Socrates and Plato brought against them two other objections--the one serious and capital, the other trivial and absurd; and yet it was the latter which told with the public. The former objection was that of superficiality and boastful assumption; they professed, within a short time, to teach all that was needful in science and literature, in philosophy and politics. And here the deeper thinking of professed philosophers superseded them, though they had not been either useless or contemptible in their day. The second objection reminds us strongly of the prejudice once felt against taking interest for money--all such profit being regarded as usury in the worst sense of the term. It was urged that the Sophists asked and received pay for spreading the truth, and for teaching what every honest man ought to communicate (if he were able) for nothing. But although it was all very well for the eccentric and exceptional Socrates, for the wealthy Plato, to refuse all remuneration, the theory that the Sophist was not a laborer worthy of his hire asserted that all higher education must be carried on by amateurs, and thus tended to destroy all systematic and widely diffused culture. § 71. This narrow prejudice, therefore, did not resist the common-sense of the public when brought to bear upon it. We are assured that Plato, like Socrates, took no payment. Our authorities are silent about Aristotle, and it is hence inferred that he followed the same rule. But Speusippus, his successor in the school, is said to have demanded regular fees. This had been the practice with all the rhetoricians who taught young men after their emancipation from school, and who followed the natural precedent of the Sophists. Such a practice was all the more reasonable, as the pupils in philosophical schools, even in Plato’s, were divided into amateur pupils, who came for mere general training, and professional students, who meant to take up teaching for their livelihood, and who spent a long time in special studies. Thus pupils’ fees were always a possible, and became an actual, endowment for higher teaching. In the Sophists’ days men complained that these fees were exorbitant, though perhaps not with justice. In later days we hear of large fees from rich pupils, but always as voluntary donations, and for the purpose of relieving poorer fellow-students. For the schools of philosophy began to be secured from difficulties by a second means of endowment--the donations of patrons and the bequests of pious founders. As regards these donations by rich pupils, we hear from Philostratus[61] that a rich scholar, Damianus, gave to each of the Sophists Aristeides and Adrianos 10,000 drachmæ, to supply poor students with free lectures. This gift, about £400 of our money, represents a far larger sum in relation to the then existing conditions of wealth. One hundred drachmæ were probably considered an adequate fee for a complete course; and if it be true that a popular