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SCIENCES IN CONNEXION WITH THE STATE.worthy of remark, that the most celebrated of them camefrom the most various partsof the Grecian world ;Gorgias,who begins the series, from Leontium in Sicily ; Protagorasfrom Abdera on the coast of Thrace ; Hippias from Colophon in Asia Minor ;not to mention a multitude of thosewho were less famous. This is a remarkable proof, howgenerally, since the Persian wars, a literary spirit had begunto animate the nation. Most of those men, it is true, removed to Athens; to which place Gorgias was sent asambassador during the Peloponnesian war; because thiscity, so long as it held the first rank; opened the widestand most profitable theatre for their exertions ; but theyalso often travelled through the cities of Greece in thetrain of their pupils ;met with the kindest reception ;andwere employed as counsellors in public affairs, and not un~frequentlyas ambassadors. They gave instruction at a highprice to all young men who joined them, in every branchof knowledge deemed essential to their education. Thisundoubtedly occasioned that boastingof universal knowledge, which has been laid to their charge but it must also;be remembered, that in those days the extent of the scienceswas stillvery limited.The sophistsat first embraced in their course of instruction, philosophy as well as rhetoric. But that which theycalled philosophy was, as with the scholastic philosophers,the art of confounding an opponent by syllogisms andsophisms and the; subjects about which they were mostfond of speculating, were some of those metaphysical questions, respecting which we ought finally to learn, that wenever can know any thing. This kind of reasoning, sincedisputation and speaking were taught, was very closely connected with rhetoric. Subsequently the sophists and rhetoricians formed distinct classes ;but the different classeswhich Isocrates distinguishedin his old 1 age, could hardlyhave been so decidedly marked in his youth.The precepts and the very name of the sophists becameodious among the ancients and it would be in vain to;attempt to free them entirely from the reproaches, whichwere cast on them by sages and by the comic writers. Butyet they cannot be deprived of the glory of having made1Isoerates, Op. p. 293^ etc.