668 PROFESSOR BLACKIE ON THE SOPHISTS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY, B.C. 



devoted themselves to field preaching and missionary work among the most 

 abandoned classes, by whom an entirely moral service could be repaid only by a 

 moral reward. 



This paper may be most fitly concluded by an articulate statement of the 

 heads of the sophistical doctrine, as I abstract them from the works of Plato, 

 supported by the general testimony of the ancients : — 



T. General information and alert intelligence without a philosophical basis, or 

 a scientific method of verification. 



II. The art of public speaking, considered merely as a means of moving masses 

 of ignorant men with a view to political advancement, but not necessarity con- 

 nected either with pure motives, lofty purpose, or business habits. 



III. The exercise of a dexterous logic, that aimed at the ingenious, the 

 striking, and the plausible, rather than the true, the solid, and the judicious. 



IV. A theory of metaphysics which, by confounding knowledge with sensa- 

 tion, and subordinating the general to the particular, made wisdom consist rather 

 in the expert use of present opportunity, than in the moulding of materials 

 according to an intellectual principle. 



V. A theory of morals which, by basing right on convention, not on nature, 

 deprived our sensuous and animal passions of the imperial control of reason, and 

 substituted for the eternal instinct of justice in the human heart the arbitrary 

 enactments of positive law, whose ultimate sanction is the intelligent selfishness 

 of the individual. 





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