these latter that they assumed rather naïvely that man can look upon
the world and can know it, and can by thinking about it succeed in
giving a reasonable account of it. That there may be a difference
between the world as it really is and the world as it appears to man,
and that it may be impossible for man to attain to a knowledge of the
absolute truth of things, does not seem to have occurred to them.

The fifth century before Christ was, in Greece, a time of intense
intellectual ferment. One is reminded, in reading of it, of the
splendid years of the Renaissance in Italy, of the awakening of the
human mind to a vigorous life which cast off the bonds of tradition and
insisted upon the right of free and unfettered development. Athens was
the center of this intellectual activity.

In this century arose the Sophists, public teachers who busied
themselves with all departments of human knowledge, but seemed to lay
no little emphasis upon certain questions that touched very nearly the
life of man. Can man attain to truth at all--to a truth that is more
than a mere truth to him, a seeming truth? Whence do the laws derive
their authority? Is there such a thing as justice, as right? It was
with such questions as these that the Sophists occupied themselves, and
such questions as these have held the attention of mankind ever since.
When they make their appearance in the life of a people or of an
individual man, it means that there has been a rebirth, a birth into
the life of reflection.

When Socrates, that greatest of teachers, felt called upon to refute
the arguments of these men, he met them, so to speak, on their own
ground, recognizing that the subjects of which they discoursed were,
indeed, matter for scientific investigation. His attitude seemed to