For I believe that the teachers who are skilled in disputation and those who are occupied with astronomy and geometry and studies of that sortCompare Socrates' views, Xen. Mem. 4.7.2 ff. do not injure but, on the contrary, benefit their pupils, not so much as they profess, but more than others give them credit for.

Most men see in such studies nothing but empty talk and hair-splitting; for none of these disciplines has any useful application either to private or to public affairs; nay, they are not even remembered for any length of time after they are learned because they do not attend us through life nor do they lend aid in what we do, but are wholly divorced from our necessities.

But I am neither of this opinion nor am I far removed from it; rather it seems to me both that those who hold that this training is of no use in practical life are right and that those who speak in praise of it have truth on their side. If there is a contradiction in this statement, it is because these disciplines are different in their nature from the other studies which make up our education;