their party in their own
interests. Greed, ambition, grabbing, selfishness, unrestricted
egotism, unbridled avarice, became the dominant notes of the political
life of the time.

Hand in hand with the rise of democracy went the decay of religion.
Belief in the gods was almost everywhere discredited. This was partly
due to the moral worthlessness of the Greek religion itself. Any
action, however scandalous or disgraceful, could be justified by the
examples of the gods themselves as related by the poets and
mythologers of Greece. But, in greater measure, the collapse of
religion was due to that advance of science and philosophy which we
have been considering in these lectures. The universal tendency of
that philosophy was to find natural causes for what had hitherto been
ascribed to the action of the divine powers, and this could not but
have an undermining effect upon popular {108} belief. Nearly all the
philosophers had been secretly, and many of them openly, antagonistic
to the people's religion. The attack was begun by Xenophanes;
Heracleitus carried it on; and lastly Democritus had attempted to
explain belief in the gods as being caused by fear of gigantic
terrestrial and astronomical phenomena. No educated man any longer
believed in divination, auguries, and miracles. A wave of rationalism
and scepticism passed over the Greek people. The age became one of
negative, critical, and destructive thought. Democracy had undermined
the old aristocratic institutions of the State, and science had
undermined religious orthodoxy. With the downfall of these two pillars
of things established, all else went too. All morality, all custom,
all authority, all tradition, were criticised and rejected. What was
regarded with awe and pious veneration by their fore-fathers the
modern Greeks now looked upon as fit subjects for jest and mockery.
Every restraint of custom, law, or morality, was resented as an
unwarrantable restriction upon the natural impulses of man. What alone
remained when these were thrust aside were the lust, avarice, and
self-will of the individual.

The teaching of the Sophists was merely a translation into theoretical
propositions of these practical tendencies of the period. The Sophists
were the children of their time, and the interpreters of their age.
Their philosophical teachings were simply the crystallization of the
impulses which governed the life of the people into abstract
principles and maxims.

Who a