have the effect of exploding truth, virtue, and beauty, considered as realities. It destroys them as objective and essential qualities. It obliterates their absolute and immutable character. It represents them as hinging on the precarious constitution of mankind, and as shifting with their shifting sensibilities.
8. It would be an interesting inquiry to trace in detail the causes which gave rise to the philosophy of the Sophists. I must at present be satisfied with remarking that the two main sources from which it emanated seem to have been Anaxagoras's doctrine of the νοῦς, or mind, as the supreme principle in nature, and the doctrine of the Atomic school in regard to sensation and perception. I shall say a word or two on each of these points.
9. First; Before the time of Anaxagoras, nature, in her external and objective character, had been held to be greater than man. Lofty as the aims and aspirations of the preceding philosophers had been, they had scarcely risen to the conception of an intelligent power superior to nature. Anaxagoras rose to this conception, he rose to the conception of spirit as above nature, of mind as greater than matter. Heretofore men, philosophers as well as others, had bowed down before nature. Now there was a principle found greater than nature, and before that principle nature herself must bow down. This principle is mind, and wherever else mind may have a place, it
