19} standard of goodness and justice, with which we can compare the
law, and see whether it agrees with that standard or not. To the
Sophists, who denied any such standard, it was mere nonsense to speak
of just and good laws. No law is in itself good or just, because there
is no such thing as goodness or justice. Or if they used such a word
as justice, they defined it as meaning the right of the stronger; or
the right of the majority. Polus and Thrasymachus, consequently, drew
the conclusion that the laws of the State were inventions of the weak,
who were cunning enough, by means of this stratagem, to control the
strong, and rob them of the natural fruits of their strength. The law
of force is the only law which nature recognizes. If a man, therefore,
is powerful enough to defy the law with impunity, he has a perfect
right to do so. The Sophists were thus the first, but not the last, to
preach the doctrine that might is right. And, in similar vein, Critias
explained popular belief in the gods as the invention of some crafty
statesman for controlling the mob through fear.

Now it is obvious that the whole tendency of this sophistical teaching
is destructive and anti-social. It is destructive of religion, of
morality, of the foundations of the State, and of all established
institutions. And we can now see that the doctrines of the Sophists
were, in fact, simply the crystallization into abstract thought of the
practical tendencies of the age. The people in practice, the Sophists
in theory, decried and trod under foot the restrictions of law,
authority, and custom, leaving nothing but the deification of the
individual in his crude self-will and egotism. It was in fact an age
of "aufklaerung," which means enlightenment or {120} illumination. Such
periods of illumination, it seems, recur periodically in the history
of thought, and in the history of civilization. This is the first, but
not the last, such period with which the history of philosophy deals.
This is the Greek illumination. Such periods present certain
characteristic features. They follow, as a rule, upon an era of
constructive thought. In the present instance the Greek illumination
followed closely upon the heels of the great development of science
and philosophy from Thales to Anaxagoras. In such a constructive
period the great thinkers bring to birth new principles, which, in the
course of time, filter down to the masses of the people and cause
popular, if shall