‘Indeed,’ I said, ‘it often happens, and the teachers do not dare to discuss freely the most important matters. But they are fearful of the opinion of the prosperous and they dread the crowd as no philosopher ought to do. They are careful not to examine closely into the deepest questions of all touching morality and the nature of the gods. They are equally afraid of the question how wealth should be divided and how the state should behave to private riches. So that in the one place where you might hope to see the existing system examined freely, you do not find any such free spirit of questioning, but a nervous desire to give satisfaction to the powerful element of society.’ ‘Rich men can avail much,’ said Lysis, ‘though they be base, mechanical fellows.’ ‘Why,’ I replied, ‘did I not say a moment ago that some who embraced academic life were above their fellows but others indeed beneath?’ ‘Yes,’ they said. ‘And you did not understand me?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why,’ I said, ‘I meant that many embrace teaching not from any high-minded aloofness to commerce or love of knowledge, but because it is the easiest employment they can find and they shirk the labour of business life. Such men are not really students at all, and spend their lives repeating over and over the small stock of information they gathered in early life. These inferior teachers live the life of donkeys or mules working a water-wheel, treading for ever round and round the same narrow course after they have once learned how the routine goes.’ At which Lysis exclaimed: ‘Truly a miserable existence.’ ‘Wretched, indeed,’ echoed Agathon, ‘and one that does more harm than good, for the majority of their students despise them, rightly guessing that they would be prosperous business men if they knew how it was done, and so the things of the mind are brought into dishonour.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but we must not blame the teachers that they avoid an unequal contest. For already they have sacrificed much to pursue their calling. Moreover a noble minority strives as bravely as did Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, preferring all sacrifices before servitude to the barbarian hosts. But these men will agree with us.’ ‘Will most of the teachers be with us?’ asked Lysis. ‘Alas,’ I said, ‘the most part of the teachers are not valiant.’ ‘What do they fear,’ asked Phaelon, ‘for they know that they will never become at all like Crœsus. It is not a happy thing to be like Crœsus.’ ‘No, Phaelon,’ I said. ‘They have no great ambition, as it seems to me. Rather are they driven by fear. They fear, Phaelon, what the rich will do to them.’ ‘What?’ ‘They might take away their cars. For they have bought cars for which they have not paid, promising to do so by a life of labour. And the rich might take them away. Then, indeed, the poor teachers would have to become philosophers of the Peripatetic School.’ ‘They would not love you, Socrates,’ said Lysis, ‘if they heard you speak unfeelingly like that.’