immoral; and with those of them who, like Gorgias of Leontium, confined themselves strictly to the teaching of the rules of pure rhetoric and elocution, no fault could justly be found any more than with Quinctilian among the later Romans, or Principal Campbell of Aberdeen among ourselves. But it is plain, from the very nature of the case, that the Sophists, so far as they went a step beyond the province of strict rhetoric, were placed in a position which rendered their moral and philosophical teaching a matter of just concern to all who were interested in the education of the youth of Athens, and in the {25} character of her public men. Besides, among an impressible and excitable people like the Athenians, fond of display, and ambitious of popularity, the mere methodized art of talking, apart from any solid knowledge, and without any high moral inspiration, was a very dangerous engine to put into the hand of ambitious young politicians. And the fact unquestionably is, according to the concurrent testimony of Xenophon, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle,--in fact, of all antiquity,--that these public teachers generally did dispense very shallow and often very dangerous doctrine. They were the natural birth of an age of movement and innovation; and in such an age, along with much that may operate as a healthy stimulant to progressive thought, there is always present a drastic admixture of the merely analytic, sceptical, and destructive element, a negative force, strong to impugn the validity of ancient foundations, but weak to establish anything equally stable and effective in their place. By the negative and sceptical teachings of these men, Socrates found the youth of Athens shaken from their old moorings, and tossing about amid seas of perplexing doubt on the one hand, and unprincipled libertinism on the other. Every great principle of social order and human right that formerly had been received from venerated tradition, and believed by the co-operation of a healthy instinct with a hoary authority, was now denied; and the field was waiting for the appearance of a great constructive prophet, who should bring people back through steps of scientific reasoning to a living faith in those maxims of immutable morality which they had originally inherited with the blood from their fathers’ veins and the milk from their mothers’ breasts. {26} Such a great prophet now appeared, and his name was Socrates.[26.1]