Granted, Lycinus. What next? Must we live a hundred years and have all that trouble? Is there no other way of studying philosophy?

No, Hermotimus. Nor need we complain if what you said at first is true: that life is short and art is long. And now I don’t understand why you are distressed if you cannot become a Chrysippus or a Plato or a Pythagoras today before sunset.

You hedge me round, Lycinus, and drive me into a corner, although I have done you no harm. Clearly you are doing this from spite, because I have made progress in my studies while you have neglected yourself—at your age too.

Do you know what? Take no notice of my ravings, but leave me to my silly chatter, and you go on your way as you are and finish what you decided to do in the first place.

You are so compulsive that you do not let me make any choice unless I try them all.

Well, you may be sure that I shall never say anything else. When you call me compulsive you seem to me to be blaming the innocent, as the poet says; Homer, Il., 11, 654. for I myself, as long as no other argument comes to your aid to release you from the compulsion, am at present a helpless captive. But look, the argument is going to bring much greater pressure to bear on you, but perhaps you will ignore that and blame me.

How? I should be surprised if it had anything left to say.

It says that to inspect and to investigate everything is not sufficient to give you the power to choose the best. No, the most important thing is still lacking.

I hesitate to tell you, Hermotimus, that even this is not enough. No, I think we deceived ourselves when we thought we had found safety: we have found no safety at all. We are like fishermen who often when they have let down their nets feel something heavy, and so haul in expecting a huge catch of fish; then when they are tired with their pulling they see a stone or a jar packed with sand. I am afraid we have hauled up something like that.

I don’t know what these nets of yours mean: you have certainly caught me in them.

Then try to get out. If anybody knows how to swim, you do—thanks to god’s help. Now, even if we go round all the sects making our tests, and eventually complete our enquiry, I don’t think it will even yet be certain whether any one of them has what we are looking for, or whether all alike are ignorant of it.

What do you mean? Not one of them?

It is debatable. Do you think it impossible that all are wrong, and that the truth may be something different, something which none of them has yet found?

How could that be possible?

In this way. Suppose our true number to be twenty. Now let someone take twenty beans in his hand, and then close it and ask any ten people how many beans he has in his hand. Suppose one man guesses seven, another five, another thirty, some other ten or fifteen, in short every one differently; nevertheless it is possible for someone by some chance to guess the truth, isn’t it?

Yes.

Yet it is not at all impossible for everyone to guess different numbers and for all these numbers to be wrong and untrue, and for not one of them to say that the man has twenty beans. Do you agree?

It is not impossible.

In the same way, then, all those who study philosophy are trying to find out what happiness is, and each one says it is something different—pleasure, beauty, and all the other things they say about it. Very likely one of these things is happiness, but it is not unlikely that it is something quite different from every one of them. We seem to have gone in the wrong direction, hastening to the end before we have found the beginning. We should first, I think, have ascertained that the truth has been discovered, and that one or other of the philosophers really has knowledge of it. Then the next step would be to find out whom to believe.

This is what you are saying, then, Lycinus, that even if we go through all philosophy, we shall not even then really be able to discover the truth.

From what you say we shall never find it or be philosophers. We shall have to give up philosophy and live a layman’s life. At least it follows from what you say that philosophy for a human being is impossible and unattainable. For you say that whoever is going to practise philosophy must first choose the best philosophy, and the choice would be correct in your view only if the truest were chosen after going through the whole field. Then you calculated the number of years required for each and went beyond all bounds, stretching it to cover several generations, so that the search for truth exceeded any man’s lifetime. Finally you show that even this is not beyond doubt when you say it is not certain whether any of the old philosophers found the truth or not.

Could you, Hermotimus, guarantee on oath that they have found it?

No, I could not.

Yet how many other things have I purposely omitted which call for long examination!

What sort of things?

Don’t you hear some of the Stoics or Epicureans or Platonists say that, while some of them know all the doctrines, others do not, although in other respects they are quite reliable?

True enough.

Then do you not think it a very laborious business to separate and differentiate those who know from those who do not know but say they know?

Very.

Then if you are going to know the best Stoic you must go and make trial of most of them if not all, and take the best as your teacher, first training yourself and acquiring the power of criticism in such matters, to prevent your preferring inadvertently an inferior one. Just think how much time it needs! I left this out on purpose not to annoy you, and yet in matters of this sort I think it is the one most important requirement in such matters—I mean where there is uncertainty and doubt. And this is the only sure and firm hope you have for truth and its discovery. There is no hope whatsoever apart from the ability to judge and separate the false from the true, and like assayers of silver to distinguish the sound and genuine metal from the counterfeit. Were you to come to your examination of the doctrines with some such power and skill, all would be well; if not, you can be sure that nothing will save you from being dragged by the nose by them all or from following a leafy branch in front of you as sheep do; you will be like water spilt on a table, running whithersoever someone pulls you by the tip of his finger, or indeed like a reed growing on a river bank, bending to every breath of wind, however slight the breeze that blows and shakes it.