We cannot tell to what extent the divergences which afterwards made Plato and Aristotle pass for types of the most extreme intellectual opposition were already manifested during their personal intercourse.[172] The tradition is that the teacher compared his pupil to a foal that kicks his mother after draining her dry. There is a certain rough truth as well as rough wit about the remark; but the author of the _Parmenides_ could hardly have been much affected by criticisms on the ideal theory which he had himself reasoned out with equal candour and acuteness; and if, as we sometimes feel tempted to conjecture, those criticisms were first suggested to him by Aristotle in conversation, it will be still more evident that they were received without offence.[173] In some respects, Aristotle began not only as a disciple but as a champion of Platonism. On the popular side, that doctrine was distinguished by its essentially religious character, and by its opposition to the rhetorical training then in vogue. Now, Aristotle’s dialogues, of which only a few fragments have been preserved, contained elegant arguments in favour of a creative First Cause, and of human immortality; although in the writings which embody his maturer views, the first of these theories is considerably modified, and the second is absolutely rejected. Further, we are informed that Aristotle expressed himself in terms of rather violent contempt for Isocrates, the greatest living professor of declamation; and opened an opposition school of his own. This step has, curiously enough, been adduced as a further proof of disagreement with Plato, who, it is said, objected to all rhetorical teaching whatever. It seems to us that what he condemned was rather the method and aim of the then fashionable rhetoric; and a considerable portion of his _Phaedrus_ is devoted to proving how much more effectually persuasion might be produced by the combined application of dialectics and psychology to oratory. Now, this is precisely what Aristotle afterwards attempted to work out in the treatise on Rhetoric still preserved among his writings; and we may safely assume that his earlier lectures at Athens were composed on the same principle.