Chapter LXVII (2)

Other simultaneous causes, arising directly out of the business of real life, contributed to the generation of these same capacities and studies. The fifth century B.C. is the first century of democracy at Athens, in Sicily, and elsewhere: moreover, at that period, beginning from the Ionic revolt and the Persian invasions of Greece, the political relations between one Grecian city and another became more complicated, as well as more continuous; requiring a greater measure of talent in the public men who managed them. Without some power of persuading or confuting,—of defending himself against accusation, or in case of need, accusing others,—no man could possibly hold an ascendent position. He had probably not less need of this talent for private, informal, conversations to satisfy his own political partisans, than for addressing the public assembly formally convoked. Even as commanding an army or a fleet, without any laws of war or habits of professional discipline, his power of keeping up the good-humor, confidence, and prompt obedience of his men, depended not a little on his command of speech.[533] Nor was it only to the leaders in political life that such an accomplishment was indispensable. In all the democracies,—and probably in several governments which were not democracies, but oligarchies of an open character,—the courts of justice were more or less numerous, and the procedure oral and public: in Athens, especially, the dikasteries—whose constitution has been explained in a former chapter—were both very numerous, and paid for attendance. Every citizen had to go before them in person, without being able to send a paid advocate in his place, if he either required redress for wrong offered to himself, or was accused of wrong by another.[534] There was no man, therefore, who might not be cast or condemned, or fail in his own suit, even with right on his side, unless he possessed some powers of speech to unfold his case to the dikasts, as well as to confute the falsehoods, and disentangle the sophistry, of an opponent. Moreover, to any man of known family and station, it would be a humiliation hardly less painful than the loss of the cause, to stand before the dikastery with friends and enemies around him, and find himself unable to carry on the thread of a discourse without halting or confusion. To meet such liabilities, from which no citizen, rich or poor, was exempt, a certain training in speech became not less essential than a certain training in arms. Without the latter, he could not do his duty as an hoplite in the ranks for the defence of his country; without the former, he could not escape danger to his fortune or honor, and humiliation in the eyes of his friends, if called before a dikastery, nor lend assistance to any of those friends who might be placed under the like necessity.

[533] See the discourse of Sokratês, insisting upon this point,
as part of the duties of a commander (Xen. Mem. iii, 3, 11).

[534] This necessity of some rhetorical accomplishments, is
enforced not less emphatically by Aristotle (Rhetoric. i, 1, 3)
than by Kalliklês in the Gorgias of Plato, c. 91, p. 486, B.

Here then were ample motives, arising out of practical prudence not less than from the stimulus of ambition, to cultivate the power both of continuous harangue, and of concise argumentation, or interrogation and reply:[535] motives for all, to acquire a certain moderate aptitude in the use of these weapons; for the ambitious few, to devote much labor and to shine as accomplished orators.

[535] See the description which Cicero gives, of his own
laborious oratorical training:—

“Ego hoc tempore omni, noctes et dies, in omnium doctrinarum
meditatione versabar. Eram cum Stoico Diodoto, qui cum
habitavisset apud me mecumque vixisset, nuper est domi meæ
mortuus. A quo quum in aliis rebus, tum studiosissime in
dialecticâ versabar; _quæ quasi contracta et astricta eloquentia
putanda est_; sine quâ etiam tu, Brute, judicavisti, te illam
justam eloquentiam, quam _dialecticam dilatatam_ esse putant,
consequi non posse. Huic ego doctori, et ejus artibus variis et
multis, ita eram tamen deditus, ut ab exercitationibus oratoriis
nullus dies vacaret.” (Cicero, Brutus, 90, 309.)

Such political and social motives, it is to be remembered, though acting very forcibly at Athens, were by no means peculiar to Athens, but prevailed more or less throughout a large portion of the Grecian cities, especially in Sicily, when all the governments became popularized after the overthrow of the Gelonian dynasty. And it was in Sicily and Italy, that the first individuals arose, who acquired permanent name both in rhetoric and dialectics: Empedoklês of Agrigentum in the former; Zeno of Elea, in Italy, in the latter.[536]

[536] Aristotel. ap. Diog. Laërt. viii, 57.

Both these distinguished men bore a conspicuous part in politics, and both on the popular side; Empedoklês against an oligarchy, Zeno against a despot. But both also were yet more distinguished as philosophers, and the dialectical impulse in Zeno, if not the rhetorical impulse in Empedoklês, came more from his philosophy than from his politics. Empedoklês (about 470-440 B.C.) appears to have held intercourse at least, if not partial communion of doctrine, with the dispersed philosophers of the Pythagorean league; the violent subversion of which, at Kroton and elsewhere, I have related in a previous chapter.[537] He constructed a system of physics and cosmogony, distinguished for first broaching the doctrine of the Four elements, and set forth in a poem composed by himself: besides which he seems to have had much of the mystical tone and miraculous pretensions of Pythagoras; professing not only to cure pestilence and other distempers, but to teach how old age might be averted and the dead raised from Hades; to prophesy, and to raise and calm the winds at his pleasure. Gorgias, his pupil, deposed to having been present at the magical ceremonies of Empedoklês.[538] The impressive character of his poem is sufficiently attested by the admiration of Lucretius,[539] and the rhetoric ascribed to him may have consisted mainly in oral teaching or exposition of the same doctrines. Tisias and Korax of Syracuse, who are also mentioned as the first teachers of rhetoric, and the first who made known any precepts about the rhetorical practice, were his contemporaries; and the celebrated Gorgias was his pupil.

[537] See my preceding vol. iv, ch. xxxvii.

[538] Diogen. Laërt. viii, 58, 59, who gives a remarkable extract
from the poem of Empedoklês, attesting these large pretensions.

See Brandis, Handbuch der Gr. Röm. Philos. part i. sects. 47, 48,
p. 192; Sturz. ad Empedoclis Frag. p. 36.

[539] De Rerum Naturâ, i, 719.

The dialectical movement emanated at the same time from the Eleatic school of philosophers,—Zeno, and his contemporary the Samian Melissus, 460-440,—if not from their common teacher Parmenidês. Melissus also, as well as Zeno and Empedoklês, was a distinguished citizen as well as a philosopher; having been in command of the Samian fleet at the time of the revolt from Athens, and having in that capacity gained a victory over the Athenians.

All the philosophers of the fifth century B.C., prior to Sokratês, inheriting from their earliest poetical predecessors the vast and unmeasured problems which had once been solved by the supposition of divine or superhuman agents, contemplated the world, physical and moral, all in a mass, and applied their minds to find some hypothesis which would give them an explanation of this totality,[540] or at least appease curiosity by something which looked like an explanation. What were the elements out of which sensible things were made? What was the initial cause or principle of those changes which appeared to our senses? What was change?—was it generation of something integrally new and destruction of something preëxistent,—or was it a decomposition and recombination of elements still continuing. The theories of the various Ionic philosophers, and of Empedoklês after them, admitting one, two, or four elementary substances, with Friendship and Enmity to serve as causes of motion or change; the Homœomeries of Anaxagoras, with Nous, or Intelligence, as the stirring and regularizing agent; the atoms and void of Leukippus and Demokritus, all these were different hypotheses answering to a similar vein of thought. All of them, though assuming that the sensible appearances of things were delusive and perplexing, nevertheless, were borrowed more or less directly from some of these appearances, which were employed to explain and illustrate the whole theory, and served to render it plausible when stated as well as to defend it against attack. But the philosophers of the Eleatic school—first Xenophanês, and after him Parmenidês—took a distinct path of their own. To find that which was real, and which lay as it were concealed behind or under the delusive phenomena of sense, they had recourse only to mental abstractions. They supposed a Substance or Something not perceivable by sense, but only cogitable or conceivable by reason; a One and All, continuous and finite, which was not only real and self-existent, but was the only reality; eternal, immovable, and unchangeable, and the only matter knowable. The phenomena of sense, which began and ended one after the other, they thought, were essentially delusive, uncertain, contradictory among themselves, and open to endless diversity of opinion.[541] Upon these, nevertheless, they announced an opinion; adopting two elements, heat and cold, or light and darkness.

[540] Some striking lines of Empedoklês are preserved by
Sextus Empiricus, adv. Mathemat. vii, 115; to the effect that
every individual man gets through his short life, with no more
knowledge than is comprised in his own slender fraction of
observation and experience: he struggles in vain to find out and
explain the totality; but neither eye, nor ear, nor reason can
assist him:—

Παῦρον δὲ ζωῆς ἀβίον μέρος ἀθρήσαντες,
Ὠκύμοροι, καπνοῖο δίκην ἀρθέντες, ἀπέπταν
Αὐτὸ μόνον πεισθέντες, ὅτῳ προσέκυρσεν ἕκαστος
Πάντοσ᾽ ἐλαυνόμενοι. Τὸ δὲ οὖλον ἐπεύχεται εὑρεῖν
Αὔτως· οὔτ᾽ ἐπιδερκτὰ τάδ᾽ ἀνδράσιν, οὔτ᾽ ἐπακουστὰ,
Οὔτε νόῳ περιληπτά.

[541] See Parmenidis Fragmenta, ed. Karsten, v, 30, 55, 60: also
the Dissertation annexed by Karsten, sects. 3, 4, p. 148, _seq._;
sect. 19, p. 221, _seq._

Compare also Mullach’s edition of the same Fragments, annexed to
his edition of the Aristotelian treatise, De Melisso, Xenophane,
et Gorgiâ, p. 144.

Parmenidês set forth this doctrine of the One and All in a poem, of which but a few fragments now remain, so that we understand very imperfectly the positive arguments employed to recommend it. The matter of truth and knowledge, such as he alone admitted, was altogether removed from the senses and divested of sensible properties, so as to be conceived only as an Ens Rationis, and described and discussed only in the most general words of the language. The exposition given by Parmenidês in his poem,[542] though complimented by Plato, was vehemently controverted by others, who deduced from it many contradictions and absurdities. As a part of his reply, and doubtless the strongest part, Parmenidês retorted upon his adversaries; an example followed by his pupil Zeno with still greater acuteness and success. Those who controverted his ontological theory, that the real, ultra-phenomenal substance was One, affirmed it to be not One, but Many; divisible, movable, changeable, etc. Zeno attacked this latter theory, and proved that it led to contradictions and absurdities still greater than those involved in the proposition of Parmenidês.[543] He impugned the testimony of sense, affirming that it furnished premises for conclusions which contradicted each other, and that it was unworthy of trust.[544] Parmenidês[545] had denied that there was any such thing as real change either of place or color: Zeno maintained change of place, or motion, to be impossible and self-contradictory; propounding many logical difficulties, derived from the infinite divisibility of matter, against some of the most obvious affirmations respecting sensible phenomena. Melissus appears to have argued in a vein similar to that of Zeno, though with much less acuteness; demonstrating indirectly the doctrine of Parmenidês, by deducing impossible inferences from the contrary hypothesis.[546]

[542] Plato, Parmenidês, p. 128, B. σὺ μὲν (Parmenidês) γὰρ ἐν
τοῖς ποιήμασιν ἓν φῂς εἶναι τὸ πᾶν, καὶ τούτων τεκμήρια παρέχεις
καλῶς τε καὶ εὖ, etc.

[543] See the remarkable passage in the Parmenidês of Plato, p.
128, B, C, D.

Ἐστὶ δὲ τό γε ἀληθὲς βοήθειά τις ταῦτα τὰ γράμματα τῷ Παρμενίδου
λόγῳ πρὸς τοὺς ἐπιχειροῦντας αὐτὸν κωμῳδεῖν, ὡς εἰ ἕν ἐστι,
πολλὰ καὶ γελοῖα συμβαίνει πάσχειν τῷ λόγῳ καὶ ἐναντία αὑτῷ.
Ἀντιλέγει δὴ οὖν τοῦτο τὸ γράμμα πρὸς τοὺς τὰ πολλὰ λέγοντας,
~καὶ ἀνταποδίδωσι ταῦτα καὶ πλείω~, τοῦτο βουλόμενον δηλοῦν, ὡς
~ἔτι γελοιότερα πάσχοι ἂν αὐτῶν ἡ ὑπόθεσις—ἡ εἰ πολλὰ ἐστίν—ἢ ἡ
τοῦ ἓν εἶναι, εἴ τις ἱκανῶς ἐπεξίοι~.

[544] Plato, Phædrus, c. 44, p. 261, D. See the citations in
Brandis, Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philosophie, part i, p. 417, _seq._

[545] Parmenid. Fragm. v, 101, ed. Mullach.

[546] See the Fragments of Melissus collected by Mullach, in his
publication cited in a previous note, p. 81. _seq._

Zeno published a treatise to maintain the thesis above described, which he also upheld by personal conversations and discussions, in a manner doubtless far more efficacious than his writing; the oral teaching of these early philosophers being their really impressive manifestation. His subtle dialectic arguments were not only sufficient to occupy all the philosophers of antiquity, in confuting them more or less successfully, but have even descended to modern times as a fire not yet extinguished.[547] The great effect produced among the speculative minds of Greece by his writing and conversation, is attested both by Plato and Aristotle. He visited Athens, gave instruction to some eminent Athenians, for high pay, and is said to have conversed both with Periklês and with Sokratês, at a time when the latter was very young; probably between 450-440 B.C.[548]

[547] The reader will see this in Bayle’s Dictionary, article,
Zeno of Elea.

Simplicius (in his commentary on Aristot. Physic. p. 255) says
that Zeno first composed written dialogues, which cannot be
believed without more certain evidence. He also particularizes a
puzzling question addressed by Zeno to Protagoras. See Brandis,
Gesch. der Griech. Röm. Philos. i, p. 409. Zeno ἴδιον μὲν οὐδὲν
ἐξέθετο (sc. περὶ τῶν πάντων·), διηπόρησε δὲ περὶ τούτων ἐπὶ
πλεῖον. Plutarch. ap. Eusebium, Præpar. Evangel. i, 23, D.

[548] Compare Plutarch, Periklês, c. 3; Plato, Parmenidês, pp.
126, 127; Plato, Alkibiad. i. ch. 14, p. 119, A.

That Sokratês had in his youth conversed with Parmenidês, when
the latter was an old man, is stated by Plato more than once,
over and above his dialogue called Parmenidês, which professes
to give a conversation between the two, as well as with Zeno. I
agree with Mr. Fynes Clinton, Brandis, and Karsten, in thinking
that this is better evidence, about the date of Parmenidês than
any of the vague indications which appear to contradict it, in
Diogenes Laërtius and elsewhere. But it will be hardly proper to
place the conversation between Parmenidês and Sokratês—as Mr.
Clinton places it, Fast. H. vol. ii, App. c. 21, p. 364—at a time
when Sokratês was only fifteen years of age. The ideas which the
ancients had about youthful propriety, would not permit him to
take part in conversation with an eminent philosopher at so early
an age as fifteen, when he would not yet be entered on the roll
of citizens, or be qualified for the smallest function, military
or civil. I cannot but think that Sokratês must have been more
than twenty years of age when he thus conversed with Parmenidês.

Sokratês was born in 469 B.C. (perhaps 468 B.C.); he would
therefore be twenty years of age in 449: assuming the visit of
Parmenidês to Athens to have been in 448 B.C., since he was then
sixty-five years of age, he would be born in 513 B.C. It is
objected that, if this date be admitted, Parmenidês could not
have been a pupil of Xenophanês: we should thus he compelled to
admit, which perhaps is the truth, that he learned the doctrine
of Xenophanês at second-hand.

His appearance constitutes a remarkable era in Grecian philosophy, because he first brought out the extraordinary aggressive or negative force of the dialectic method. In this discussion respecting the One and the Many, positive grounds on either side were alike scanty: each party had to set forth the contradictions deducible from the opposite hypothesis, and Zeno professed to show that those of his opponents were the more flagrant. We thus see that, along with the methodized question and answer, or dialectic method, employed from henceforward more and more in philosophical inquiries, comes out at the same time the negative tendency, the probing, testing, and scrutinizing force, of Grecian speculation. The negative side of Grecian speculation stands quite as prominently marked, and occupies as large a measure of the intellectual force of their philosophers, as the positive side. It is not simply to arrive at a conclusion, sustained by a certain measure of plausible premise,—and then to proclaim it as an authoritative dogma, silencing or disparaging all objectors,—that Grecian speculation aspires. To unmask not only positive falsehood, but even affirmation without evidence, exaggerated confidence in what was only doubtful, and show of knowledge without the reality; to look at a problem on all sides, and set forth all the difficulties attending its solution, to take account of deductions from the affirmative evidence, even in the case of conclusions accepted as true upon the balance, all this will be found pervading the march of their greatest thinkers. As a condition of all progressive philosophy, it is not less essential that the grounds of negation should be freely exposed, than the grounds of affirmation. We shall find the two going hand in hand, and the negative vein, indeed, the more impressive and characteristic of the two, from Zeno downwards in our history. In one of the earliest memoranda illustrative of Grecian dialectics,—the sentences in which Plato represents Parmenidês and Zeno as bequeathing their mantle to the youthful Sokratês, and giving him precepts for successfully prosecuting those researches which his marked inquisitive impulse promised,—this large and comprehensive point of view is emphatically inculcated. He is admonished to set before him both sides of every hypothesis, and to follow out both the negative and the affirmative chains of argument with equal perseverance and equal freedom of scrutiny; neither daunted by the adverse opinions around him, nor deterred by sneers against wasting time in fruitless talk; since the multitude are ignorant that without thus travelling round all sides of a question, no assured comprehension of the truth is attainable.[549]

[549] Plato, Parmenid. pp. 135, 136.

Parmenidês speaks to Sokratês: Καλὴ μὲν οὖν καὶ θεία, εὖ ἴσθι, ἡ
ὁρμὴ, ἣν ὁρμᾷς ἐπὶ τοὺς λόγους· ἕλκυσον δὲ σαυτὸν καὶ γυμνάσαι
μᾶλλον διὰ τῆς δοκούσης ἀχρήστου εἶναι καὶ καλουμένης ὑπὸ τῶν
πολλῶν ἀδολεσχίας, ἕως ἔτι νέος εἶ· εἰ δὲ μὴ, σὲ διαφεύξεται ἡ
ἀλήθεια. Τίς οὖν ὁ τρόπος, φάναι (τὸν Σωκράτη), ὦ Παρμενίδη,
τῆς γυμνασίας; Οὗτος, εἰπεῖν (τὸν Παρμενίδην) ὅνπερ ἤκουσας
Ζήνωνος.... Χρὴ δὲ καὶ τόδε ἔτι πρὸς τούτῳ σκοπεῖν, ~μὴ μόνον,
εἰ ἔστιν ἕκαστον, ὑποτιθέμενον, σκοπεῖν τὰ ξυμβαίνοντα ἐκ τῆς
ὑποθέσεως—ἀλλὰ καὶ, εἰ μή ἐστι τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο, ὑποτίθεσθαι~—εἰ
βούλει μᾶλλον γυμνασθῆναι.... Ἀγνοοῦσι γὰρ οἱ πολλοὶ ὅτι ἄνευ
ταύτης τῆς διὰ πάντων διεξόδου καὶ πλάνης, ἀδύνατον ἐντυχόντα
τῷ ἀληθεῖ νοῦν σχεῖν. See also Plato’s Kratylus, p. 428, E,
about the necessity of the investigator looking both before and
behind—ἅμα πρόσσω καὶ ὀπίσσω.

See also the Parmenidês, p. 130, E,—in which Sokratês is warned
respecting the ἀνθρώπων δόξας, against enslaving himself to the
opinions of men: compare Plato, Sophistes, p. 227, B, C.

We thus find ourselves, from the year 450 B.C., downwards, in presence of two important classes of men in Greece, unknown to Solon or even to Kleisthenês, the Rhetoricians, and the Dialecticians; for whom, as has been shown, the ground had been gradually prepared by the politics, the poetry, and the speculation, of the preceding period.

Both these two novelties—like the poetry and other accomplishments of this memorable race—grew up from rude indigenous beginnings, under native stimulus unborrowed and unassisted from without. The rhetorical teaching was an attempt to assist and improve men in the power of continuous speech as addressed to assembled numbers, such as the public assembly or the dikastery; it was therefore a species of training sought for by men of active pursuits and ambition, either that they might succeed in public life, or that they might maintain their rights and dignity if called before the court of justice. On the other hand, the dialectic business had no direct reference to public life, to the judicial pleading, or to any assembled large number. It was a dialogue carried on by two disputants, usually before a few hearers, to unravel some obscurity, to reduce the respondent to silence and contradiction, to exercise both parties in mastery of the subject, or to sift the consequences of some problematical assumption. It was spontaneous conversation[550] systematized and turned into some predetermined channel; furnishing a stimulus to thought, and a means of improvement not attainable in any other manner; furnishing to some, also, a source of profit or display. It opened a line of serious intellectual pursuit to men of a speculative or inquisitive turn, who were deficient in voice, in boldness, in continuous memory, for public speaking; or who desired to keep themselves apart from the political and judicial animosities of the moment.

[550] See Aristotel. De Sophist. Elenchis, c. 11, p. 172, ed.
Bekker; and his Topica, ix, 5, p. 154; where the different
purposes of dialogue are enumerated and distinguished.

Although there were numerous Athenians, who combined, in various proportions, speculative with practical study, yet generally speaking, the two veins of intellectual movement—one towards active public business, the other towards enlarged opinions and greater command of speculative truth, with its evidences—continued simultaneous and separate. There subsisted between them a standing polemical controversy and a spirit of mutual detraction. If Plato despised the sophists and the rhetors, Isokratês thinks himself not less entitled to disparage those who employed their time in debating upon the unity or plurality of virtue.[551] Even among different teachers, in the same intellectual walk, also, there prevailed but too often an acrimonious feeling of personal rivalry, which laid them all so much the more open to assault from the common enemy of all mental progress; a feeling of jealous ignorance, stationary or wistfully retrospective, of no mean force at Athens, as in every other society, and of course blended at Athens with the indigenous democratical sentiment. This latter sentiment[552] of antipathy to new ideas, and new mental accomplishments, has been raised into factitious importance by the comic genius of Aristophanês, whose point of view modern authors have too often accepted; thus allowing some of the worst feelings of Grecian antiquity to influence their manner of conceiving the facts. Moreover, they have rarely made any allowance for that force of literary and philosophical antipathy, which was no less real and constant at Athens than the political; and which made the different literary classes or individuals perpetually unjust one towards another.[553] It was the blessing and the glory of Athens, that every man could speak out his sentiments and his criticisms with a freedom unparalleled in the ancient world, and hardly paralleled even in the modern, in which a vast body of dissent both is, and always has been, condemned to absolute silence. But this known latitude of censure ought to have imposed on modern authors a peremptory necessity of not accepting implicitly the censure of any one, where the party inculpated has left no defence; at the very least, of construing the censure strictly, and allowing for the point of view from which it proceeds. From inattention to this necessity, almost all the things and persons of Grecian history are presented to us on their bad side; the libels of Aristophanês, the sneers of Plato and Xenophon, even the interested generalities of a plaintiff or defendant before the dikastery, are received with little cross-examination as authentic materials for history.

[551] See Isokratês, Orat. x; Helenæ Encomium, sects. 2-7;
compare Orat. xv, De Permutatione, of the same author, s. 90.

I hold it for certain, that the first of these passages is
intended as a criticism upon the Platonic dialogues (as in Or. v,
ad Philip. s. 84), probably the second passage also. Isokratês,
evidently a cautious and timid man, avoids mentioning the names
of contemporaries, that he may provoke the less animosity.

[552] Isokratês alludes much to this sentiment, and to the men
who looked upon gymnastic training with greater favor than upon
philosophy, in the Orat. xv, De Permutatione, s. 267, _et seq._ A
large portion of this oration is in fact a reply to accusations,
the same as those preferred against mental cultivation by the
Δίκαιος Λόγος in the Nubes of Aristophanês, 947, _seq._; favorite
topics in the mouths of the pugilists “with smashed ears.”
(Plato, Gorgias, c. 71, p. 515, E; τῶν τὰ ὦτα κατεαγότων.)

[553] There is but too much evidence of the abundance of such
jealousies and antipathies during the times of Plato, Aristotle,
and Isokratês; see Stahr’s Aristotelia, ch. iii, vol. i, pp. 37,
68.

Aristotle was extremely jealous of the success of Isokratês, and
was himself much assailed by pupils of the latter, Kephisodôrus
and others, as well as by Dikæarchus, Eubulidês, and a numerous
host of writers in the same tone: στρατὸν ὅλον τῶν ἐπιθεμένων
Ἀριστοτέλει; see the Fragments of Dikæarchus, vol. ii, p. 225,
ed. Didot. “De ingenio ejus (observes Cicero, in reference to
Epicurus, de Finibus, ii, 25, 80) in his disputationibus, non de
moribus, quæritur. Sit ista in Græcorum levitate perversitas, qui
maledictis insectantur eos, a quibus de veritate dissentiunt.”
This is a taint no way peculiar to _Grecian_ philosophical
controversy; but it has nowhere been more infectious than among
the Greeks, and modern historians cannot be too much on their
guard against it.

If ever there was need to invoke this rare sentiment of candor, it is when we come to discuss the history of the persons called sophists, who now for the first time appear as of note; the practical teachers of Athens and of Greece, misconceived as well as misesteemed.

The primitive education at Athens consisted of two branches; gymnastics, for the body; music, for the mind. The word _music_ is not to be judged according to the limited signification which it now bears. It comprehended, from the beginning, everything appertaining to the province of the Nine Muses; not merely learning the use of the lyre, or how to bear part in a chorus; but also the hearing, learning, and repeating, of poetical compositions, as well as the practice of exact and elegant pronunciation; which latter accomplishment, in a language like the Greek, with long words, measured syllables, and great diversity of accentuation between one word and another, must have been far more difficult to acquire than it is in any modern European language. As the range of ideas enlarged, so the words _music_ and musical teachers acquired an expanded meaning, so as to comprehend matter of instruction at once ampler and more diversified. During the middle of the fifth century B.C., at Athens, there came thus to be found, among the musical teachers, men of the most distinguished abilities and eminence; masters of all the learning and accomplishments of the age, teaching what was known of astronomy, geography, and physics, and capable of holding dialectical discussions with their pupils, upon all the various problems then afloat among intellectual men. Of this character were Lamprus, Agathoklês, Pythokleidês, Damon, etc. The two latter were instructors of Periklês; and Damon was even rendered so unpopular at Athens, partly by his large and free speculations, partly through the political enemies of his great pupil, that he was ostracized, or at least sentenced to banishment.[554] Such men were competent companions for Anaxagoras and Zeno, and employed in part on the same studies; the field of acquired knowledge being not then large enough to be divided into separate, exclusive compartments. While Euripidês frequented the company, and acquainted himself with the opinions, of Anaxagoras, Ion of Chios, his rival as a tragic poet, as well as the friend of Kimon, bestowed so much thought upon physical subjects, as then conceived, that he set up a theory of his own, propounding the doctrine of three elements in nature;[555] air, fire, and earth.

[554] See Plato (Protagoras, c. 8, p. 316, D.; Lachês, c. 3, p.
180, D.; Menexenus, c. 3, p. 236, A; Alkibiad. i, c. 14, p. 118,
C); Plutarch, Periklês, c. 4.

Periklês had gone through dialectic practice in his youth
(Xenoph. Memor. i, 2, 46).

[555] Isokratês, Or. xv, De Permutat. sect. 287.

Compare Brandis, Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philosophie, part i, sect.
48, p. 196.

Now such musical teachers as Damon and the others above mentioned, were sophists, not merely in the natural and proper Greek sense of that word, but, to a certain extent, even in the special and restricted meaning which Plato afterwards thought proper to confer upon it.[556] A sophist, in the genuine sense of the word, was a wise man, a clever man; one who stood prominently before the public as distinguished for intellect or talent of some kind. Thus Solon and Pythagoras are both called sophists; Thamyras the skilful bard, is called a sophist:[557] Sokratês is so denominated, not merely by Aristophanês, but by Æschinês:[558] Aristotle himself calls Aristippus, and Xenophon calls Antisthenês, both of them disciples of Sokratês, by that name:[559] Xenophon,[560] in describing a collection of instructive books, calls them “the writings of the old poets and sophists,” meaning by the latter word prose-writers generally: Plato is alluded to as a sophist, even by Isokratês:[561] Isokratês himself was harshly criticized as a sophist, and defends both himself and his profession: lastly, Timon, the friend and admirer of Pyrrho, about 300-280 B.C., who bitterly satirized all the philosophers, designated them all, including Plato and Aristotle, by the general name of sophists.[562] In this large and comprehensive sense the word was originally used, and always continued to be so understood among the general public. But along with this idea, the title sophist also carried with it or connoted a certain invidious feeling. The natural temper of a people generally ignorant towards superior intellect,—the same temper which led to those charges of magic so frequent in the Middle Ages,—appears to be a union of admiration with something of an unfavorable sentiment;[563] dislike, or apprehension, as the case may be, unless where the latter element has become neutralized by habitual respect for an established profession or station: at any rate, the unfriendly sentiment is so often intended, that a substantive word, in which it is implied without the necessity of any annexed predicate, is soon found convenient. Timon, who hated the philosophers, thus found the word sophist exactly suitable, in sentiment as well as meaning, to his purpose in addressing them.

[556] Isokratês calls both Anaxagoras and Damon, sophists (Or.
xv, De Perm. sect. 251), Plutarch, Periklês, c. 4. Ὁ δὲ Δάμων
ἐοικεν, ἄκρος ὢν σοφιστὴς, καταδύεσθαι μὲν εἰς τὸ τῆς μουσικῆς
ὄνομα, ἐπικρυπτόμενος πρὸς τοὺς πολλοὺς τὴν δεινότητα.

So Protagoras too (in the speech put into his mouth by Plato,
Protag. c. 8, p. 316) says, very truly, that there had been
sophists from the earliest times of Greece. But he says also,
what Plutarch says in the citation just above, that these earlier
men refused, intentionally and deliberately, to call themselves
sophists, for fear of the odium attached to the name; and that
he, Protagoras, was the first person to call himself openly a
sophist.

The denomination by which a man is known, however, seldom depends
upon himself, but upon the general public, and upon his critics,
friendly or hostile. The unfriendly spirit of Plato did much more
to attach the title of sophists specially to these teachers, than
any assumption of their own.

[557] Herodot. i, 29; ii, 49; iv, 95. Diogenês of Apollonia,
contemporary of Herodotus, called the Ionic philosophers or
physiologists by the name sophists: see Brandis, Geschich. der
Griech. Röm. Philosoph. c. lvii, note _O_. About Thamyras, see
Welcker, Griech. Tragöd., Sophoklês, p. 421:—

Εἰτ᾽ οὖν σοφιστὴς καλὰ παραπαίων χέλυν, etc.

The comic poet Kratinus called all the poets, including Homer and
Hesiod, σοφισταί: see the Fragments of his drama Ἀρχίλοχοι in
Meineke, Fragm. Comicor. Græcor. vol. ii, p. 16.

[558] Æschinês cont. Timarch. c. 34. Æschinês calls Demosthenês
also a sophist, c. 27.

We see plainly from the terms in Plato’s Politicus, c. 38, p.
299 B, μετεωρολόγον, ἀδολεσχήν τινα σοφιστὴν, that both Sokratês
and Plato himself were designated as sophists by the Athenian
public.

[559] Aristotel. Metaphysic. iii, 2, p. 996; Xenophon, Sympos.
iv, 1.

Aristippus is said to have been the first of the disciples of
Sokratês who took money for instruction (Diogen. Laërt. ii, 65).

[560] Xenoph. Memor. iv, 2, 1. γράμματα πολλὰ συνειλεγμένον
ποιητῶν τε καὶ σοφιστῶν τῶν εὐδοκιμωτάτων....

The word σοφιστῶν is here used just in the same sense as τοὺς
θησαυροὺς ~τῶν πάλαι σοφῶν ἀνδρῶν~, οὓς ἐκεῖνοι κατέλιπον ἐν
βιβλίοις γράψαντες, etc. (Memor. i, 6, 14.) It is used in a
different sense in another passage (i, 1, 11), to signify
teachers who gave instruction on physical and astronomical
subjects, which Sokratês and Xenophon both disapproved.

[561] Isokratês, Orat. v, ad Philipp. sect. 14: see Heindorf’s
note on the Euthydemus of Plato, p. 305, C. sect. 79.

[562] Diogen. Laërt. ix, 65. Ἔσπετε νῦν μοι, ὅσοι πολυπράγμονές
ἐστε σοφισταί (Diogen. Laërt. viii, 74).

Demetrius of Trœzen numbered Empedoklês as a sophist. Isokratês
speaks of Empedoklês, Ion, Alkmæon, Parmenidês, Melissus,
Gorgias, all as οἱ παλαιοὶ σοφισταί; all as having taught
different περιττολογίας about the elements of the physical world
(Isok. de Permut. sect. 288).

[563] Eurip. Med. 289:—

Χρὴ δ᾽ οὔποθ᾽ ὅστις ἀρτίφρων πέφυκ᾽ ἀνὴρ,
Παῖδας περισσῶς ἐκδιδάσκεσθαι σοφούς.
Χωρὶς γὰρ ἄλλης, ἧς ἔχουσιν, ἀργίας,
Φθόνον πρὸς ἀστῶν ἀλφάνουσι δυσμενῆ.

The words ὁ περισσῶς σοφὸς seem to convey the same unfriendly
sentiment as the word σοφιστής.

Now when (in the period succeeding 450 B.C.) the rhetorical and musical teachers came to stand before the public at Athens in such increased eminence, they of course, as well as other men intellectually celebrated, became designated by the appropriate name of sophists. But there was one characteristic peculiar to themselves, whereby they drew upon themselves a double measure of that invidious sentiment which lay wrapped up in the name. They taught for pay: of course, therefore, the most eminent among them taught only the rich, and earned large sums; a fact naturally provocative of envy, to some extent, among the many who benefited nothing by them, but still more among the inferior members of their own profession. But even great minds, like Sokratês and Plato, though much superior to any such envy, cherished in that age a genuine and vehement repugnance against receiving pay for teaching. We read in Xenophon,[564] that Sokratês considered such a bargain as nothing less than servitude, robbing the teacher of all free choice as to persons or proceeding; and that he assimilated the relation between teacher and pupil to that between two lovers or two intimate friends; which was thoroughly dishonored, robbed of its charm and reciprocity, and prevented from bringing about its legitimate reward of attachment and devotion, by the intervention of money payment. However little in harmony with modern ideas, such was the conscientious sentiment of Sokratês and Plato; who therefore considered the name sophists, denoting intellectual celebrity combined with an odious association, as preëminently suitable to the leading teachers for pay. The splendid genius, the lasting influence, and the reiterated polemics, of Plato, have stamped it upon the men against whom he wrote as if it were their recognized, legitimate, and peculiar designation: though it is certain, that if, in the middle of the Peloponnesian war, any Athenian had been asked, “Who are the principal sophists in your city?” he would have named Sokratês among the first; for Sokratês was at once eminent as an intellectual teacher and personally unpopular, not because he received pay, but on other grounds, which will be hereafter noticed: and this was the precise combination of qualities which the general public naturally expressed by a sophist. Moreover, Plato not only stole the name out of general circulation, in order to fasten it specially upon his opponents, the paid teachers, but also connected with it express discreditable attributes, which formed no part of its primitive and recognized meaning, and were altogether distinct from, though grafted upon, the vague sentiment of dislike associated with it. Aristotle, following the example of his master, gave to the word sophist a definition substantially the same as that which it bears in the modern languages:[565] “an impostrous pretender to knowledge; a man who employs what he knows to be fallacy, for the purpose of deceit and of getting money.” And he did this at a time when he himself, with his estimable contemporary Isokratês, were considered at Athens to come under the designation of sophists, and were called so by every one who disliked either their profession or their persons.[566]

[564] Xenoph. Memor. i, 2, 6. In another passage, the sophist
Antiphon—whether this is the celebrated Antiphon of the deme
Rhamnus, is uncertain; the commentators lean to the negative—is
described as conversing with Sokratês, and saying that Sokratês
of course must imagine his own conversation to be worth nothing,
since he asked no price from his scholars. To which Sokratês
replies:—

Ὦ Ἀντιφῶν, παρ᾽ ἡμῖν νομίζεται, τὴν ὥραν καὶ τὴν σοφίαν ὁμοίως
μὲν καλὸν, ὁμοίως δὲ αἰσχρὸν, διατίθεσθαι εἶναι. Τήν τε γὰρ ὥραν,
ἐὰν μέν τις ἀργυρίου πωλῇ τῷ βουλομένῳ, πόρνον αὐτὸν ἀποκαλοῦσιν·
ἐὰν δέ τις, ὃν ἂν γνῷ καλόν τε κἀγαθὸν ἐραστὴν ὄντα, τοῦτον φίλον
ἑαυτῷ ποιῆται, σώφρονα νομίζομεν. Καὶ ~τὴν σοφίαν~ ὡσαύτως τοὺς
μὲν ~ἀργυρίου τῷ βουλομένῳ πωλοῦντας, σοφιστὰς ὥσπερ πόρνους~
ἀποκαλοῦσιν· ὅστις δὲ, ὃν ἂν γνῷ εὐφυᾶ ὄντα, διδάσκων ὅ,τι ἂν ἔχῃ
ἀγαθὸν, φίλον ποιεῖται, τοῦτον νομίζομεν, ἃ τῷ καλῷ κἀγαθῷ πολίτῃ
προσήκει, ταῦτα ποιεῖν (Xenoph. Memor. i, 6, 13).

As an evidence of the manners and sentiment of the age, this
passage is extremely remarkable. Various parts of the oration of
Æschinês against Timarchus, and the Symposion of Plato, pp. 217,
218, both receive and give light to it.

Among the numerous passages in which Plato expresses his dislike
and contempt of teaching for money, see his Sophistes, c. 9, p.
223. Plato, indeed, thought that it was unworthy of a virtuous
man to accept salary for the discharge of any public duty: see
the Republic, i, 19, p. 347.

[565] Aristot. Rhetoric. i, 1, 4; where he explains the sophist
to be a person who has the same powers as the dialectician,
but abuses them for a bad purpose: ἡ γὰρ σοφιστικὴ, οὐκ ἐν τῇ
δυνάμει, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τῇ προαιρέσει.... Ἐκεῖ δὲ, σοφιστὴς μὲν, κατὰ
τὴν προαίρεσιν, διαλεκτικὸς δὲ, οὐ κατὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν ἀλλὰ
κατὰ τὴν δύναμιν. Again, in the first chapter of the treatise
de Sophisticis Elenchis: ὁ σοφιστὴς, χρηματιστὴς ἀπὸ φαινομένης
σοφίας, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ οὔσης, etc.

[566] Respecting Isokratês, see his Orat. xv, De Permutatione,
wherein it is evident that he was not only ranked as a sophist
by others, but also considered himself as such, though the
appellation was one which he did not like. He considers himself
as such, as well as Gorgias: οἱ καλούμενοι σοφισταί; sects. 166,
169, 213, 231.

Respecting Aristotle, we have only to read not merely the passage
of Timon cited in a previous note, but also the bitter slander
of Timæus (Frag. 70. ed. Didot, Polybius, xii, 8), who called
him ~σοφιστὴν ὀψιμαθῆ καὶ μισητὸν ὑπάρχοντα~, καὶ τὸ πολυτίμητον
ἰατρεῖον ἀρτίως ἀποκεκλεικότα, πρὸς δὲ τούτοις, εἰς πᾶσαν αὐλὴν
καὶ σκήνην ἐμπεπηδηκότα· πρὸς δὲ, γαστρίμαργον, ὀψαρτύτην, ἐπὶ
στόμα φερόμενον ἐν πᾶσι.

Great thinkers and writers, like Plato and Aristotle, have full right to define and employ words in a sense of their own, provided they give due notice. But it is essential that the reader should keep in mind the consequences of such change, and not mistake a word used in a new sense for a new fact or phenomenon. The age with which we are now dealing, the last half of the fifth century B.C., is commonly distinguished in the history of philosophy as the age of Sokratês and the sophists. The sophists are spoken of as a new class of men, or sometimes in language which implies a new doctrinal sect, or school, as if they then sprang up in Greece for the first time; ostentatious imposters, 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. They are even affirmed to have succeeded in corrupting the general morality, so that Athens had become miserably degenerated and vicious in the latter years of the Peloponnesian war, as compared with what she was in the time of Miltiadês and Aristeidês. Sokratês, on the contrary, is usually described as a holy man combating and exposing these false prophets, standing up as the champion of morality against their insidious artifices.[567] Now though the appearance of a man so very original as Sokratês was a new fact of unspeakable importance, the appearance of the sophists was no new fact; what was new was the peculiar use of an old word, which Plato took out of its usual meaning, and fastened upon the eminent paid teachers of the Sokratic age.

[567] In the general point of view here described, the sophists
are presented by _Ritter_, Geschichte der Griech. Philosophie,
vol. i, book vi, chaps. 1-3, p. 577, _seq._, 629, _seq._; by
_Brandis_, Gesch. der Gr. Röm. Philos. sects, lxxxiv-lxxxvii,
vol. i, p. 516, _seq._; by _Zeller_, Geschichte der Philosoph.
ii. pp. 65, 69, 165, etc.: and, indeed, by almost all who treat
of the sophists.

The paid teachers, with whom, under the name of The Sophists, he brings Sokratês into controversy, were Protagoras of Abdêra, Gorgias of Leontini, Polus of Agrigentum, Hippias of Elis, Prodikus of Keos, Thrasymachus of Chalkêdon, Euthydêmus and Dionysodorus of Chios; to whom Xenophon adds Antiphon of Athens. These men—whom modern writers set down as the sophists, and denounce as the moral pestilence of their age—were not distinguished in any marked or generic way from their predecessors. Their vocation was to train up youth for the duties, the pursuits, and the successes, of active life, both private and public. Others had done this before; but these teachers brought to the task a larger range of knowledge with a greater multiplicity of scientific and other topics; not only more impressive powers of composition and speech, serving as a personal example to the pupil, but also a comprehension of the elements of good speaking, so as to be able to give him precepts conducive to that accomplishment;[568] a considerable treasure of accumulated thought on moral and political subjects, calculated to make their conversation very instructive, and discourse ready prepared, on general heads or _common places_, for their pupils to learn by heart.[569] But this, though a very important extension, was nothing more than an extension, differing merely in degree of that which Damon and others had done before them. It arose from the increased demand which had grown up among the Athenian youth, for a larger measure of education and other accomplishments; from an elevation in the standard of what was required from every man who aspired to occupy a place in the eyes of his fellow-citizens. Protagoras, Gorgias, and the rest, supplied this demand with an ability and success unknown before their time; hence they gained a distinction such as none of their predecessors had attained, were prized all over Greece, travelled from city to city with general admiration, and obtained considerable pay. While such success, among men personally strangers to them, attests unequivocally their talent and personal dignity, of course it also laid them open to increased jealousy, as well from inferior teachers as from the lovers of ignorance generally: such jealousy manifesting itself, as I have before explained, by a greater readiness to stamp them with the obnoxious title of sophists.

[568] Compare Isokratês, Orat. xiii. cont. Sophistas, sects.
19-21.

[569] Aristot. Sophist. Elench. c. 33; Cicero, Brut. c. 12.

The hostility of Plato against these teachers,—for it is he, and not Sokratês, who was peculiarly hostile to them, as may be seen by the absence of any such marked antithesis in the Memorabilia of Xenophon,—may be explained without at all supposing in them that corruption which modern writers have been so ready not only to admit but to magnify. It arose from the radical difference between his point of view and theirs. He was a great reformer and theorist; they undertook to qualify young men for doing themselves credit, and rendering service to others, in active Athenian life. Not only is there room for the concurrent operation of both these veins of thought and action, in every progressive society, but the intellectual outfit of the society can never be complete without the one as well as the other. It was the glory of Athens that both were there adequately represented, at the period which we have now reached. Whoever peruses Plato’s immortal work, “The Republic,” will see that he dissented from society, both democratical and oligarchical, on some of the most fundamental points of public and private morality; and throughout most of his dialogues his quarrel is not less with the statesmen, past as well as present, than with the paid teachers of Athens. Besides this ardent desire for radical reform of the state, on principles of his own, distinct from every recognized political party or creed, Plato was also unrivalled as a speculative genius and as a dialectician; both which capacities he put forth, to amplify and illustrate the ethical theory and method first struck out by Sokratês, as well as to establish comprehensive generalities of his own.

Now his reforming, as well as his theorizing tendencies, brought him into polemical controversy with all the leading agents by whom the business of practical life at Athens was carried on. In so far as Protagoras or Gorgias talked the language of theory, they were doubtless much inferior to Plato, nor would their doctrines be likely to hold against his acute dialectics. But it was neither their duty, nor their engagement, to reform the state, or discover and vindicate the best theory on ethics. They professed to qualify young Athenians for an active and honorable life, private as well as public, _in Athens_, or in any other given city; they taught them “to think, speak, and act,” _in Athens_; they of course accepted, as the basis of their teaching, that type of character which estimable men exhibited and which the public approved, _in Athens_; not undertaking to recast the type, but to arm it with new capacities and adorn it with fresh accomplishments. Their direct business was with ethical precept, not with ethical theory; all that was required of them, as to the latter, was, that their theory should be sufficiently sound to lead to such practical precepts as were accounted virtuous by the most estimable society _in Athens_. It ought never to be forgotten, that those who taught for active life were bound, by the very conditions of their profession, to adapt themselves to the place and the society as it stood. With the theorist Plato, not only there was no such obligation, but the grandeur and instructiveness of his speculations were realized only by his departing from it, and placing himself on a loftier pinnacle of vision; and he himself[570] not only admits, but even exaggerates, the unfitness and repugnance of men, taught in his school, for practical life and duties.

[570] See a striking passage in Plato, Theætet. c. 24, pp. 173,
174.

To understand the essential difference between the practical and the theoretical point of view, we need only look to Isokratês, the pupil of Gorgias, and himself a sophist. Though not a man of commanding abilities, Isokratês was one of the most estimable men of Grecian antiquity. He taught for money; and taught young men to “think, speak, and act,” all with a view to an honorable life of active citizenship; not concealing his marked disparagement[571] of speculative study and debate, such as the dialogues of Plato and the dialectic exercises generally. He defends his profession much in the same way as his master Gorgias, or Protagoras, would have defended it, if we had before us vindications from their pens. Isokratês at Athens, and Quintilian, a man equally estimable at Rome, are, in their general type of character and professional duty, the fair counterpart of those whom Plato arraigns as the sophists.

[571] Isokratês, Orat. v (ad. Philip.), sect. 14; Orat. x (Enc.
Hel.), sect. 2; Orat. xiii (adv. Sophist.), sect. 9 (compare
Heindorf’s note ad Platon. Euthydem. sect. 79); Orat. xii
(Panath.), sect. 126; Orat. xv (Perm.), sect. 90.

Isokratês, in the beginning of his Orat. x, Encom. Helenæ,
censures all the speculative teachers; first, Antisthenês and
Plato (without naming them, but identifying them sufficiently
by their doctrines); next, Protagoras, Gorgias, Melissus, Zeno,
etc., by name, as having wasted their time and teaching on
fruitless paradox and controversy. He insists upon the necessity
of teaching with a view to political life and to the course of
actual public events, abandoning these useless studies (sect. 6).

It is remarkable that what Isokratês recommends is just what
Protagoras and Gorgias are represented as actually doing—each
doubtless in his own way—in the dialogues of Plato, who censures
them for being too practical, while Isokratês, commenting on them
from various publications which they left, treats them only as
teachers of useless speculations.

In the Oration De Permutatione, composed when he was eighty-two
years of age (sect. 10, the orations above cited are earlier
compositions, especially Orat. xiii, against the sophists, see
sect. 206), Isokratês stands upon the defensive, and vindicates
his profession against manifold aspersions. It is a most
interesting oration, as a defence of the educators of Athens
generally, and would serve perfectly well as a vindication of
the teaching of Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, etc., against the
reproaches of Plato.

This oration should be read, if only to get at the genuine
Athenian sense of the word sophists, as distinguished from the
technical sense which Plato and Aristotle fasten upon it. The
word is here used in its largest sense, as distinguished from
ἰδιώταις (sect. 159): it meant, literary men or philosophers
generally, but especially the professional teachers: it carried,
however, an obnoxious sense, and was therefore used as little as
possible by themselves; as much as possible by those who disliked
them.

Isokratês, though he does not willingly call himself by
this unpleasant name, yet is obliged to acknowledge himself
unreservedly as one of the profession, in the same category as
Gorgias (sects. 165, 179, 211, 213, 231, 256), and defends the
general body as well as himself; distinguishing himself of course
from the bad members of the profession, those who pretended to
be sophists, but devoted themselves to something different in
reality (sect. 230).

This professional teaching, and the teachers, are signified
indiscriminately by these words: οἱ σοφισταί—οἱ περὶ τὴν
φιλοσοφίαν διατρίβοντες—τὴν φιλοσοφίαν ἀδίκως διαβεβλημένην
(sects. 44, 157, 159, 179, 211, 217, 219)—ἡ τῶν λόγων παιδεία—ἡ
τῶν λόγων μελέτη—ἡ φιλοσοφία—ἡ τῆς φρονήσεως ἄσκησις—τῆς ἐμῆς,
εἴτε βούλεσθε καλεῖν δυνάμεως, εἴτε φιλοσοφίας, εἴτε διατρίβης
(sects. 53, 187, 189, 193, 196). All these expressions mean the
same process of training; that is, general mental training as
opposed to bodily (sects. 194, 199), and intended to cultivate
the powers of thought, speech, and action: πρὸς τὸ λέγειν καὶ
φρονεῖν—τοῦ φρονεῖν εὖ καὶ λέγειν—τὸ λέγειν καὶ πράττειν (sects.
221, 261, 285, 296, 330).

Isokratês does not admit any such distinction between the
philosopher and dialectician on the one side, and the sophist on
the other, as Plato and Aristotle contend for. He does not like
dialectical exercises: yet he admits them to be useful for youth,
as a part of intellectual training, on condition that all such
speculations shall be dropped, when the youth come into active
life (sects. 280, 287).

This is the same language as that of Kalliklês in the Gorgias of
Plato, c. 40, p. 484.