Low and sordid minds such as with drooping heads look solely at such trivial and ephemeral results, regarded as of small consequence the great benefit that results from study:--namely probity or knowledge of truth; and these two things they did not regard with sufficient acuteness nor did they comprehend their great value, but they sought the immediate reward of money or popular favor. And so, in order to get a greater return for their labor, they admitted the populace to their contests like the spectators of a play brought out at the theatre. Then, as one might expect when the standard is lowered, the philosopher laid aside his dignified, venerable character, and put on his stage dress that he might dance more easily: the populace was made spectator, umpire, and judge, and the philosopher did that which the flute player does not do on the stage,--he suited his music, not to his own ideas and to the Muses, as his old teacher advises, but wholly to the circle of onlookers and the crowd whence distinction and gain was likely to come back to the actors. There was no need of real, solid teaching (at least, not in the opinion of those who are going to learn); but pretence and dust were thrown in the eyes of the crowd. So the one plain road of obtaining the truth was abandoned; six hundred ways of pretending were made, by which each strove for what suited himself, especially since there is nothing made so ugly as to lack a sponsor.