Initiation into Philosophy | Page 4

with the atoms that external matter sends, so to
speak, into our souls. The doctrines of Democritus will be found again
in those of Epicurus and Lucretius.

CHAPTER II
THE SOPHISTS
Logicians and Professors of Logic, and of the Analysis of Ideas, and of
Discussion.
DOCTRINES OF THE SOPHISTS.--The Sophists descend from
Parmenides and Zeno of Elea; Gorgias was the disciple of the latter. By
dint of thinking that all is semblance save the Supreme Being, who
alone is real, it is very easy to arrive at belief in all being semblance,
including that Being; or at least what is almost tantamount, that all is
semblance, inclusive of any idea we can possibly conceive of the
Supreme Being. To believe nothing, and to demonstrate that there is no
reason to believe in anything, is the cardinal principle of all the
Sophists. Then, it may be suggested, there is nothing for it but to be
silent. No, there is the cultivation of one's mind (the only thing of the
existence of which we are sure), so as to give it ability, readiness, and
strength. With what object? To become a dexterous thinker, which in
itself is a fine thing; to be also a man of consideration, listened to in
one's city, and to arrive at its government.
The Sophists accordingly gave lessons, especially in psychology,
dialectics, and eloquence. They further taught philosophy, but in order
to demonstrate that all philosophy is false; and, as Pascal observed later,
that to ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. They seem to have
been extremely intellectual, very learned, and most serious despite their
scepticism, and to have rendered Greece the very great service of
making a penetrating analysis--the first recorded--of our faculty of
knowledge and of the limitations, real, possible, or probable, of that
faculty.
PROTAGORAS; GORGIAS; PRODICUS.--They were very numerous,
the taste for their art, which might be called philosophical criticism,
being widespread in Attica. It may be believed, as Plato maintains, that
some were of very mediocre capacity, and this is natural; but there were

also some who clearly were eminent authorities. The most illustrious
were Protagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus of Ceos. Protagoras seems to
have been the most philosophical of them all, Gorgias the best orator
and the chief professor of rhetoric, Prodicus the most eminent moralist
and poet. Protagoras rejected all metaphysics--that is, all investigation
of first causes and of the universe--and reduced all philosophy to the
science of self-control with a view to happiness, and control of others
with a view to their happiness. Like Anaxagoras, he was banished from
the city under the charge of impiety, and his books were publicly burnt.
Gorgias appears to have maintained the same ideas with more
moderation and also with less profundity. He claimed, above all, to be
able to make a good orator. According to Plato, it was he whom
Socrates most persistently made the butt of his sarcasms.
Prodicus, whom Plato himself esteemed, appears to have been
principally preoccupied with the moral problem. He was the author of
the famous apologue which represented Hercules having to choose
between two paths, the one being that of virtue, the other of pleasure.
Like Socrates later on, he too was subject to the terrible accusation of
impiety, and underwent capital punishment. The Sophists furnish the
most important epoch in the history of ancient philosophy; until their
advent the philosophic systems were great poems on the total of all
things, known and unknown. The Sophists opposed these ambitious
and precipitate generalizations, in which imagination had the larger
share, and their discovery was to bring philosophy back to its true
starting point by affirming that the first thing to do, and that before all
else, was to know our own mind and its mechanism. Their error
possibly was, while saying that it was the first thing to do, too often to
affirm that it was the only thing to do; still the fact remains that they
were perfectly accurate in their assurance that it was primary.


CHAPTER III

SOCRATES
Philosophy Entirely Reduced to Morality, and Morality Considered as
the End of all Intellectual Activity.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES.--Of Socrates nothing is known
except that he was born at Athens, that he held many public discussions
with all and sundry in the streets of Athens, and that he died under the
Thirty Tyrants. Of his ideas we know nothing, because he wrote
nothing, and because his disciples were far too intelligent; in
consequence of which it is impossible to know if what they said was
thought by him, had really been his ideas or theirs. What seems certain
is that neither Aristophanes nor the judges at the trial of Socrates were
completely deceived in considering him a Sophist; for he proceeded
from them. It is true he proceeded from