72
But, my dear friend, do not feel like that towards me, if I, a friend, did not let you spend all your life in a dream, albeit a sweet one, digging up treasure, flying, inventing extravagant visions, and hoping for what was beyond reach, or if again I tell you to get up and carry out your daily tasks and adopt a course that will keep your mind in future on the trivalities of the common life. For what you have recently been working at and planning is no different from Hippocentaurs and Chimaeras and Gorgons and all the other images that belong to dreams and to poets and painters with their artistic licence—fancies that have never existed and can never exist. Nevertheless the vast majority of mankind believe them and they are enchanted when they see or hear things of this sort, because they are strange and monstrous.
73
You too have heard from some storyteller of a woman of surpassing beauty, beyond the Graces themselves or Heavenly Aphrodite; and, although you had not first asked whether he was telling the truth and whether this woman existed anywhere in the world, you fell in love with her at once, as they say Medea fell in love with Jason from a dream. But what above all brought you to this love—and has brought all who are in love with the same vision as you—was, I should guess, this: when he had told you about the woman and his first sketch had won your belief, he proceeded to fill in the details. You looked at nothing else, and so, when once you had let him get the first grip, he dragged you all by the nose and led you to the beloved by what he said was a straight path. The rest, I fancy, was easy: not one of you turned back to the entrance and enquired whether it was the true one and whether he had made a mistake and should not have entered; no, you followed in the steps of those who had made the journey before you, like sheep following their leader, although you should have considered at the entrance right at the beginning whether you ought to enter in there.
