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INDIVIDUAL SOPHISTS 163 Man murdered by a wicked world : nobody is to stand near Socrates. Socrates himself only tells us that the philosophy of the Sophists would not bear his criticism any more than the sculpture of Pheidias or the statesmanship of Pericles. They were human ; perhaps compared to him they were conventional ; and their real fault in his eyes was the spirit they had in common — the spirit of enlightened, progressive, democratic, over-confident Athens in the morning of her greatness. Their main mission was to teach, to clear up the mind of Greece, to put an end to bad myths and unproven cosmogonies, to turn thought into fruitful paths. Many of them were eminent as original thinkers : Gorgias re- duced Eleaticism to absurdity ; Protagoras cleared the air by his doctrine of the relativity of knowledge. The many sophists to whom ' wisdom ' meant knowledge of nature, are known to us chiefly by the Hippocratic writ- ings, and through the definite advances made at this time in the various sciences, especially Medicine, Astronomy, Geometry, and Mechanics. Cos, Abdera, and Syracuse could have told us much about them ; Athens, our only informant, was thinking of other things at the time — of social and human problems. In this department Prota- goras gave a philosophic basis to Democracy. The mass of mankind possesses the sense of justice and the sense of shame — the exceptions are wild beasts, to be extermi- nated — and it is these two qualities rather than intel- lectual powers that are the roots of social conduct. Alkidamas, a disciple of Gorgias, is the only man recorded as having in practical politics proposed the abolition of slavery ; in speculation, of course, many did so. Anti- phon the sophist represents, perhaps alone, the sophistic