“How, then, can a pursuit be fairly despised which has produced such results? for do not all men confess this, that those are to be esteemed the most thoroughly versed in their art or handicraft who can make their apprentices as good workmen as themselves? Now, in philosophy this very thing has happened. For as many as happened on a genuine and sensible guide will be found to have such a family likeness in their way of expressing themselves that any one can tell they have come from the same trainer. This similarity of type is conclusive evidence of the method and system to which they have been subjected. So, too, any of you could mention fellow-pupils who, as children, were the most ignorant of their fellows, but as they advanced in age became far superior in good sense and in eloquence to those once far ahead of them.” The orator goes on, with his usual elegant diffuseness, to make many other developments of the same leading idea, all of which might be used with hardly a word of change by any one defending our university education against the vulgar objectors who think that vast sums of time and money are spent upon it, with little or no result. Nor is the good which he does claim for his higher education anything different from what our universities could claim, apart from the material good of prizes and degrees. § 59. The peculiar position of Isocrates was that of opposition to both Sophists and philosophers, and yet of likeness to both. He joined the Sophists in urging sceptical objections to the subtle theories of the metaphysicians, and in commenting upon the small outcome of their elaborate speculations. He joined the philosophers in attacking the boastful claims of the Sophists, who pretended to teach everything. But he joined with the more practical side in putting a training in rhetoric--a training in style--above everything. There were many reasons why this should be the case with higher education at Athens. In an age when books were scarce, and a reading public small; when the power of publicism only existed for poets, and when all State affairs were settled by discussion either in the assembly or in private meetings--in such a society a power of clear and elegant utterance was the highest and best outcome of education. Nor could any man then be considered educated who lacked that power, just as nowadays no man is called educated who cannot write correct English; and, furthermore, the writing of elegant English is justly accounted to indicate a thorough and general culture. For we are such severe judges in this matter, everybody thinks himself in this so well able to appreciate beauty and pick out defects, that a man who can pass through the fire of criticism unscathed must indeed be equipped with no ordinary preparation, and may be pronounced a really cultivated man. This will explain to us the enormous importance of rhetoric in Isocrates’ system--an importance, perhaps, enhanced by his feeling that here he was really able to do