26
All my difficulty lies here. For, whichever of them I approach, a man who stands at the beginning of each path at the entrance, a very trustworthy person, stretches out his hand, and urges me to go off along his road, and each one of them says that he alone knows the direct route and that the others are astray, since they have neither gone there themselves nor followed others able to lead them. If I go to his neighbour, he makes similar promises about his own road and vilifies the others. The man next to him acts similarly, and so do they all in turn. The number of roads, then, and the differences between them, and especially the way the guides over-strain themselves, each sect praising its own, worries me immoderately and makes me uncertain. I don’t know which way to turn or which one to follow to reach the city.
27
I will free you from your uncertainty. Trust those who have made the journey before, Lycinus, and you cannot go wrong.
27
Whom do you mean? Which road did they go? Which of the guides did they follow? The same uncertainty appears to us in another guise shifting from events to persons.
27
What do you mean?
27
That the man who took Plato’s path and had him for travelling-companion will obviously praise Plato’s route, and so with Epicurus’s and the rest and you with yours. What about it, Hermotimus? Is that not so?
27
Of course.
