2
For I think it is manifest to all that foreknowledge of future events is not vouchsafed to our human nature, but that we are so far removed from this prescienceThere is, according to Isocrates, no “science” which can teach us to do under all circumstances the things which will insure our happiness and success. Life is too complicated for that, and no man can foresee exactly the consequences of his acts—“the future is a thing unseen.” All that education can do is to develop a sound judgement (as opposed to knowledge) which will meet the contingencies of life with resourcefulness and, in most cases, with success. This is a fundamental doctrine of his “philosophy” which he emphasizes and echoes again and again in opposition to the professors of a “science of virtue and happiness.” See General Introd. pp. xxvii ff. that Homer, who has been conceded the highest reputation for wisdom, has pictured even the gods as at times debating among themselves about the futureSee Hom. Il. 16.431 ff. and Hom. Il. 16.652 ff.; Hom. Il. 22.168 ff.—not that he knew their minds but that he desired to show us that for mankind this power lies in the realms of the impossible.
3
But these professors have gone so far in their lack of scruple that they attempt to persuade our young men that if they will only study under them they will know what to do in life and through this knowledge will become happy and prosperous. More than that, although they set themselves up as masters and dispensers of goods so precious, they are not ashamed of asking for them a price of three or four minae!Socrates (Plat. Apol. 20b) speaks with the same sarcasm of a sophist named Evenus, who professed to teach all the virtues necessary to a good man and a good citizen for five minae.
