The Sophists. 147 view, viz. the instruction of youth in virtue rhetoric and philo- sophy or general information : that they were not propagators of demoralizing doctrines or sophistical argumentations : that they were the regular authorized teachers of Greek morality, neither above nor below the standard of the age: that there was no essential difference between them and Socrates, who was distin- guished from them merely by his higher eminence and the pecu- liarity of his life and teaching : to which may be added if I fully understand the purport of Mr Grote's argument on this part of the subject that the name Sophists was used of them and other teachers in the same sense except by Plato, who affixed to it a new signification for their especial benefit. Without venturing to infer from the almost unanimous con- sent of preceding writers that any deviation from their view must necessarily be an error ; and fully admitting the ingenuity shown by Mr Grote in making out his case, and the new light he has thrown in this as in other cases on Greek history by attracting attention to points which had escaped notice, and by reopening questions previously held to be settled beyond the reach of con- troversy, but really requiring further examination ; I still cannot help thinking that here as elsewhere he has done rather more than justice to the characters which he wished to 'rehabilitate/ and in the endeavour to avoid one extreme view that of Stall- baum, Ast, and other Platonic commentators as well as histo- rians of philosophy he has been carried too far in the opposite direction. , I do not pretend to maintain that there is no exaggeration in the view which represents the Sophists as " ostentatious impos- tors flattering and duping the rich youth for their own personal gain, undermining the morality of Athens public and private, and encouraging their pupils to the unscrupulous prosecution of ambition and cupidity," p. 485 though at the same time it may be observed that this is not very far from the character given of them in Xen. de Venat. c. 13 and again (p. 509), " It has been common with recent German historians of philosophy to translate from Plato and dress up a fiend called ' die Sophistik ;' whom they assert to have poisoned and demoralized, by corrupt teaching, the Athenian moral character. So that it became degenerate at the end of the Peloponnesian war compared with what it had been in the time of Miltiades and Aristeides." 102
