The same charges which the historians of philosophy bring against the Sophists were brought by contemporary Athenians against Sokrates. They represent the standing dislike of free inquiry, usual with an orthodox public.

These historians usually speak in very harsh terms of the Sophists, as well as of Eukleides and the Megaric sect; who are taken as the great apostles of negation. But the truth is, that the Megarics inherited it from Sokrates, and shared it with Plato. Eukleides cannot have laid down a larger programme of negation than that which we read in the Apology of Sokrates, — nor composed a dialogue more ultra-negative than the Platonic Parmenidês: nor, again, did he depart so widely, in principle as well as in precept, from existing institutions, as Plato in his Republic. The charges which historians of philosophy urge against the Megarics as well as against the persons whom they call the Sophists — such as corruption of youth — perversion of truth and morality, by making the worse appear the better reason — subversion of established beliefs — innovation as well as deception — all these were urged against Sokrates himself by his contemporaries,[80] and indeed against all the philosophers indiscriminately, as we learn from Sokrates himself in the Apology.[81] They are outbursts of feeling natural to the practical, orthodox citizen, who represents the common sense of the time and place; declaring his antipathy to these speculative, freethinking innovations of theory, which challenges the prescriptive maxims of traditional custom and tests them by a standard approved by herself. The orthodox citizen does not feel himself in need of philosophers to tell him what is truth or what is virtue, nor what is the difference between real and fancied knowledge. On these matters he holds already settled persuasions, acquired from his fathers and his ancestors, and from the acknowledged civic authorities, spiritual and temporal;[82] who are to him exponents of the creed guaranteed by tradition:—

“Quod sapio, satis est mihi: non ego curo
Esse quod Arcesilas ærumnosique Solones.”

[80] Themistius, in defending himself against contemporary opponents, whom he represents to have calumniated him, consoles himself by saying, among other observations, that these arrows have been aimed at all the philosophers successively — Sokrates, Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus. Ὁ γὰρ σοφιστὴς καὶ ἀλαζὼν καὶ καινότομος πρῶτον μὲν Σωκράτους ὀνείδη ἦν, ἔπειτα Πλάτωνος ἐφεξῆς, εἶθ’ ὕστερον Ἀριστοτέλους καὶ Θεοφράστου. (Orat. xxiii. p. 346, Dindorf.)

We read in Zeller’s account of the Platonic philosophy (Phil. der Griech. vol. ii. p. 368, ed. 2nd):

“Die propädeutische Begründung der Platonischen Philosophie besteht im Allgemeinen darin, dass der unphilosophische Standpunkt aufgelöst, und die Erhebung zum philosophischen in ihrer Nothwendigkeit nachgewiesen wird. Im Besondern können wir drey Stadien dieses Wegs unterscheiden. Den Ausgangspunkt bildet das gewöhnliche Bewusstsein. Indem die Voraussetzungen, welche Diesem für ein Erstes und Festes gegolten hatten, dialektisch zersetzt werden, so erhalten wir zunächst das negative Resultat der Sophistik. Erst wenn auch diese überwunden ist, kann der philosophische Standpunkt positiv entwickelt werden.”

Zeller here affirms that it was the Sophists (Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias and others) who first applied negative analysis to the common consciousness; breaking up, by their dialectic scrutiny, those hypotheses which had before exercised authority therein, as first principles not to be disputed.

I dissent from this position. I conceive that the Sophists (Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias) did not do what Zeller affirms, and that Sokrates (and Plato after him) did do it. The negative analysis was the weapon of Sokrates, and not of Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias, &c. It was he who declared (see Platonic Apology) that false persuasion of knowledge was at once universal and ruinous, and who devoted his life to the task of exposing it by cross-examination. The conversation of the Xenophontic Sokrates with Euthydêmus (Memor. iv. 2), exhibits a complete specimen of that aggressive analysis, brought to bear on the common consciousness, which Zeller ascribes to the Sophists: the Platonic dialogues, in which Sokrates cross-examines upon Justice, Temperance, Courage, Piety, Virtue, &c., are of the like character; and we know from Xenophon (Mem. i. 1-16) that Sokrates passed much time in such examinations with pre-eminent success.

I notice this statement of Zeller, not because it is peculiar to him (for most of the modern historians of philosophy affirm the same; and his history, which is the best that I know, merely repeats the ordinary view), but because it illustrates clearly the view which I take of the Sophists and Sokrates. Instead of the unmeaning abstract “Sophistik,” given by Zeller and others, we ought properly to insert the word “Sokratik,” if we are to have any abstract term at all.

Again — The negative analysis, which these authors call “Sophistik,” they usually censure as discreditable and corrupting. To me it appears, on the contrary, both original and valuable, as one essential condition for bringing social and ethical topics under the domain of philosophy or “reasoned truth”.