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life of Greece at this period, it were impossible tc. deny; they may be accounted for though not defended, and we are afraid they must be reckoned among the inevitabilities of the progress of mankind from a lower to a higher grade of being. Even the lark, though it soars to heaven's gates, cannot avoid bearing with it some of the dusty stains of its lowlier dwelling.

We are not sure that our readers will assent to our subsequent proposition, and yet we fear we must press it on their acceptance, if we attempt to comprehend the true relationship of the Sophists and humanity at this peculiar era. It is that the moral, no less than the intellectual and political, condition of Greece necessitated the introduction of a sifting and testing power into the spirits of men-the culture of a dialectic.

Custom among men begets an implicit moral code, of greater or less soundness, according to the prevalent ideas of the time. By. and-bye the implicit code of custom becomes explicit as law. Often with the institution of the letter the spirit becomes effete, and the form of obedience satisfies the conscience, all the while that every possible evasion is practised. Traditional morality has but little power over passion, desire, caprice, and whim, when the imperial voice of conscience is disregarded. Morality is a spontaneity, or it is nought. Moral propriety may be exhibited in all the outward and ordinary concerns of life by a person who has moulded his habits merely by the customs of his day; but it is seldom that some unexpected temptation does not reach a man and hurry him out of the smooth-water coast-line of customary morality into the currents of vice or the deep sea of indifference; and then, unless a reasoning conscience holds the helm, wreck is imminent, and escape is almost an impossibility. In this case, the natural deceptiveness of the heart exerts itself to gloze over the iniquity of departing from the moorings of morality; or the necessities of the matter make it imperative to maintain a defence against the active dominance of public law.

The degeneracy of the times was not, as is commonly assumed, a consequence of the development of dialectics; it was an existent fact; and the earnest assiduity with which dialectics were cultivated, forms the best proof that the depraved Greeks seized upon this agency at once as a shield and a weapon, and employed the high and holy means of gratifying the love of wisdom into the instruments of a low and disingenuous logomachy. The apparent perfection of the form of a process of reasoning seemed to the luxurious, dissolute, loquacious Greek almost as important as the absolute perfection of the truth which ought to have been expressed or represented by it.

The use of any means of attaining success appeared justifiable to the descendants and imitators of those who rewarded Äristides and Themistocles with ostracism, and paid Miltiades with imprisonment and fine. To such men the form and appearance of truth seemed to be much more servicable than the real possession and use of it; and when the state of thought during the fifth century made experi

mental reasoning a necessity, they were ready to apply the specious argumentation of the speculative thinkers to their own purposes; and gain, in a transition age, the advantage which a new art in the process of trial gave to the quick-witted and unprincipled.

If these three tendencies be regarded as they ought, it will at once appear that an extensive demand for instruction in dialectics was inevitable. Demand regulates supply. Numerous teachers at this time appeared in Greece, who, though they formed no school, and probably held no code of tenets in common, have been accurately enough differentiated from other philosophic teachers by the term Sophists, i. e., "professors of wisdom, those who taught men to speak, think, and act." The emphatic protests of a higher morality and a more modern philosophy against the sophistic practices of the transition age, in which Socrates lived and moved, ought not to be allowed to darken knowledge" regarding the true state of matters in the age of Pericles, when the rude, rough, stiff, antique forms of morality were changing into those throbbings of man's inner nature, which threw into the heart the renewed life of a nobler virtue, and the honourable rectitude of a resistent, consistent, and persistent faith, such as sustained Socrates and furnished to the heathen world the example of a man following an ideal aim into the region of the real.

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The effrontery and imposture, the unphilosophical quackery and pretentiousness of the Sophists did not strike the Greeks of their own age with that positive and direct dislike which they did in after times. To them their rhetorical commonplaces were wisdom, and their subtle manoeuvres with words did not so much appear the result of cleverness, dexterity, and affectation, as of acute and farseeing thought, and a special skill in speech. They had not yet a test for fallacious or deceitful reasoning, and they were enamoured of the forms of wisdom with which their ears were tickled and their fancies pleased. We are not, therefore, to expect that in their own age the Sophists would be felt to have lowered the morals, and injuriously affected the philosophical tenets, of their contemporaries. They seemed, and were then believed to be, both wise and good.

Zeno, the promulgator of the earlier dialectic, and Aristotle, the analyst of the operations of the reason, are each free from the stigma attached to the intermediate thinkers of Greece, Socrates excepted. The former gave the first and initiatory offset to the movement, and the latter arrested, controlled, and purified the arts of ratiocination. In the transition era, Socrates antagonized the Sophists, both in the form and in the elements of their teaching; yet he pursued an art and method of reasoning which bears his name even now. Are we to believe, then, that the mode rather than the aim of the Sophists was erroneous? Certainly not. The mode, so far as it was common and uniform, was only following up in the pathway of experiment the theoretic deductions of Zeno, and preparing for the carefully co-ordinated science of Aristotle; but the aim took a differing point of departure from that of true philosophy, which is the love of wisdom for its own sake, not for the sake of the advantages it con

fers, or the power it enables us to wield over the thoughts and passions of our fellows.

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The Sophists were the advocates of what was desired, Socrates pleaded for the desirable. The two should be alike, but they are not. The ground-thought of the one is far more noble and praiseworthy than the other; the court of appeal in the one case is altogether on a lower level than the other. Socrates posits conscience, the Sophists custom, as the implicit law of human activity. They strive after, he strives against, subtle turns, dexterous quirks, involutions, and windings of thought; prescriptive right against rational right, the mighty right of passion against the 'serene might of reason, these caused the chief antagonisms between the Sophists and Socrates.*

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To deal in wisdom is not in itself a criminal act. To vend and sell the long results of thought" are harmless. The mere act of disposing for money of such learning as travel, study, experience, and time can supply to one mind is indeed more praiseworthy than reprehensible. We cannot, therefore, think that the act of sale is that wherein the offensiveness of the Sophistic teaching is contained. That we look upon as a fair and honourable piece of dealing, provided it is uprightly proceeded with and honestly conducted. It is not so much, we fancy, in the act as in the accessories that the guilt lies. It is not so much the text as the pretext of the Sophists' system that is at fault. It is to the motive much more than to the doctrine that exception must be taken. If I make a mistake in reasoning, it is at once spoken of as a fallacy; but if it is wished to imply that I intentionally and wilfully introduced an illicit process into discourse, the matter is at once denounced as a sophism. The impudent delusiveness of the latter excites anger; the implicit weakness of mind which the former makes manifest induces vexation. Disapprobation is the highest form of opposing feeling to which the one can raise a man, but reprobation is the intense antithesis to which the other moves an antagonist, or even a listener.

Philosophy had never a finer or freer field for experiment than that which Greece at this time offered. The intellect felt its need of some check upon its vagaries and the wanton wooing of the new; the political condition of the confederation was one of weakness, distraction, and difficulty; the moral customs of society had relaxed their hold, and had a true philosophy then appeared as an angel of safety and help, her energies and her influence would have been blissful and beneficial. But Sophistry came, with the face of a friend and the heart of a traitor, and stole from the hopeless even the energy of despair. Instead of ennobling man, it overrated the sensuous and underrated the sensual in him, and the loftiest of human powers became the agent of man's debasement. It was a sad fault, only to be expiated by a long period of distrust and suspicion. The eclipse of philosophy was occasioned-like that of the moon-by the obscuring shadow of the earth. In a time of obsolescent creeds, of

This will be more instructively shown in a future paper on SOCRATES.

beliefs effete and inefficacious, of customs deficient in vivifying power or regulative influence, of unsettled politics, and of ambitious aspirants to place, power, and pelf,-the arts of persuasion, of fluent talk, of rapidly and artfully confusing words and ideas, are always in demand, and pretentiousness is almost certain of ascendancy. The real wants of such a society are moral discipline, intellectual culture rightly directed, the excitement of motives having noble issues; and these philosophy should have supplied: and, indeed, in the person of Socrates, she did provide the precise medicinal and remedial agency;-but vanity and self-interest carried the day, and the false Florimel was preferred to the true.

In a future paper we shall pursue this subject farther and more minutely, endeavouring to mediate between the extreme views of antagonist writers, and to hold the balances as honestly as possible in weighing evidence.

In any age it is a sad thing to see the popularization of knowledge resulting in demoralization. In Greece, the desire for gainful influence created a supply of teachers for hire-no wrongous thing in itself, but fearfully wrong in its effects. The love of knowledge for its own sake is philosophy. The love of knowledge for its uses, its gains, its influence, for the sake of turning it to account, is something widely different, and leads quite otherwhere than to truth. The utility of knowledge is indisputable, and the utilization of knowledge is right; but the search after wisdom only that it may be made the bond-slave of passion, pride, or interest, is a kind of study which cannot be dignified by a title which so unqualifiedly implies the love of wisdom as philosophy. If we love power, station, wealth, influence, fame, &c., and employ study-the attainment of wisdom-as a means to the effectuation of our end, it is clearly a false pretence to say that we are actuated by the love of wisdom. This is a sophistry of the heart to which we are all prone. We often disguise with noble names ignoble aims. We often ridicule duty by the use of words of evil implication to express it. We avouch an outward aim which conceals an unavowed intention, and we plume ourselves on our skill in gaining double credit, and attaining a double purpose. The age of Sophists is not gone. There is in each one a sophistical inclination, against which it is his duty to guard. The historic period of rapid ripening into doubt, of speedy declension into scepticism, of fertile excusings of indefensible doings, of paltering with justice, truth, and right, of vain self-glorying and anxious hurrying towards aggrandizement, is acted over again in each breast. It will be well for us if, while the false and illusive lights of sophistry flicker before us, we look with gladness on the moral light which conscience holds up for us, and hasten on till the brightness of a reasoned-out faith replace that which we had given up. Though the Sophists strive to charm, may we listen rather to the Socratic teaching, labour to attain the elevated and passionate love of knowledge which Plato had, accept the careful guidance for thought which Aristotle offers, yet still press on, and pause not till light and immortality are brought to life in our souls by Christ. S. N.

Religion.

IS THE BIBLE ALONE A SUFFICIENT RULE OF FAITH?

'AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-IV.

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SOME of the arguments advanced by "Pope Gregory" may be dismissed in a few words. Unitarians do not find a solitary text in proof of the Trinity, therefore he assumes that no Protestant can, which is strange logic. The Unitarian view is scriptural or not. If scriptural, it is no recommendation that Catholics are Trinitarians. If "Gregory's" assumption be correct, that Protestants are Trinitarians without support from Scripture, through the traditions of Rome, it simply proves that the blind have led the blind. To admit his mises, is to adopt Unitarianism, but certainly not Catholicism. "Gregory," again, quotes Mark xvi. 16, gives the Baptist version of its meaning, and jumps to the conclusion that all Pædo-Baptists have abandoned their Rule of Faith. If the Baptists are right, it follows that Catholics are wrong in sprinkling infants. Every man who admits the premises of "Gregory" will condemn the Catholic, and become a Baptist. If, however, one Protestant denies the doctrine of the Trinity, and another that of infant baptism, it does not follow that all other Protestants abandon their Rule of Faith in being Trinitarians, or in baptizing infants.

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Gregory," again, asserts that" Protestants ignore the scriptural command to keep the Jewish sabbath, and follow the traditions of the Catholic Church, by observing the Sunday instead." We profess to know something of the Bible, but have yet to find where such a command exists. If his representation be correct, it follows that Catholics, in defiance of our Lord's warning, have made the commandment of God of none effect by "their traditions," and have misled the Protestant, which is a singular way of asking Protestants to continue their confidence in Rome. It is, however, too hasty a procedure to "challenge" an authority for "neglecting Saturday," until chapter and verse are given in support of the assertion that the observance of Saturday is commanded. He admits that there "is evidence, though very slight, that the apostles and their followers hallowed in some way the Sunday," and this is enough to show that they knew of no command to keep "the Jewish sabbath." The command is to work six days, and to hallow the seventh. All evidence in Scripture and common history shows that they kept

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