[569] Aristot. Sophist. Elench. c. 33; Cicero, Brut. c. 12.
[570] See a striking passage in Plato, Theætet. c. 24, pp. 173, 174.
[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).