a profession of the higher education, and some of them amassed considerable fortunes by their lectures on rhetoric, the art of speaking, which was also made to include instruction in regard to political and social life. The speculative interest of the older philosophers was in them changed into a predominantly practical interest, 1st, as to how to acquire wealth and notoriety for themselves, and 2ndly, as a means to this, to attract by omniscient pretensions, by brilliant declamation and startling paradox, clever and ambitious young men of the richer classes; and then to secure their continued discipleship by careful training with a view to the attainment of political power*.

Protagoras of Abdera (B.c. 490—415) and Gorgias of Leontini in Sicily (B.C. 480-375) are the earliest of the so-called Sophists. Protagoras taught in Sicily and at Athens, from which latter place he was banished on a charge of impiety in consequence of his treatise on Theology referred to by Cicero, N. D. 1 29 & 63. His treatise on Truth began with the famous sentence, 'Man is the measure of all things;' meaning that truth is relative, not absolute, that what each man holds to be true, that is true to him; and similarly in regard to conduct, that it is impossible to pronounce universally that one kind of conduct is right, another wrong: right and wrong depend upon opinion; what is generally thought right is right generally; what each thinks right is right for him, just as each man's sensations are true for him, though perhaps not for another; there is therefore no more reason for one general assertion than for another, perhaps an opposite assertion. It is plain that this was a sort of conciliation theory naturally springing from the fact of the opposition of philosophical schools: each of you are equally right relatively, equally wrong absolutely; there is no need for quarrel.' Protagoras also wrote on Grammar and Philology. Gorgias is said to have first come to Athens in B.C. 427, and afterwards to have travelled about giving lectures from town to town. He devoted himself mainly to the cultivation of rhetoric, but also wrote a treatise πepì púσews, in which he maintained 1st 'that nothing exists' (i. e. doubtless 'in the absolute Eleatic sense'); 2nd that if anything did exist, still it could not be known; 3rd that even if it could be known, the knowledge of it could not be communicated

* The general features of the Sophistic period are photographed in the Clouds of Aristophanes, and in Thucydides' chapters on the Plague of Athens and the Corcyrean revolution, and his speeches generally.

to others. Hippias of Elis and Prodicus of Ceos were some twenty years younger than Protagoras. The former was best known for his scientific attainments: he is said to have given utterance to the revolutionary sentiment of the age in the phrase, 'Law is a tyrant over men, forcing them to do many things contrary to nature.' Prodicus is famed for his moral apologue on the Choice of Hercules narrated by Xenophon. Cicero (N. D. 1 118), following Philodemus, reports that he considered the Gods of popular religion to be merely deified utilities, Bacchus wine, Ceres corn, &c.

But the extreme effects of the disintegration of established beliefs were not seen in the teachers, but in some of their pupils who were less dependent on public opinion, young aristocrats who fretted under democratic rule, and were eager to take advantage of the disorganized state of society in order to grasp at power for themselves. Such was the Callicles of the Gorgias, such Critias and Alcibiades, both disciples of Socrates, of whom we have now to speak.

Socrates was born at Athens 470 B.C.; he was the son of Sophroniscus a sculptor, and Phaenarete a midwife. While sharing the general scepticism as to the possibility of arriving at certainty in regard to the Natural Philosophy which had formed the almost exclusive subject of earlier speculation, he maintained, in opposition to most of the popular teachers of his time, the certainty of moral distinctions, and laid down a method for the discovery of error on the one side, and the establishment of objective truth on the other. The main lines of his philosophy are given in three famous sentences: (1) that of Cicero, that he brought down philosophy from heaven to earth; (2) his own assertion that he practised in regard to the soul the art (μaievtiký) which his mother had practised in regard to the body, bringing to birth and consciousness truths before held unconsciously; (3) Aristotle's statement that Socrates was the first to introduce inductive reasoning and general definitions. But more important than any innovation in regard to method was the immense personal influence of Socrates. His force of will, his indifference to conventionalities, his intense earnestness, both moral and intellectual, contrasting so strongly with the dilettantism of ordinary teachers, and yet combined with such universal interest and sympathy in all varieties of life and character, his warm and genial nature, his humour, his irony, his extraordinary conversational

powers, these formed a whole unique in the history of the world; and we can well believe that they acted like an electric shock on the more susceptible minds of his time. For we must remember that Socrates did not, like earlier philosophers, content himself with imparting the results of solitary meditation to a few favoured disciples: nor did he, like the Sophists, lecture to a paying audience on a set subject; but obeying, as he believed, a divine call, he mixed with men of every class wherever they were to be found, crossquestioning them as to the grounds of their beliefs, and endeavouring to awaken in them a consciousness of their ignorance and a desire for real knowledge. His own account of his call is as follows: one of his disciples was told by the Oracle at Delphi that Socrates was the wisest of men. Socrates could not conceive how this should be, as he was conscious only of ignorance; but he determined to question some of those who had the highest repute for wisdom; accordingly he went to statesmen and poets and orators, and last of all to craftsmen, but everywhere met with the same response: none really knew what were the true ends of life, but each one fancied that he knew, and most were angry when Socrates attempted to disturb their illusion of knowledge. Thus he arrived at the conclusion that what the oracle meant was that the first step to knowledge was the consciousness of ignorance, and he believed, in consequence of other divine warnings, that it was his special mission to bring men to this consciousness.

The next step on the way to knowledge was to get clear general notions, by comparing a number of specific cases in which the same general term was employed; or, according to the phraseology of ancient philosophy, to see the One (the kind or genus, the general principle, the law, the idea,) in the Many (the subordinate species or individuals, the particulars, the phenomena, the facts) and conversely to rise from the Many to the One. The process of doing this he called Dialectic, i. e. discourse, since it was by question and answer that he believed the proposed definition could be best tested, and the universal idea which was latent in each individual could be brought to light. Truth and right were the same for all it was only ignorance, mistake, confusion which made them seem different to different men. And similarly it is ignorance which leads men to commit vicious actions: no one willingly does wrong, since to do right is the only way to happiness, and every man desires happiness. Thus virtue is a knowledge of the way to happiness,

and more generally, right action is reasonable action; in other words, virtue is wisdom, and each particular virtue, such as courage or temperance, wisdom in reference to particular circumstances or a particular class of objects. Self-mastery and superiority to the outward conditions of life are essential to happiness.

In regard to religion, Socrates, while often employing language suited to the popular polytheism, held that there was one supreme God who was to the universe what the soul of man was to his body, that all things were arranged and ordered by Him for good, and that man was the object of His special providence and might look for guidance from Him in oracles and otherwise. The soul was immortal, and had in it a divine element. Socrates believed that he was himself favoured beyond others in the warning sign (TÒ Sapóviov) which checked him whenever he was about to take an ill-judged step.

The personal enmity provoked by the use of the Socratic elenchus, and the more general dislike to the Socratic method as unsettling the grounds of belief and undermining authority, a dislike which showed itself in the Clouds of Aristophanes as early as 423 B.C., combined with the democratic reaction, after the overthrow of the Thirty, to bring about the execution of Socrates in the year 399 B.C. The charges on which he was condemned were that he did not believe in the Gods of the established religion, that he introduced new Gods, and that he corrupted the young: the last charge probably referring to the fact that Socrates freely pointed out the faults of the Athenian constitution, and that many of his disciples took the anti-popular side (N. D. II 18, 167).

Our authorities for the life of Socrates are the writings of his two disciples, Xenophon and Plato. The former (440—355 B.C.) was a soldier and country gentleman with a taste for literature, who endeavoured to clear his master's memory from the imputation of impiety and immorality by publishing the Memorabilia, a collection of his noteworthy sayings and discourses. Xenophon was banished from Athens for fighting in the Spartan ranks at Coronea.. Plato is distinguished from the other disciples of Socrates as the one who represents most truly the many-sidedness of his master, completing indeed and developing what was defective in him and incorporating all that was valuable in the earlier philosophers. Before treating of him it will be convenient to speak shortly of the 'imperfect' or one-sided Socraticists.

Euclides of Megara, the founder of the Megaric and so ultimately of the Sceptic school, was chiefly attracted by the negative teaching of Socrates, and his followers are noted as the inventors of various sophisms which served them as offensive weapons against their opponents. The main positive doctrine attributed to them is that they identified the Good, which Socrates called the highest object of knowledge, with the Absolute One of Parmenides, denying the existence of Evil.

Antisthenes (N. D. 1 32), the founder of the Cynic and indirectly of the Stoic school, was the caricature of the ascetic and unconventional side of Socrates. Nothing is good but virtue, nothing evil but vice. Virtue is wisdom, and the wise man is always perfectly happy because he is self-sufficient and has no wants, no ties and no weaknesses. The mass of men are fools and slaves, and the wise man is their appointed guide and physician. Acting on these principles the Cynics were the mendicant Friars of their time, abstaining from marriage and repudiating all civil claims while they professed themselves to be citizens of a world-wide community. On the subject of religion Antisthenes stated explicitly, what was doubtless implied in the teaching of Socrates, that there was only one God, who is invisible and whose worship consists in a virtuous life.

Aristippus of Cyrene (N. D. III 77), the founder of the Cyrenaic school, resembled Antisthenes in dwelling exclusively upon the practical side of his master's teaching. He interpreted the somewhat ambiguous language of Socrates about happiness in a purely eudaemonistic sense and declared that the only rule of life was to enjoy the present moment. Wisdom was essential to this, as it freed the mind from prejudice and passion. It was the boast of Aristippus no less than of Antisthenes 'mihi res, non me rebus subjungere conor'. Among the more prominent members of this school were Theodorus (N. D. 1 2, 63), surnamed the Atheist, who lived towards the close of the 4th century, B.C. He objected to the doctrine of his predecessor on the ground that it did not leave sufficient scope to wisdom, since pleasure and pain are so much dependent on outward circumstances; and put forward as the chief good not the enjoyment of passing pleasure, but the maintaining of a calm and cheerful frame of mind. Euhemerus, whose religious system is referred to by Cicero (N. D. 1 119), was a pupil of his. His contemporary, Hegesias, called Teiσiðávatos from his gloomy doctrine, considered that as life has more of pain than pleasure, the aim of the wise man should be not