But this is not all. The education provided by the sophists of culture had positive merits. When Protagoras included in his course, grammar, style, interpretation of the poets and oratory, supplementing his own continuous expositions by disputations in which he and his pupils took part, he showed a not inadequate appreciation of the requisites of a literary education ; and it may be conjectured that his comprehensive programme, which Prodicus and others extended, had something to do with the development of that versatility which was the most notable element in the Athenian character.
There is less to be said for the teachers of rhetoric, politics and eristic, who, in limiting themselves each to a single subject—the rhetoricians proper or forensic rhetoricians to one branch of oratory, the politicians or political rhetoricians to another, and the eristics to disputation—ceased to be educators and became instructors. Nevertheless, rhetoric and disputation, though at the present day strangely neglected in English schools and universities, are, within their limits, valuable instruments; and, as specialization in teaching does not necessarily imply specialization in learning, many of those who attended the lectures and the classes of a rhetorician or an eristic sought and found other instruction else where. It would seem then that even in its decline sophistry had its educational use, But in any case it may be claimed for its professors that in the course of a century they discovered and turned to account most of the instruments of literary education. With these considerable merits, normal sophistry had one defect, its indifference to truth. Despairing of philosophy—that is to say, of physical science—the sophists were prepared to go all lengths in scepticism. Accordingly the epideictic sophists in ex position, and the argumentative sophists in debate, one and all, studied, not matter but style, not accuracy but effect, not proof but persuasion. In short, in their hostility to science they refused to handle literature in a scientific spirit. That this defect was serious was dimly apprehended even by those who frequented and admired the lectures of the earlier sophists; that it was fatal was clearly seen by Socrates, who, himself commonly regarded as a sophist, emphatically reprehended, not only the taking of fees, which was after all a mere incident, objectionable because it seemed to preclude independence of thought, but also the funda mental disregard of truth which infected every part and every phase of sophistical teaching. To these contemporary censures the modern critic cannot refuse his assent.
To literature and to oratory the sophists rendered good service. Themselves of necessity stylists, because their professional suc ress largely depended upon skilful and effective exposition, the sophists both of culture and of rhetoric were professedly teachers of the rules of grammar and the principles of written and spoken discourse. Thus, by example as well as by precept, they not only taught their hearers to value literary and oratorical excellence, but also took the lead in fashioning the style of their time. Their influence in these respects was weighty and important. Whereas, when sophistry began, prose composition was hardly practised in central Greece, the sophists were still the leaders in literature and oratory when Plato wrote the Republic, and they had hardly lost their position when Demosthenes delivered the Philippics. In fact, it is not too much to say that it was the sophists who provided those great masters with their consummate instrument, and it de tracts but little from the merit of the makers if they were them selves unable to draw from it its finer tones.
The relation of sophistry to philosophy was throughout one of pronounced hostility. From the days of Protagoras, when this hostility was triumphant and contemptuous, to the days of Isoc rates, when it was jealous and bitter, the sophists were declared and consistent sceptics. But, although Protagoras and Gorgias
had examined the teaching of their predecessors so far as to satisfy themselves of its futility and to draw the sceptical inference, their study of the great problem of the day was preliminary to their sophistry rather than a part of it ; and, as the overthrow of philo sophy was complete and the attractions of sophistry were all powerful, the question "What is knowledge?" ceased for a time to clairti or to receive attention. There is, then, no such thing as a "sophistical theory of knowledge." Similarly, the recognition of a "sophistical ethic" is, to say the least, misleading. It may have been that the sophists' preference of seeming to reality, of success to truth, had a mischievous effect upon the morality of the time ; but it is clear that they had no common theory of ethics, and there is no warrant for the assumption that a sophist, as such, specially interested himself in ethical questions. When Protagoras asserted "civic excellence" or "virtue" to be the end of education, he neither expressed nor implied a theory of morality. Prodicus in his platitudes reflected the customary morality of the time. Gorgias said plainly that he did not teach "virtue." If Hippias, Polus and Thrasymachus defied conventional morality, they did so independently of one another, and in this, as in other matters, they were disputants maintaining paradoxical theses, rather than thinkers announcing heretical convictions. The morality of Isocrates bore a certain resemblance to that of Socrates. In short, the attitude of the sophists towards inquiry in general precluded them, collectively and individually, from attachment to any particular theory. Yet among the so-called sophists there were two who had philosophical leanings, as appears in their willingness to be called by the title of philosopher. First, Socrates, whilst he conceived that the physicists had mistaken the field of inquiry, absolute truth being unattainable, main tained, as has been seen, that one opinion was better than an other, and that consistency of opinion, resulting in consistency of action, was the end which the human intellect properly proposes to itself. Hence, though an agnostic, he was not unwilling to be called a philosopher, in so far as he pursued such truth as was attainable by man. Secondly, when sophistry had begun to fall into contempt, the political rhetorician Isocrates claimed for him self the time-honoured designation of philosopher, "herein," says Plato, "resembling some tinker, bald-pated and short of stature, who, having made money, knocks off his chains, goes to the bath, buys a new suit, and then takes advantage of the poverty and desolation of his master's daughter to urge upon her his odious addresses" (Rep. vi. 495 E). It will be seen, however, that neither Socrates nor Isocrates was philosopher in any strict sense of the word, the speculative aims of physicists and metaphysicians being foreign to the practical theories both of the one and of the other.