Author: A. Douglas Thomson

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2019-02-04

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 9780365388968

Excerpt from Euripides the Attic Orators: A Comparison Between the physicists and Socrates came the Sophists, who represent the birth and growth of Scepticism. This scepticism was a natural and necessary step in the progress of thought. When so many and so widely different schools sprang up, each claiming to give the true interpretation of the universe, and yet giving out doctrines so contradictory; when these doctrines had become more or less popularly known, and had been the cause of endless debate and discussion, it was an inevitable result that scepticism should spread. And this spirit was fostered also by the social and political conditions of the time; for over the whole of Greece, as we have seen, and above all in Athens, there took place in the fifth century B. C. A great and rapid development in all departments of life. The victory over Persia, combined with the steady growth of democracy, had 'given a stimulus and promoted an activity which was quite unprecedented. The power of speaking was becoming more important, and was the chief weapon in the hands of ambitious citizens; and men were eager to acquire powers of argument and debate, and to learn the opinions of the greatest thinkers of the day. The sophists came forward to satisfy these wants, and in so doing they incidentally rendered a great service to Greek prose. The most important of them was Protagoras 2, whose treatise on Truth began with the words, Man is the measure of all things, ' - meaning that there is no such thing as objective truth, that truth is not absolute but relative, and similarly that, in matters of conduct, right and wrong depend on opinion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.