'PHILOSOPP^Y' OF ISOCRATES 343 he returned to Athens (391 ?) he did no more law- court work. He established a school, not of mere rhetoric, but of what he called philosophy. He is at great pains to explain himself, both in the fragment Against the Sophists, which formed a sort of prospectus of his system, and afterwards in the elaborate defence of his life and pursuits, which goes by the name of the Speech on the Exchange of Property. His philo- sophy is not what is sometimes so called — paradoxical metaphysics, barren logomachies, or that absolutely certain knowledge a priori about all the world, which certain persons offer for sale at extremely reasonable prices, but which nobody ever seems to possess. Nor, again, is it the mere knack of composing speeches for the law-courts, like Lysias, or of making improvisations, like Alkidamas. Isocrates means by philosophy what Protagoras and Gorgias meant — a practical culture of the whole mind, strengthening the character, forming a power of 'generally right judgment,' and developing to the highest degree the highest of human powers. Language. He requires in his would-be ' philosopher ' a broad amateur knowledge of many subjects — of history, of dialectics and mathematics, of the present political condition of all Greece, and of literature. He is far more philosophic and cultured than the average orator, far more practical and sensible than the philosophers. It is a source of lifelong annoyance to him that both philosophers and practical men despise his middle course, and that the general public refuses to under- stand him. Plato in two passages criticises the position very lucidly. In the Phcedrus (see above, p. 305) he expresses his sympathy with Isocrates as compared with the ordinary speech-writers. In the epilogue to
