7
Wisdom, courage, beauty itself, justice itself, the sure certainty of knowing everything as it really is. Riches and glories and pleasures and bodily things are all stripped off the climber and left down below before he makes his ascent. Think of the story of Heracles when he was burned and deified on Mount Oeta: he threw off the mortal part of him that came from his mother and flew up to heaven, taking the pure and unpolluted divine part with him, the part that the fire had separated off. So philosophy like a fire strips our climbers of all these things that the rest of mankind wrongly admires; they climb to the top and are happy; they never even remember wealth and glory and pleasures any more, and they laugh at those who believe them to be real.
8
By Heracles on Oeta, Hermotimus, you tell a brave and happy tale about them! But tell me this: do they ever come down from their hill-top (if that is their wish), to make use of what they have left down here below? Or must they stay there once they are up and live in Virtue’s company, laughing at wealth and glory and pleasures?
8
That is not all, Lycinus. A man who is perfected in Virtue can never be a slave to anger or fear or lusts; he will not know grief and in short he will not experience feelings of this sort any longer.
8
Well, if I must speak the truth without fear—but I had better keep quiet, I suppose; it would not be pious to question what wise men do.
8
Not at all. Please say what you mean.
8
Look, friend, how afraid I am!
8
Don’t be afraid, good Lycinus. You are speaking to me alone.
9
Well, I followed and believed most of what you said, Hermotimus, that they become wise and brave and just and so on; in a way your description held me in a sort of spell. But when you said they despised riches and glory and pleasures and were not angry or grieved, there (we are alone) I came to a stop. I remembered something I saw a certain person doing the other day—shall I name him? Or is it enough to leave him anonymous?
