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352 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE for Aristotle, was far the most philosophical. In this department, as in every other, he followed the moderate course — he avoided the folly of extremes, or fell between two stools, as one may prefer to phrase it. In a sense his cardinal fault lies in this double-mindedness. Is he a stylist, or is he a political thinker ? Is he really advising his country, or is he giving a model exercise to his school ? The criticism is not quite fair. It would apply to every orator and stylist, to Grattan, Burke, Cicero, Demosthenes himself. Perhaps the real reason for that curious weariness and irritation which Isocrates generally produces, is partly the intolerance of our own age to formal correctness of the easy and obvious sort. The eighteenth century has done that business for us, and it interests us no longer. Partly it is the real and definite lack in Isocrates of the higher kind of inspi- ration. He is conceited. He likes a smooth, sensible prose better than Homer. He does not understand poetry, and does not approve of music. It is sins of this kind that mankind ultimately cannot forgive, because they are offences against the eternal element in our life. As to religion in the more definite sense, Isocrates is an interesting type ; a moderate as usual, eminently pious, but never superstitious, using religion effectively as an element in his eloquence, and revealing to a close inspection that profound unconscious absence of belief in anything— in providence, in Zeus himself, in philo- sophy, in principle— which is one of the privileges of the moderate and practical moralist. Yet he was a good and sagacious man, an immense force in literature, and one of the most successful teachers that ever lived.