Having reached Protagoras with Hippocrates, Socrates finds him in an assemblage of the foremost Sophists and surrounded by listeners, “walking about and like an Orpheus entrancing all men by his words, Hippias sitting meanwhile on a chair with not so many round him, and Prodicus lying amongst a great number of admirers.” After Socrates brought before Protagoras the request to have Hippocrates placed under his instruction, in order that he might by him be taught how to become eminent in the State, he also asks whether they might speak with him in public or alone. Protagoras praises his discretion, and replies that they act wisely to make use of this precaution. For because the Sophists wandered about the towns, and thus youths, deserting fathers and friends, followed them in view of improving themselves through their intercourse with them, they drew upon themselves much envy and ill-will—for everything new is hated. On this point Protagoras speaks at length: “I assert that the art of the Sophists is old; but that those of the ancients who practised it in fear of giving offence” (for the uncultured world is antagonistic to the cultured) “veiled and concealed it. One section, like Homer and Hesiod, taught it in their poetry; others, like Orpheus and Musæus, through mysteries and oracles. Some, I believe, like Iccus of Tarentum, and the Sophist now living and unsurpassed—Herodicus, of Selymbria—in gymnastics, but many more through music.” We see that Protagoras usually describes the end of mental culture as being to bring about morality, presence of mind, sense of order and general capacity. He adds: “all those who feared envy arising against the sciences, required such veils and screens. But I think that they do not attain their end, for men of penetration in the State see the end appearing through, while the people notice nothing, and only quote the others. If people behave so, they make themselves more hated, and appear to be impostors. I have therefore taken the opposite way, and openly acknowledge (_ὁμολογῶ_), and do not deny that I am a Sophist” (Protagoras first used the name of Sophist), “and that my business is to give men culture (_παιδεύειν_).”[87] Further on, where the arts which Hippocrates was to acquire under Protagoras’ instruction were discussed, Protagoras answered Socrates: “What you ask is sensible, and I like to answer a sensible question. Hippocrates will not have the same experience that he would have with other teachers (_σοφιστῶν_). These latter are at variance with (_λωβῶνται_) their pupils, for they take them against their wills straight back to the arts and sciences which they just wished to escape, inasmuch as they teach them arithmetic, geometry and music. But he who comes to me will be instructed in nothing else than that in which he comes to be instructed.” Thus the youths came freely, with the wish to be made men of culture through his instruction, and in the hope that he, as teacher, knew the way to succeed in so doing. As to his general aim, Protagoras says, “The instruction consists in bringing about a right perception and understanding (_εὐβουλία_) of the best way of regulating one’s own family affairs, and similarly as regards citizenship, in qualifying men both to speak on the affairs of the State, and to do the best for the State.” Thus two interests are here apparent, that of the individual and that of the State. Now Socrates expresses dissent and surprise at Protagoras’ assertion as to imparting instruction in political aptitude. “I thought that the political virtues could not be learned,” for it is Socrates’ main tenet that virtue cannot be taught. And Socrates now brings forward the following argument, after the manner of the Sophists appealing to experience. “Those who are masters of the art of politics cannot impart that art to others. Pericles, the father of these youths, gave them instruction in all that instructors could teach; but not in the science for which he is celebrated; here he left them free to wander in the chance of their lighting upon wisdom. Similarly other great statesmen did not teach it to others, whether friends or strangers.”[88] Protagoras now replied that it could be taught, and shows the reason why great statesmen did not give this instruction, while he asks whether he is to speak as an elder to younger men in a myth, or whether he should give his reasons. The company left the matter to him and he began with the following myth of everlasting interest: “The gods commanded Prometheus and Epimetheus to adorn the world and confer on it its qualities and powers. Epimetheus imparted strength, power of flight, arms, clothing, herbs and fruits, but in some incomprehensible way he gave all to the beasts, so that nothing remained to men. Prometheus saw them unclothed, unarmed, helpless, when the moment came in which the form of man had to go forth into the light. Then he stole fire from heaven, the arts of Vulcan and Minerva, to equip man for his needs. But political wisdom was wanting, and, living without any common bond, they were in a constant state of strife and misery. Then Zeus gave the command to Hermes to grant reverence” (natural obedience, honour, docility, respect of children for parents, and of men for higher and better natures), “and justice. Hermes asks, ‘How shall I impart them? To individuals, as particular arts are distributed, just as some have a knowledge of medicine sufficient for assisting others?’ But Zeus answers that it must be to all, for no body of men (_πόλις_) can exist if only a few partake of those qualities. And it shall be the law that whoever cannot acknowledge authority and justice must be exterminated as a plague to the State. Hence the Athenians when they wish to build, call builders into counsel, and when they contemplate any other business, those who have experience in it, but when they wish to come to a decision or make a regulation in State affairs, they admit all. For all must partake of this virtue or no State could exist. Thus if anyone is inexperienced in the art of flute-playing and yet professes to be a master in it, he is justly thought to be mad. But in justice it is otherwise; if anyone is not just and confesses it, he is thought to be mad. He must profess to be so, for everybody must either share in it or be shut out from social life.”[89] For the fact that this political science is also so constituted “that everyone by education and diligence (_ἐξ ἐπιμελείας_) may acquire it,” Protagoras gives additional reasons in the following argument: “No one blames or punishes on account of a defect or evil that has come to anyone by nature or by chance. But defects and faults which can be removed through diligence, exercise and teaching are considered to be blameworthy and punishable. Impiety and injustice are of this description and, generally speaking, all that opposes public virtue. Men guilty of these sins are thus reproached; they are punished in the idea that they had the power to remove the wrong and still more to acquire political virtue through diligence and teaching. Thus men do not punish on account of what is past—excepting as we strike a vicious beast on the head—but on account of what is to come, so that neither the one who committed the crime nor any other misled by his example, should do the same again. Thus it is in this implied that virtue can be acquired through education and exercise.”[90] This is a good argument for the teachability of virtue.
As to the statement of Socrates that men such as Pericles, who were famed for their political virtues, did not impart these to their children and friends, Protagoras in the first place says that it may on the other hand be replied, that in these virtues all men are instructed by all men. Political virtue is so constituted that it is the common province of all; this one essential for all men is justice, temperance, and holiness—in one word, whatever comprises manly virtue. In it no particular education from men of eminence is thus required. The children are from their earliest infancy exhorted and admonished to do what is good, and are accustomed to that which is right. Instruction in music and gymnastics contributes to temper the indulgence of self-will and pleasure, and to accustom men to conform to a law or rule; and the reading of the poets who enforce this does the same. When man steps outside this circle of education, he enters into that of the constitution of a State which likewise contributes to keep everyone within the bounds of law and order, so that political virtue is a result of the education of youth. But the objection that distinguished men did not impart their distinction to their children and friends, Protagoras answered secondly and very well as follows: “Let us say that in a State all the citizens had to become flute-players, all would be instructed in the art; some would be distinguished, many good, some mediocre, a few perhaps bad, and yet all would have a certain amount of skill. But it might very well be the case that the son of an artist should be a bad player, for the distinction depends on particular talents, and a particularly good natural capacity. From very skilful players very unskilful might descend, and conversely, but all would have a certain knowledge of the flute, and all would certainly be infinitely better than those who were quite ignorant of the art. Similarly all, even the worst citizens of a rational State are better and juster than citizens of a State where there is no culture nor justice nor law, in a word, where there is no necessity to bring them up to be just. For this superiority they have to thank the education given in their State.”[91] All these are quite good examples and striking arguments which are not at all worse than Cicero’s reasoning—_a natura insitum_. The arguments of Socrates and the development of these arguments are, on the contrary, examples based upon experience, and are often not better than what is here placed in the mouth of a Sophist.
What now confronts us is the question of how far this may be inadequate, and particularly how far Socrates and Plato came into collision with the Sophists and constituted the antagonism to them. For the claim made by the Sophists in Greece was that they had given a higher culture to their people; for this, indeed, great credit was ascribed to them in Greece, but they were met by the reproach that was encountered by all culture. That is to say, because the Sophists were masters of argument and reasoning, and were within the stage of reflective thought, they wished, passing from the particular to the universal, to awaken attention through examples and illustrations to what in his experience and to his mind appears to man to be right. This, the necessary course of free, thinking reflection, which with us has also been adopted by culture, must, however, necessarily lead beyond implicit trust and unrestricted faith in the current morality and religion. The statement that the Sophists thereby fell into one-sided principles rests upon the fact that in Greek culture the time had not yet come when, out of thinking consciousness itself, the ultimate principles had become manifested, and thus there was something firm to rest upon, as is the case with us in modern times. Because, on the one hand, the need of subjective freedom existed merely to give effect to that which man himself perceives and finds present in his reason (thus laws, religious ideas, only in so far as I recognize them through my thought), on the other hand, no fixed principle had so far been found in thought; thought was rather reasoning, and what remained indeterminate could thus only be fulfilled through self-will. It is otherwise in our European world where culture is, so to speak, introduced under the protection and in presupposition of a spiritual religion, _i.e._ not of a religion of the imagination, but by presupposing a knowledge of the eternal nature of Spirit and of the absolute end, of the end of man, to be in a spiritual way actual and to posit himself in unity with the absolute spirit. Thus here there is a groundwork of a fixed spiritual principle which thus satisfies the needs of the subjective mind; and from this absolute principle all further relationships, duties, laws, &c., are established. Consequently culture cannot receive the variety of direction—and hence the aimlessness—of the Greeks and of those who extended culture over Greece, the Sophists. As regards the religion of the imagination, as regards the undeveloped principle of the Greek State, culture was able to divide itself into many points of view, or it was easy to it to represent particular subordinate points of view as highest principles. Where, on the contrary, as is the case with us, a universal aim so high, indeed the highest possible, floats before the imagination, a particular principle cannot so easily reach this rank, even if the reflection of reason attains to the position of determining and recognizing from itself what is highest; for the subordination of special principles is already determined, although in form our enlightenment may have the same standpoint as that of the Sophists.
As regards content, the standpoint of the Sophists differed from that of Socrates and Plato, in that the mission of Socrates was to express the beautiful, good, true, and right, as the end and aim of the individual, while with the Sophists the content was not present as an ultimate end, so that all this was left to the individual will. Hence came the evil reputation obtained by the Sophists through the antagonism of Plato, and this is certainly their defect. As to their outward lives, we know that the Sophists accumulated great riches;[92] they became very proud, and some of them lived very luxuriously. But in respect of the inward life, reasoning thought has, in distinction to Plato, this prevailing characteristic, that it makes duty, that which has to be done, not come from the Notion of the thing as determined in and for itself; for it brings forward external reasons through which right and wrong, utility and harmfulness, are distinguished. To Plato and Socrates, on the other hand, the main point is that the nature of the conditions should be considered, and that the Notion of the thing in and for itself should become evolved. Socrates and Plato wished to bring forward this Notion as opposed to the consideration of things from points of view and reasonings which are always merely particular and individual, and thus opposed to the Notion itself. The distinction in the two points of view is thus that cultured reasoning only belongs, in a general way, to the Sophists, while Socrates and Plato determined thought through a universal determination (the Platonic Idea), or something fixed, which mind finds eternally in itself.
If sophistry is bad in the sense that it signifies a quality of which only bad men are guilty, it is at the same time much more common than this would imply; for all argumentative reasoning, adducing of arguments and counterarguments, bringing into prominence particular points of view, is sophistry. And just as utterances of the Sophists are adduced against which nothing can be said (as they are by Plato), men of our day are urged to all that is good for the very reasons that are reasons to the Sophists. Thus it is said, “do not cheat, else you lose your credit, hence your wealth,” or, “be temperate, or you will spoil your appetite and have to suffer.” Or for punishment men give the external reasons of improvement, &c.; or else an action is defended on external grounds taken from the result. If, on the other hand, firmly rooted principles lie at the foundation—as in the Christian Religion, although men now remember this no longer—it is said, “the grace of God in respect of holiness, &c., thus directs the life of men;” and these external grounds fall away. Sophistry thus does not lie so far from us as we think. When educated men discuss matters now-a-days, it may seem all very good, but it is in no way different from what Socrates and Plato called sophistry—although they themselves have adopted this standpoint as truly as did the Sophists. Educated men fall into it when they judge of concrete cases in which a particular point of view determines the result, and we must in ordinary life do the same if we wish to make up our minds in action. If duties and virtues are advocated as in sermons (this is so in most sermons), we must hear such reasons given. Other speakers, such as those in parliament, likewise make use of arguments and counterarguments similar to these, through which they try to persuade and convince. On the one hand something definite is in question, such as the constitution, or a war, and from the fixed direction thus given, certain provisions have to be deduced consistently; but this consistency, on the other, soon disappears, just because the matter can be arranged either this way or that, and thus particular points of view always are decisive. Men likewise make use of good arguments, after the manner of the Sophists, against Philosophy. There are, they say, various philosophies, various opinions, and this is contrary to the one Truth; the weakness of human reason allows of no knowledge. What is Philosophy to the feelings, mind, and heart? Abstract thinking about such matters produces abstruse results which are of no use in the practical life of man. We no longer apply the word sophistry thus, but it is the way of the Sophists not to take things as they are, but to bring about their proofs by arguments derived from feelings as ultimate ends. We shall see this characteristic of the Sophists more clearly still in Socrates and Plato.
With such reasoning men can easily get so far as to know (where they do not, it is owing to the want of education—but the Sophists were very well educated) that if arguments are relied upon, everything can be proved by argument, and arguments for and against can be found for everything; as particular, however, they throw no light upon the universal, the Notion. Thus what has been considered the sin of the Sophists is that they taught men to deduce any conclusion required by others or by themselves; but that is not due to any special quality in the Sophists, but to reflective reasoning. In the worst action there exists a point of view which is essentially real; if this is brought to the front, men excuse and vindicate the action. In the crime of desertion in time of war, there is, for example, the duty of self-preservation. Similarly in more modern times the greatest crimes, assassination, treachery, &c., have been justified, because in the purpose there lay a determination which was actually essential, such as that men must resist the evil and promote the good. The educated man knows how to regard everything from the point of view of the good, to maintain in everything a real point of view. A man does not require to make great progress in his education to have good reasons ready for the worst action; all that has happened in the world since the time of Adam has been justified by some good reason.
It appears that the Sophists were conscious of this reasoning, and knew, as educated men, that everything could be proved. Hence in Plato’s Gorgias it is said that the art of the Sophists is a greater gift than any other; they could convince the people, the senate, the judges, of what they liked.[93] The advocate has similarly to inquire what arguments there are in favour of the party which claims his help, even if it be the opposite one to that which he wished to support. That knowledge is no defect, but is part of the higher culture of the Sophists; and if uneducated men naturally form conclusions from external grounds which are those alone coming to their knowledge, they may perhaps be mainly determined by something besides what they know (by their integrity, for instance). The Sophists thus knew that on this basis nothing was secure, because the power of thought treated everything dialectically. That is the formal culture which they had and imparted, for their acquaintanceship with so many points of view shook what was morality in Greece (the religion, duties, and laws, unconsciously exercised), since through its limited content, that came into collision with what was different. Once it was highest and ultimate, then it was deposed. Ordinary knowledge thus becomes confused, as we shall see very clearly in Socrates, for something is held to be certain to consciousness, and then other points of view which are also present and recognized, have similarly to be allowed; hence the first has no further value, or at least loses its supremacy. We saw in the same way, how bravery, which lies in the hazarding of one’s life, is made dubious by the duty of preserving life, if put forward unconditionally. Plato quotes several examples of this unsettling tendency, as when he makes Dionysodorus maintain: “Whoever gives culture to one who does not possess knowledge, desires that he should no longer remain what he is. He desires to direct him to reason, and this is to make him not the same as he is.” And Euthydemus, when the others say that he lies, answers, “Who lies, says what is not; men cannot say what is not, and thus no one can lie.”[94] And again Dionysodorus says, “You have a dog, this dog has young, and is a father; thus a dog is your father, and you are brother to its young.”[95] Sequences put together thus are constantly found in critical treatises.
With this comes the question which the nature of thought brings along with it. If the field of argument, that which consciousness holds to be firmly established, is shaken by reflection, what is man now to take as his ultimate basis? For something fixed there must be. This is either the good, the universal, or the individuality, the arbitrary will of the subject; and both may be united, as is shown later on in Socrates. To the Sophists the satisfaction of the individual himself was now made ultimate, and since they made everything uncertain, the fixed point was in the assertion, “it is my desire, my pride, glory, and honour, particular subjectivity, which I make my end.” Thus the Sophists are reproached for countenancing personal affections, private interests, &c. This proceeds directly from the nature of their culture, which, because it places ready various points of view, makes it depend on the pleasure of the subject alone which shall prevail, that is, if fixed principles do not determine. Here the danger lies. This takes place also in the present day where the right and the true in our actions is made to depend on good intention and on my own conviction. The real end of the State, the best administration and constitution, is likewise to demagogues very vague.
On account of their formal culture, the Sophists have a place in Philosophy; on account of their reflection they have not. They are associated with Philosophy in that they do not remain at concrete reasoning, but go on, at least in part, to ultimate determinations. A chief part of their culture was the generalization of the Eleatic mode of thought and its extension to the whole content of knowledge and of action; the positive thus comes in as, and has become, utility. To go into particulars respecting the Sophists would lead us too far; individual Sophists have their place in the general history of culture. The celebrated Sophists are very numerous; the most celebrated amongst them are Protagoras, Gorgias, and also Prodicus, the teacher of Socrates, to whom Socrates ascribes the well-known myth of “The choice of Hercules”[96]—an allegory, beautiful in its own way, which has been repeated hundreds and thousands of times. I will deal only with Protagoras and Gorgias, not from the point of view of culture, but in respect of proving further how the general knowledge which they extended to everything, has, with one of them, the universal form which makes it pure science. Plato is the chief source of our acquaintanceship with the Sophists, for he occupied himself largely with them; then we have Aristotle’s own little treatise on Gorgias; and Sextus Empiricus, who preserved for us much of the philosophy of Protagoras.
1. PROTAGORAS.
Protagoras, born at Abdera,[97] was somewhat older than Socrates; little more is known of him, nor, indeed, could there be much known. For he led a uniform life, since he spent it in the study of the sciences; he appeared in Greece proper as the first public teacher. He read his writings[98] like the rhapsodists and poets, the former of whom sang the verses of others, and the latter their own. There were then no places of learning, no books from which men could be taught, for to the ancients, as Plato says,[99] “the chief part of culture” (_ραιδείας_) “consisted in being skilled” (_δεινόν_) “in poetry,” just as with us fifty years ago the principal instruction of the people consisted of Bible History and Biblical precepts. The Sophists now gave, in place of a knowledge of the poets, an acquaintanceship with thought. Protagoras also came to Athens and there lived for long, principally with the great Pericles, who also entered into this culture. Indeed, the two once argued for a whole day as to whether the dart or the thrower or he who arranged the contest was guilty of the death of a man who thus met his death.[100] The dispute is over the great and important question of the possibility of imputation; guilt is a general expression, the analysis of which may undoubtedly become a difficult and extensive undertaking. In his intercourse with such men, Pericles developed his genius for eloquence; for whatever kind of mental occupation may be in question, a cultivated mind can alone excel in it; and true culture is only possible through pure science. Pericles was a powerful orator, and we see from Thucydides how deep a knowledge he had of the State and of his people. Protagoras had the same fate as Anaxagoras, in being afterwards banished from Athens. The cause of this sentence was a work written by him beginning, “As to the gods, I am not able to say whether they are or are not; for there is much which prevents this knowledge, both in the obscurity of the matter, and in the life of man which is so short.” This book was also publicly burned in Athens by command of the State, and, so far as we know, it was the first to be treated so. At the age of seventy or ninety years Protagoras was drowned while on a voyage to Sicily.[101] Protagoras was not, like other Sophists, merely a teacher of culture, but likewise a deep and solid thinker, a philosopher who reflected on fundamental determinations of an altogether universal kind. The main point in his system of knowledge he expressed thus: “Man is the measure of all things; of that which is, that it is; of that which is not, that it is not.”[102] On the one hand, therefore, what had to be done was to grasp thought as determined and as having content; but, on the other, to find the determining and content-giving; this universal determination then becomes the standard by which everything is judged. Now Protagoras’ assertion is in its real meaning a great truth, but at the same time it has a certain ambiguity, in that as man is the undetermined and many-sided, either he may in his individual particularity, as this contingent man, be the measure, or else self-conscious reason in man, man in his rational nature and his universal substantiality, is the absolute measure. If the statement is taken in the former sense, all is self-seeking, all self-interest, the subject with his interests forms the central point; and if man has a rational side, reason is still something subjective, it is “he.” But this is just the wrong and perverted way of looking at things which necessarily forms the main reproach made against the Sophists—that they put forward man in his contingent aims as determining; thus with them the interest of the subject in its particularity, and the interest of the same in its substantial reason are not distinguished.
The same statement is brought forward in Socrates and Plato, but with the further modification that here man, in that he is thinking and gives himself a universal content, is the measure. Thus here the great proposition is enunciated on which, from this time forward, everything turns, since the further progress of Philosophy only explains it further: it signifies that reason is the end of all things. This proposition further expresses a very remarkable change of position in asserting that all content, everything objective, is only in relation to consciousness; thought is thus in all truth expressed as the essential moment, and thereby the Absolute takes the form of the thinking subjectivity which comes before us principally in Socrates. Since man, as subject, is the measure of everything, the existent is not alone, but is for my knowledge. Consciousness is really the producer of the content in what is objective, and subjective thinking is thus really active. And this view extends even to the most modern philosophy, as when, for instance, Kant says that we only know phenomena, _i.e._ that what seems to us to be objective reality, is only to be considered in its relation to consciousness, and does not exist without this relation. The fact that the subject as active and determining brings forth the content, is the important matter, but now the question comes as to how the content is further determined—whether it is limited to the particularity of consciousness or is determined as the universal, the existent in and for itself. God, the Platonic Good, is certainly at first a product of thought, but in the second place He is just as really in and for Himself. Since I, as existent, fixed and eternal, only recognize what is in its content universal, this, posited as it is by me, is likewise the implicitly objective, not posited by me.
Protagoras himself shows us much more of what is implied in his theory, for he says, “Truth is a manifestation for consciousness. Nothing is in and for itself one, but everything has a relative truth only,” _i.e._ it is what it is but for another, which is man. This relativity is by Protagoras expressed in a way which seems to us in some measure trivial, and belongs to the first beginnings of reflective thought. The insignificant examples which he adduces (like Plato and Socrates when they follow out in them the point of view of reflection), by way of explanation, show that in Protagoras’ understanding what is determined is not grasped as the universal and identical with self. Hence the exemplifications are taken mostly from sensuous manifestation. “In a wind it may be that one person is cold and another is not; hence of this wind we cannot tell whether in itself it is cold or hot.”[103] Frost and heat are thus not anything which exist, but only are in their relation to a subject; were the wind cold in itself, it would always be so to the subject. Or again, “if we have here six dice, and place by them four others, we should say of the former that there are more of them. But, again, if we put twelve by them we say that these first six are the fewer.”[104] Because we say of the same number that it is more and fewer, the more and the less is merely a relative determination; thus what is the object, is so in the idea present to consciousness only. Plato, on the contrary, considered one and many, not like the Sophists in their distinction, but as being one and the same.