The received supposition that there were at Athens a class of men called Sophists who made money and reputation by obvious fallacies employed to bring about contradictions in dialogue--appears to me to pervert the representations given of ancient philosophy. Aristotle defines a Sophist to be "one who seeks to make money by apparent wisdom which is not real wisdom":--the Sophist (he says) is an Eristic who, besides money-making, seeks for nothing but victory in debate and humiliation of his opponent:--Distinguishing the Dialectician from the Sophist (he says), the Dialectician impugns or defends, by probable arguments, probable tenets--that is, tenets which are believed by a numerous public or by a few wise and eminent individuals:--while the Sophist deals with tenets which are probable only in appearance and not in reality--that is to say, tenets which almost every one by the slightest attention recognises as false.[42] This definition is founded, partly on the personal character and purpose ascribed to the Sophist: partly upon the distinction between apparent and real wisdom, assumed to be known and permanent. Now such pseudo-wisdom was declared by Sokrates to be the natural state of all mankind, even the most eminent, which it was his mission to expose: moreover, the determination, what is to be comprised in this description, must depend upon the judges to whom it is submitted, since much of the works of Aristotle and Plato would come under the category, in the judgment of modern readers both vulgar and instructed. But apart from this relative and variable character of the definition, when applied to philosophy generally--we may confidently assert, that there never was any real class of intellectual men, in a given time or place, to whom it could possibly apply. Of individuals, the varieties are innumerable: but no professional body of men ever acquired gain or celebrity by maintaining theses, and employing arguments, which every one could easily detect as false. Every man employs sophisms more or less; every man does so inadvertently, some do it by design also; moreover, almost every reasoner does it largely, in the estimation of his opponents. No distinct line can be drawn between the Sophist and the Dialectician: the definition given by Aristotle applies to an ideal in his own mind, but to no reality without: Protagoras and Prodikus no more correspond to it than Sokrates and Plato. Aristotle observes, with great truth, that all men are dialecticians and testers of reasoning, up to a certain point: he might have added that they are all Sophists also, up to a certain point.[43] Moreover, when he attempts to found a scientific classification of intellectual processes upon a difference in the purposes of different practitioners--whether they employ the same process for money or display, or beneficence, or mental satisfaction to themselves--this is altogether unphilosophical. The medical art is the same, whether