need, accusing others, no man could possibly hold an ascendant. position. He had probably not less need of this talent for private informal conversations to satisfy his own political partisans, than for addressing the public assembly formally convoked. Even commanding an army or a fleet, without any laws of war or habit of discipline, his power of keeping up the good-humor, confidence, and prompt obedience of his men, depended not a little on his command of speech. Nor was it only to the leaders in political life that such an accomplishment was indispensable. In all democracies, and probably in several Governments which were not democracies but oligarchies of an open character, the courts of justice were more or less numerous, and the procedure oral and public; in Athens especially the Dicasteries were both very numerous and were paid for attendance. Every citizen had to go before them in person, without being able to send a paid advocate in his place, if he either required redress for wrong offered to himself, or was accused of wrong by another. There was no man therefore who might not be cast or condemned, or fail in his own suit, even with right on his side, unless he possessed some power of speech to unfold his case to the Dicasts, as well as to confute the falsehoods and disentangle the sophistry of an opponent. To meet such liabilities, from which no citizen, rich or poor, was exempt, a certain training in speech became not less essential than a certain training in arms.' Thus was it that even quibbling ingenuity, "making the worse appear the better reason," became a sort of virtue, because it was obtained only by that mastery over argument which was the Athenian's ambition and necessity. We can send a paid advocate to quibble for us, and do not therefore need such argumentative subtlety. But let us ask, are barristers pronounced the "corruptors of mankind," and is their art called the art of "making the worse appear the better reason," as if that, and that alone, were the purport of all pleading? Yet, in defending a criminal, does not every bar

* Grote, viii. 468-4.

rister exert his energy, eloquence, subtlety, and knowledge "to make the worse appear the better reason?" Do we reprobate Sergeant Talfourd or Sir Frederick Thesiger, if they succeed in gaining their client's cause, although that cause be a bad one? On the contrary, the badness of the cause makes the greatness of the triumph.

Now let us suppose Sergeant Talfourd to give lessons in forensic oratory; suppose him to announce to the world, that for a certain sum he would instruct any man in the whole art of exposition and debate, of the interrogation of witnesses, of the tricks and turning-points of the law, so that the learner might become his own advocate: this would be contrary to legal etiquette; but would it be immoral? Grave men might, perhaps, object that Mr. Talfourd was offering to make men cheats and scamps, by enabling them to make the worse appear the better reason. But this is a consequence foreseen by grave men, not acknowledged by the teacher. It is doubtless true that owing to oratory, ingenuity, and subtlety, a scamp's cause is sometimes gained; but it is also true that many an honest man's cause is gained, and many a scamp frustrated, by the same means. If forensic oratory does sometimes make the worse appear the better reason, it also makes the good appear in all its strength. The former is a necessary evil, the latter is the very object of a court of justice. "If," says Callicles, in defence of Gorgias, to Socrates, " any one should charge you with some crime which you had not committed, and carry you off to prison, you would gape and stare, and would not know what to say; and, when brought to trial, however contemptible and weak your accuser might be, if he chose to indict you capitally, you would perish. Can this be wisdom, which, if it takes hold of a gifted man, destroys the excellence of his nature, rendering him incapable of preserving himself and others from the greatest dangers, enabling his enemies to plunder him of all his property, and reducing him to the situation of those who, by a sentence of the Court, have been deprived of all their rights?"

If it be admitted that Sergeant Talfourd's instruction in forensic oratory would not be immoral, however unusual, we have only to extend the sphere and include politics, and represent to ourselves the democratic state of Athens, where demagogues were ever on the alert, and we shall be fully persuaded that the art of the Sophists was not considered immoral; and, as further proof, we select the passage in Plato's Republic, as coming from an unexceptionable source.

Socrates, speaking of the mercenary teachers whom the people call Sophists, says: "These Sophists teach them only the things which the people themselves profess in assemblies; yet this they call wisdom. It is as if a man had observed the instincts and appetites of a great and powerful beast, in what manner to approach it, how or why it is ferocious or calm, what cries it makes, what tones appease and what tones irritate it; after having learnt all this, and calling it wisdom, commenced teaching it without any knowledge of what is good, just, shameful and unjust among these instincts and appetites; but calling that good which flatters the animal, and that bad which irritates it; because he knows not the difference between what is good in itself and that which is only relatively good."*

There is the usual vein of caricature in this description (which is paraphrased in the Quarterly Review, and there given as if the undoubted and unexaggerated doctrines of the Sophists); but it very distinctly sets forth the fact that the Sophists did not teach any thing contrary to public morals, however their art may have offended abstract morality. Indeed the very fact of their popularity would prove that they did but respond to a public want; and because they responded to this want they were paid by the public in money. Plato constantly harps upon their being mercenaries; but he was wealthy, and could afford such sarcasms. The Greeks paid their Musicians, Painters, Sculptors, Physicians, Poets, and Teachers in Schools; why therefore

should they not pay their Philosophers? Zeno of Elea was paid; so was Democritus; but both of these have been sometimes included amongst the Sophists. We see nothing whatever more derogatory in the acceptance of money by Philosophers than by Poets; and we know how the latter stipulated for handsome payment.

Having done our best to show that the "Sophistical art”that alone which the Sophists had in common-was not immoral, or at any rate was not regarded as immoral by the Greeks, we will now see how the case stands with respect to the old accusation of their having corrupted the Athenian youth, and of their doctrines being essentially corrupting.

That the Athenians did not consider the Sophists as corruptors of youth is unequivocally shown in two facts: they did not impeach the Sophists, and they did impeach Socrates. When Anaxagoras and Protagoras "sapped the foundations of morality" by expressing opinions contrary to the religion of Athens, they were banished; but who impeached Gorgias, or Hippias, or Prodicus?

The art however may have been essentially corrupting, although to contemporaries it did not appear so. We believe it was so, if it is to be made responsible for all the consequences which can logically be deduced from it. But "logical consequences" are unjust standards. Men are not responsible for what others may consider their doctrines "lead to." It was on the ground of such remote deduction that Socrates was put to death; and on such grounds the Sophists have been the byword of reproach. Mr. Grote grapples directly with the fact, where he declares Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian war was not more corrupt than Athens in the days of Miltiades and Aristides; and had it been more corrupt, we should demand quite other evidence than that usually alleged, before believing the corruption due to the Sophists.

Why then did Plato speak of the Sophists with so much asperity? Why did he consider their teaching so dangerous?

Because he differed from them in toto. He hated them for the same reason that Calvin hated Servetus; but having a more generous nature than Calvin, his hatred of their doctrines did not assume so disgraceful a form. If his allegations are to condemn the Sophists, they must equally condemn all the public men of that day. "Whoever will read either the Gorgias or the Republic, will see in how sweeping and indiscriminate a manner he passes the sentence of condemnation. Not only the Sophists and all the Rhetors, but all the Musicians and either Dithyrambic or Tragic Poets, all the Statesmen past as well as present, not excepting even the great Pericles, receive from his hand one common stamp of dishonor."* But so far is he from considering the Sophists as peculiar corruptors of Athenian morality, "that he distinctly protests against that supposition in a remarkable passage of the Republic. It is, he says, the whole people or the society, with its established morality, intelligence, and tone of sentiment, which is intrinsically vicious; the teachers of such a society must be vicious also, otherwise their teaching would not be received; and even if their private teaching were ever so good, its effect would be washed away, except in some few privileged natures, by overwhelming influences."

The truth is that, in as far as the Sophists taught any doctrine at all, their doctrine was ethical; and to suppose men teaching immoral ethics, i. e. systems of morality known by them to be immoral, is absurd. To clear up this point we must endeavor to ascertain what that doctrine was.

Plato's account is on the face of it a caricature, since it is impossible that any man should have seriously entertained such a doctrine. What Protagoras and Gorgias thought is not given, but only a misrepresentation of what they thought. Plato seizes hold of one of their doctrines, and, interpreting it in his own

* Grote, viii. 537.

Ibid. p. 59. The passage referred to is Repub. vi. 492 (page 888, ed. Bekker), and the Sophists are mentioned by name as the teachers of whom it treats.