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, 
 since they pretend to search for truth, but straightway at the beginning of their
 professions attempt to deceive us with lies?

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 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 —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!

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!

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 to those who have never been under their instruction,
 being well advised as to their security, but doing the opposite of what they preach.

For it is permissible to those who give any other instruction to be exacting in matters
 open to dispute, since nothing prevents those who have been made adept in other lines of
 training from being dishonorable in the matter of contracts. But men who inculcate virtue
 and sobriety—is it not absurd if they do not trust in their own students before all
 others? For it is not to be supposed that men who are honorable and
 just-dealing with others will be dishonest with the very preceptors who have made them
 what they are.

When, therefore, the layman puts all these things together and observes that the
 teachers of wisdom and dispensers of happiness are themselves in great want 
 but exact only a small fee from their students, that they are on the watch for
 contradictions in words but are blind to inconsistencies in deeds, and that,
 furthermore, they pretend to have knowledge of the future

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 successful 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.

But it is not these sophists alone who are open to criticism, but also those who profess
 to teach political discourse. For the latter have no interest whatever in the truth, 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.

More than that, they do not attribute any of this power either to the practical
 experience or to the native ability of the student, but undertake to transmit the science
 of discourse as simply as they would teach the letters of the alphabet, not having taken trouble
 to examine into the nature of each kind of knowledge, but thinking that because of the
 extravagance of their promises they themselves will command admiration and the teaching of
 discourse will be held in higher esteem—oblivious of the fact that the arts are made
 great, not by those who are without scruple in boasting about them, but by those who are
 able to discover all of the resources which each art affords.

For myself, I should have preferred above great riches that philosophy had as much power
 as these men claim; for, possibly, I should not have been the very last in the profession
 nor had the least share in its profits. But since it has no such power, I could wish that
 this prating might cease. For I note that the bad repute which results therefrom does not
 affect the offenders only, but that all the rest of us who are in the same profession
 share in the opprobium.

But I marvel when I observe these men setting themselves up as instructors of youth who
 cannot see that they are applying the analogy of an art with hard and fast rules to a
 creative process. For, excepting these teachers, who does not know that the art of using
 letters remains fixed and unchanged, so that we continually and invariably use the same
 letters for the same purposes, while exactly the reverse is true of the art of
 discourse? For what has been said by one speaker is not equally useful for the
 speaker who comes after him; on the contrary, he is accounted most skilled in this art who
 speaks in a manner worthy of his subject and yet is able to discover in it topics which
 are nowise the same as those used by others.

But the greatest proof of the difference between these two arts is that oratory is good
 only if it has the qualities of fitness for the occasion, propriety of style, and originality of treatment, while in
 the case of letters there is no such need whatsoever. So that those who make use of such
 analogies ought more justly to pay out than to accept fees, since they attempt to teach
 others when they are themselves in great need of instruction.

However, if it is my duty not only to rebuke others, but also to set forth my own views,
 I think all intelligent people will agree with me that while many of those who have
 pursued philosophy have remained in private life, others, on the other hand, who have never taken lessons from any one of
 the sophists have become able orators and statesmen. For ability, whether in speech or in
 any other activity, is found in those who are well endowed by nature and have been
 schooled by practical experience.

Formal training makes such men more skilfull and more resourceful in discovering the
 possibilities of a subject; for it teaches them to take from a readier source the topics
 which they otherwise hit upon in haphazard fashion. But it cannot fully fashion men who
 are without natural aptitude into good debaters or writers, although it is capable of
 leading them on to self-improvement and to a greater degree of intelligence on many
 subjects.

But I desire, now that I have gone this far, to speak more clearly on these matters. For
 I hold that to obtain a knowledge of the elements out of which we make and compose all
 discourses is not so very difficult if anyone entrusts himself, not to those who make rash
 promises, but to those who have some knowledge of these things. But to choose from these
 elements those which should be employed for each subject, to join them together, to
 arrange them properly, and also, not to miss what the occasion demands but appropriately
 to adorn the whole speech with striking thoughts and to clothe it in flowing and melodious
 phrase —

these things, I hold, require much study and are the task of a vigorous and imaginative
 mind: 
 for this, the student must not only have the requisite aptitude but he must learn the
 different kinds of discourse and practice himself in their use; and the teacher, for his
 part, must so expound the principles of the art with the utmost possible exactness as to
 leave out nothing that can be taught, and, for the rest, he must in himself set such an
 example of oratory

that the students who have taken form under his instruction and are able to pattern after
 him will, from the outset, show in their speaking a degree of grace and charm which is not
 found in others. When all of these requisites are found together, then the devotees of
 philosophy will achieve complete success; but according as any one of the things which I
 have mentioned is lacking, to this extent must their disciples of necessity fall below the
 mark.

Now as for the sophists who have lately sprung up and have very recently embraced these
 pretensions, even though they
 flourish at the moment, they will all, I am sure, come round to this position. But there
 remain to be considered those who lived before our time and did not scruple to write the
 so-called arts of oratory. 
 These must not be dismissed without rebuke, since they professed to teach how to conduct
 law-suits, picking out the most discredited of terms, which the enemies, not the champions, of this discipline might
 have been expected to employ—

and that too although this facility, in so far as it can be taught, is of no greater aid
 to forensic than to all other discourse. But they were much worse than those who dabble in
 disputation; for although the latter expounded such captious theories that were anyone to
 cleave to them in practice he would at once be in all manner of trouble, they did, at any
 rate, make professions of virtue and sobriety in their teaching, whereas the former,
 although exhorting others to study political discourse, neglected all the good things
 which this study affords, and became nothing more than professors of meddlesomeness and
 greed.

And yet those who desire to follow the true precepts of this discipline may, if they
 will, be helped more speedily towards honesty of character than
 towards facility in oratory. And let no one suppose that I claim that just living can be
 taught; for, in a word, I hold that there does not exist an art of the kind
 which can implant sobriety and justice in depraved natures. Nevertheless, I do think that
 the study of political discourse can help more than any other thing to stimulate and form
 such qualities of character.

But in order that I may not appear to be breaking down the pretensions of others while
 myself making greater claims than are within my powers, I believe that the very arguments
 by which I myself was convinced will make it clear to others also that these things are
 true.