“The beating,” answered the young man, “would be more justly inflicted on yours, for having knowingly let loose two such sages upon mankind!”[[836]]
But these, after all, were but laughing sophists, who, though they had succeeded in confounding and obliterating from their own minds every trace of difference between right and wrong, fell short of that superb degree of wickedness at which Polos, Callicles, and Thrasymachos arrived, at least in speculation. The former were mere babblers, who corrupted a pupil or two whom bad luck threw in their way. Thrasymachos flew at higher game. His sophistry was political,[[837]] and his aim the destruction of freedom, by extinguishing that sense of justice on which it must ever be based. The genius of the man was considerable. He had deep thoughts, and investigated boldly; but his sympathies having somehow been early perverted, he grew sombre, fierce, and unsociable, and without the slightest disguise advocated, like our Hobbes,[[838]] tyrannical maxims and morals. Money, like the rest, he of course worshipped. Nay, in the conversation at the house of Cephalos he even ventures to sneer rudely at Socrates’ poverty; upon which Glaucon[[839]] observes:—"Don’t fear to go unpaid for the instruction you may give him, for we will enter into a subscription on his behalf."[[840]] Thrasymachos, however, was still more vain than avaricious. He thirsted to exhibit his notions in order to enjoy the satisfaction arising from shocking those who heard him. He maintained that justice is nothing more than what in any state the rulers think proper to establish; and that, consequently, the ordinances of a tyrant are as binding and as just as the laws of a free state, since by nature all actions are indifferent.
It was, in fact, a part of the sophistical doctrine, to maintain in politics, what Hobbes afterwards advocated, the right of the stronger:—
—--"The good old rule, the simple plan,
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can."
But because there is in every man’s heart a rooted prejudice in favour of justice, they were fain to argue that all governors, in as far as they deserved the name, would ordain what was best for themselves, and that, whatever it might be, was just:[[841]] a very satisfactory doctrine, which has never grown wholly out of fashion. They laughed to scorn, as persons who required nurses to look after them and wipe their noses,[[842]] whomsoever they found entertaining the notion that governments were instituted for the good of the governed.
Their staple comparison was always a flock or a herd. What shepherd, they inquired, ever looked after his flock for their benefit, and not for his own use? In like manner magistrates, who, as is proper, hold the chief place in cities, look on the public exactly as if they are so many sheep or oxen, and think of nothing, night or day, but how they may derive most advantage from them. Justice, therefore, is what promotes the interests of the governors, though it may be loss to the governed. The man, esteemed just and pious and holy by the philosopher, was merely, in their opinion, a fool. Whenever anything is to be gained he gets less than any man, and when anything is to be done for the community he does more. He is always ready with his purse whenever anything is to be paid; always out of the way when gain is afloat. The unjust man, on the contrary, knows what he is about. He pays and does as little as possible for the public, and takes from it all he can. The former renders himself disagreeable to his friends and domestics, by refusing to commit any unjust action on their behalf. The latter, on the other hand, unscrupulous in acquisition, is able to oblige many by his wealth if he happens to require their services. Thus even in private life and small matters injustice is to be preferred; but when it operates on a grand scale, plunders whole cities, and usurps over them supreme authority, it reaches the acme of felicity, is saluted by the name of prince, and becomes an object of envy to all mankind.
Nor did they pause even here. It was not enough to show the happiness of vice as vice; they undertook to prove that vice is virtue and virtue vice, which may be considered as their magnum opus. They went to work boldly, but, like the fox of Archilochos,[[843]] always kept something of their figure concealed, that, if any necessity arose, they might be able to retreat by treating their whole chain of argumentation as a mere rhetorical exercise. “You appear to be in earnest,” observed Socrates on one occasion. “What does it signify to you whether I am in earnest or not,” replied the sophist, “if you cannot refute what I advance?” With this prudent reserve, they taught that injustice is a powerful and beautiful principle, reckoning it among the virtues, and attributing to it all the characteristics usually attributed to justice.[[844]] Pascal, in developing the morals of the Jesuits, describes their principles exactly. They patronised even cutting purses, providing the operator had the ingenuity to conceal his performance. No doubt, in thus arguing, they did violence to their secret convictions, and might, by an able dialectician, be made to feel, though never to acknowledge, the deformity of their doctrines, as Thrasymachos, driven up in a corner by the logic of Socrates, blushes and is chap-fallen;[[845]] but as sophistry was their occupation, the misery and degradation was, that, convinced or not convinced, they must still sing the old song. It is evident, in fact, that, like many sophists of other days, they were bold with the lips while the heart within trembled. The light of conscience could not be wholly quenched. They conceived the gods to be armed with power and disposed to exert it, not only against evil doers but against evil speakers also. Pressed upon this point, whether the bad be not obnoxious and the good agreeable to the deities, Thrasymachos would not deny it. And why? Lest he should render himself hateful to them, ἴνα μὴ τοῖς δὲ ἀπέχθωμαι. So that in the worst times of paganism, religion, how corrupt soever, failed not to preserve some influence over men’s minds, to save them from the bestial recklessness into which they seemed desirous to plunge.[[846]]
Nevertheless, the sophists on many points did but methodise, condense and embody in florid language the maxims and modes of thinking current in corrupt ages among the vulgar. Their doctrines were but an echo of what was heard in the ecclesiæ, in the law courts, in the theatres, and in the camps. It would have been to little purpose, therefore, to have silenced them, unless, at the same time, the above schools could have been purified, wherein young and old, men and women, imbibed the opinions, maxims, prejudices, which constituted the system of the sophists.[[847]] And Plato, who observes this, supplies us, in doing so, with a fresh proof that women frequented the theatre. In one of these four places, he says, they were corrupted: but they were not soldiers, and, therefore, not in the camp; they were not dicasts, and, therefore, not in the law courts; they were neither orators nor voters, and, therefore, not in the ecclesiæ. The evil doctrines they imbibed, therefore, must have been imbibed at the theatre.[[848]] Here, too, the youth, disciplined and principled in better things by his philosophical teachers, received a new education which overthrew the former. Deeds and words, condemned by his teachers, he often found to be greeted here with rapturous applause, re-echoed by rocks and walls; while hisses, sneers, or vociferous vituperation would, perhaps, be showered on things he had been taught most to revere. In his feelings, therefore, and internal convictions a revolution was soon effected. He grew ashamed of the notions implanted in him at school. Every lingering sentiment of honour seemed to him an unfortunate prejudice despised by men of the world, and he hastened to shift his notions as a clown does his dress to prepare for admittance into fashionable company.