ss and felicity of speech, and that was most valued which brought
immediate recompense, like eloquence. Men began to practise eloquence as
an art, and to employ it in furthering their interests. They made
special pleadings, since it was their object to gain their point at any
expense of law and justice. Hence they taught that nothing was immutably
right, but only so by convention. They undermined all confidence in
truth and religion by teaching its uncertainty. They denied to men even
the capability of arriving at truth. They practically affirmed the cold
and cynical doctrine that there is nothing better for a man than that he
should eat and drink. _Cui bono?_ this, the cry of most men in periods
of great outward prosperity, was the popular inquiry. Who will show us
any good?--how can we become rich, strong, honorable?--this was the
spirit of that class of public teachers who arose in Athens when art and
eloquence and wealth and splendor were at their height in the fifth
century before Christ, and when the elegant Pericles was the leader of
fashion and of political power.

These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of
the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men,
trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty
in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but
who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later
philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much
esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers
of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult
missions. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw
ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics,
astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were
polished men of society; not profound nor religious, but very brilliant
as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were
men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, Leucippus, and
Gorgias. They were not pretenders and quacks; they were sceptics who
denied subjective truths, and labored for outward advantage. They taught
the art of disputation, and sought systematic methods of proof. They
thus prepared the way for a more perfect philosophy than that taught by
the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, or the Eleatics, since they showed the
vagueness of such inquiries, conjectural rather than scienti