doctrines. Yet it is very clear that, by thus bringing these several
primary systems into contact, a comparison of a secondary and of a
higher order, and therefore far more likely to approach to absolute
truth, must needs be established among them. It is very well known that
the popular result of this secondary examination was the philosophical
rejection of polytheism.

[Sidenote: The Sophists.]

[Sidenote: They reject philosophy, and even morality.]

So, in Athens the result of the secondary examination of philosophical
systems and deductions was scepticism as regards them all, and the rise
of a new order of men--the Sophists--who not only rejected the validity
of all former philosophical methods, but carried their infidelity to a
degree plainly not warranted by the facts of the case, in this, that
they not only denied that human reason had thus far succeeded in
ascertaining anything, but even affirmed that it is incapable, from its
very nature, as dependent on human organization, or the condition under
which it acts, of determining the truth at all; nay, that even if the
truth is actually in its possession, since it has no criterion by which
to recognize it, it cannot so much as be certain that it is in such
possession of it. From these principles it follows that, since we have
no standard of the true, neither can we have any standard of the good,
and that our ideas of what is good and what is evil are altogether
produced by education or by convention. Or, to use the phrase adopted by
the Sophists, "it is might that makes right." Right and wrong are hence
seen to be mere fictions created by society, having no eternal or
absolute existence in nature. The will of a monarch, or of a majority in
a community, declares what the law shall be; the law defines what is
right and what is wrong; and these, therefore, instead of having an
actual existence, are mere illusions, owing their birth to the exercise
of force. It is might that has determined and defined what is right. And
hence it follows that it is needless for a man to trouble himself with
the monitions of conscience, or to be troubled thereby, for conscience,
instead of being anything real, is an imaginary fiction, or, at the
best, owes its origin to education, and is the creation of our social
state. Hence the wise will give himself no concern as to a meritorious
act or a crime, seeing that the one is intrinsically neither better nor
worse than the other; but he wil