Note 3 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTION

I have here mainly followed Gomperz (Greek Thinkers, vol. I, pp. 430-34); there is not now, however, much controversy over the position of Hippias, which there is now, indeed, rather a tendency to exaggerate, considering how small is the basis of knowledge we possess. Thus Dupréel (La Légende Socratique, p. 432), regarding him as the most misunderstood of the great Sophists, declares that Hippias is “the thinker who conceived the universality of science, just as Prodicus caught glimpses of the synthesis of the social sciences. Hippias is the philosopher of science, the Great Logician, just as Prodicus is the Great Moralist.” He compares him to Pico della Mirandola as a Humanist and to Leibnitz in power of wide synthesis.