Note 734 — Chapter LXVIII · SOKRATES.

Lord Bacon remarks, in the Novum Organon (Aph. 71):—

“Erat autem sapientia Græcorum professoria, et in disputationes effusa, quod genus inquisitioni veritatis adversissimum est. Itaque nomen illud Sophistarum—quod per contemptum ab iis, qui se philosophos haberi voluerunt, in antiquos rhetores rejectum et traductum est, Gorgiam, Protagoram, Hippiam, Polum—etiam universo generi competit, Platoni, Aristoteli, Zenoni, Epicuro, Theophrasto, et eorum successoribus, Chrysippo, Carneadi, reliquis.”

Bacon is quite right in effacing the distinction between the two lists of persons whom he compares; and in saying that the latter were just as much sophists as the former, in the sense which he here gives to the word, as well as in every other legitimate sense. But he is not justified in imputing to either of them this many-sided argumentation as a fault, looking to the subjects upon which they brought it to bear. His remark has application to the simpler physical sciences, but none to the moral. It had great pertinence and value, at the time when he brought it forward, and with reference to the important reforms which he was seeking to accomplish in physical science. In so far as Plato, Aristotle, or the other Greek philosophers, apply their deductive method to physical subjects, they come justly under Bacon’s censure. But here again, the fault consisted less in disputing too much, than in too hastily admitting false or inaccurate axioms without dispute.