Meanwhile culture is the only thing in us that is immortal and divine. In the nature of man there are two sovereign elements—understanding and reason. It is the place of the understanding to direct the reason and of the reason to serve the understanding. Fortune cannot overcome them, calumny cannot rob us of them, disease cannot corrupt them, old age cannot impair them. The understanding is the only thing that renews its youth as it grows old, and, while time carries off everything else, it brings old age one gift—that of knowledge. When, again, war comes like a torrent, tearing and sweeping everything away, it is of our mental culture alone that it cannot rob us. Stilpo, the Megarian philosopher, made what seems a memorable answer when Demetrius, after enslaving the city and razing it to the ground, asked him if he had lost anything. ‘O no!’ said he, ‘for virtue is not made spoil of war.’ The reply of Socrates is evidently to the same tune and purpose. [Sidenote: 6] It was Gorgias, I believe, who asked him his opinion of the Great King, and whether he considered him happy. ‘I have no knowledge,’ said Socrates, ‘as to the state of his character and culture.’ He assumed that happiness depended upon these, and not upon the gifts of fortune. Not only should the education of our children be treated as of the very first importance, but I once more urge that we should insist upon its being of the sound and genuine kind. From pretentious nonsense our sons should be kept as far aloof [Sidenote: B] as possible. To please the many is to displease the wise, an assertion in which I have the support of Euripides: _I am not deft of words before the crowd, More skilled when with my compeers and the few. ’Tis compensation: they who ‘mid the wise Are naught, surpass in gift of speech to mobs._ My own observation tells me that persons who make a business of speaking in a way to please and curry favour with the rabble, generally prove correspondingly dissolute and pleasure-loving in their lives. Nor, indeed, should we expect anything else; for if they have no regard to propriety when catering for the [Sidenote: C] gratification of other people, it is not likely that they will permit right and sound principles to have the upper hand of their own voluptuous self-indulgence, nor that they will cultivate self-control rather than enjoyment. [Sidenote: *] And how can children learn from them anything admirable? Among admirable things is the practice of neither saying nor doing anything at random; and, as the proverb goes, ‘admirable things are difficult.’ Meanwhile, speeches made offhand are a mass of reckless slovenliness, without a notion where to begin or where to end.