If all who are engaged in the profession of education were willing to state the facts
 instead of making greater promises than they can possibly fulfill, they would not be in
 such bad repute with the lay-public. As it is, however, the teachers who do not scruple to
 vaunt their powers with utter disregard of the truth have created the impression that
 those who choose a life of careless indolence are better advised than those who devote
 themselves to serious study. Indeed, who can fail to abhor, yes to contemn, those
 teachers, in the first place, who devote themselves to disputation, Captious argumentation in the field of ethics. He is not thinking of Socrates,
 who did not teach for pay, nor of Plato's dialectic, which was not yet famous, but of
 the minor Socratics, especially Antisthenes and Eucleides, who taught for money while
 affecting contempt for it. In general he is thinking of such quibblers as are later
 shown up in Plato's Euthydemus . See General Introd. pp. xxi ff. 
 since they pretend to search for truth, but straightway at the beginning of their
 professions attempt to deceive us with lies? Theirs is a
 cloud morality, not truth to live by on earth. Cf. Isoc.
 13.20 . See General Introd. p. xxii. 
 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 prescience There 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 future See 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. 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. 
 Why, if they were to sell any other commodity for so trifling a fraction of its worth
 they would not deny their folly; nevertheless, although they set so insignificant a price
 on the whole stock of virtue and happiness, they pretend to wisdom and assume the right to
 instruct the rest of the world. Furthermore, although they say that they do not want money
 and speak contemptuously of wealth as “filthy lucre,” they hold their hands out for a
 trifling gain and promise to make their disciples all but immortal! That is, to make them all but gods. 
 But what is most ridiculous of all is that they distrust those from whom they are to get
 this money—they distrust, that is to say, the very men to whom they are about to deliver
 the science of just dealing—and they require that the fees advanced by their students be
 entrusted for safe keeping For their security, they
 required that the fees charged to their students be deposited with third parties until
 the end of the discourse. to those who have never been under their instruction,
 being well advised as to their security, but doing the opposite of what they preach.