Sophist | Page 7

contemporary writers, such as Xenophon and Isocrates.
Changes in the meaning of words can only be made with great
difficulty, and not unless they are supported by a strong current of
popular feeling. There is nothing improbable in supposing that Plato
may have extended and envenomed the meaning, or that he may have
done the Sophists the same kind of disservice with posterity which
Pascal did to the Jesuits. But the bad sense of the word was not and
could not have been invented by him, and is found in his earlier
dialogues, e.g. the Protagoras, as well as in the later.
3. There is no ground for disbelieving that the principal Sophists,
Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, were good and honourable men.
The notion that they were corrupters of the Athenian youth has no real
foundation, and partly arises out of the use of the term 'Sophist' in
modern times. The truth is, that we know little about them; and the
witness of Plato in their favour is probably not much more historical
than his witness against them. Of that national decline of genius, unity,
political force, which has been sometimes described as the corruption
of youth, the Sophists were one among many signs;--in these respects
Athens may have degenerated; but, as Mr. Grote remarks, there is no
reason to suspect any greater moral corruption in the age of
Demosthenes than in the age of Pericles. The Athenian youth were not
corrupted in this sense, and therefore the Sophists could not have
corrupted them. It is remarkable, and may be fairly set down to their
credit, that Plato nowhere attributes to them that peculiar Greek
sympathy with youth, which he ascribes to Parmenides, and which was
evidently common in the Socratic circle. Plato delights to exhibit them
in a ludicrous point of view, and to show them always rather at a
disadvantage in the company of Socrates. But he has no quarrel with
their characters, and does not deny that they are respectable men.
The Sophist, in the dialogue which is called after him, is exhibited in
many different lights, and appears and reappears in a variety of forms.
There is some want of the higher Platonic art in the Eleatic Stranger
eliciting his true character by a labourious process of enquiry, when he
had already admitted that he knew quite well the difference between the
Sophist and the Philosopher, and had often heard the question
discussed;-- such an anticipation would hardly have occurred in the
earlier dialogues. But Plato could not altogether give up his Socratic

method, of which another trace may be thought to be discerned in his
adoption of a common instance before he proceeds to the greater matter
in hand. Yet the example is also chosen in order to damage the 'hooker
of men' as much as possible; each step in the pedigree of the angler
suggests some injurious reflection about the Sophist. They are both
hunters after a living prey, nearly related to tyrants and thieves, and the
Sophist is the cousin of the parasite and flatterer. The effect of this is
heightened by the accidental manner in which the discovery is made, as
the result of a scientific division. His descent in another branch affords
the opportunity of more 'unsavoury comparisons.' For he is a retail
trader, and his wares are either imported or home-made, like those of
other retail traders; his art is thus deprived of the character of a liberal
profession. But the most distinguishing characteristic of him is, that he
is a disputant, and higgles over an argument. A feature of the Eristic
here seems to blend with Plato's usual description of the Sophists, who
in the early dialogues, and in the Republic, are frequently depicted as
endeavouring to save themselves from disputing with Socrates by
making long orations. In this character he parts company from the vain
and impertinent talker in private life, who is a loser of money, while he
is a maker of it.
But there is another general division under which his art may be also
supposed to fall, and that is purification; and from purification is
descended education, and the new principle of education is to
interrogate men after the manner of Socrates, and make them teach
themselves. Here again we catch a glimpse rather of a Socratic or
Eristic than of a Sophist in the ordinary sense of the term. And Plato
does not on this ground reject the claim of the Sophist to be the true
philosopher. One more feature of the Eristic rather than of the Sophist
is the tendency of the troublesome animal to run away into the darkness
of Not-being. Upon the whole, we detect in him a sort of hybrid or
double nature, of which, except perhaps in the Euthydemus of