The Sophists. 153 because Mr Grote for various reasons, of greater or less weight, holds that some of the most important of them must either be put out of court altogether, or at any rate that they were so biassed by strong prejudice, that their evidence must be received with the greatest suspicion. The witnesses from whom our statements will be derived are Aristophanes, Socrates, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle and Isocrates; men it is to be observed of widely different temper and turn of mind, who yet unite as we shall endeavour to show in giving a certain character, the same in its outline and essential points, to a particular class of men whom they call Sophists : if this can be shown, it would not be easy to point out any better attested fact in history, whether we regard the number or the respectability of the witnesses by whose evidence it is confirmed. As Plato is by far the most important of them, it will be proper to examine him first, and endeavour to ascertain how far his description may be depended on ; whether in fact in his representation of the Sophists and the sentiments he has put into their mouths, he acted the part of a calumnious libeller as Aristophanes treats Socrates in the Nubes without even so much excuse as the comic poet for ignorance and carelessness. This seems unlikely. Mr Grote's explanation of the phenomenon (p. 487, sq.) is that Plato was a reformer and a theorist, who had originated a new philosophical system, and lived in a specu- lative world of his own, apart from the common ways and haunts of men; and that he looked at things consequently from an entirely different point of view from that of the Sophists, who were practical instructors, and whose office was to qualify young men for public life. This statement however takes no notice of the philosophical theories of Gorgias and Protagoras, one of which Plato himself weighs with so much care in the balance of the Theaetetus, and finds so lamentably wanting. If Plato had no other reason than that alleged by Mr Grote for attacking the Sophists, we need not suppose that he does them any injustice ; and we may take his account as substan- tially correct, unless we can discover some cause of ill will against them and there was none by which his view of their character, teaching, and influence might have been warped and distorted. In fact Mr Grote afterwards does so, and with a
