SIR,-I had hoped that when Colonel Mure, in his elaborate critical work on the "Literature of Ancient Greece," came to speak of the Sophists, he would have passed a strong condemnation upon the new theories respecting that class of teachers which Mr. Grote has given to the world in his eighth vo fume of the "History of Greece." I find, however, in the fourth volume of Colonel Mure's work, which has just been published, a note which expresses rather concurrence of opinion with Mr. Grote than the contrary. "Mr. Grote's discussion," he says, "of the subject, is marked by the same defect which pervades so many parts of his able work, that of exaggerating or overstating almost every doctrine or theory of his own. But though he may have overstepped the bounds of impartial criticism in the very flattering picture which he has drawn of the character and influence of the Sophists, he has effectually exposed the injustice with which they have been treated, both by the leading disciples of the Socratic school in their own age, and by the great body of modern critics and commentators.

I confess I have read this note with considerable disappointment, and I cannot but regard it as another sign of the defection of some of our ablest writers from the standard of elevated moral sentiment. To me it appears that scarcely at any other period since the revival of letters, could such “new lights" upon the character of the Sophists have been put forth without serious rebuke from the literary defenders of religion and morality. It is a remarkable sign of the times that a writer so respectable by his position and acquirements as Mr. Grote, should be permitted, without censure, to make a grave historical work the vehicle of teaching which is not less opposed to sound morality than that of Gibbon was to revealed religion. It must, indeed, be admitted that from the danger which lurked in Mr. Gibbon's book on account of the fascination of its style, Mr. Grote's defence of the So

phists is free. This is the only palliation I can find in comparing the two together. Strange it is that at a time when so much earnest research and critical vivacity are devoted to the discussion of religious doctrine or of ecclesiastical theory, scarcely any warning has been given to the public respecting a popular book of no mean authority in modern literary circles, the tendency of which is very unfavourable to fixed moral principles, though, most probably, no intention beyond that of the propagation of ultra-liberal opinions actuated the author.

For what Mr. Grote inculcates is this that the Sophists, though they did not teach sound theoretic principles of morality, as Plato did, yet well deserved all the praise and all the profit which they derived from their profession as teachers, because they taught young men how to succeed in life according to the prevailing opinions and tastes of the particular time at which they taught, and in the cities in which their lectures were delivered. Aristotle, who was, doubtless, a wise and considerate man (though in the present age he seems to be going out of favour), and one very well qualified to judge of such matters, censures Protagoras, and all the sort of him, who undertook openly to teach young men the art of making the worse appear the better reason. But Mr. Grote, in his turn, censures Aristotle as following the Platonic vein, and thinks that the teachers of this art may be regarded very favourably if looked at from the proper "point of view." "It was," he says, "neither the duty of the Sophists to reform the state or vindicate the best theory on ethics! They accepted, as the basis of their teaching, that type of character which the public approved in Athens; not undertaking to re-cast the type, but to arm it with new capacities, and to adorn it with fresh accomplishments." This Mr. Grote appears to uphold as perfectly justifiable; and he contends that Plato was actuated by "prejudice," because he insisted upon the necessity of a

nobler morality than that which was agreeable to the people, and in harmony with popular manners. He admits the merit of Plato's views, as speculations; but then practical life was another thing; and they who taught what was of advantage for practical life, no matter what its ethical propriety might be, were not to be blamed for that, or judged by Plato's standard. They were to be estimated from another point of view. "That systematic and original character," he says, "which lends so much value and charm to the substantive speculations of Plato, counts as a deduction from his trustworthiness as a critic, or witness in reference to the living agents whom he saw at work in Athens and other cities, as statesmen, generals, or teachers. His criticisms are dictated by his own point of view, according to which the entire society was corrupt, and all the instruments who carried on its functions were essentially base metal." (What can all this mean, but that there are other points of view than those of moral principle, from which the words and actions of governors and teachers should be contemplated? Plato condemned Pericles and Cimon as nothing better than servants or ministers, who supplied the immediate appetites and tastes of the people, just as the baker and confectioner did in their respective departments, without knowing or caring whether the food would do any real good, a point which the physician alone could determine. The city, he admitted, was amply provided by these statesmen with defences and conveniences, but they did not attend to the true purpose of politics the mental improvement of the people. Mr. Grote regards such criticism as the result of "systematic peculiarity of vision-the prejudice of a great and able mind." Where is the prejudice? The whole question turns on the matter of fact. Was it or was it not true that these

eminent men ministered only to the immediate gratification and desires of the people, without looking to their permanent improvement. without seeking to make them morally better? If the charge was well founded, so was the condemnation.*

This evidently is not Mr. Grote's opinion. Moral principles-pure ethics -was all very well for "a great and systematic theorist" like Plato, but practical philosophers had another guide, which Mr. Grote appears equally to approve, namely, the tastes, desires, and dispositions of the public at a given time, and in a given city! And this the leading critics of the present day allow to pass, with faint praise, indeed, but certainly with no special condemnation. The Edinburgh Review says, that Mr. Grote, "by proving the Sophists to be really professional teachers for practical life, has not precluded all controversy as to the quality of their influence. If they were the teachers of their age, and not its reformers, the opinions entertained respecting them must depend on the manner in which the age is estimated, as well in its tendencies as in its characteristics." How far this limitation or qualification of Mr. Grote's championship of the Sophists is well founded, will be best judged of by looking at a few passages from his eighth volume :

:

"These men, whom modern writers set down as the Sophists, and denounce as the moral pestilence of their age, were not distinguished in any marked or generic way from their predecessors. Their vocation was to train up youth for the duties, the pursuits, and the successes of active life, both private and public. Others had done this before, but these teachers brought to the task a larger range of knowledge with a greater multiplicity of scientific and other topicsnot only more impressive powers of composition and speech, serving as a personal example to the pupil, but also a comprehension

No. 191, July, 1851.

of the elements of good speaking, so as to be able to give him precepts conducive to that accomplishment-a considerable treasure of accumulated thought on moral and political subjects, calculated to make their conversation very instructive, and discourse ready prepared on general heads, or commonplaces for their pupils to learn by heart. But this, though a very important extension, was nothing more than an extension, differing merely in degree, of that which Damon and others had done before them. It arose from the increased demand which had grown up among the Athenian youths for a larger measure of education and other accomplishments-from an elevation in the standard of what was required from every man who aspired to occupy a place in the eyes of his fellow-citizens. Protagoras, Gorgias, and the rest, supplied this demand with an ability and success unknown before their time; hence they gained a distinction such as none of their predecessors had attained, were prized all over Greece, travelled from city to city with general admiration, and obtained considerable pay. While such success among men, personally strangers to them, attests unequivocally their talent and personal dignity, of course it also laid them open to increased jealousy, as well from inferior teachers as from the lovers of ignorance generally; such jealousy manifesting itself by a greater readiness to stamp them with the obnoxious title of Sophists.

"The hostility of Plato against these teachers (for it he and not Socrates who was peculiarly hostile to them), may be explained without at all supposing in them that corruption which modern writers have been so ready not only to admit, but to magnify. It arose from the radical difference between his point of view and theirs. He was a great reformer and theorist: they undertook to qualify young men for doing themselves credit, and rendering service to others in active Athenian life. Not only is there room for the concurrent operation of both these veins of thought and action in every progressive society, but the intellectual outfit of the society can never be complete without the one as well as the other. It was the glory of Athens that both were there adequately represented at the period which we have now reached. Whoever peruses Plato's immortal work 'The Republic,' will see that he dissented from society, both democratical and oligarchical, on some of the most fundamental points of public and private morality; and throughout most of his dialogues, his quarrel is not less with the statesmen past as well as present, than with the paid teachers of Athens. Besides this ardent desire for radical reform of the state or principles of his own, distinct from every recognised political party or creed, Plato was also unrivalled as a speculative genius and as a dialectician, both which capacities he put forth to amplify and illustrate the ethical

theory and method first struck out by Socrates, as well as to establish comprehensive generalities of his own.

"Now, his reforming as well as his theorising tendencies, brought him into polemical controversy with all the leading agents by whom the business of practical life at Athens was carried on. In so far as Protagoras or Gorgias talked the language of theory, they were doubtless much inferior to Plato, nor would their doctrines be likely to hold against his acute dialectics. But it was neither their duty nor their engagement to reform the state, or discover and vindicate the best theory on ethics. They professed to qualify young Athenians for an active and honourable life, private as well as public, in Athens (or in any other given city); they taught them to speak, think, and act' in Athens; they, of course, accepted, as the basis of their teaching, that type of character which estimable men exhibited, and which the public approved in Athens-not undertaking to recast the type, but to arm it with new capacities and adorn it with fresh accomplishments. Their direct business was with ethical precept, not with ethical theory: all that was required of them, as to the latter, was, that their theory should be sufficiently sound to lead to such practical precepts as were accounted virtues by the most estimable society in Athens. It ought never to be forgotten, that those who taught for active life, were bound by the very conditions of their profession to adapt themselves to the place and the society as it stood. With the theorist, Plato, not only there was no such obligation, but the grandeur and instructiveness of his speculations were realised only by his departing from them, and placing himself on a loftier pinnacle of vision; and he himself not only admits, but even exaggerates, the unfitness and repugnance of men taught in his school for practical life and duties.

"To understand the essential difference between the practical and theoretical point of view, we need only look to Isocrates, the pupil of Gorgias, and himself a Sophist. Though not a man of commanding abilities, Isocrates was one of the most estimable men of Grecian antiquity. He taught for money, and taught young men to 'think, speak, and act,' all with a view to an honourable life of active citizenship, not concealing his marked disparagement of speculative study and debate, such as the dialogues of Plato and the dialectic exercises generally. He defends his profession much in the same way as his master Gorgias or Protagoras would have defended it if we had before us vindications from their pens. Socrates, at Athens, and Quintillian, a man equally estimable, at Rome, are in their general type of character and professional duty, the fair counterpart of those whom Plato arraigns as the Sophists."Grote, Hist. Greece, vol. viii. pp. 486-491.

"It would not be less unjust to appreciate

the Sophists or the statesmen of Athens from the point of view of Plato, than the present teachers and politicans of England or France from that of Mr. Owen or Fourier. Both

the one and the other class laboured for society as it stood at Athens; the statesmen carried on the business of practical politics; the Sophists trained up youth for practical life in all its departments, as family men, citizens, and leaders. -to obey as well as to command. Both accepted the system as it stood, without contemplating the possibility of a new birth of society: both ministered to certain exigencies, held their anchorage upon certain sentiments, and bound to a certain morality actually felt among the living men around them. That which Plato says of the statesmen of Athens is perfectly true that they were only servants or ministers of the people. He who tried the people and the entire society by comparison with an imaginary standard of his own, might deem all these ministers worthless in the lump, as carrying on a system too bad to be mended, but nevertheless the difference between a competent and incompetent minister-between Pericles and Nicias-was of unspeakable moment to the security and happiness of the Athenians."-Ib. p. 539.

66

These extracts appear to me to contain not a conditional and qualified, but a direct and absolute defence of the teaching of the Sophists. Mr. Grote is their champion. And this championship appears to rest upon his recognition of two distinct systems of morality, one for theory or speculation, the other for practical life. Both of these he seems to regard as allowable, and even laudable when contemplated from their 'proper points of view," though one of them (and that the more important of the two, since it concerned practical conduct) had no more authoritative or permanent foundation than the prevailing tone and fashion of Athenian or of Greek society-one might say, of a corrupt society, but that, according to Mr. Grote's view, would be a begging of the question. For if the fashion or prevailing conduct and sentiment of society in any given city is to be taken as the foundation of a system of morality, which teachers of youth may justifiably inculcate, because it will fit the pupils for practical life as it then and there exists, then, that which is corrupt, according to abstract morality, may be moral, according to practice, and fashion, and Mr. Grote.

As to the comparison of Plato's cri

ticism of Athenian statesmanship and teaching, to that of Owen and Fourier upon English and French politicians, it appears to be both degrading and absurd. From what "point of view” does Mr. Grote regard the Platonic philosophy when he discerns in it any resemblance to the frantic criticism of Owen or Fourier? He has but just described Plato as censuring the statesmen of Athens because they contented themselves with ministering to the immediate tastes and appetites of the people, instead of attending to their mental improvement and permanent and moral good. Plato inculcated self-restraint and self-denial-the sacrifice of the immediately agreeable for the prospectively good and honourable— the preference of virtue to pleasure. But the Socialist leaders adverted to by Mr. Grote criticise existing laws upon principles the very opposite. Present enjoyment is what they claim for the people, and the things against which they inveigh are the restraints of religion, of decency, and of law. Anything, therefore, more preposterous than the comparison of their censure of modern practical politicians, to Plato's censure of the practical politicians of old Greece, it is difficult to conceive.

The Quarterly Review notices Mr. Grote's chapter on the Sophists, without venturing upon any word of reproof. It is treated upon only in a foot-note, and the few remarks made may possibly be intended for sarcasm, thinly veiled by a courteous form of expression, but there is no distinct censure. The note is as follows:

"An apology may seem to be due to Mr. Grote for the brevity with which we have passed over his chapter on the Sophists. On no portion of his work has he expended more labour and more energy, and, if his view be correct, on none ought the reader to bestow more attention and thought. We have, however, abstained from dwelling upon it, because, as we have observed, with respect to the Greek philosophy in general, it is premature to discuss a subject confessedly incomplete. It is enough here to state, as briefly as possible, the contrast between this writer's view and the popular representation of the Sophists. According to the common notion they were a sect: according to him they were a class or profession. According to the common view they were the propa

gators of demoralising doctrines and (what from them are termed) sophistical argumentations. According to Mr. Grote, they were the regular teachers of Greek morality, neither above nor below the standard of the age. According to the common view, Socrates was the great opponent of the Sophists, and Plato, his natural successor in the same combat. According to Mr. Grote, Socrates was the great representative of the Sophists, distinguished from them only by his higher eminence, and by the peculiarity of his mode of life and teaching. According to the common view, Plato and his followers were the authorised teachers, the established clergy of the Greek nation; and the Sophists the dissenters. According to Mr. Grote, the Sophists were the established clergy, and Plato was the dissenter-the socialist who attacked the sophists (as he attacked the poets and the statesmen), not as a particular sect, but as one of the existing orders of society."

However gay and pleasant, and fashionably indifferent this may seem, and however witty in the allusion to the Established Church and Dissenters, one may be excused for wishing that the reviewer had expressed some grave and decided judgment upon a question of so much interest as that of the real character of the teaching of the Sophists. Nor was it at all necessary for him to use so cautious a hesitation in committing the authority of his journal to one side or another of the question, for that had indeed been done very emphatically, and long ago. There is no subject connected with ancient history, upon which the Quarterly Review has more energetically pronounced its judgment, than upon this one of the real character of the Sophists. That judgment was as opposite as possible to the views now promulgated by Mr. Grote. So long ago as 1819, one of the most accomplished Greek scholars of his time* wrote in the Quarterly Review an essay upon the Greek philosophy, which, certainly, as regards the teaching of the Sophists, did not mince the matter. The editor of the Quarterly, in those days, felt no sort of hesitation upon the subject. His mind appears to have been quite made up, and had any author of respectability at that time put forth such a theory as that of Mr. Grote, it cer

tainly would not have been allowed to pass merely with the remark that it

was new.

In contrast, then, to what Mr. Grote now teaches, observe what has been taught in recent times by a scholar at least equally competent, and backed by the authority of the Quarterly Review, and do not think that this matter is interesting merely as a point of historical or antiquarian research. It bears upon the practical philosophy of our own time. A change, in many respects similar to that which is now taking place in modern society, introduced the sophistical teaching. That change it is which now gives a kind of evil appropriateness to the defence of what had been so long condemned by all good men:

"The busy and stirring nature of the times; the change from monarchial to republican governments; the institution of popular assemblies, and, still more, the Persian contest, by making the Greeks act in bodies, whose feelings were to be conciliated, prejudices consulted, and large sacrifices of private interest to be demanded in favour of the public, all conspired to bring into vogue a knowledge more adapted to the transaction of human business than the study of the heavens, and the properties of matter, the nature of God and of the soul. Political wisdom soon became the leading object of attainment, and the splendid eminence to which political eloquence led, made it of essential importance to investigate and cultivate those rules which were found most effectual for working upon large bodies of men. It is impossible to peruse the interesting dialogues of Plato and Xenophon, without receiving a most lively impression of the strong ferment which was then taking place in men's minds, and without recognising in them some of the marks of that agitated fermentation of the intellect which, whether for good or evil, is working in our own days.

"To be able to distinguish themselves in the general assemblies; to make a figure in the courts of justice; to be ingenious in putting, and ready in answering questions, and what, in the now complicated affairs of Grecian politics, was becoming of still more importance, to become men of business, was the ruling object of every young man's ambition in Athens."

Having further shown that it was the ambition of these young aspirants