of them, Protagoras, actually professed his unbelief in the national faith, and was persecuted accordingly; others, though more cautious, and regarding any formal denial of transcendental truths as hardly practical, were justly suspected of agnosticism, as their moral essays kept suspiciously clear of theology. They were regarded as unsound in faith, and hence alleged to be unsound in morals by the orthodox, whose faith the Sophists charged fairly enough with the same objection. § 55. So the education of the Sophists came to be regarded by the soberest part of the public, the steady-going old people, as subversive of ancient and venerable traditions. In religion it was supposed to suggest, if not to teach, infidelity; in politics and society, radicalism. This is exactly the sort of charge we hear made by the old-fashioned public against the universities--still more in Germany, where the gulf between the average and the learned part of society is far wider than it is here. When we university teachers make young men think, even though carefully avoiding (as we are in honor bound) anything which may shock the traditions in which they have been brought up, the mental agitation produced must, nevertheless, lead them to reject at least some superstitions which they have accepted on weak evidence. If our education does not produce this result, it is not worthy the name. But this partial and cautious scepticism is of course identified by the older generation, who are less spiritually developed, with the rejection of vital truths. And there are many cases where the young sceptic really oversteps his just bounds, and becomes as rash in negation as his fathers were uncritical in affirmation. Let us add that the orthodox party are not very particular about evidence, and will start a calumnious charge against a teacher whom they suspect and fear, with very little care about really proving their case. This party are, moreover, always supplied with powerful allies by the jealousies and differences among the teachers themselves, the elder and less able of whom often try to sustain their waning influence by an alliance with orthodoxy, and make up by theological popularity what they have been unable to attain for want of intellectual force and sympathy.