The sophistical movement was then primarily an attempt to provide a general or liberal education which should supplement the customary instruction in reading, writing, gymnastic, and music. But, as the sophists of the first period chose for their instruments grammar, style, literature, and oratory, while those of the second and third developments were professed rhetoricians, sophistry exercised an important influence upon literature. Then again, as the movement, taking its rise in the philosophical agnosticism which grew out of the early physical systems, was itself persistently sceptical, sophistry may be regarded as an interlude in the history of philosophy. Finally, the practice of rhetoric and eristic, which presently became prominent in sophistical teaching, had, or at any rate seemed to have, a mischievous effect upon conduct; and the charge of seeking, whether in exposition or in debate, not truth but victory—which charge was impressively urged against the sophists by Plato—grew into an accusation of holding and teaching immoral and unsocial doctrines, and in our own day has been the subject of eager controversy. In the present article the matters above indicated will be dealt with under the following heads :—(1) the genesis and development of sophistry; (2) the relations of sophistry to education, literature, and philosophy; (3) the theory of Grote.

(1) Genesis and Development of Sophistry.— Sophistry arose out of a crisis in philosophy. The earlier Ionian physicists,—Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes,—in their attempts to trace the multiplicity of things to a single material element, had been troubled by no misgivings about the possibility of knowledge. But, when Heraclitus to the assumption of fire as the single material cause added the doctrine that all things are in perpetual flux, he found himself obliged to admit that things cannot be known. Thus, though, in so far as he asserted his fundamental doctrine without doubt or qualification, he was a dogmatist, in all else he was a sceptic. Again, the Eleatic Parmenides, deriving from the theologian Xenophanes the distinction between ἐπιoτήμη and δόξα, conceived that, whilst the One exists, and is the object of knowledge, the Multiplicity of things becomes, and is the object of opinion; but, when his successor Zeno provided the system with a logic, the consistent application of that logic resolved the fundamental doctrine into the single proposition “One is One,” or, more exactly, into the single identity “One One.” Thus Eleaticism, though professedly dogmatic, was inconsistent in its theory of the One and its attributes, and openly sceptical in regard to the world of nature. Lastly, the philosophers of the second physical succession,—Empedocles and Anaxagoras,—not directly attacking the great mystery of the One and the Many, but in virtue of a scientific instinct approaching it through the investigation of phenomena, were brought by their study of sensation to perceive and to proclaim the inadequacy of the organs of sense. Thus they too, despite their air of dogmatism, were in effect sceptics. In short, from different standpoints, the three philosophical successions had devised systems which were in reality sceptical, though they had none of them recognized the sceptical inference.

Towards the middle of the 5th century, however, Protagoras of Abdera, taking account of the teaching of the first, and possibly of the second, of the physical successions, and Gorgias of Leontini, starting from the teaching of the metaphysical succession of Elea, drew that sceptical inference from which the philosophers had shrunk. If, argued Protagoras in a treatise entitled Truth, all things are in flux, so that sensation is subjective, it follows that “Man is the measure of all things, of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not”; in other words, there is no such thing as objective truth. Similarly, Gorgias, in a work On Mature, or on the Nonent, maintained (a ) that nothing is, (b ) that, if anything is, it cannot be known, (c ) that, if anything is and can be known, it cannot be expressed in speech; and the summaries which have been preserved by Sextus Empiricus (Adv. Math., vii. 65-87) and by the author of the De Melisso, &c. (cc. 5, 6), show that, in defending these propositions, Gorgias availed himself of the arguments which Zeno had used to discredit the popular belief in the existence of the Many; in other words, that Gorgias turned the destructive logic of Zeno against the constructive ontology of Parmenides, thereby not only reducing Eleaticism to nothingness, but also, until such time as a better logic than that of Zeno should be provided, precluding all philosophical inquiry whatsoever. Thus, whereas the representatives of the three successions had continued to regard themselves as philosophers or seekers after truth, Protagoras and Gorgias, plainly acknowledging their defeat, withdrew from the ungrateful struggle.

Meagre as were the results which the earlier thinkers had obtained, the extinction of philosophy just at the time when the liberal arts became more technical, and consequently less available as employments of leisure, threatened to leave a blank in Hellenic life. Accordingly Protagoras, while with the one hand he put away philosophy, with the other offered a substitute. Emphasizing the function of the teacher, which with the philosophers had been subordinate, and proclaiming the right end of intellectual endeavour to be, not “truth” (ἀλήθεια ) or “wisdom” (σοφία), which was unattainable, but “virtue” or “excellence” (αρετή), he sought to communicate, not a theory of the universe, but an aptitude for civic life. “The lesson which I have to teach,” Plato makes him say (Prot., 318 E), “is prudence or good counsel, both in respect of domestic matters, that the man may manage his household aright, and in respect of public affairs, that he may be thoroughly qualified to take part, both by deed and by word, in the business of the state. In other words, I profess to make men good citizens.” As instruments of education Protagoras used grammar, style, poetry, and oratory. Thus, whereas hitherto the young Greek, having completed his elementary training in the schools of the γραμματιστής, the κιθαριστής, and the παιδοτρίβης, was left to prepare himself for his life’s work as best he might, by philosophical speculation, by artistic practice, or otherwise, one who passed from the elementary schools to the lecture-room of Protagoras received from him a “higher education.” The programme was exclusively literary, but for the moment it enabled Protagoras to satisfy the demand which he had discovered and evoked. Wherever he went, his lecture-room was crowded with admiring pupils, whose homage filled his purse and enhanced his reputation.

After Protagoras the most prominent of the literary sophists was Prodicus of Ceos. Establishing himself at Athens, he taught “virtue” or “excellence,” in the sense attached to the word by Protagoras, partly by means of literary subjects, partly in discourses upon practical ethics. It is plain that Prodicus was an affected pedant. Yet his simple conventional morality found favour, and Plato (Rep., 600 C) couples him with Protagoras in his testimony to the popularity of the sophists and their teaching.

At Athens, the centre of the intellectual life of Greece, there was soon to be found a host of sophists: some of them strangers, others citizens; some of them bred under Protagoras and Prodicus, others self-taught. In the teaching of the sophists of this younger generation two points are observable. First, their independence of philosophy and the arts being assured, though they continued to regard “civic excellence” as their aim, it was no longer necessary for them to make the assertion of its claims a principal element in their exposition. Secondly, for the sake of novelty they extended their range, including scientific and technical subjects, but handling them, and teaching their pupils to handle them, in a popular way. In this stage of sophistry then, the sophist, though not a specialist, trenched upon the provinces of specialists; and accordingly Plato (Prot., 318 E) makes Protagoras pointedly refer to sophists who, “when young men have made their escape from the arts, plunge them once more into technical study, and teach them such subjects as arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music.” The sophist of whom the Platonic Protagoras is here thinking was Hippias of Elis, who gave popular lectures, not only upon the four subjects just mentioned, but also upon grammar, mythology, family history, archaeology, Homerology, and the education of youth. In this polymath we see at once the degradation of the sophistry of culture and the link which connects Protagoras and Prodicus with the eristics, who at a later period taught, not, like Hippias, all branches of learning, but a universally applicable method of disputation.

Meanwhile, Gorgias of Leontini, who, as has been seen, had studied and rejected the philosophy of western Greece, gave to sophistry a new direction by bringing to the mother country the technical study of rhetoric,—especially forensic rhetoric (Plato, Gorg., 454 B; cf. Aristotle, Rhet., 1354 b 26),—which study had begun in Sicily with Corax and Tisias nearly forty years before. Gorgias was already advanced in years and rich in honours when, in 427, he visited Athens as the head of an embassy sent to solicit aid against Syracuse. Received with acclamation, he spent the rest of his long life in central Greece, winning applause by the display of his oratorical gifts and acquiring wealth by the teaching of rhetoric. There is no evidence to show that at any period of his life he called himself a sophist; and, as Plato (Gorg., 449 A) makes him describe himself as a ῥήτωρ, it is reasonable to suppose that he preferred that title. That he should do so was only natural, since his position as a teacher of rhetoric was already secure when Protagoras made his first appearance in the character of a sophist; and, as Protagoras, Prodicus, and the rest of the sophists of culture offered a comprehensive education, of which oratory formed only a part, whilst Gorgias made no pretence of teaching “civic excellence” (Plato, Meno, 95 C), and found a substitute for philosophy, not in literature generally, but in the professional study of rhetoric alone, it would have been convenient if the distinction between sophistry and rhetoric had been maintained. But, though, as will be seen hereafter, these two sorts of education were sometimes distinguished, Gorgias and those who succeeded him as teachers of rhetoric, such as Thrasymachus of Chalcedon and Polus of Agrigentum, were commonly called by the title which Protagoras had assumed and brought into familiar use.

Rhetorical sophistry, as taught by Gorgias with special reference to the requirements of the law courts, led by an easy transition to political sophistry. During the century which had elapsed since the expulsion of the Pisistratids and the establishment of the democracy, the Athenian constitution had developed with a rapidity which produced an oligarchical reaction, and the discussion of constitutional principles and precedents, always familiar to the citizen of Athens, was thus abnormally stimulated. The Peloponnesian War too not only added a deeper interest to ordinary questions of policy, but also caused the relations of dissentient parties, of allied and belligerent states, of citizens and aliens, of bond and free, of Greeks and barbarians, to be eagerly debated in the light of present experience. It was only natural then that some of those who professed to prepare young Athenians for public life should give to their teaching a distinctively political direction; and accordingly we find Isocrates recognizing teachers of politics, and discriminating them at once from those earlier sophists who gave popular instruction in the arts and from the contemporary eristics. To this class, that of the political sophists, may be assigned Lycophron, Alcidamas, and Isocrates himself. For, though that celebrated personage would have liked to be called, not “sophist,” but “political philosopher,” and tried to fasten the name of “sophist” upon his opponents the Socratics, it is clear from his own statement that he was commonly ranked with the sophists, and that he had no claim, except on the score of superior popularity and success, to be dissociated from the other teachers of political rhetoric. It is true that he was not a political sophist of the vulgar type, that as a theorist he was honest and patriotic, and that, in addition to his fame as a teacher, he had a distinct reputation as a man of letters; but he was a professor of political rhetoric, and, as such, in the phraseology of the day, a sophist. He had already reached the height of his fame when Plato opened a rival school at the Academy, and pointedly attacked him in the Gorgias, the Phaedrus, and the Republic. Thenceforward there was a perpetual controversy between the rhetorician and the philosopher, and the struggle of educational systems continued until, in the next generation, the philosophers were left in possession of the field.

While the sophistry of rhetoric led to the sophistry of politics, the sophistry of culture led to the sophistry of disputation. It has been seen that the range of subjects recognized by Protagoras and Prodicus gradually extended itself, until Hippias professed himself a teacher of all branches of learning, including in his list subjects taught by artists and professional men, but handling them from a popular or non-professional point of view. The successors of the polymath claimed to possess and to communicate, not the knowledge of all branches of learning, but an aptitude for dealing with all subjects, which aptitude should make the knowledge of any subject superfluous. In other words, they cultivated skill in disputation. Now skill in disputation is plainly a valuable accomplishment; and, as the Aristotelian logic grew out of the regulated discussions of the eristics and their pupils, the disputant sophistry of the 4th century deserves more attention and more respect than it usually receives from historians of Greek thought. But when men set themselves to cultivate skill in disputation, irrespective of the matter debated, —when men regard the matter discussed, not as a serious issue, but as a thesis upon which to practise their powers of controversy,—they learn to pursue, not truth, but victory; and, their criterion of excellence having been thus perverted, they presently prefer ingenious fallacy to solid reasoning, and the applause of bystanders to the consciousness of honest effort. Indeed, the sophists generally had a predisposition to error of this sort, not only because sophistry was from the beginning a substitute for the pursuit of truth, but also because the successful professor, travelling from city to city, or settling abroad, could take no part in public affairs, and thus was not at every step reminded of the importance of the “material” element of exposition and reasoning. Paradox, however, soon becomes stale, and fallacy wearisome. Hence, despite its original popularity, eristical sophistry could not hold its ground. The man of the world who had cultivated it in his youth regarded it in riper years as a foolish pedantry, or at best as a propaedeutic exercise; while the serious student, necessarily preferring that form of disputation which recognized truth as the end of this as of other intellectual processes, betook himself to one or other of the philosophies of the revival.

In order to complete this sketch of the development of sophistry in the latter half of the 5th century and the earlier half of the 4th, it is necessary next to take account of Socrates and the Socratics. A foe to philosophy and a renegade from art, Socrates took his departure from the same point as Protagoras, and moved in the same direction, that of the education of youth. Finding in the cultivation of “virtue” or “excellence” a substitute for the pursuit of scientific truth, and in disputation the sole means by which “virtue” or “excellence” could be attained, he resembled at once the sophists of culture and the sophists of eristic. But, inasmuch as the “virtue” or “excellence” which he sought was that of the man rather than that of the official, while the disputation which he practised had for its aim, not victory, but the elimination of error, the differences which separated him from the sophists of culture and the sophists of eristic were only less considerable than the resemblances which he bore to both; and further, though his whole time and attention were bestowed upon the education of young Athenians, his theory of the relations of teacher and pupil differed from that of the recognized professors of education, inasmuch as the taking of fees seemed to him to entail a base surrender of the teacher’s independence. The principal characteristics of Socrates’s theory of education were accepted, mutatis mutandis, by the leading Socratics. With these resemblances to the contemporary professors of education, and with these differences, were Socrates and the Socratics sophists or not? To this question there is no simple answer, yes or no. It is certain that Socrates’s contemporaries regarded him as a sophist; and it was only reasonable that they should so regard him, because in opposition to the physicists of the past and the artists of the present he asserted the claims of higher education. But, though according to the phraseology of the time he was a sophist, he was not a typical sophist,—his principle that, while scientific truth is unattainable by man, right opinion is the only basis of right action, clearly differentiating him from all the other professors of “virtue.” Again, as the Socratics—Plato himself, when he established himself at the Academy, being no exception—were, like their master, educators rather than philosophers, and in their teaching laid especial stress upon discussion, they too were doubtless regarded as sophists, not by Isocrates only, but by their contemporaries in general; and it may be conjectured that the disputatious tendencies of the Megarian school made it all the more difficult for Plato and others to secure a proper appreciation of the difference between dialectic, or discussion with a view to the discovery of truth, and eristic, or discussion with a view to victory. Changing circumstances, however, carry with them changes in the meaning and application of words. Whereas, so long as philosophy was in abeyance Socrates and the Socratics were regarded as sophists of an abnormal sort, as soon as philosophy revived it was dimly perceived that, in so far as Socrates and the Socratics dissented from sophistry, they preserved the philosophical tradition. This being so, it was found convenient to revise the terminology of the past, and to include in the philosophical succession those who, though not philosophers, had cherished the sacred spark. As for Socrates, he ranked himself neither with the philosophers, who professed to know, nor with the sophists, who professed to teach; and, if he sometimes described himself as a φιλόσοφος, he was careful to indicate that he pretended to no other knowledge than that of his own limitations.

It would seem then, (1) that popular nomenclature included under the term “sophist” all teachers—whether professors, or, like Socrates, amateurs—who communicated, not artistic skill, nor philosophical theory, but a general or liberal education; (2) that, of those who were commonly accounted sophists, some professed culture, some forensic rhetoric, some political rhetoric, some eristic, some (fe., the Socratics) dialectic; (3) that the differences between the different groups of sophists were not inconsiderable, and that in particular the teaching of the rhetoricians was distinct in origin, and, in so far as its aim was success in a special walk of life, distinct in character, from the...