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1GENERAL INTRODUCTION XVU not, however, discuss the value of this early philosophizing further than to say that the more deeply one studies it, the more surely one sees that these men were not fools, and that, in spite of their crudi. ties, some of them were giants of all time. What I wish now to do is to discuss their influence upon the public mind of Greece. As might be expected, they produced one kind of effect upon the few who paid special attention to them and an altogether different effect upon the general public. Even with the former, the effect was by no means always flattering to the philosophers. Just in the period between the Persian wars and the birth of Plato, a great many of the Greeks who devoted themselves to learning were coming to the conclusion that philosophy was a failure. " The philosophers,** they said in substance, " tell us that we cannot trust our senses for the truth of anything, and that we must learn the truth of them. We go to them and find that they contradict one another at every point. The truth is,** some went on to say, "there is no truth which is truth always! and everywhere. The world is different at every | point and is always changing. Men are all different from each other and every one is constantly changing. How can a changing man find anything in a changing world which every other man will always find just so? It is impossible. That is true for [ each man which he finds true. Let us cease the vain search for a universal and absolute truth. Let us be content to learn how to be practically effective. Let us learn how to fight, how to write, how to speak, how to plead in the courts and before the
2XVlll GENERAL INTRODUCTION assembly of the people. Let us acquire skill to get on in the world. There is no other wisdom than this. The class of men who took substantially this position called themselves Sophists, that is, wise men. Some of them were very talented, very thoroughly schooled in the learning of that time, and very skillful in the practical art$ which they professed to teach. They gave special attention to language — that is, to grammar, rhetoric, and oratory. They are given credit for the development of Greek prose style, as it appears, for example, in the orations of Demosthenes, a century later, and indirectly for the development of the same art among the Romans. Some of the Sophists were, of course, inferior. I need only refer to the dialogue Euthydemus, in this volume, to show that some of them were despicably so. Such men cared for nothing but their own advantage, and were, without doubt, gross corrupters of the youth. Now, the general public did not draw any fine distinctions between the superior Sophists, such as Protagoras, and the baser sort, such as Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. Moreover, the public did not distinguish between the Sophists and the philosophers. Although the philosophers had sought earnestly for the truth, and believed that they had found some truth, while the Sophists believed all such search vain, the Athenian public, intelligent as they were in many things, lumped all men of learning together, and called them Sophists. As a result of this failure to distinguish between men whose views were directly opposed, the public attributed
3GENERAL INTRODUCTION XIX to all of them substantially all the faults they found or suspected in any of them. Some of the philosophers had outgrown the popular religion ; the people were accordingly quick to believe that any learned man was an atheist. Some of the Sophists rejected the conventional notions of morals; every scholar was, therefore, readily suspected of being a corrupter of the youth, and if any youth who consorted with scholars turned out badly, his ruin was charged up to the new learning. The public opinion, with its muddle-headed opposition to the whole movement of science and philosophy, was expressed perfectly in a comedy by the great Athenian, Aristophanes. The story of the play, called "The Clouds," runs as follows: A certain man finds himself in debt, without ability to pay. He is told that there is a school of the Sophists where he can be taught how to argue himself out of all his debts. The school is described, with Socrates as chief teacher. Socrates is represented as engaged in profound investigations on various nonsensical questions about things in heaven and beneath the earth. He is calculating, for example, the distance from one place to another in terms of the foot of a flea. The man is taught how to argue away his debt; but his son gets from the same teachers a lesson which enables him to prove his right to thrash his father. It is easy to see how the average Athenian, who looked and laughed at this play, would lump all the philosophers together, and attribute to each of them, but especially to Socrates, a nonsense and a knavery which would bring the country to ruin.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1GENERAL INTRODUCTION XVU not, however, discuss the value of this early philosophizing further than to say that the more deeply one studies it, the more surely one sees that these men were not fools, and that, in spite of their crudi. ties, some of them were giants of all time. What I wish now to do is to discuss their influence upon the public mind of Greece. As might be expected, they produced one kind of effect upon the few who paid special attention to them and an altogether different effect upon the general public. Even with the former, the effect was by no means always flattering to the philosophers. Just in the period between the Persian wars and the birth of Plato, a great many of the Greeks who devoted themselves to learning were coming to the conclusion that philosophy was a failure. " The philosophers,** they said in substance, " tell us that we cannot trust our senses for the truth of anything, and that we must learn the truth of them. We go to them and find that they contradict one another at every point. The truth is,** some went on to say, "there is no truth which is truth always! and everywhere. The world is different at every | point and is always changing. Men are all different from each other and every one is constantly changing. How can a changing man find anything in a changing world which every other man will always find just so? It is impossible. That is true for [ each man which he finds true. Let us cease the vain search for a universal and absolute truth. Let us be content to learn how to be practically effective. Let us learn how to fight, how to write, how to speak, how to plead in the courts and before the
2XVlll GENERAL INTRODUCTION assembly of the people. Let us acquire skill to get on in the world. There is no other wisdom than this. The class of men who took substantially this position called themselves Sophists, that is, wise men. Some of them were very talented, very thoroughly schooled in the learning of that time, and very skillful in the practical art$ which they professed to teach. They gave special attention to language — that is, to grammar, rhetoric, and oratory. They are given credit for the development of Greek prose style, as it appears, for example, in the orations of Demosthenes, a century later, and indirectly for the development of the same art among the Romans. Some of the Sophists were, of course, inferior. I need only refer to the dialogue Euthydemus, in this volume, to show that some of them were despicably so. Such men cared for nothing but their own advantage, and were, without doubt, gross corrupters of the youth. Now, the general public did not draw any fine distinctions between the superior Sophists, such as Protagoras, and the baser sort, such as Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. Moreover, the public did not distinguish between the Sophists and the philosophers. Although the philosophers had sought earnestly for the truth, and believed that they had found some truth, while the Sophists believed all such search vain, the Athenian public, intelligent as they were in many things, lumped all men of learning together, and called them Sophists. As a result of this failure to distinguish between men whose views were directly opposed, the public attributed
3GENERAL INTRODUCTION XIX to all of them substantially all the faults they found or suspected in any of them. Some of the philosophers had outgrown the popular religion ; the people were accordingly quick to believe that any learned man was an atheist. Some of the Sophists rejected the conventional notions of morals; every scholar was, therefore, readily suspected of being a corrupter of the youth, and if any youth who consorted with scholars turned out badly, his ruin was charged up to the new learning. The public opinion, with its muddle-headed opposition to the whole movement of science and philosophy, was expressed perfectly in a comedy by the great Athenian, Aristophanes. The story of the play, called "The Clouds," runs as follows: A certain man finds himself in debt, without ability to pay. He is told that there is a school of the Sophists where he can be taught how to argue himself out of all his debts. The school is described, with Socrates as chief teacher. Socrates is represented as engaged in profound investigations on various nonsensical questions about things in heaven and beneath the earth. He is calculating, for example, the distance from one place to another in terms of the foot of a flea. The man is taught how to argue away his debt; but his son gets from the same teachers a lesson which enables him to prove his right to thrash his father. It is easy to see how the average Athenian, who looked and laughed at this play, would lump all the philosophers together, and attribute to each of them, but especially to Socrates, a nonsense and a knavery which would bring the country to ruin.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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