of knowledge themselves, but refusing to impart, except to such as came with full purses, those truths which were to the Greek as the very bread of life.
Doubtless Plato had sufficient reason to justify the repulsive picture which he has drawn of the Sophist in several of his Dialogues, as "the charlatan, the foreigner, the prince of esprits faux, the hireling who is not a teacher; . . . the 'evil one,' the ideal representative of all that Plato most disliked in the moral and intellectual tendencies of his own age, the adversary of the almost equally ideal Socrates."[1]
In the Dialogue called The Sophist, an attempt is made to define, by a regular logical process called "dichotomy," the real nature of this many-sided creature; no easy task, says Plato, "for the animal is troublesome, and hard to catch." He has a variety of characters. Firstly, he is a sort of hunter, and his art is like the angler's, with the difference that he is a fisher of men, and baits his hook with pleasure, "haunting the rich meadow-lands of generous youth." Secondly, he is like a retail trader, but his merchandise is a spurious knowledge which he buys from others or fabricates for himself as he wanders from city to city. Thirdly, he is a warrior, but his tongue is his sword with which he is eternally wrangling about right and wrong for money. Fourthly, since education purifies the soul by casting out ignorance or the false conceit of knowledge, men would have you believe that the Sophist does this; though, as a matter of fact, he is
- ↑ Jowett's Plato, iii. 448.
