Prevented by natural disabilities from exercising his talents in public, but urged on by the necessity of earning a living, since the Peloponnesian War had dissipated his fortune, Isocrates turned to a profession for which he was well fitted, that of an educator. During many years he was, like Gorgias, a teacher of rhetoric, and like Gorgias he may be classed as a Sophist. This title is misleading. In itself it means nothing more than an educator, or teacher of wisdom, and early, writers use it in a laudatory sense; Herodotus applies it to the Seven Sages. In the fourth century it was debased, partly by the comic poets, as representing the popular habit of sneering at anything which the mob cannot understand, but more honestly and systematically by Plato, who, though he admitted that some of the Sophists, such as Protagoras, were men worthy of the highest respect, took many opportunities of disparaging Sophists as a class, and Sophistry as a profession. There can be no doubt that he was quite sincere, for he takes great pains to bring out the distinction between the educators and his own master Socrates, whom Aristophanes had already marked as one of the crowd.[196] To us it seems that the marked distinction cannot be maintained; apart from Socrates’ peculiarity of refusing to take fees from his pupils, he is distinguished only by possessing a higher moral tone than the rest of the Sophists. Like them he was a sceptic as far as philosophy was concerned, and like them he was an educator. We have, however, accepted the word at the value which Plato chose to put upon it; but we must not suppose that this was the value at which it was usually current. This is clear from the fact that Isocrates can use the word without any idea of disparagement. Though he wrote a speech _Against the Sophists_, it is directed not against the profession as a whole, but against certain classes, whom he calls the ἀγέλαιοι σοφισταί—‘Sophists of the baser sort.’ Isocrates’ earliest work on education, the speech or tract _Against the Sophists_ (Or. xiii.), dates from the beginning of his professional career, perhaps about the year 390 B.C. We possess only part, perhaps less than half, of the speech. What remains is purely destructive criticism which, as is clear from the concluding words, was meant to lead up to an exposition of the writer’s own principles and theory. The loss is to be regretted, but is not irreparable, since the speech _On the Antidosis_, composed thirty-five years later, supplements it by a full constructive statement. The introduction on the Sophists is sweeping in its severity:[197] ‘If all our professional educators would be content to tell the truth and not promise more than they ever intend to perform, they would not have a bad reputation among laymen. As it is, their reckless effrontery has encouraged the opinion that a life of incurious idleness is better than one devoted to philosophy.’