THE SOPHISTS.
209
asked, should he, in such circumstances, not commit injustice? No Sophistical theory was able to answer that question; or if they answered it at all, their answer was, that a man in the position indicated should just follow the bent of his natural inclinations and commit injustice, doing what seemed to him good in his own eyes, and not whit was reckoned good in the estimation of society. The commands of nature carry more authority than the laws and regulations of society; therefore, when they can be obeyed with impunity, they ought to be, and they will be, obeyed. Such was the spirit and tendency of much of the Sophistical mode of argumentation.
