6
Hermotimus God forbid! these are words of ill omen, Lycinus; may life be granted me, that I may grow wise, and have if it be but one day of Happiness!
6
Lycinus For all these toils will you be content with your one day?
6
Hermotimus Content? yes, or with the briefest moment of it.
7
Lycinus But is there indeed Happiness up there—and worth all the pains? How can you tell? You have never been up yourself.
7
Hermotimus I trust my master’s word; and he knows well; is he not on the topmost height?
7
Lycinus Oh, do tell me what he says about it; what is Happiness like? wealth, glory, pleasures incomparable?
7
Hermotimus Hush, friend! all these have nought to do with the Virtuous life.
7
Lycinus Well, if these will not do, what are the good things he offers to those who carry their course right through?
7
Hermotimus Wisdom, courage, true beauty, justice, full and firm knowledge of all things as they are; but wealth and glory and pleasure and all bodily things — these a man strips off and abandons before he mounts up, like Heracles burning on Mount Oeta before deification; he too cast off whatever of the human he had from his mother, and soared up to the Gods with his divine part pure and unalloyed, sifted by the fire. Even so those I speak of are purged by the philosophic fire of all that deluded men count admirable, and reaching the summit have Happiness with never a thought of wealth and glory and pleasure—except to smile at any who count them more than phantoms.
7
Lycinus
8
By Heracles (and his death on Oeta), they quit themselves like men, and have their reward, it seems. But there is one thing I should like to know: are they allowed to come down from their elevation sometimes, and have a taste of what they left behind them? or when they have once got up, must they stay there, conversing with Virtue, and smiling at wealth and glory and pleasure?
