Diogenes. When Humanity is averse to Truth, a fig for her!

Plato. Many, who profess themselves her votaries, have made her a less costly offering.

Diogenes. Thou hast said well, and I will treat thee gently for it.

Plato. I may venture then in defence of my compositions, to argue that neither simple metaphysics nor strict logic would be endured long together in a dialogue.

Diogenes. Few people can endure them any where; but whatever is contradictory to either is intolerable. The business of a good writer is to make them pervade his works, without obstruction to his force or impediment to his facility; to divest them of their forms, and to mingle their potency in every particle. I must acknowledge that, in matters of love, thy knowledge is twice as extensive as mine is: yet nothing I ever heard is so whimsical and silly as thy description of its effects upon the soul, under the influence of beauty. The wings of the soul, thou tellest us, are bedewed; and certain germs of theirs expand from every part of it.

The only thing I know about the soul is, that it makes the ground slippery under us when we discourse on it, by virtue (I presume) of this bedewing; and beauty does not assist us materially in rendering our steps the steadier.

Plato. Diogenes! you are the only man that admires not the dignity and stateliness of my expressions.

Diogenes. Thou hast many admirers; but either they never have read thee, or do not understand thee, or are fond of fallacies, or are incapable of detecting them. I would rather hear the murmur of insects in the grass than the clatter and trilling of cymbals and timbrels over-head. The tiny animals I watch with composure, and guess their business: the brass awakes me only to weary me I wish it under ground again, and the parchment on the sheep's back.

Plato. My sentences, it is acknowledged by all good judges, are well constructed and harmonious. Diogenes. I admit it: I have also heard it said that thou art eloquent.

Plato. If style, without elocution, can be. Diogenes. Neither without nor with elocution is there eloquence, where there is no ardour, no impulse, no energy, no concentration. Eloquence raises the whole man: thou raisest our eyebrows only. We wonder, we applaud, we walk away, and we forget. Thy eggs are very prettily speckled; but those which men use for their sustenance are plain white ones. People do not every day put on their smartest dresses; they are not always in trim for dancing, nor are they practising their

Plato. Which would not always be the case if the occulter operations of the human mind were the subject.

Diogenes. If what is occult must be occult for ever, why throw away words about it? Employ on every occasion the simplest and easiest, and range them in the most natural order. Thus they will serve thee faithfully, bringing thee many hearers and readers from the intellectual and uncorrupted. All popular orators, victorious commanders, crowned historians, and poets above crowning, have done it. Homer, for the glory of whose birthplace none but the greatest cities dared contend, is alike the highest and the easiest in poetry. Herodotus, who brought into Greece more knowledge of distant countries than any or indeed than all before him, is the plainest and gracefulest in prose. Aristoteles, thy scholar, is possessor of a long and lofty treasury, with many windings and many vaults at the sides of them, abstruse and dark. He is unambitious of displaying his wealth; and few are strong-wristed enough to turn the key of his iron chests. Whenever he presents to his reader one full-blown thought, there are several buds about it which are to open in the cool of the study; and he makes you learn more than he teaches.

Plato. I can never say that I admire his language.

Diogenes. Thou wilt never say it; but thou dost. His language, where he wishes it to be harmonious, is highly so: and there are many figures of speech exquisitely beautiful, but simple and unobtrusive. You see what a fine head of hair he might have if he would not cut it so short. Is there as much true poetry in all thy works, prose and verse, as in that Scolion of his on Virtue?

Plato. I am less invidious than he is.

Diogenes. He may indeed have caught the infection of malignity, which all who live in the crowd, whether of a court or a school, are liable to contract. We had dismissed that question : we had buried the mortal and corruptible part of him, and were looking into the litter which contains his true and everlasting effigy and this effigy the strongest and noblest minds will carry by relays to interminable generations. We were speaking of his thoughts and what conveys them. His language then, in good truth, differs as much from that which we find in thy dialogues, as wine in the goblet differs from wine spilt upon the table. With thy leave, I would rather drink than lap.

Plato. Methinks such preference is contrary to your nature.

Diogenes. Ah, Plato! I ought to be jealous of thee, finding that two in this audience can smile at thy wit, and not one at mine.

Plato. I would rather be serious, but that my seriousness is provocative of your moroseness.

Detract from me as much as can be detracted by the most hostile to my philosophy, still it is beyond the power of any man to suppress or to conceal from the admiration of the world the amplitude and grandeur of my language.

Diogenes. Thou remindest me of a cavern I once entered. The mouth was spacious; and many dangling weeds and rampant briers caught me by the hair above, and by the beard below, and flapped my face on each side. I found it in some places flat and sandy; in some rather miry; in others I bruised my shins against little pointed pinnacles, or larger and smoother round stones. Many were the windings, and deep the darkness. Several men came forward with long poles and lighted torches on them, promising to show innumerable gems, on the roof and along the sides, to some ingenuous youths whom they conducted. I thought I was lucky, and went on among them. Most of the gems turned out to be drops of water; but some were a little more solid. These, however, in general, gave way and crumbled under the touch and most of the remainder lost all their brightness by the smoke of the torches underneath. The farther I went in, the fouler grew the air and the dimmer the torchlight. Leaving it, and the youths, and the guides, and the long poles, I stood a moment in wonder at the vast number of names and verses graven at the opening, and forbore to insert the ignoble one of Diogenes.

The vulgar indeed and the fashionable do call such language as thine the noblest and most magnificent the scholastic bend over it in paleness, and with the right hand upon the breast, at its unfathomable depth: but what would a man of plain simple sound understanding say upon it? what would a metaphysician? what would a logician? what would Pericles? Truly, he had taken thee by the arm, and kissed that broad well-perfumed forehead, for filling up with light (as thou wouldst say) the dimple in the cheek of Aspasia, and for throwing such a gadfly in the current of her conversation. She was of a different sect from thee both in religion and in love, and both her language and her dress were plainer. Plato. She, like yourself, worshipped no deity in public and probably both she and Aristoteles find the more favour with you from the laxity of their opinions in regard to the Powers above. The indifference of Aristoteles to religion may perhaps be the reason why king Philip bespoke him so early for the tuition of his successor; on whom, destined as he is to pursue the conquests of the father, moral and religious obligations might be incommodious.

Diogenes. Kings who kiss the toes of the most gods, and the most zealously, never find any such incommodiousness. In courts, religious ceremonies cover with their embroidery moral obligations; and the most dishonest and the most libidinous and the most sanguinary kings (to say nothing of private men) have usually been the most punctual worshippers.

Plato. There may be truth in these words. We however know your contempt for religious acts and ceremonies, which, if you do not comply with them, you should at least respect, by way of an example.

Diogenes. What! if a man lies to me, should I respect the lie for the sake of an example! Should I be guilty of duplicity, for the sake of an example! Did I ever omit to attend the Thesmophoria? the only religious rite worthy of a wise man's attendance. It displays the union of industry and law. Here is no fraud, no fallacy, no filching: the gods are worshipped for their best gifts, and do not stand with open palms for ours. I neither laugh nor wonder at anyone's folly. To laugh at it, is childish or inhuman, a cording to its nature; and to wonder at it, would be a greater folly than itself, whatever it may be. Must I go on with incoherencies and inconsistencies?

Plato. I am not urgent with you.

Diogenes. Then I will reward thee the rather. Thou makest poor Socrates tell us that a beautiful vase is inferior to a beautiful horse; and as a beautiful horse is inferior to a beautiful maiden, in like manner a beautiful maiden is inferior in beauty to the immortal gods.

Plato. No doubt, O Diogenes!

Diogenes. Thou hast whimsical ideas of beanty: but, understanding the word as all Athenians and all inhabitants of Hellas understand it, there is no analogy between a horse and a vase. Understanding it as thou perhaps mayest choose to do on the occasion, understanding it as applicable to the service and utility of man and gods, the vase may be applied to more frequent and more noble purposes than the horse. It may delight men in health; it may administer to them in sickness; it may pour out before the protectors of families and of cities the wine of sacrifice. But if it is the quality and essence of beauty to gratify the sight, there are certainly more persons who can receive gratification from the appearance of a beautiful vase than a beautiful horse. Xerxes brought into Hellas with him thousands of beautiful horses and many beautiful vases. Supposing now that all the horses which were beautiful seemed so to all good judges of their symmetry, it is probable that scarcely one man in fifty would fix his eyes attentively on one horse in fifty; but undoubtedly there were vases in the tents of Xerxes which would have attracted all the eyes in the army and have filled them with admiration. I say nothing of the women, who in Asiatic armies are as numerous as the men, and who would every one admire the vases, while few admired the horses. Yet women are as good judges of what is beautiful as thou art, and for the most part on the same principles. But, repeating that there is no analogy between the two objects, I must insist that there can be no just comparison: and I trust I have clearly demonstrated that the postulate is not to be conceded. We will nevertheless carry on the argument and examination, for "the

beautiful virgin is inferior in beauty to the im-\ mortal gods." Is not Vulcan an immortal god? are not the Furies and Discord immortal goddesses? Ay, by my troth are they; and there never was any city and scarcely any family on earth to which they were long invisible. Wouldst thou prefer them to a golden cup, or even to'a cup from the potter's? Would it require one with a dance of Bacchanals under the pouting rim? would it require one foretasted by Agathon? Let us descend from the deities to the horses. Thy dress is as well adapted to horsemanship as thy words are in general to discourse. Such as thou art, would run out of the horse's way; and such as know thee best, would put the vase out of thine. Plato. So then, I am a thief, it appears, not only of men's notions, but of their vases!

Diogenes. I believe thee: but done it thou hast. The language of Socrates was Attic and simple: he hated the verbosity and refinement of wranglers and rhetoricians; and never would he have attributed to Aspasia, who thought and spoke like Pericles, and whose elegance and judgment thou thyself hast commended, the chaff and litter thou hast tossed about with so much wind and wantonness, in thy dialogue of Menexenus. Now, to omit the other fooleries in it, Aspasia would have laughed to scorn the most ignorant of her tire-women, who should have related to her the story thou tellest in her name, about the march of the Persians round the territory of Eretria. This narrative seems to thee so happy an attempt at history, that thou betrayest no small fear lest the reader should take thee at thy word, and lest Aspasia should in reality rob thee or Socrates of the glory due for it.

Plato. Where lies the fault?

Diogenes. If the Persians had marched, as thou describest them, forming a circle, and from sea to sea, with their hands joined together; fourscore shepherds with their dogs, their rams, and their bell-wethers, might have killed them all, coming against them from points well-chosen. As however great part of the Persians were horsemen, which thou appearest to have quite forgotten, how could they go in single line with their hands

the backs of their horses, and unless the horses

Diogenes. Visible beauty? beauty cognizable in the same sense as of vases and of horses? beauty that in degree and in quality can be compared with theirs? Is there any positive proof that the gods possess it? and all of them? and all equally? Are there any points of resemblance between Jupiter and the daughter of Acrisius? any between Hatè and Hebe? whose sex being the same brings them somewhat nearer. In like manner thou confoundest the harmony of music with symmetry in what is visible and tangible: and thou teachest the stars how to dance to their own compositions, enlivened by fugues and variations from thy master-hand. This, in the opinion of thy boy scholars, is sublimity! Truly it is the sublimity which he attains who is hurled into the air from a ballista. Changing my ground, and perhaps to thy advantage, in the name of Socrates I come forth against thee; not for using him as a widemouthed mask, stuffed with gibes and quibbles; not for making him the most sophistical of sophists, or (as thou hast done frequently) the most improvident of statesmen and the worst of citizens; my accusation and indictment is, for representing him, who had distinguished himself on the field of battle above the bravest and most experienced of the Athenian leaders (particularly at Delion and Potidea), as more ignorant of warfare than the worst-fledged crane that fought against the Pygmies.

Plato. I am not conscious of having done it.

other? Even then the line would be interrupted, and only two could join hands. A pretty piece of net-work is here! and the only defect I can find in it is, that it would help the fish to catch the fisherman.

Plato. This is an abuse of wit, if there be any wit in it.

Diogenes. I doubt whether there is any; for the only man that hears it does not smile. We will be serious then. Such nonsense, delivered in a school of philosophy, might be the less derided; but it is given us as an oration, held before an Athenian army, to the honour of those who fell in battle. The beginning of the speech is cold and languid: the remainder is worse; it is learned and scholastic.

Plato. Is learning worse in oratory than languor?

Diogenes. Incomparably, in the praises of the dead who died bravely, played off before those who had just been fighting in the same ranks. What we most want in this business is sincerity; what we want least are things remote from the action. Men may be cold by nature, and languid from exhaustion, from grief itself, from watchfulness, from pity; but they cannot be idling and wandering about other times and nations, when their brothers and sons and bosom-friends are brought lifeless into the city, and the least inquisitive, the least sensitive, are hanging immovably over their recent wounds. Then burst forth their names from the full heart; their father's names

Diogenes. How ready we all are with our praises when a cake is to be divided; if it is not ours!

Plato. According to your numeration, the great men are scanty: and pray, O Diogenes! are they always at hand?

Diogenes. Prominent men always are. Catch them and hold them fast, when thou canst find none better. Whoever hath influenced the downfall or decline of a commonwealth, whoever hath altered in any degree its social state, should be brought before the high tribunal of history.

Plato. Very mean intellects have accomplished these things. Not only battering-rams have loosened the walls of cities, but foxes and rabbits have done the same. Vulgar and vile men have been elevated to power by circumstances: would you introduce the vulgar and vile into the pages you expect to be immortal?

Diogenes. They never can blow out immortality. Criminals do not deform by their presence the strong and stately edifices in which they are incarcerated. I look above them and see the image of Justice: I rest my arm against the plinth where the protectress of cities raises her spear by the judgment-seat. Thou art not silent on the vile; but delightest in bringing them out before us, and in reducing their betters to the same condition.

Plato. I am no writer of history.

Diogenes. Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may. He carries with him for thousands of years a portion of his times and indeed if only his own effigy were there, it would be greatly more than a fragment of his country.

In all thy writings I can discover no mention of Epaminondas, who vanquished thy enslavers the Lacedæmonians; nor of Thrasybulus, who expelled the murderers of thy preceptor. Whenever thou again displayest a specimen of thy historical researches, do not utterly overlook the fact that these excellent men were living in thy days; that they fought against thy enemies; that they rescued thee from slavery; that thou art indebted to them for the whole estate of this interminable robe, with its valleys and hills and wastes; for these perfumes that overpower all mine; and moreover for thy house, thy grove, thy auditors, thy admirers, and thy admired.

Plato. Thrasybulus, with many noble qualities, had great faults.

Diogenes. Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.

Plato. Epaminondas was undoubtedly a mo

Plato. I acknowledge his magnanimity, his integrity, his political skill, his military services, and, above all, his philosophical turn of mind: but, since his countrymen, who knew him best, have until recently been silent on the transcendency of his merits, I think I may escape from obloquy in leaving them unnoticed. His glorious death appears to have excited more enthusiastic acclamation than his patriotic heroism.

Diogenes. The sun colours the sky most deeply and most diffusely when he hath sunk below the horizon; and they who never said "How beneficently he shines!" say at last, "How brightly he set!" They who believe that their praise gives immortality, and who know that it gives celebrity and distinction, are iniquitous and flagitious in withdrawing it from such exemplary men, such self-devoted citizens, as Epaminondas and Thra sybulus.

Great writers are gifted with that golden wand which neither ages can corrode nor violence rend asunder, and are commanded to point with it toward the head (be it lofty or low) which nations are to contemplate and to revere.

Plato. I should rather have conceived from you that the wand ought to designate those who merit the hatred of their species.

Diogenes. This too is another of its offices, no less obligatory and sacred.

Plato. Not only have I particularized such faults as I could investigate and detect, but in that historical fragment, which I acknowledge to be mine (although I left it in abeyance between Socrates and Aspasia), I have lauded the courage and conduct of our people.

Diogenes. Thou recountest the glorious deeds of the Athenians by sea and land, staidly and circumstantially, as if the Athenians themselves, or any nation of the universe, could doubt them. Let orators do this when some other shall have rivalled them; which, as it never hath happened in the myriads of generations that have passed away, is never likely to happen in the myriads that will follow. From Asia, from Africa, fifty nations came forward in a body, and assailed the citizens of one scanty city: fifty nations filed from before them. All the wealth and power of the world, all the civilisation, all the barbarism, were leagued against Athens; the ocean was covered with their pride and spoils; the earth trembled. mountains were severed, distant coasts united: Athens gave to Nature her own again; and equal laws were the unalienable dowry brought by Liberty to the only men capable of her defence or her enjoyment. Did Pericles, did Aspasia did Socrates foresee, that the descendents of those, whose heroes and gods were at best but like them, should enter into the service of Persian satraps, and become the parasites of Sicilian kings?

Plato. Pythagoras, the most temperate and retired of mortals, entered the courts of princes. Diogenes. True; he entered them and cleansed them his breath was lustration; his touch purified. He persuaded the princes of Italy to renounce their self-constituted and unlawful authority in effecting which purpose, thou must acknowledge, O Plato! that either he was more eloquent than thou art, or that he was juster. If, being in the confidence of a usurper, which in itself is among the most heinous of crimes, since they virtually are outlaws, thou never gavest him such counsel at thy ease and leisure, as Pythagoras gave at the peril of his life, thou in this likewise wert wanting to thy duty as an Athenian, a republican, a philosopher. If thou offeredst it, and it was rejected, and after the rejection thou yet tarriedst with him, then wert thou, friend Plato! an importunate sycophant and self-bound slave.

Plato. I never heard that you blamed Euripides in this manner for frequenting the court of Archelaus.

Diogenes. I have heard thee blame him for it; and this brings down on thee my indignation. Poets, by the constitution of their minds, are neither acute reasoners nor firmly minded. Their vocation was allied to sycophancy from the beginning: they sang at the tables of the rich: and he who could not make a hero could not make a dinner. Those who are possessed of enthusiasm are fond of everything that excites it: hence poets are fond of festivals, of wine, of beauty, and of glory. They can not always make their selection; and generally they are little disposed to make it, from indolence of character. Theirs partakes less than others of the philosophical and the heroic. What wonder if Euripides hated those who deprived him of his right, in adjudging the prize of tragedy to his competitors? From hating the arbitrators who committed the injustice, he proceeded to hate the people who countenanced it. The whole frame of government is bad to those who have suffered under any part. Archelaus praised Euripides' poetry: he therefore liked Archelaus: the Athenians bantered his poetry: therefore he disliked the Athenians. Beside, he could not love those who killed his friend and teacher: if thou canst, I hope thy love may be for ever without a rival.

Plato. He might surely have found, in some republic of Greece, the friend who would have sympathized with him.

Diogenes. He might: nor have I any more inclination to commend his choice than thou hast right to condemn it. Terpander and Thales and Pherecydes were at Sparta with Lycurgus: and thou too, Plato, mightst have found in Greece a wealthy wise man ready to receive thee, or (where words are more acceptable) an unwise wealthy one. Why dost thou redden and bite thy lip? Wouldst thou rather give instruction, or not give it?

Plato. I would rather give it, where I could. Diogenes. Wouldst thou rather give it to those

who have it already, and do not need it, or to those who have it not, and do need it? Plato. To these latter.

Diogenes. Impart it then to the unwise; and to those who are wealthy in preference to the rest, as they require it most, and can do most good with it.

Plato. Is not this a contradiction to your own precepts, O Diogenes! Have you not been censuring me, I need not say how severely, for my intercourse with Dionysius? and yet surely he was wealthy, surely he required the advice of a philospher, surely he could have done much good with it.

Diogenes. An Athenian is more degraded by becoming the counseller of a king, than a king is degraded by becoming the schoolmaster of paupers in a free city. Such people as Dionysius are to be approached by the brave and honest from two motives only to convince them of their inutility, or to slay them for their iniquity. Our fathers and ourselves have witnessed in more than one country the curses of kingly power. All nations, all cities, all communities, should enter into one great hunt, like that of the Scythians at the approach of winter, and should follow it up unrelentingly to its perdition. The diadem should designate the victim: all who wear it, all who offer it, all who bow to it, should perish. The smallest, the poorest, the least accessible village, whose cottages are indistinguishable from the rocks around, should offer a reward for the heads of these monsters, as for the wolf's, the kite's, and the viper's.

Thou tellest us, in thy fourth book on Polity, that it matters but little whether a state be governed by many or one, if the one is obedient to the laws. Why hast not thou likewise told us, that it little matters whether the sun bring us heat or cold, if he ripens the fruits of the earth by cold as perfectly as by heat? Demonstrate that he does it, and I subscribe to the proposition. Demonstrate that kings, by their nature and education, are obedient to the laws; bear them patiently; deem them no impediment to their wishes, designs, lusts, violences; that a whole series of monarchs hath been of this character and condition, wherever a whole series hath been permitted to continue; that under them independence of spirit, dignity of mind, rectitude of conduct, energy of character, truth of expression, and even lower and lighter things, eloquence, poetry, sculpture, painting, have flourished more exuberantly than among the free. On the contrary, some of the best princes have rescinded the laws they themselves introduced and sanctioned. Impatient of restraint and order are even the quiet and inert of the species.

Plato. There is a restlessness in inactivity: we must find occupation for kings.

Diogenes. Open the fold to them and they will find it themselves: there will be plenty of heads and shanks on the morrow. I do not see why those who, directly or indirectly, would promote

Н Н