45
Well, but you have only to choose, and you can let down your golden cord, and then every man of them With earth and sky and all thou canst draw up.
46
Blasphemer, have you ever been a voyage?
46
Many.
46
Well, then, thé wind struck the canvas and filled the sails, and it or the oars gave you way, but there was a person responsible for steering and for the safety of the ship?
46
Certainly.
46
Now that ship would not have sailed, without a steersman; and do you suppose that this great universe drifts unsteered and uncontrolled?
46
Good, this time, 'Timocles; a cogent illustration, that.
47
But, you pattern of piety, the earthly navigator makes bis plans, takes his measures, gives his orders, with a single eye to efficiency; there is nothing useless or purposeless on board 3 everything is to make navigation easy or possible; but as for the navigator for whom you claim the management of this vast ship, he and bis crew show no reason or appropriateness in any of their arrangements; the forestays, as likely as not, are made fast to the stern, and both sheets to the bows; the anchor will be gold, the beak lead, decoration below the water-line, and unsightliness above.
48
As for the men, you will find some lazy awkward coward in second or third command, or a fine swimmer, active as a cat aloft, and a handy man generally, chosen out of all the rest to—pump. It is just the same with the passengers: here is a gaolbird accommodated with a seat next the captain and treated with reverence, there a debauchee or parricide or temple-robber in honourable possession of the best place, while crowds of respectable people are packed together in a corner and hustled by their real inferiors. Consider what sort of a voyage Socrates and Aristides and Phocion had of it, on short rations, not venturing, for the filth, to stretch out their legs on the bare deck; and on the other hand what a comfortable, luxurious, contemptuous life it was for Callias or Midias or Sardanapalus.
