Ἑρμότιμος ἢ Περὶ Αἱρέσεων

Lines

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İngilizce İngilizce Yunanca Yunanca

60 Then how could you have known the whole from just the first taste? There were not the same, but always new things being said on new subjects, unlike wine, which is always the same. So, my friend, unless you drink the whole butt, your tipsiness has been to no purpose; god seems to me to have hidden the good of philosophy right down at the bottom beneath the very lees. You will have to drain it all to the end or you will never find that divine drink for which I think you have long thirsted. But you imagine it to be such that, if you were but to taste and draw just a drop, you would at once become all-wise, as, they say, the prophetess at Delphi becomes inspired as soon as she drinks of the sacred spring and gives her answers to those who consult the oracle. But it seems it is not so: you had drunk over half the butt, and you said that you were still at the beginning.

61 Perhaps philosophy is more like this: still keep your butt and your dealer, but no wine; rather take an assortment of cereals—wheat on top, then beans, then barley, and, beneath the barley, lentils, then chickpeas, and other kinds of seeds as well. You come in wishing to buy some of the cereals. He has taken out a pinch of the wheat from where the wheat was and has given you a sample in your hand to examine. Now could you say by looking at that sample whether the peas were pure, the lentils tender, and the beans not completely empty?

61 Not at all.