Fourth Dealer And you, my poor fellow, what are you crying for? I must see what I can make of you. Heraclitus I am thinking, friend, upon human affairs; and well may I weep and lament, for the doom of all is sealed. Hence my compassion and my sorrow. For the present, I think not of it; but the future!—the future is all bitterness. Conflagration and destruction of the world. I weep to think that nothing abides, All things are whirled together in confusion. Pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, great and small; up and down they go, the playthings of Time. Fourth Dealer And what is Time? Heraclitus A child; and plays at draughts and blindman’s-buff. Fourth Dealer And men? Heraclitus Are mortal Gods. Fourth Dealer And Gods? Heraclitus Immortal men. Fourth Dealer So! Conundrums, fellow? Nuts to crack? You are a very oracle for obscurity. Heraclitus Your affairs do not interest me. Fourth Dealer No one will be fool enough to bid for you at that rate. Heraclitus Young and old, him that bids and him that bids not, a murrain seize you all! Fourth Dealer A sad case. He will be melancholy mad before long. Neither of these is the creed for my money. Heraclitus No one bids. Zeus Next lot. Heraclitus The Athenian there? Old Chatterbox? Zeus By all means. Heraclitus Come forward!—A good sensible creed this. Who buys Holiness? Fifth Dealer Let me see. What are you good for? Socrates I teach the art of love. Fifth Dealer A likely bargain for me! I want a tutor for my young Adonis. Socrates And could he have a better? The love I teach is of. the spirit, not of the flesh. Under my roof, be sure, a boy will come to no harm. Fifth Dealer Very unconvincing that. A teacher of the art of love, and never meddle with anything but the spirit? Never use the opportunities your office gives you?