2. On the Sophists of the Fifth Century, B.C.

Extract

The object of this paper was to controvert the views of Mr Grote as stated in his history of Greece and in his work on Plato. Professor Blackie, while admitting that the Sophists might have been somewhat hardly dealt with by certain extreme writers in modern times, and recognising gladly the view stated by Meiners and Hegel that their teaching was an important and necessary step in the intellectual development of Greece, nevertheless maintained that the current character of the Sophists, as handed down to us from ancient times, was in the main correct; and that all that could be said in defence of their teaching amounted to no more than a slight palliation of the charges brought against them by Plato and Aristophanes, not to an acquittal.