But despite this moralizing tendency, he agrees with the other orators in appreciating highly the economic importance of the manual arts.[504] He points also, with apparent pride, to the extensive commerce of Athens as compared with that of other states,[505] and one of his chief arguments for peace is that thereby the city will be filled with merchants and strangers and metics.[506] This entire plea for peace, which he bases so largely on economic advantage, has a decidedly modern ring. He understood well the importance of industrial development in the general prosperity of a democracy. In almost Aristotelian language, he pictures how in the good old days the rich were accustomed to give the poor a start in business (ἀφορμή), either in agriculture, trade, or the arts.[507] This positive economic interest is further evidenced by his emphasis upon the increased skill that results from the application of the division of labor.[508] Isocrates, like Plato, was especially opposed to civic strife and the extreme individualistic communism that demanded a redivision of lands and abolition of debts.[509] In the ideal past of his dreams, there were no extremes of wealth and poverty, private property was safe, and revolutions did not rend the state. Now, on the other hand, all is changed. Sparta is the only state that has not been torn by the bitter party strife.[510] He contrasts the high regard in which the wealthy were held in his boyhood with the present jealous discontent. To be known as a wealthy man now is almost equivalent to being considered criminal and is a thing for which to apologize.[511] This attitude toward the rich, of which Isocrates complains, is significant in the light of similar tendencies in our own democracy today. Again, in agreement with Plato and Aristotle, Isocrates opposes the doctrine of mere arithmetical equality, and insists that the true equality apportions to each what befits his capacity.[512] But though he is hostile to the crasser type of communism, he makes the chief characteristic of the ideal past a noble community feeling and spirit of co-operation. In that happy time, the common weal was first in the thought of all, each had regard for others’ interests, the poor were not jealous of the rich, and the rich assisted the poor.[513] At times, he even approaches the modern humanitarian sentiment for the submerged classes. He defines true national prosperity as a condition in which no citizen is lacking the means of livelihood,[514] and thinks the poor might well be pardoned for their indifference to public welfare, in their anxiety over the daily means of subsistence.[515] He also states the somewhat socialistic principle so emphasized by Plato, that the character of the state will be like that of the ruler.[516] Footnote 487: E.g., p. 106, n. 3, citing _Or._ xxxvi. 44 on πίστις. Footnote 488: _Peace_ 12, though the emphasis is on bribery. Footnote 489: