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* «Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots as freedom is to slavery,» he says.
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beginning. Their attitude, in the main, was genuinely scientific whenever it did not merely embody the prejudices of their age. But it was not only scientific; it was imaginative and vigorous and filled with the delight of adventure. They were interested in everything—meteors and eclipses, fishes and whirlwinds, religion and morality; with a penetrating intellect they combined the zest of children.
From this point onwards, there are first certain seeds of decay, in spite of previously unmatched achievement, and then a gradual decadence. What is amiss, even in the best philosophy after Democritus, is an undue emphasis on man as compared with the universe. First comes scepticism, with the Sophists, leading to a study of how we know rather than to the attempt to acquire fresh knowledge. Then comes, with Socrates, the emphasis on ethics; with Plato, the rejection of the world of sense in favour of the self-created world of pure thought; with Aristotle, the belief in purpose as the fundamental concept in science. In spite of the genius of Plato and Aristotle, their thought has vices which proved infinitely harmful. After their time, there was a decay of vigour, and a gradual recrudescence of popular superstition. A partially new outlook arose as a result of the victory of Catholic orthodoxy; but it was not until the Renaissance that philosophy regained the vigour and independence that characterize the predecessors of Socrates.
CHAPTER X Protagoras
THE great pre-Socratic systems that we have been considering were confronted, in the latter half of the fifth century, by a sceptical movement, in which the most important figure was Protagoras, chief of the Sophists. The word «Sophist» had originally no bad connotation; it meant, as nearly as may be, what we mean by «professor.» A Sophist was a man who made his living by teaching young men certain things that, it was thought, would be useful to them
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in practical life. As there was no public provision for such education, the Sophists taught only those who had private means, or whose parents had. This tended to give them a certain class bias, which was increased by the political circumstances of the time. In Athens and many other cities, democracy was politically triumphant, but nothing had been done to diminish the wealth of those who belonged to the old aristocratic families. It was, in the main, the rich who embodied what appears to us as Hellenic culture: they had education and leisure, travel had taken the edge off their traditional prejudices, and the time that they spent in discussion sharpened their wits. What was called democracy did not touch the institution of slavery, which enabled the rich to enjoy their wealth without oppressing free citizens.
In many cities, however, and especially in Athens, the poorer citizens had towards the rich a double hostility, that of envy, and that of traditionalism. The rich were supposed—often with justice—to be impious and immoral; they were subverting ancient beliefs, and probably trying to destroy democracy. It thus happened that political democracy was associated with cultural conservatism, while those who were cultural innovators tended to be political reactionaries. Somewhat the same situation exists in modern America, where Tammany, as a mainly Catholic organization, is engaged in defending traditional theological and ethical dogmas against the assaults of enlightenment. But the enlightened are politically weaker in America than they were in Athens, because they have failed to make common cause with the plutocracy. There is, however, one important and highly intellectual class which is concerned with the fence of the plutocracy, namely the class of corporation lawyers. In some respects, their functions are similar to those that were performed in Athens by the Sophists.
Athenian democracy, though it had the grave limitation of not including slaves or women, was in some respects more democratic than any modern system. Judges and most executive officers were chosen by lot, and served for short periods; they were thus average citizens, like our jurymen, with the prejudices and lack of professionalism characteristic of average citizens. In general, there were a large number of judges to hear each case. The plaintiff and defendant, or
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prosecutor and accused, appeared in person, not through professional lawyers. Naturally, success or failure depended largely on oratorical skill in appealing to popular prejudices. Although a man had to deliver his own speech, he could hire an expert to write the speech for him, or, as many preferred, he could pay for instruction in the arts required for success in the law courts. These arts the Sophists were supposed to teach.
The age of Pericles is analogous, in Athenian history, to the Victorian age in the history of England. Athens was rich and powerful, not much troubled by wars, and possessed of a democratic constitution administered by aristocrats. As we have seen in connection with Anaxagoras, a democratic opposition to Pericles gradually gathered strength, and attacked his friends one by one. The Peloponnesian War broke out in 431 B.C.; * Athens (in common with many other places) was ravaged by the plague; the population, which had been about 230,000, was greatly reduced, and never rose again to its former level ( Bury, History of Greece, I, p. 444). Pericles himself, in 430 B.C., was deposed from the office of general and fined for misappropriation of public money by a court composed of 1501 judges. His two sons died of the plague, and he himself died in the following year (429). Pheidias and Anaxagoras were condemned; Aspasia was prosecuted for impiety and for keeping a disorderly house, but acquitted.
In such a community, it was natural that men who were likely to incur the hostility of democratic politicians should wish to acquire forensic skill. For Athens, though much addicted to persecution, was in one respect less illiberal than modern America, since those accused of impiety and corrupting the young were allowed to plead in their own defence.
This explains the popularity of the Sophists with one class and their unpopularity with another. But in their own minds they served more impersonal purposes, and it is clear that many of them were genuinely concerned with philosophy. Plato devoted himself to caricaturing and vilifying them, but they must not be judged by his polemics. In his lighter vein, take the following passage from the Euthydemus, in which two Sophists, Dionysodorus and Euthydemus,
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* It ended in 404 B.C. with the complete overthrow of Athens.
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set to work to puzzle a simple-minded person named Clesippus. Dionysodorus begins:
You say that you have a dog? Yes, a villain of a one, said Clesippus. And he has puppies? Yes, and they are very like himself. And the dog is the father of them? Yes, he said, I certainly saw him and the mother of the puppies come together. And is he not yours? To be sure he is. Then he is a father, and he is yours; ergo, he is your father, and the puppies are your brothers.
In a more serious vein, take the dialogue called The Sophist. This is a logical discussion of definition, which uses the sophist as an illustration. With its logic we are not at present concerned; the only thing I wish to mention at the moment as regards this dialogue is the final conclusion:
«He, then, who traces the pedigree of his (the Sophist’s) art as follows—who, belonging to the conscious or dissembling section of the art of causing self-contradiction, is an imitator of appearance, and is separated from the class of phantastic which is a branch of image-making into that further division of creation, the juggling of words, a creation human, and not divine—any one who affirms the real Sophist to be of this blood and lineage will say the very truth.»
There is a story about Protagoras, no doubt apocryphal, which illustrates the connection of the Sophists with the law-courts in the popular mind. It is said that he taught a young man on the terms that he should be paid his fee if the young man won his first law-suit, but not otherwise, and that the young man’s first law-suit was one brought by Protagoras for recovery of his fee.
However, it is time to leave these preliminaries and see what is really known about Protagoras.
Protagoras was born about 500 B.C., at Abdera, the city from which Democritus came. He twice visited Athens, his second visit being not later than 432 B.C. He made a code of laws for the city of Thurii in 444-3 B.C. There is a tradition that he was prosecuted for impiety,
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but this seems to be untrue, in spite of the fact that he wrote a book On the Gods, which began: «With regard to the gods, I cannot feel sure either that they are or that they are not, nor what they are like in figure; for there are many things that hinder sure knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life.»
His second visit to Athens is described somewhat satirically in Plato Protagoras, and his doctrines are discussed seriously in the Theaetetus. He is chiefly noted for his doctrine that «Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not.» This is interpreted as meaning that each man is the measure of all things, and that, when men differ, there is no objective truth in virtue of which one is right and the other wrong. The doctrine is essentially sceptical, and is presumably based on the «deceitfulness» of the senses.
One
