SOPHISTS, the designation applied to cer tain schools of philosophers in Greece, which occupied the transition period between the older and ruder cosmical philosophies, and the more refined subsequent systems, which beginning with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, were founded primarily on the study of the human mind as the perceiving, thinking, reasoning and knowing subject. In the older systems the direct relation of mind to the objective universe did not receive prominent attention. The hypothesis of a unity in the external variety was assumed without dispute, and a theistic or materialistic interpretation of this unity formulated accord ing to the tendency of the school. In this man ner arose a succession of systems which were agreed in being artificial cosmogonies, unrelated if not hostile to the current traditions of reli gion, and however superior to these current notions as the efforts of great minds to com prehend the relations of things, they were still unable to stand the inevitable criticism of com parison with fact. Of this comparison and criticism the sophists were the exponents, and its force fell both on philosophy and religion. But none of the sophists were really great men, at least in comparison with those who i succeeded them, and they appeared in an age of political decline and social corruption.
The direct services of the sophists to phi losophy appear to have been small and negative. It is too much to attribute to them as a merit the introduction of subjective philosophy. This, as its simultaneous appearance in different schools proves, was no more than a necessity of the period to which they belonged. What chiefly marks the sophists was their 'incapacity to generalize the subjective element, in conse quence of which they were not philosophers properly so called, but only the critics of a dying philosophy. But the sophists rendered to science and literature, and even indirectly to philosophy, much greater services than as phi losophers they were able to render to philoso phy. They have been not inaptly compared to the French encyclopaedists. They belonged to all the liberal professions; they taught all the usual branches of knowledge. Some of them were distinguished as rhetoricians and gram marians, others as men of science. They fre quently made a profession of universal knowl edge, and though from their overweening esti mate of the newly found subjective element of knowledge they carried this pretension so far as to profess to speak of subjects of which they knew nothing, all their pretensions were not equally frivolous. Rhetoric, to which they naturally gave undue importance, was systemat ically studied by them, and they supplied some of the earliest models of good Greek prose. They are accused, however, particularly the later sophists, of being not only superficial in their attainments, but mercenary, vain-glorious and self-seeking in their aims.
Protagoras of Abdera, the earliest and one of the most important of the sophists, was con temporary with Socrates, but considerably older; he applied the Heraclitan doctrine of the uni versal flux of all things to the mind, maintained the uncertainty of the existence of the gods and the relativity of all truth. Man, he said, is the measure of all things. That is true for the individual which for the time being he per ceives or feels. Sense and the gratification of sense are the only relations which subsist be tween man and the external world. All opinions are equally true, and contradictories may be affirmed with equal authority. Protagoras is said to have been the first who taught for pay, and though he left his pupils to fix his re muneration according to the amount of benefit they had received, he is said to have become wealthy. Gorgias of Leontini came to Athens in 427 B.C. as an ambassador from his native city. He affected great pomp, and studied to excel in the splendor of his rhetoric. Founding upon Zeno, he took a bolder stand in scepticism (q.v.) than Protagoras. His hook was called 'Of the Non-Existent or of Nature' ; and his three cardinal propositions were that nothing exists, that if anything exists it cannot be known, that if it could be known it could not be communicated. Gorgias reaches these conclusions by a logical quibble, in which he plays off Heraclitus against the Eleatic school. The scepticism of Gorgias, however, like that of other sophists, as it was founded on a superficial logic, was neither very profound nor very consistently developed. His successors applied it chiefly in a moral direction, which made Plato call the art of rhetoric as taught by Gorgias a corruption of justice. Hippias of Elis represented the law as a tyrant in com pelling men to act contrary to nature. Thrasymachus made the gratification of desire the natural right of the stronger and might the law of nature. Critias, one of the 30 tyrants, ascribed faith in the gods to the invention of politicians. Prodicus of Ceos taught a moral ity more in accordance with ordinary con ceptions of right. Some of his moral dis courses are preserved and are still admired for the feeling they display. His teaching was rec ommended by Socrates, and he has sometimes been called his predecessor. Prodicus is said to have been exorbitant in his charges for in struction. He taught rhetoric to Euripides. Consult Grote, G., 'History of Greece' (new ed., New York 1899) ; Schanz, M., Sophisten' (Gottingen 1867); and the various histories of ancient philosophy.