ument and pay. They delighted, as
Cicero tells us, to plead the opposite sides of a cause with equal
effect. And they found exquisite pleasure in raising difficulties,
maintaining paradoxes, and passing off mere tricks of oratory for solid
proofs. This is the uniform representation of the sophistical spirit
which is given by all the best writers who lived nearest to their times,
and who are, therefore, to be presumed to have known them best.
Grote[904] has made an elaborate defense of the Sophists; he charges
Plato with gross misrepresentation. His portraits of them are denounced
as mere caricatures, prompted by a spirit of antagonism; all antiquity
is presumed to have been misled by him. No one, however, can read
Grant's "Essay on the History of Moral Philosophy in Greece"[905]
without feeling that his vindication of Plato is complete and
unanswerable: "Plato never represents the Sophists as teaching a lax
morality to their disciples. He does not make sophistry to consist in
holding wicked opinions; he represents them as only too orthodox in
general,[906] but capable of giving utterance to immoral paradoxes for
the sake of vanity. Sophistry rather tampers and trifles with the moral
convictions than directly attacks them." The Sophists were wanting in
deep conviction, in moral earnestness, in sincere love of truth, in
reverence for goodness and purity, and therefore their trifling,
insincere, and paradoxical teaching was unfavorable to goodness of life.
The tendency of their method is forcibly depicted in the words of Plato:
"There are certain dogmas relating to what is _just_ and _good_ in which
we have been brought up from childhood--obeying and reverencing them.
Other opinions recommending pleasure and license we resist, out of
respect for the old hereditary maxims. Well, then, a question comes up
concerning what is right? He gives some answer such as he has been
taught, and straightway is refuted. He tries again, and is again
refuted. And, when this has happened pretty often, he is reduced to the
opinion that _nothing is either right or wrong_; and in the same way it
happens about the just and the good, and all that before we have held in
reverence. On this, he naturally abandons his allegiance to the old
principles and takes up with those he before resisted, and so, from
being a good citizen, he becomes lawless."[907] And, in point of fact,
this was the theoretical landing-place of the Sophists. We do not say
they b