SOPHISTS. The race of sophists took its rise in Athens about the 5th century n.c., when Athens was a real democracy. From the neces sity every man was under of pleading his,own cause before the dicastery, in any case before the court, whether as plaintiff or defendant ; from the political power which every citizen possessed, hut could scarcely exercise with effect unless able to speak fluently; the teaching of rhetoric, or the arts of speaking and arguing logically, came to be in much request. The age was also a sceptical, and therefore an investi gating one. But though flourishing in Athens, sophists and their teachings were not confined to that city, but extended throughout all the Grecian republics, and occasionally to the courts of tyrants. They went about Greece discoursing and viehating, and sometimes educating the youth of rich and noble families. They were not, strictly speaking, a sect ; indeed the name signifying only a wise or clever man, had been so applied from the earliest times of Greece; and Socrates, Plato, and other eminent men were all called sophists.
The disrepute attached to the name arose apparently from the facts of the teachers accepting payment for their lessons, and pro ceeding to inculcate not the desire for truth, but the means of securing victory by the use of specious fallacies. It was against both these modes that Socrates and Plato contended ; and to which Plato and Aristotle affixed the name as a term of reproach for a " man who em ploys what he knows to be fallacy, for the purpose of deceit and of getting money." (Grote, Hist. of Greece,' vol. v.) But the sophists were able to bear up against the judgment of philosophers, by having become the trainers of men for the active pursuits of life, and their influence over the multitude greatly exceeded that of the sages. Nor
did they all, though they taught for money, teach fallacies merely; and the representations of them, in the Dialogues of Plato must not be accepted as the truth with reference to them as a class. Socrates, Protagoras, and Prodicus, were stigmatised as sophists, but what we know of their doctrines and practice does not deserve any heavy condemna tion. No doubt, in numerous instances the sophists, like the school men of the middle ages, indulged in subtleties and evasions which were dishonest, trivial, and often ridiculous; but, as Ritter says (‘ Ge schichte der Philosophic,' vol. i.), " It is not to be denied that the sophists contributed greatly to the perfection of prose; which was in itself a great benefit to philosophy. The sophists applied themselves to manifold arts of persuasion, and in their attacks upon each other, labouring to expose and lay bare the delusions of appearance, they acquired great nicety in the distinction of terms. Prodieus was cele brated for his skill in the distinctions of synonymous terms (as we learn from Plato, who ridicules him for it, (Protag. p. 337 ; Crat. p. 384) ; but Prodicus is honourably mentioned by him (Euthyd. p. 277-305). The sophisms turning upon the words 'to learn," to understand,' ' to know,' also contributed to the more accurate know ledge of these terms. The very circumstance that their rules were — — — intended to be subservient to the euds of fallacy and deception, must hive ailbriled a stronger motive to the philosophical spirit to bring under investigation the true forms of thought and expression which hul been neglected by earlier philosophers ; and accordingly we find that they occupied much of the attentiou of Socrates?'