“First among things human I reckon education. For if you begin anything whatever in the right way, the end will probably be right also. The nature of the harvest depends upon the seed you sow. If you plant good education in a young body, it bears leaves and fruit the whole life long, and no rain or drought can destroy it.” “Life is like a day’s sentry-duty, and the length of life is comparable to a single day. While our day lasts, we look up to the sunlight, then we pass on our duty to our successors.” “A miser stored up money in a hiding-place, and did not lend or use it. Then it was stolen. A man to whom he had refused to lend it told him to put a stone in the hiding-place instead, and imagine that it was money; it would be just as useful.” Among the Sophists were some apparently who were merely jesters, and used their brains solely in arousing laughter. It may well be doubted whether the account which Plato gives of _Euthudemos_ and _Dionusodoros_ is true to life; but they probably represent a type. As teachers, no sane man could take them seriously. They had been gladiators, and had taught forensic rhetoric; afterwards they discovered a genius for quibbles. They were ready to make out any statement to be true or false. The respondent may only answer “Yes” or “No,” and no previous statement could be quoted against them, since they did not claim to teach anything consistent. A sample[525] of their arguments will make their methods clearer. “_A._ Your father is a dog. _B._ So is yours. _A._ If you answer my questions, you will admit it. Have you a dog? _B._ Yes, a very bad one. _A._ Has it puppies? _B._ Mongrels like itself. _A._ Then the dog is a father? _B._ Yes. _A._ Isn’t the dog yours? _B._ Certainly. _A._ Then being yours and a father, it is your father, and you are the brother of puppies.” Absurd as it is, such discussions are a good means of teaching logic, since they make the search for rules intellectually compulsory. No doubt there were black sheep among the lesser Sophists, to whom Plato’s bitter definitions in the _Sophist_ were quite applicable, who were “hunters after young men of wealth and position, with sham education as their bait, and a fee for their object, making money by a scientific use of quibbles in private conversation, while quite aware that what they were teaching was wrong.” But they do not appear in extant literature, which has only recorded a very few, and those the very pick, of the hundreds of Sophists that there must have been in the Socratic age.[526] * * * * * The Sophists who have been mentioned so far have been but little concerned with Rhetoric: they form rather a school of Logic, opposed to the rhetorical school of _Gorgias_ and his followers. [Illustration: PLATE VIII. IN THE PALAISTRA: FLUTE-PLAYERS (WITH φορβεία [phorbeia]), JAVELIN-THROWER, DISK-THROWER, AND BOXER