SOPHISTS, sof'@sts, Greek philosophers who were part of the transition from the older aiid ruder cosmic philosophers to the more refined systems that began with Socrates, Plato, aiid Aristotle. The more refined systems were founded primarily on the study of the human mind as the perceiving, thinlring, reasoning, and kcnowing s@ibject.

             In the older systems the direct relation of mind to the objective universe did not receive prominent attention. The hy othesis of a unity in the diverse wo'rld outside the mind was assumed witho'ut dispute and a theistic or materialistic interpretation of this unity formulated according to the tendency of the school. Thus there had arisen a succession of systems that were agreed in bein g artificial cosmogonies, and were unrelated if not hostile to' the current traditions of religion. However, these systems were unable to stand the inevitable criticism of comparison with fact. The So'phists were the exponents of this type of comparison and criticism, and their force fell both on philosophy aiid religion. But the Sophists were not great men, at least in comparison with those who succeeded thenm, and they appeared in an age of political decline and social corruption.

             The direct services of the Sophists to philosophy appear to have been small and negative. It is too much to attribute to them the introduction of subjective philosophy. This, as its simultaneous appearance in different SChools proves, was no more than a necessity of the period to which they belonged. What chiefly marlced the Sophists was their incapacity to gene@'alize the subjective element, in conse'quenCe of which they were not properly philosophets but only the critics of a dying philosophy.

             The Sophists rendered to science and literature greater services than they were able to render to philosophy. They have been aptly compared to the French encyclopedists. The belonged te all the liberal professions and taught all the usual branches of kno\wledge. Some of them \were distinguished as rhetoricians and grammarians, o'thers as men of science. They frequently made claims to universal knowledge Because "of their overweening estimate of the ne\wly found subjective element of knowledge they carried this pretension so far as to profess to speak of subjects of which they knew nothing, though all their pretensions were not equally frivolous. Rhetoric, to \which they naturally gave undue importance, was systematically studied by them, and they supplied so'me of the earliest models of goo'd Greek prose. The Sophists, particularly the later ones, \were accused of being superficial in their attainments, and mercenary, vainglorious, and self-seeking in their aims.

             Protagoras of Abdera, the earliest and one of the mo'st important of the Sophists, was a contemporary of Socrates but considerably older. He applied the Heraclitean doctrine of the universal flux of all things to the mind and maintained the unce'rtainty of the existence of the gods and the relativity of all truth. Man, he said, is the measure of all things. That is also true for the individual man \who perceives or feels. Sense and the gratification of sense are the only relations that subsist bet\ween man and the external \world. All opinions are equally true, and contradictories may be affirmed \with equal authority. Protagoras is said to have been the first who taught for pay. He let his pupils fix his remuneration according to the benefit they had received, but he is said to have become wealthy.

             Gorgias of Leontini \went to Athens in 427 i3. c. as an ambassador from his native city. He sought to excel in splendid rhetoric. Building upon Zeno's thought, he took a bolder stand in skepticism than Protagoras. His book was called Om Nature or the Nom-Existemt. His three cardinal propositio'ns \were that nothing exists, that it anything exists it cannot be known, and that if it co'uld be known it could not be communicated Gorgias reaches these conclusions by a logical quibble, in \which he plays off Heraclitus aganist the Eleatics. The skepticism of Gorgias, however, like that of other Sophists, \was neither very profound nor very consistently developed, since it \was fo'unded upon superficial logic. His successors applied it chieBy in a moral direction, which made Plato call the art of rhetoric as taught by Gorgias a corruption of justice.

             Hippias of Elis represented the law as a tyrant in compelling men to act contrary to nature. Thrasymachus made the gratification of desire the natural right of the stronger, and might the la\w of nature. Critias, one of the 30 tyrants, ascribed faith in the gods to the invention of politicians. Prodicus of Ceos taught a morality more in accordance \with ordinaary conceptio'ns of right. Some of his moral discourses are preserved and are still admired for the feeling they display. His teaching was recommended by Socrates, and he has sometimes been called his predecessor. Ho\wever, Prodicus is said to have been exorbitant in his charges for instruction. It was he who taught rhetoric to Euripides.