f their vocation. That they
were foreigners, that they made fortunes, that they taught novelties,
that they excited the minds of youth, are quite sufficient reasons to
account for the opprobrium which attached to them. The genius of Plato
could not have stamped the word anew, or have imparted the associations
which occur in contemporary writers, such as Xenophon and Isocrates.
Changes in the meaning of words can only be made with great difficulty,
and not unless they are supported by a strong current of popular
feeling. There is nothing improbable in supposing that Plato may
have extended and envenomed the meaning, or that he may have done the
Sophists the same kind of disservice with posterity which Pascal did to
the Jesuits. But the bad sense of the word was not and could not have
been invented by him, and is found in his earlier dialogues, e.g. the
Protagoras, as well as in the later.

3. There is no ground for disbelieving that the principal Sophists,
Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, were good and honourable men.
The notion that they were corrupters of the Athenian youth has no real
foundation, and partly arises out of the use of the term 'Sophist' in
modern times. The truth is, that we know little about them; and the
witness of Plato in their favour is probably not much more historical
than his witness against them. Of that national decline of genius,
unity, political force, which has been sometimes described as the
corruption of youth, the Sophists were one among many signs;--in these
respects Athens may have degenerated; but, as Mr. Grote remarks, there
is no reason to suspect any greater moral corruption in the age of
Demosthenes than in the age of Pericles. The Athenian youth were not
corrupted in this sense, and therefore the Sophists could not have
corrupted them. It is remarkable, and may be fairly set down to their
credit, that Plato nowhere attributes to them that peculiar Greek
sympathy with youth, which he ascribes to Parmenides, and which was
evidently common in the Socratic circle. Plato delights to exhibit
them in a ludicrous point of view, and to show them always rather at
a disadvantage in the company of Socrates. But he has no quarrel with
their characters, and does not deny that they are respectable men.

The Sophist, in the dialogue which is called after him, is exhibited in
many different lights, and appears and reappears in a variety of forms.
There is some want of the higher Platonic a