The quarrel of Socrates with the Sophists was in part one of those
antagonisms which are involved necessarily in the very conditions of an
age that has not yet made up its mind; was in part also a mere rivalry
of individuals; and it might have remained in memory only as a matter
of historical interest. It has been otherwise. That innocent word
"Sophist" has survived in common language, to indicate some constantly
recurring viciousness, in the treatment of one's own and of other
minds, which is always at variance with such habits of thought as are
really worth while. There is an every-day "sophistry," of course,
against which we have all of us to be on our guard--that insincerity of
reasoning on behalf of sincere convictions, true or false in themselves
as the case may be, to which, if we are unwise enough to argue at all
with each other, we must all be tempted at times. Such insincerity
however is for the most part apt to expose itself. But there is a more
insidious sophistry of which Plato is aware; and against which he
contends in the Protagoras, and again still more effectively in the
Phaedrus; the closing pages of which discover the essential point of
that famous quarrel between the Sophists and Socrates or Plato, in
regard to a matter which is [116] of permanent interest in itself, and
as being not directly connected with practical morals is unaffected by
the peculiar prejudices of that age. Art, the art of oratory, in
particular, and of literary composition,--in this case, how one should
write or speak really inflammatory discourses about love, write love-
letters, so to speak, that shall really get at the heart they're meant
for--that was a matter on which the Sophists had thought much
professionally. And the debate introduced in the Phaedrus regarding
the secret of success in proposals of love or friendship turns properly
on this: whether it is necessary, or even advantageous, for one who
would be a good orator, or writer, a poet, a good artist generally, to
know, and consciously to keep himself in contact with, the truth of his
subject as he knows or feels it; or only with what other people,
perhaps quite indolently, think, or suppose others to think, about it.
And here the charge of Socrates against those professional teachers of
the art of rhetoric comes to be, that, with much superficial aptitude
in the conduct of the matter, they neither reach, nor put others in the
way of reaching, that intellectual ground of things (of the
consciousness of love for instance, when they are to open their lips,
and presumably their souls, about that) in true contact with which
alone can there be a real mastery in dealing with them. That you
yourself must have an inward, carefully ascertained, measured,
instituted hold [117] over anything you are to convey with any real
power to others, is the truth which the Platonic Socrates, in strongly
convinced words, always reasonable about it, formulates, in opposition