No More Learning

Well, take my meaning, and it was
good; or take my word, and it was auspicious.

And now that I have got to this point, I have reason to fear that I may
be suspected of having made the slip on purpose, leading up to this
apology. O God of health, only grant me that the quality of my piece may
justify the notion that I wanted no more than a peg whereon to hang an
essay!




HERMOTIMUS, OR THE RIVAL PHILOSOPHIES


_Lycinus. Hermotimus_

_Ly_. Good morning, Hermotimus; I guess by your book and the pace
you are going at that you are on your way to lecture, and a little late.
You were conning over something as you walked, your lips working and
muttering, your hand flung out this way and that as you got a speech into
order in your mind; you were doubtless inventing one of your crooked
questions, or pondering some tricky problem; never a vacant mind, even in
the streets; always on the stretch and in earnest, bent on advancing in
your studies.

_Her_. I admit the impeachment; I was running over the details of
what he said in yesterday's lecture. One must lose no chance, you know;
the Coan doctor [Footnote: Hippocrates] spoke so truly: _ars longa,
vita brevis_. And what be referred to was only physic--a simpler
matter. As to philosophy, not only will you never attain it, however long
you study, unless you are wide awake all the time, contemplating it with
intense eager gaze; the stake is so tremendous, too,--whether you shall
rot miserably with the vulgar herd, or be counted among philosophers and
reach Happiness.

_Ly_. A glorious prize, indeed! however, you cannot be far off it
now, if one may judge by the time you have given to philosophy, and the
extraordinary vigour of your long pursuit. For twenty years now, I should
say, I have watched you perpetually going to your professors, generally
bent over a book taking notes of past lectures, pale with thought and
emaciated in body. I suspect you find no release even in your dreams, you
are so wrapped up in the thing. With all this you must surely get hold of
Happiness soon, if indeed you have not found it long ago without telling
us.

_Her_. Alas, Lycinus, I am only just beginning to get an inkling of
the right way. Very far off dwells Virtue, as Hesiod says, and long and
steep and rough is the way thither, and travellers must bedew it with
sweat.

_Ly_. And you have not yet sweated and travelled enough?

_Her_. Surely not; else should I have been on the summit, with
nothing left between me and bliss; but I am only starting yet, Lycinus.

_Ly_. Ah, but Hesiod, your own authority, tells us, Well begun is
half done; so we may safely call you half-way by this time.

_Her_. Not even there yet; that would indeed have been much.

_Ly_. Where _shall_ we put you, then?

_Her_. Still on the lower slopes, just making an effort to get on;
but it is slippery and rough, and needs a helping hand.

_Ly_. Well, your master can give you that; from his station on the
summit, like Zeus in Homer with his golden cord, he can let you down his
discourse, and therewith haul and heave you up to himself and to the
Virtue which he has himself attained this long time.

_Her_. The very picture of what he is doing; if it depended on him
alone, I should have been hauled up long ago; it is my part that is still
wanting.

_Ly_. You must be of good cheer and keep a stout heart; gaze at the
end of your climb and the Happiness at the top, and remember that he is
working with you. What prospect does he hold out? when are you to be up?
does he think you will be on the top next year--by the Great Mysteries,
or the Panathenaea, say?

_Her_. Too soon, Lycinus.

_Ly_. By next Olympiad, then?

_Her_. All too short a time, even that, for habituation to Virtue
and attainment of Happiness.

_Ly_. Say two Olympiads, then, for an outside estimate. You may fairly be
found guilty of laziness, if you cannot get it done by then; the time
would allow you three return trips from the Pillars of Heracles to India,
with a margin for exploring the tribes on the way instead of sailing
straight and never stopping. How much higher and more slippery, pray, is
the peak on which your Virtue dwells than that Aornos crag which Alexander
stormed in a few days?

_Her_. There is no resemblance, Lycinus; this is not a thing, as you
conceive it, to be compassed and captured quickly, though ten thousand
Alexanders were to assault it; in that case, the sealers would have been
legion. As it is, a good number begin the climb with great confidence,
and do make progress, some very little indeed, others more; but when they
get half-way, they find endless difficulties and discomforts, lose heart,
and turn back, panting, dripping, and exhausted. But those who endure to
the end reach the top, to be blessed thenceforth with wondrous days,
looking down from their height upon the ants which are the rest of
mankind.

_Ly_. Dear me, what tiny things you make us out--not so big as the Pygmies
even, but positively grovelling on the face of the earth. I quite
understand it; your thoughts are up aloft already. And we, the common men
that walk the earth, shall mingle you with the Gods in our prayers; for
you are translated above the clouds, and gone up whither you have so long
striven.

_Her_. If but that ascent might be, Lycinus! but it is far yet.

_Ly_. But you have never told me _how_ far, in terms of time.

_Her_. No; for I know not precisely myself. My guess is that it will
not be more than twenty years; by that time I shall surely be on the
summit.

_Ly_. Mercy upon us, you take long views!

_Her_. Ay; but, as the toil, so is the reward.

_Ly_. That may be; but about these twenty years--have you your master's
promise that you will live so long? is he prophet as well as philosopher?
or is it a soothsayer or Chaldean expert that you trust? such things are
known to them, I understand. You would never, of course, if there were any
uncertainty of your life's lasting to the Virtue-point, slave and toil
night and day like this; why, just as you were close to the top, your fate
might come upon you, lay hold of you by the heel, and lug you down with
your hopes unfulfilled.

_Her_. God forbid! these are words of ill omen, Lycinus; may life be
granted me, that I may grow wise, and have if it be but one day of
Happiness!

_Ly_. For all these toils will you be content with your one day?

_Her_. Content? yes, or with the briefest moment of it.

_Ly_. But is there indeed Happiness up there--and worth all the pains? How
can you tell? You have never been up yourself.

_Her_. I trust my master's word; and he knows well; is he not on the
topmost height?

_Ly_. Oh, do tell me what he says about it; what is Happiness like?
wealth, glory, pleasures incomparable?

_Her_. Hush, friend! all these have nought to do with the Virtuous
life.

_Ly_. Well, if these will not do, what _are_ the good things he offers to
those who carry their course right through?

_Her_. Wisdom, courage, true beauty, justice, full and firm knowledge of
all things as they are; but wealth and glory and pleasure and all bodily
things--these a man strips off and abandons before he mounts up, like
Heracles burning on Mount Oeta before deification; he too cast off
whatever of the human he had from his mother, and soared up to the Gods
with his divine part pure and unalloyed, sifted by the fire. Even so those
I speak of are purged by the philosophic fire of all that deluded men
count admirable, and reaching the summit have Happiness with never a
thought of wealth and glory and pleasure--except to smile at any who count
them more than phantoms.

_Ly_. By Heracles (and his death on Oeta), they quit themselves like
men, and have their reward, it seems. But there is one thing I should
like to know: are they allowed to come down from their elevation
sometimes, and have a taste of what they left behind them? or when they
have once got up, must they stay there, conversing with Virtue, and
smiling at wealth and glory and pleasure?

_Her_. The latter, assuredly; more than that, a man once admitted of
Virtue's company will never be subject to wrath or fear or desire any
more; no, nor can he feel pain, nor any such sensation.

_Ly_. Well, but--if one might dare to say what one thinks--but no--let me
keep a good tongue in my head--it were irreverent to pry into what wise
men do.

_Her_. Nay, nay; let me know your meaning.

_Ly_. Dear friend, I have not the courage.

_Her_. Out with it, my good fellow; we are alone.

_Ly_. Well, then--most of your account I followed and accepted--how
they grow wise and brave and just, and the rest--indeed I was quite
fascinated by it; but then you went on to say they despised wealth and
glory and pleasure; well, just there (quite between ourselves, you know)
I was pulled up; I thought of a scene t'other day with--shall I tell you
whom? Perhaps we can do without a name?

_Her_. No, no; we must have that too.

_Ly_. Your own professor himself, then,--a person to whom all
respect is due, surely, not to mention his years.

_Her_. Well?

_Ly_. You know the Heracleot, quite an old pupil of his in philosophy by
this time--red-haired--likes an argument?

_Her_. Yes; Dion, he is called.

_Ly_. Well, I suppose he had not paid up punctually; anyhow the other day
the old man haled him before the magistrate, with a halter made of his own
coat; he was shouting and fuming, and if some friends had not come up and
got the young man out of his hands, he would have bitten off his nose, he
was in such a temper.

_Her_. Ah, _he_ is a bad character, always an unconscionable time paying
his debts. There are plenty of others who owe the professor money, and he
has never treated any of them so; they pay him his interest punctually.

_Ly_. Not so fast; what in the world does it matter to him, if they do not
pay up? he is purified by philosophy, and has no further need of the cast
clothes of Oeta.

_Her_. Do you suppose his interest in such things is selfish? no, but he
has little ones; his care is to save them from indigence.

_Ly_. Whereas he ought to have brought them up to Virtue too, and let them
share his inexpensive Happiness.

_Her_. Well, I have no time to argue it, Lycinus; I must not be late for
lecture, lest in the end I find myself left behind.

_Ly_. Don't be afraid, my duteous one; to-day is a holiday; I can save you
the rest of your walk.

_Her_. What do you mean?

_Ly_. You will not find him just now, if the notice is to be trusted;
there was a tablet over the door announcing in large print, No meeting
this day. I hear he dined yesterday with the great Eucrates, who was
keeping his daughter's birthday. He talked a good deal of philosophy
over the wine, and lost his temper a little with Euthydemus the
Peripatetic; they were debating the old Peripatetic objections to the
Porch. His long vocal exertions (for it was midnight before they broke
up) gave him a bad headache, with violent perspiration. I fancy he had
also drunk a little too much, toasts being the order of the day, and
eaten more than an old man should. When he got home, he was very ill,
they said, just managed to check and lock up carefully the slices of meat
which he had conveyed to his servant at table, and then, giving orders
that he was not at home, went to sleep, and has not waked since. I
overheard Midas his man telling this to some of his pupils; there were a
number of them coming away.

_Her_. Which had the victory, though, he or Euthydemus--if Midas said
anything about that?

_Ly_. Why, at first, I gathered, it was very even between them; but you
Stoics had it in the end, and your master was much too hard for him.
Euthydemus did not even get off whole; he had a great cut on his head. He
was pretentious, insisted on proving his point, would not give in, and
proved a hard nut to crack; so your excellent professor, who had a goblet
as big as Nestor's in his hand, brought this down on him as he lay within
easy reach, and the victory was his.

_Her_. Good; so perish all who will not yield to their betters!

_Ly_. Very reasonable, Hermotimus; what was Euthydemus thinking of, to
irritate an old man who is purged of wrath and master of his passions,
when he had such a heavy goblet in his hand?

But we have time to spare--you might tell a friend like me the story of
your start in philosophy; then I might perhaps, if it is not too late,
begin now and join your school; you are my friends; you will not be
exclusive?

_Her_. If only you would, Lycinus! you will soon find out how much you are
superior to the rest of men. I do assure you, you will think them all
children, you will be so much wiser.

_Ly_. Enough for me, if after twenty years of it I am where you are now.

_Her_. Oh, I was about your age when I started on philosophy; I was forty;
and you must be about that.

_Ly_. Just that; so take and lead me on the same way; that is but right.
And first tell me--do you allow learners to criticize, if they find
difficulties in your doctrines, or must juniors abstain from that?

_Her_. Why, yes, they must; but _you_ shall have leave to ask questions
and criticize; you will learn easier that way.

_Ly_. I thank you for it, Hermotimus, by your name-God Hermes.

Now, is there only one road to philosophy--the Stoic way? they tell me
there are a great many other philosophers; is that so?

_Her_. Certainly--Peripatetics, Epicureans, Platonists, followers of
Diogenes, Antisthenes, Pythagoras, and more yet.

_Ly_. Quite so; numbers of them. Now, are their doctrines the same,
or different?

_Her_. Entirely different.

_Ly_. But the truth, I presume, is bound to be in one of them, and not in
all, as they differ?

_Her_. Certainly.

_Ly_. Then, as you love me, answer this: when you first went in pursuit of
philosophy, you found many gates wide open; what induced you to pass the
others by, and go in at the Stoic gate? Why did you assume that that was
the only true one, which would set you on the straight road to Virtue,
while the rest all opened on blind alleys? What was the test you applied
_then_?
Please abolish your present self, the self which is now
instructed, or half-instructed, and better able to distinguish between
good and bad than we outsiders, and answer in your then character of a
layman, with no advantage over me as I am now.

_Her_. I cannot tell what you are driving at.

_Ly_. Oh, there is nothing recondite about it. There are a great many
philosophers--let us say Plato, Aristotle, Antisthenes, and your spiritual
fathers, Chrysippus, Zeno, and all the rest of them; what was it that
induced you, leaving the rest alone, to pick out the school you did from
among them all, and pin your philosophic faith to it? Were you favoured
like Chaerephon with a revelation from Apollo? Did he tell you the Stoics
were the best of men, and send you to their school? I dare say he
recommends different philosophers to different persons, according to
their individual needs?

_Her_. Nothing of the kind, Lycinus; I never consulted him upon it.

_Ly_. Why? was it not a _dignus vindice nodus_? or were you confident in
your own unaided discrimination?

_Her_. Why, yes; I was.

_Ly_. Then this must be my first lesson from you--how one can decide
out of hand which is the best and the true philosophy to be taken, and
the others left.

_Her_. I will tell you: I observed that it attracted most disciples, and
thence inferred that it was superior.

_Ly_. Give me figures; how many more of them than of Epicureans,
Platonists, Peripatetics? Of course you took a sort of show of hands.

_Her_. Well, no; I didn't count; I just guessed.

_Ly_. Now, now! you are not teaching, but hoaxing me; judge by guess
work and impression, indeed, on a thing of this importance! You are
hiding the truth.

_Her_. Well, that was not my only way; every one told me the Epicureans
were sensual and self-indulgent, the Peripatetics avaricious and
contentious, the Platonists conceited and vain; about the Stoics, on the
contrary, many said they had fortitude and an open mind; he who goes their
way, I heard, was the true king and millionaire and wise man, alone and
all in one.

_Ly_. And, of course, it was other people who so described them; you
would not have taken their own word for their excellences.

_Her_. Certainly not; it was others who said it.

_Ly_. Not their rivals, I suppose?

_Her_. Oh, no.

_Ly_. Laymen, then?

_Her_. Just so.

_Ly_. There you are again, cheating me with your irony; you take me for a
blockhead, who will believe that an intelligent person like Hermotimus, at
the age of forty, would accept the word of laymen about philosophy and
philosophers, and make his own selection on the strength of what they
said.

_Her_. But you see, Lycinus, I did not depend on their judgement entirely,
but on my own too. I saw the Stoics going about with dignity, decently
dressed and groomed, ever with a thoughtful air and a manly countenance,
as far from effeminacy as from the utter repulsive negligence of the
Cynics, bearing themselves, in fact, like moderate men; and every one
admits that moderation is right.

_Ly_. Did you ever see them behaving like your master, as I described him
to you just now? Lending money and clamouring for payment, losing their
tempers in philosophic debates, and making other exhibitions of
themselves? Or perhaps these are trifles, so long as the dress is
decent, the beard long, and the hair close-cropped? We are provided for
the future, then, with an infallible rule and balance, guaranteed by
Hermotimus? It is by appearance and walk and haircutting that the best
men are to be distinguished; and whosoever has not these marks, and is
not solemn and thoughtful, shall be condemned and rejected?

Nay, do not play with me like this; you want to see whether I shall catch
you at it.

_Her_. Why do you say that?

_Ly_. Because, my dear sir, this appearance test is one for statues;
_their_ decent orderly attire has it easily over the Stoics, because
Phidias or Alcamenes or Myron designed them to be graceful. However,
granting as much as you like that these are the right tests, what is a
blind man to do, if he wants to take up philosophy? how is he to find the
man whose principles are right, when he cannot see his appearance or gait?

_Her_. I am not teaching the blind, Lycinus; I have nothing to do with
them.

_Ly_. Ah, but, my good sir, there ought to have been some universal
criterion, in a matter of such great and general use. Still, if you will
have it so, let the blind be excluded from philosophy, as they cannot
see--though, by the way, they are just the people who most need
philosophy to console them for their misfortune; but now, the people who
_can_ see--give them the utmost possible acuity of vision, and what
can they detect of the spiritual qualities from this external shell?

What I mean is this: was it not from admiration of their _spirit_ that you
joined them, expecting to have your own spirit purified?

_Her_. Assuredly.

_Ly_. How could you possibly discern the true philosopher from the
false, then, by the marks you mentioned? It is not the way of such
qualities to come out like that; they are hidden and secret; they are
revealed only under long and patient observation, in talk and debate and
the conduct they inspire. You have probably heard of Momus's indictment
of Hephaestus; if not, you shall have it now. According to the myth,
Athene, Posidon, and Hephaestus had a match in inventiveness. Posidon
made a bull, Athene planned a house, Hephaestus constructed a man; when
they came before Momus, who was to judge, he examined their productions;
I need not trouble you with his criticisms of the other two; but his
objection to the man, and the fault he found with Hephaestus, was this:
he should have made a window in his chest, so that, when it was opened,
his thoughts and designs, his truth or falsehood, might have been
apparent. Momus must have been blear-eyed, to have such ideas about men;
but you have sharper eyes than Lynceus, and pierce through the chest to
what is inside; all is patent to you, not merely any man's wishes and
sentiments, but the comparative merits of any pair.

_Her_. You trifle, Lycinus. I made a pious choice, and do not repent it;
that is enough for me.

_Ly_. And will you yet make a mystery of it to your friend, and let him be
lost with the vulgar herd?

_Her_. Why, you will not accept anything I say.

_Ly_. On the contrary, my good sir, it is you who will not say anything I
can accept. Well, as you refuse me your confidence, and are so jealous of
my becoming a philosopher and your equal, I must even do my best to find
out the infallible test and learn to choose safely for myself. And you may
listen, if you like.

_Her_. That I will, Lycinus; you will very likely hit on some good idea.

_Ly_. Then attend, and do not mock me, if my inquiry is quite
unscientific; it is all I can do, as you, who know better, will not give
me any clearer light.

I conceive Virtue, then, under the figure of a State whose citizens are
happy--as your professor, who is one of them, phrases it,--absolutely
wise, all of them brave, just, and self-controlled, hardly
distinguishable, in fact, from Gods. All sorts of things that go on here,
such as robbery, assault, unfair gain, you will never find attempted
there, I believe; their relations are all peace and unity; and this is
quite natural, seeing that none of the things which elsewhere occasion
strife and rivalry, and prompt men to plot against their neighbours, so
much as come in their way at all. Gold, pleasures, distinctions, they
never regard as objects of dispute; they have banished them long ago as
undesirable elements. Their life is serene and blissful, in the enjoyment
of legality, equality, liberty, and all other good things.

_Her_. Well, Lycinus? Must not all men yearn to belong to a State like
that, and never count the toil of getting there, nor lose heart over the
time it takes? Enough that one day they will arrive, and be naturalized,
and given the franchise.

_Ly_. In good truth, Hermotimus, we should devote all our efforts to
this, and neglect everything else; we need pay little heed to any claims
of our earthly country; we should steel our hearts against the clingings
and cryings of children or parents, if we have them; it is well if we can
induce them to go with us; but, if they will not or cannot, shake them
off and march straight for the city of bliss, leaving your coat in their
hands, if they lay hold of it to keep you back, in your hurry to get
there; what matter for a coat? You will be admitted there without one.

I remember hearing a description of it all once before from an old man,
who urged me to go there with him. He would show me the way, enroll me
when I got there, introduce me to his own circles, and promise me a share
in the universal Happiness. But I was stiff-necked, in my youthful folly
(it was some fifteen years ago); else might I have been in the outskirts,
nay, haply at the very gates, by now. Among the noteworthy things he told
me, I seem to remember these: all the citizens are aliens and foreigners,
not a native among them; they include numbers of barbarians, slaves,
cripples, dwarfs, and poor; in fact any one is admitted; for their law
does not associate the franchise with income, with shape, size, or
beauty, with old or brilliant ancestry; these things are not considered
at all; any one who would be a citizen needs only understanding, zeal for
the right, energy, perseverance, fortitude and resolution in facing all
the trials of the road; whoever proves his possession of these by
persisting till he reaches the city is _ipso facto_ a full citizen,
regardless of his antecedents. Such distinctions as superior and
inferior, noble and common, bond and free, simply do not exist there,
even in name.

_Her_. There, now; you see I am not wasting my pains on trifles; I
yearn to be counted among the citizens of that fair and happy State.

_Ly_. Why, your yearning is mine too; there is nothing I would sooner pray
for. If the city had been near at hand and plain for all to see, be
assured I would never have doubted, nor needed prompting; I would have
gone thither and had my franchise long ago; but as you tell me--you and
your bard Hesiod--that it is set exceeding far off, one must find out
the way to it, and the best guide. You agree?

_Her_. Of course that is the only thing to do.

_Ly_. Now, so far as promises and professions go, there is no lack of
guides; there are numbers of them waiting about, all representing
themselves as from there. But instead of one single road there seem to be
many different and inconsistent ones. North and South, East and West,
they go; one leads through meadows and vegetation and shade, and is well
watered and pleasant, with never a stumbling-block or inequality; another
is rough and rocky, threatening heat and drought and toil. Yet all these
are supposed to lead to the one city, though they take such different
directions.

That is where my difficulty lies; whichever of them I try, there is sure
to be a most respectable person stationed just at the entrance, with a
welcoming hand and an exhortation to go his way; each of them says he is
the only one who knows the straight road; his rivals are all mistaken,
have never been themselves, nor learnt the way from competent guides. I
go to his neighbour, and he gives the same assurances about _his_ way,
abusing the other respectable persons; and so the next, and the next, and
the next. This multiplicity and dissimilarity of the roads gives me
searchings of heart, and still more the assertiveness and self-
satisfaction of the guides; I really cannot tell which turning or whose
directions are most likely to bring me to the city.

_Her_. Oh, but I can solve that puzzle for you; you cannot go wrong,
if you trust those who have been already.

_Ly_. Which do you mean? those who have been by which road, and under
whose guidance? It is the old puzzle in a new form; you have only
substituted men for measures.

_Her_. How do you mean?

_Ly_. Why, the man who has taken Plato's road and travelled with him will
recommend that road; so with Epicurus and the rest; and _you_ will
recommend your own. How else, Hermotimus? it must be so.

_Her_. Well, of course.

_Ly_. So you have not solved my puzzle; I know just as little as before
which traveller to trust; I find that each of them, as well as his guide,
has tried one only, which he now recommends and will have to be the only
one leading to the city. Whether he tells the truth I have no means of
knowing; that he has attained _some_ end, and seen _some_ city, I may
perhaps allow; but whether he saw the right one, or whether, Corinth being
the real goal, he got to Babylon and thought he had seen Corinth--that is
still undecided; for surely every one who has seen a city has not seen
Corinth, unless Corinth is the only city there is. But my greatest
difficulty of all is the absolute certainty that the true road is one; for
Corinth is one, and the other roads lead anywhere but to Corinth, though
there may be people deluded enough to suppose that the North road and the
South road lead equally to Corinth.

_Her_. But that is absurd, Lycinus; they go opposite ways, you see.

_Ly_. Then, my dear good man, this choice of roads and guides is quite a
serious matter; we can by no means just follow our noses; we shall be
discovering that we are well on the way to Babylon or Bactria instead of
to Corinth. Nor is it advisable to toss up, either, on the chance that we
may hit upon the right way if we start upon any one at a venture. That is
no impossibility; it may have come off once and again in a cycle; but I
cannot think we ought to gamble recklessly with such high stakes, nor
commit our hopes to a frail craft, like the wise men who went to sea in a
bowl; we should have no fair complaint against Fortune, if her arrow or
dart did not precisely hit the centre; the odds are ten thousand to one
against her; just so the archer in Homer--Teucer, I suppose it was--when
he meant to hit the dove, only cut the string, which held it; of course it
is infinitely more likely that the point of the arrow will find its billet
in one of the numberless other places, than just in that particular
central one. And as to the perils of blundering into one of the wrong
roads instead of the right one, misled by a belief in the discretion of
Fortune, here is an illustration:--it is no easy matter to turn back and
get safe into port when you have once cast loose your moorings and
committed yourself to the breeze; you are at the mercy of the sea,
frightened, sick and sorry with your tossing about, most likely. Your
mistake was at the beginning: before leaving, you should have gone up to
some high point, and observed whether the wind was in the right quarter,
and of the right strength for a crossing to Corinth, not neglecting, by
the way, to secure the very best pilot obtainable, and a seaworthy craft
equal to so high a sea.

_Her_. Much better so, Lycinus. However, I know that, if you go the
whole round, you will find no better guides or more expert pilots than
the Stoics; if you mean ever to get to Corinth, you will follow them, in
the tracks of Chrysippus and Zeno. It is the only way to do it.

_Ly_. Ah, many can play at the game of assertion. Plato's fellow
traveller, Epicurus's follower, and all the rest, will tell me just what
you do, that I shall never get to Corinth except with whichever of them
it is. So I must either believe them all, or disbelieve impartially. The
latter is much the safest, until we have found out the truth.

Put a case, now: just as I am, as uncertain as ever which of the whole
number has the truth, I choose your school; I rely on you, who are my
friend, but who still know only the Stoic doctrine, and have not
travelled any way but that. Now some God brings Plato, Pythagoras,
Aristotle, and the rest to life again; they gather round and cross-
examine me, or actually sue me in court for constructive defamation;
_Good Lycinus_, they say, _what possessed or who induced you to
exalt Chrysippus and Zeno at our expense? we are far older established;
they are mere creatures of yesterday; yet you never gave us a hearing,
nor inquired into our statements at all_. Well, what am I to plead?
will it avail me to say I trusted my friend Hermotimus? I feel sure they
will say, _We know not this Hermotimus, who he is, nor he us; you had
no right to condemn us all, and give judgement by default against us, on
the authority of a man who knew only one of the philosophic roads, and
even that, perhaps, imperfectly. These are not the instructions issued to
juries, Lycinus; they are not to hear one party, and, refuse the other
permission to say what he deems advisable; they are to hear both sides
alike, with a view to the better sifting of truth from falsehood by
comparison of the arguments; if they fail in these duties, the law allows
an appeal to another court_. That is what we may expect them to say.

Then one of them might proceed to question me like this: _Suppose,
Lycinus, that an Ethiopian who had never been abroad in his life, nor
seen other men like us, were to state categorically in an Ethiopian
assembly that there did not exist on earth any white or yellow men--
nothing but blacks--, would his statement be accepted? or would some
Ethiopian elder remark, How do you know, my confident friend? you have
never been in foreign parts, nor had any experience of other nations. _
Shall I tell him the old man's question was justified? what do you
advise, my counsel?

_Her_. Say that, certainly; I consider the old man's rebuke quite
reasonable.

_Ly_. So do I. But I am not so sure you will approve what comes
next; as for me, I have as little doubt of that as of the other.

_Her_. What is it?

_Ly_. The next step will be the application; my questioner will say,
_Now Lycinus, let us suppose an analogue, in a person acquainted only
with the Stoic doctrine, like your friend Hermotimus; he has never
travelled in Plato's country, or to Epicurus, or any other land; now, if
he were to state that there was no such beauty or truth in those many
countries as there is in the Porch and its teaching, would you not be
justified in considering it bold of him to give you his opinion about
them all, whereas he knew only one, having never set foot outside the
bounds of Ethiopia? _ What reply do you advise to that?

_Her_. The perfectly true one, of course, that it is indeed the Stoic
doctrine that we study fully, being minded to sink or swim with that, but
still we do know what the others say also; our teacher rehearses the
articles of their beliefs to us incidentally, and demolishes them with his
comments.

_Ly_. Do you suppose the Platonists, Pythagoreans, Epicureans, and
other schools, will let that pass? or will they laugh out loud and say,
_What remarkable methods your friend has, Lycinus! he accepts our
adversaries' character of us, and gathers our doctrines from the
description of people who do not know, or deliberately misrepresent them.
If he were to see an athlete getting his muscles in trim by kicking high,
or hitting out at empty space as though he were getting a real blow home,
would he (in the capacity of umpire) at once proclaim him victor, because
he _could not help winning_? No; _he would reflect that these displays are
easy and safe, when there is no defence to be reckoned with, and that the
real decision must wait till he has beaten and mastered his opponent, and
the latter 'has had enough'. Well then, do not let Hermotimus suppose from
his teachers' sparrings with our shadows (for _we_ are not there) that
they have the victory, or that our doctrines are so easily upset; tell him
the business is too like the sand houses which children, having built them
weak, have no difficulty in overturning, or, to change the figure, like
people practising archery; they make a straw target, hang it to a post,
plant it a little way off, and then let fly at it; if they hit and get
through the straw, they burst into a shout, as if it were a great triumph
to have driven through the dry stuff. That is not the way the Persians
take, or those Scythian tribes which use the bow. Generally, when _they_
shoot, in the first place they are themselves mounted and in motion, and
secondly, they like the mark to be moving too; it is not to be stationary,
waiting for the arrival of the arrow, but passing at full speed; they can
usually kill beasts, and their marksmen hit birds. If it ever happens that
they want to test the actual impact on a target, they set up one of stout
wood, or a shield of raw hide; piercing that, they reckon that their
shafts will go through armour too. So, Lycinus, tell Hermotimus from us
that his teachers fierce straw targets, and then say they have disposed of
armed men; or paint up figures of us, spar at them, and, after a not
surprising success, think they have beaten us. But we shall severally
quote against them Achilles's words against Hector:

They dare not face the nodding of my plume. _

So say all of them, one after the other.

I suspect that Plato, with his intimate knowledge of Sicily, will add an
anecdote from there. Gelo of Syracuse had disagreeable breath, but did
not find it out himself for a long time, no one venturing to mention such
a circumstance to a tyrant. At last a foreign woman who had a connexion
with him dared to tell him; whereupon he went to his wife and scolded her
for never having, with all her opportunities of knowing, warned him of
it; she put in the defence that, as she had never been familiar or at
close quarters with any other man, she had supposed all men were like
that. So Hermotinus (Plato will say) after his exclusive association with
Stoics, cannot be expected to know the savour of other people's mouths.