But despite this moralizing tendency, he agrees with the other orators in appreciating highly the economic importance of the manual arts.504
He points also, with apparent pride, to the extensive commerce of Athens as compared with that of other states,505 and one of his chief arguments for peace is that thereby the city will be filled with merchants and strangers and metics.506
This entire plea for peace, which he bases so largely on economic advantage, has a decidedly modern ring. He understood well the importance of industrial development in the general prosperity of a democracy. In almost Aristotelian language, he pictures how in the good old days the rich were accustomed to give the poor a start in business (ἀφορμή), either in agriculture, trade, or the arts.507
This positive economic interest is further evidenced by his emphasis upon the increased skill that results from the application of the division of labor.508
Isocrates, like Plato, was especially opposed to civic strife and the extreme individualistic communism that demanded a redivision of lands and abolition of debts.509
In the ideal past of his dreams, there were no extremes of wealth and poverty, private property was safe, and revolutions did not rend the state. Now, on the other hand, all is changed. Sparta is the only state that has not been torn by the bitter party strife.510
He contrasts the high regard in which the wealthy were held in his boyhood with the present jealous discontent. To be known as a wealthy man now is almost equivalent to being considered criminal and is a thing for which to apologize.511
This attitude toward the rich, of which Isocrates complains, is significant in the light of similar tendencies in our own democracy today.