In my last lecture I spoke of the small effect, or want of effect, which a mere intellectual training in the liberal arts might have upon the average morals of a large society. To-day I propose to take you into a higher atmosphere, and consider what occupied the élite of Greek society in their advanced education, and in their speculations on the nature of things. You must not underrate the enormous advantages the well-born youth then possessed in training his mind, as compared with the youth of to-day. In the first place, a very moderate income would keep a household in comfort, and remove all the grinding care which, in this our modern life with its myriad exigencies, torments so many respectable families. In the next place, the demon of competition had not invaded these states, nor was it possible to do as I and many others have done, to be a slave for some years in order to obtain a competence by passing first in a single examination. In the third place, there was no object in travelling long distances. What was worth seeing, lay within easy reach. In modern life there is only Holland, and perhaps Northern Italy, which offers the same delights within short distances. The huge amount of time spent by Americans in travelling is perhaps one of the most serious obstacles to their intellectual advancement. If North America were compressed into one tenth its size, its inhabitants might gain some leisure for better education. The obvious thing that will strike any intelligent American, who has only heard of Plato, and wants to make his acquaintance through Jowett’s noble translation, is the amount of time these Dialogues waste in arriving at a conclusion. Nay often they represent a very long conversation which comes to no conclusion at all. Yet that feature is essential to all higher training of the human mind. You may appear to the vulgar to be wasting time, and yet it is not wasting time, but doing the best you can for a great object. The earth moving in its orbit need not delay its regular course because it revolves upon its axis, and causes its whole surface to enjoy the blessed light of the sun. And the next thing you will find in Plato’s Dialogues (the best exponent of higher education I know) is that the objects in view are not those of sense, or of the material needs of life, or of obtaining success in the world. They all, like Saint Paul’s reasonings with Felix, have to do with righteousness and temperance, and judgment to come. But even this field, that of ethical inquiry, is not the highest to which Greek education attained. For their early teachers taught them to think about the universe and its constitution, the nature of mind, the nature of matter, and other high questions of abstract metaphysic.