whitfield and other zealous evangelists in 

 the last century, who, flinging away the golden hopes of ecclesiastical preferment, 



