modern professors, who see no reason to refuse a salary, have so frequently repeated Plato's
strictures.
There was, however, another point in which the Sophists differed from most contemporary
philosophers. It was usual, except among the Sophists, for a teacher to found a school, which had
some of the properties of a brotherhood; there was a greater or smaller amount of common life,
there was often something analogous to a monastic rule, and there was usually an esoteric doctrine
not proclaimed to the public. All this was natural wherever philosophy had arisen out of Orphism.
Among the Sophists there was none of this. What they had to teach was not, in their minds,
connected with religion or virtue. They taught the art of arguing, and as much knowledge as
would help in this art. Broadly speaking, they were prepared, like modern lawyers, to show how to
argue for or against any opinion, and were not concerned to advocate conclusions of their own.
Those to whom philosophy was a way of life, closely bound up with religion, were naturally
shocked; to them, the Sophists appeared frivolous and immoral.
To some extent--though it is impossible to say how far--the odium which the Sophists incurred,
not only with the general public, but with Plato and subsequent philosophers, was due to their
intellectual merit. The pursuit of truth, when it is whole-hearted, must ignore moral
considerations; we cannot know in advance that the truth will turn out to be what is thought
edifying in a given society. The Sophists were prepared to follow an argument wherever it might
lead them. Often it led them to scepticism. One of them, Gorgias, maintained that nothing exists;
that if anything exists, it is unknowable; and granting it even to exist and to be knowable by any
one man, he could never communicate it to others. We do not know what his arguments were, but
I can well imagine that they had a logical force which compelled his opponents to take refuge in
edification. Plato is always concerned to advocate views that will make people what he thinks
virtuous; he is hardly ever intellectually honest, because he allows himself to judge doctrines by
their social consequences. Even about this, he is not honest; he pretends to follow the argument
and to be judging by purely theoretical standards, when in fact he is twisting the discussion so as
to lead to a virtuous result. He introduced this vice into philosophy, where it has persisted ever
since. It was prob-