7
When, therefore, the layman puts all these things together and observes that the teachers of wisdom and dispensers of happiness are themselves in great wantSee the close of the Isoc. 4. but exact only a small fee from their students, that they are on the watch for contradictions in wordsThe aim of “eristic” (ἕρις means contention) is to show up the contradictions in the accepted morality. but are blind to inconsistencies in deeds, and that, furthermore, they pretend to have knowledge of the future
8
but are incapable either of saying anything pertinent or of giving any counsel regarding the present, and when he observes that those who follow their judgements are more consistent and more successfulSee Isoc. 13.2, note; Isoc. 12.9; Isoc. 10.5. than those who profess to have exact knowledge, then he has, I think, good reason to contemn such studies and regard them as stuff and nonsense, and not as a true discipline of the soul.
9
But it is not these sophists alone who are open to criticism, but also those who profess to teach political discourse.The whole field of “deliberative” oratory, but the most “useful” branch of it in “litigious Athens” was the forensic. For the latter have no interest whatever in the truth,Their interest was not in the triumph of justice but in making the “worse reason appear the better.” See General Introd. p. xxii. but consider that they are masters of an art if they can attract great numbers of students by the smallness of their charges and the magnitude of their professions and get something out of them. For they are themselves so stupid and conceive others to be so dull that, although the speeches which they compose are worse than those which some laymen improvise, nevertheless they promise to make their students such clever orators that they will not overlook any of the possibilities which a subject affords.
