Page:Lucian (IA lucianlucas00collrich).pdf/141

Rh examiner. He declares, with great truth and honesty, that his clever friend has succeeded, like many clever disputants, in making him, at all events, very uncomfortable, and that he heartily wishes he had never met him that morning in his quiet meditations. "You always were overbearing in argument, Lycinus; I don't know what harm Philosophy ever did you, that you hate her so, and make such a joke of us philosophers." "My dear Hermotimus," calmly replies his friend, "you and your master, being philosophers, ought to know more about Truth than I do: I only know this much,—she is not always pleasant to those who listen to her."

The Dialogue is extended to some length, but the neophyte Stoic fails to hold his ground. Lycinus argues that after all there comes no answer to that great question—'What is truth?' It may be, after all, that she is something different from anything yet discovered. All visions of her are but different guesses, and all the guesses may be wrong. And life is too short to waste in interminable speculations. "Words, words," are, in the opinion of Lycinus, the sum of the philosophy of the day, whereas life demands action. Hermotimus becomes convinced that he has hitherto been wasting his time; henceforth he will try to do his duty as a private citizen, and if lie meets a professor of philosophy in the street, will "avoid him as he would a mad dog."

Lucian is best remembered as a satirist and a jester, but this Dialogue is enough to prove to us that he was