§ 54. These men really shaped out the first form which university education took in Europe, meaning by university education that higher general training which, coming after school discipline, trains men for the duties of social and political as well as scientific and literary life. In the city life of the Greeks, when residence in any foreign place entailed great inconvenience, it was evident that this university teaching could not occupy a fixed place. It was not till the amalgamation of the Greek nation under Roman sway that Athens became (like Alexandria) strictly a university town. So, as the students could not gather round the early sophist, he was obliged to go to them, wandering through Greece, and staying for a considerable time in each great centre, where the native youth could profit by him. But even in early days there were some enthusiastic pupils, who abandoned home and country, and wandered about as aliens in the wake of these brilliant teachers. The latter generally made high display of their acquirements, and gave exhibitions of eloquence and of argument to show the value of their wares. They lived an ostentatious life, like the professional artists of the present day, and though they made large profits, saved but little money. Their first object was to make ready and practical citizens, men able to collect and express their thoughts and give sound advice on public matters. For this purpose they not only taught the art of rhetoric and that of disputation, but they were obliged to enter upon some of the great theories which form the basis of all practical life--the problems of philosophy, of ethics, and of religion. As we might expect, they took in all these a utilitarian view, such as a practical crammer would take. Some of them, such as Gorgias and Protagoras, studied philosophy deeply, but only to show that a devotion to metaphysic or to abstract science was idle, all knowledge being subjective, and varying with the age. Man was the measure of things; abstract nature was mere nothing. On the more pressing question of morals, though practically sound enough, and though some of them, such as Prodicus, were celebrated as moral preachers, they denied all immutable morality, and were content with obeying the existing laws of society, without admitting any permanent scientific basis for them. It was Socrates who first applied his great mind to solve this question, and his classes of young men--he was in this a regular sophist or university teacher, and was commonly so called--were specially exercised in seeking for the permanent and immutable ideas implied in our moral terms which characterize our moral actions. As regards religion, seeing that the Greek faith had grown up in myths and poetry, and was imbedded in an elaborate polytheistic mythology full of immoralities and absurdities, the Sophists were, as we might expect, sceptical, and so far opposed to the conservative public. One