Goodness, Hermotimus, how sure you sound when you affirm that you can know the whole from the parts! And yet I remember hearing just the opposite, that if you know the whole you know the part as well, while if you know only the part, it does not follow now that you know the whole. Tell me this: would Phidias when he saw the lion’s claw ever have known that it belonged to a lion, if he had never seen a whole lion? If you saw a human hand, could you have said that it belonged to a man if you had not previously known or seen a man? Why do you not answer? Am I to give the only possible answer for you, that you could not have said it? It looks as though Phidias has retired unsuccessful and has modelled his lion in vain; clearly he is saying what has nothing to do with Dionysus! I.e., irrelevant. Epigenes of Sicyon, a tragic poet, is said to have been upbraided by his audience for introducing into the worship of Dionysus themes which had nothing to do with the god. Or what comparison is there? Both Phidias and you yourself had no other means of recognising the parts than your knowledge of the whole—I mean the whole man and lion; and in a philosophy (the Stoic, for instance) how can you by knowing a part see the rest as well? How can you prove the rest beautiful? You see, you do not know the whole of which they are parts.

As to your contention that it is easy in a small part of a day to hear the essentials of all philosophies (I suppose you mean their principles and ends, their views of the gods and the soul, who say that everything is corporeal, who assert that immaterial things also exist, the fact that some identify “pleasure,” others “the beautiful “with goodness and happiness, and so on), after a hearing of this sort it is easy and no trouble to state the facts; but to know which is the one that is telling the truth will surely require not part of a day but many days. If not, why on earth have they all written books by the hundreds and thousands on these very subjects, to prove the truth, I suppose, of these very parts, those few parts, which you think easy and soon learnt? Here too, I fancy, you will have need of a prophet to help you choose the best, unless you spend time on accurate selection and make a personal and detailed study of all and everything. It would certainly be a short cut with no complications or delays if you sent for a prophet, listened to the essentials of them all, and sacrificed for each one: the god will save you a great deal of trouble if he reveals in the victim’s liver the choice you must make..