The Dead Come to Life, or the Fisherman (16-20)

You, my dears, may walk about in the Painted Porch meanwhile: I shall join you after concluding the trial.

Who are they, Philosophy? They too seem very mannerly.

This one with the masculine air is Virtue; yonder is Temperance, and there beside her Justice; the one in advance is Culture, and she that is faint and indistinct in colour is Truth.

I do not see which one you really mean.

Do you not see the unadorned one over there, naked, always shrinking into the background and slipping away?:

I can just see her now. But why not bring them also, in order that the meeting may be full and perfect? As to Truth, indeed, I wish to introduce her into the trial as an advocate.

To be sure. (To the others) Come with us also. It is not a hard matter to try a single case, particularly one that will involve our own interests.

You others go: I do not-need to hear what I have long known all about.

But it would help us, Truth, if you should join in the trial and give us information on each point.

Then shall I bring along these two waitingwomen, who are in very close sympathy with me?

Yes, indeed, as many as you wish.

Come with us, Liberty and Free-speech, so that we may be able to rescue this poor creature, our admirer, who is facing danger for no just reason. You, Investigation, may stay where you are.

Hold, my lady: let him come too, if anyone is to come. Those whom I shall have to fight to-day are none of your ordinary cattle, but pretentious fellows, hard to argue down, always finding some loophole or other, so that Investigation is necessary.

Yes, most necessary: and you had better take Proof along too.:

Come, all of you, since you appear to be necessary to the case.

Do you see that? He is suborning Truth against us, Philosophy.

Then you, Plato and Chrysippus and Aristotle, are afraid that she, Truth, may tell some lie ‘in his behalf?

It isn’t that, but he is terribly unprincipled and smooth-tongued, so that he will seduce her.

Have no fear. No injustice will be done while we have Justice here with us.

Let us go up, then. But tell me, what is your name?

Mine? Frankness, son of Truthful, son of Renowned Investigator.

And your country?

I am a Syrian, Philosophy, from the banks of the Euphrates. But what of that? I know that some of my opponents here are just as foreign-born as I: but in their manners and culture they are not like men of Soli or Cyprus or Babylon or Stageira.[*] Yet as far as you are concerned it would make no difference even if a man’s speech were foreign, if only his way of thinking were manifestly right and just.

True: it was a needless question, to be sure. But what is your calling? That at least is worth knowing.

Iam a bluff-hater, cheat-hater, liar-hater, vanityhater, and hate all that sort of scoundrels, who are very numerous, as you know.

Heracles! You follow a hateful calling!

You are right. You see, in fact, how many have come to dislike me and how I am imperilled because I follow it. However, I am very well up in the opposite calling, too: I mean the one with love for a base; for I am a truth-lover, a beauty-lover, a simplicitylover, and a lover of all else that is kindred to love. But there are very few who deserve to have this calling practised upon them, while those who come under the other and are closer akin to hatefulness number untold thousands. So the chances are that by this time I have lost my skill in the pne calling for lack of practice, but have become very expert in the other.

But that ought not to be so, for if a man can do the one, they say, he can do the other. So do not distinguish the two callings; they are but one, though they seem two.

You know best as to that, Philosophy. For my part, however, I am so-constituted as to hate rascals and to commend and love honest men.