CHAPTER V.

THE SOPHISTS.

Protagoras-Prodicus-Gorgias.

THERE seems to be a law in force on this globe of ours that nothing shall be perfect or unbroken. There shall be no even flow, no consummation, no sitting down to rest at the top of the hill, whether the hill climbed be physical, mental, or moral.

66 Anticlimax seems the natural end of those who lay themselves out to climb. Few great conquerors have died in the heyday of success-few sciences or religions have pursued their course without a fall. The greater the subject, indeed, the greater the check given by an unseen Power that some believe to be one thing, some another. The old saying applied to Love might be applied to Thought: "The course of true Thought never runs smooth."

The bold effort of these old Greeks to find out why we . are here, what we are, and what we are going to be, what Eternity and Eternal Power is, and the rest, continued unchecked, unopposed, for a century or two. Philosophy had become a mental Object in the land, each mind helping to build, as the ants erect their mounds; but suddenly came a rough kick, and the carefully built edifice was down.

In the fifth century before Christ, all the grand reasonings of the great minds, from Thales to Empedocles, suffered a shock, and for a time were effaced, almost oblite

rated, by the moral paralysis of Doubt; a doubt, if not entirely originated, nourished and fostered by a band of clever men called in history the "Sophists."

All who have made the acquaintance of that ugly, subtle influence we call Doubt know its stultifying, freezing atmosphere. Doubt is to the mind what weakness is to the body, a power which is all the greater because it is negative. It is a Not. Weakness is non-strength,— Doubt is non-belief. They are chasms to be filled up, not obstacles to be overthrown: and every one knows how much easier it is to be active than passive, to work than to wait.

"But" and "If' are small weapons in the hands of fools; but wielded by "Sophists" or "wise men," the very instruments of moral death.

At the head of this band of so-called philosophical reformers is Protagoras.

Protagoras was a native of Abdera, the birthplace of Democritus; and the story runs that he was a porter, of middle age, who attracted the attention of the young philosopher one day as he was strolling in the marketplace, by the mathematical manner in which he arranged his knot. Democritus talked to him, and was so convinced of his natural aptitude, that later we hear of Democritus and Protagoras as master and pupil.

Protagoras was the older man, but his inferior position somewhat balanced the difference in age. Democritus, then a young man of rank and wealth, would feel less diffidence in instructing a senior who carried so many pounds on his shoulders for so many pence than he would in expounding his ideas to a man older than himself, but socially his equal.

How, after that eventful moment of the meeting, Protagoras pursued his education; how he became the powerful orator who bore away the minds of his hearers as mere straws upon the mighty stream of his eloquence, is not related. We next hear of him in Athens, where

he rose to such eminence that Plato named one of his renowned dialogues "Protagoras," and repeats therein many of the great man's sayings.

The literal meaning of "Sophist" is "wise man," but the accepted interpretation of " sophistry" and "sophism" is a specious twisting of facts in the struggle to adapt and fit truth to the will of the reasoner. Whether these philosophers who were called Sophists were more wise men than false reasoners, or vice versa, we in these days can hardly judge; for, as G. H. Lewes tell us, "we have only the testimony of antagonists." But that they taught the insufficiency of Philosophy to solve the problem of existence, and brought forward no positive system of their own to replace the mass of opinions they argued against, is certain.

Protagoras brought about a crisis. Until he raised his sceptical voice, men bowed down before the various teachings, in fact, they believed. Each school had its tribe of followers, who accepted the opinions of its founder as dogma.

Protagoras declared "Man to be the measure of all things." This was the text upon which he preached, upon which he lavished his wonderful gifts of eloquence, argument, and persuasion, a text he never seemed to tire of repeating during his travels through Greece. He taught to each individual that his own perceptions were to be trusted,-what he saw, touched, and heard was actual existence, that the idea so cherished by philosophers, that "all things are not what they seem," was a fallacy. This subtle flattery of the lower order of intelligences at once gained him the favour of the million. Although he was paid heavy fees for his lectures and lessons, he had as many pupils as he could accept, and Plato describes his reception by the young men of Athens as absurdly enthusiastic.

This oratorical genius is said to have been the inventor of the art of public speaking, and it is a fact that he was

the first to use divisions in his speeches. He wrote,—but if any of his writing remains, it is in quotations by others.

Protagoras, Prodicus, Gorgias, and other Sophists,—all ridiculing the tenets of the Philosophers as well as the religion of the time,-became the leaders of the intellectual world of Greece. It became the fashion to attach importance to each verbal quibble, to hang upon every word that fell from their lips. Their last epigram was the principal theme of conversation.

Thought, in fact, was stifled by them-Language put in its place. They were so easy to understand because there was nothing to be understood.

There must have been those who stood apart and mourned to see the crowd,-the crowd that had once venerated an Empedocles, shouting "Protagoras!" even as a noisy crowd some centuries later cried out the name of Barabbas, the robber.

From those regretful bystanders must have arisen the murmur of rebellion against the fascinating but hollow talkers, which finally made itself heard in high places, and led to the banishment of Protagoras.

The excuse given for this measure was that the Sophistical teaching tended to foster immorality—as well it might among the giddy and inexperienced, when, among other like asseverations, it advanced that justice meant "the interests of the stronger;" that rulers legislate with a view to their own interests, as a shepherd fattens his sheep for his own advantage; that the unjust man who plunders is better off than the honest just man, therefore it is better to be unjust than just.

This is but one of many examples of how the Sophists substituted the "worse" for the "better" reasoning.

But there was one among their hearers, a quiet listener, who at times asked them questions with an apologetic, humble air,—an odd, ungainly, insignificant little man, who seemed abashed and overwhelmed when addressing the pompous men in their rich robes, sur

rounded by crowds of wealthy admirers. No doubt they replied to him with lofty condescension, if indeed they deigned to reply at all. They little knew how their own words would be used to refute them, how there was a mind among them they knew not, before whose burning fire their poor little sophistries would scorch, wither, and shrivel up like so many paper flowers.