§ 61. Still, there is room for surprise that the _matter_ of higher education, the ideas to be acquired, should have been introduced indirectly under the guise of preparation for public speaking. No doubt, this was an artificial and unnatural order of things. To subordinate the matter of knowledge to the form is always a mistake. But we may at least conceive the position of Isocrates’ pupils if we compare it with that of the popular preachers, so powerful a generation ago, and even now playing no unimportant part in society. I have known more than one of these eminent men who educated themselves with great care generally, and in all directions, for the purpose of supplying themselves with matter for their discourses. And this is very well-meant, legitimate, and honest education, though perverted in order, and, like that of Isocrates, not likely to lead to really deep and thorough knowledge. We are told that in the present day there are people who read all kinds of books for the purpose of solving double acrostics, and I have heard men of intelligence advocate this foolish kind of riddles as promoting general education! Thus the school of Isocrates stood side by side, and in rivalry, with the schools of Plato and Aristotle, as one in which elegance of form, and a superficial but graceful culture, was given to the higher youth, instead of the exact science and metaphysic which unfitted men for public life. It was a contrast somewhat like the Oxford and Cambridge type in England. Isocrates’ own failure as a politician, and the little influence which his open letters on politics attained, made the wiser portion of men drift away still farther from the sophistic aspect of his teaching, from the mixture of philosophy and politics with rhetoric; and so they again subdivided their training into strictly rhetorical, such as had already been begun by Lysias and was carried out by Isæus, and the philosophical, for which an increasing number of schools now offered themselves. As the political power of Greece decayed, and its literary and artistic splendor became universally recognized, Athens became an educational centre, to which youths from all parts of the civilized world flocked for their training. This later history of Greek culture will occupy us in our last chapter. But we must first give a brief account of the deeper theories of State education which Plato and Aristotle have left us, in contrast to the shallow popularity of Isocrates. FOOTNOTES: [52] Περὶ ἀντιδόσεως, p. 98 sq. CHAPTER X. THE GREEK THEORISTS ON EDUCATION--PLATO AND ARISTOTLE.