renounces the method of exhortation as unprofitable; or at least employs it only subject to the condition of having previously administered the Elenchus with success, as his own patent medicine.[97] Upon this definition, Sokrates is more truly a Sophist than either Protagoras or Prodikus: neither of whom, so far as we know, made it their business to drive the respondent to contradictions. [Footnote 95: Plato, Sophist. p. 230 D. [Greek: pri\n a)\n e)le/gchôn tis to\n e)legcho/menon ei)s ai)schu/nên katastê/sas, ta\s toi=s mathê/masin e)mpodi/ous do/xas e)xelô/n, katharo\n a)pophê/nê| kai\ tau=ta ê(gou/menon, a(/per oi)=den ei)de/nai mo/na, plei/ô de\ mê/.]] [Footnote 96: Plato, Sophist. p. 231 C.] [Footnote 97: Plato, Sophist. p. 230 E.] [Side-note: Universal knowledge--was professed at that time by all Philosophers--Plato, Aristotle, &c.] Again, Plato tells us that the Sophist is a person who disputes about all matters, and pretends to know all matters: respecting the invisible Gods, respecting the visible Gods, Sun, Moon, Stars, Earth, &c., respecting transcendental philosophy, generation and essence--and respecting all civil, social, and political questions--and respecting special arts. On all these miscellaneous topics, according to Plato, the Sophists pretended to be themselves instructed, and to qualify their disciples for arguing on all of them. Now it is possible that the Sophists of that day may have pretended to this species of universal knowledge; but most certainly Plato and Aristotle did the same. The dialogues of Plato embrace all that wide range of topics which he tells us that the Sophists argued about, and pretended to teach. In an age when the amount of positive knowledge was so slender, it was natural for a clever talker or writer to fancy that he knew every thing. In reference to every subject then discussed, an ingenious mind could readily supply deductions from both hypotheses--generalities ratiocinative or imaginative--strung together into an apparent order sufficient for the exigencies of hearers. There was no large range of books to be studied; no stock of facts or experience to be mastered. Every philosopher wove his own tissue of theory for himself, without any restraint upon his intellectual impulse, in regard to all the problems then afloat. What the theories of the Sophists were, we do not know: but Plato, author of the Timæus, Republic, Leges, Kratylus, Menon--who affirmed the pre-existence as well as post-existence of the mind, and the eternal self-existence of Ideas--has no fair ground for reproaching them with blamable rashness in the extent and diversity of topics which they presumed to discuss. They obtained indeed (he says justly) no truth or knowledge, but merely a fanciful semblance of knowledge--an equivocal show or imitation of reality.[98] But Plato himself obtains nothing more in the Timæus: and we shall find Aristotle pronouncing the like condemnation on the Platonic self-existent Ideas.