Untitled - 24grammata.com

202 ANCIENT GREECE.the higher class of their nation sensible of the necessity ofa liberal education. They rose rapidly and extraordinarily,because they were deeply connected with the wants of thetimes. In states, where every thing was discussed orally,and where every thing was just beginning to bloom, the instructersin logic and rhetoric could not but be acceptable.But in two respects, they soon became injurious and evendangerous to the state ; by reducing eloquence to the mereart of disputing, and by degrading or ridiculing the popularreligion.The first seems to have been a very natural consequenceof the condition of the sciences at that time. The morelimited is the knowledge of men, the more bold are they intheir assertions ;the less they know, the more they believethey do and can know. Man persuades himself of nothingmore readily, than that he has arrived at the bounds of human knowledge. This belief creates in him a dogmaticalspirit because he;believes he can prove every thing. Butwhere it is believed that every thing can be proved, therenaturally arises the art of proving the contrary proposition ;and the art of disputing among the sophists degenerated tothis. The art of confounding right and wrong, objected tothem by the comic poets, may have had a very injuriousinfluence on social life ;but a greater evil resulting from itwas the destroying of a nice sense of truth ;for even truthitself becomes contemptible, when it is believed, that it canas well be refuted, as established, by an argument.That the popular religion was held in less esteem, wasprobably a consequence of the more intimate connexion,which existed between the elder sophists and their predecessors and contemporaries of the Eleatic school. In theseaccusationsbeen done to some ofinjustice has ^ perhapsthem ;for itmay be doubted whether Protagoras deserved1the name of atheist; yet no circumstance probably contributed so much to make them odious in the eyes of thepeople.If to these things we add their lax moral principles,which consisted in lessons of prudence, how life could be1 He had only said he knew mot whether the gods existed or not :yet for* m banlslled fro^ Athens, and his writings were burnt Sext. Emp.ix. 57. That the atheism of Prodicus is uncertain, has been already* observedby Tenneman. Gesch, d. Phil i. S. 377.