of Plato and the dialectic exercises generally. lie defends hid
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. Isokrates at Athens, and Quintilian, a man equally estimable at Home, are, in their general type of character and professional duty, the fair counterpart of those whom Plato arraigns as the sophists.
We know these latter chiefly from the evidence of Plato, their pronounced enemy; yet even his evidence, when construed candidly and taken as a whole, will not be found to justify the
charges of corrupt and immoral teaching, impostrous pretence of
This oration should be read, if only to get at the genuine Athenian sense of the word sophists, as distinguished from the technical sense which Plato and Aristotle fasten upon it. The word is here used in its largest sense, as distinguished from (
Greek characters) (sect. 159) : it meant, literary men or philosophers generally, but especially the professional teachers : it carried, however, an obnoxious sense, and was therefore used as little as possible by themselves ; as much as possible by those who disliked them.Isokratês, though he does not willingly call himself by this unpleasant name, yet is obliged to acknowledge himself unreservedly as one of the profession, in the same category as Gorgias (sects. 165, 179, 211, 213, 231, 256), and defends the general body as well as himself; distinguishing himself of course from the bad members of the profession, those who pretended to be sophists, but devoted themselves to something different in reality (sect. 230). This professional teaching, and the teachers, are signified indiscriminately by these words: (Greek characters) (sects. 53, 187, 189, 193, 196). All these expressions mean the same process of training; that is, general mental training as opposed to bodily (sects. 194, 199), and intended to cultivate the powers of thought, speech, and action : (Greek characters) (sects. 221, 261, 285, 296,330). Isokratêes does not admit any such distinction between the philosopher and dialectician on the one side, and the sophist on the other, as Plato and Aristotle contend for. He does not like dialectical exercises: yet he admits them to be useful for youth, as a part of intellectual training, on condition that all such speculations shall be dropped, when the youth come into active life (sects. 280, 287). This is the same language as that of Kallikl{{Subst:e^}}s in the Gorgias of Plato, e. 40, p. 484.
