SIMON 
Well, that it excels all put together, I think I


 

have demonstrated. Come now, let us see how it
excels each individually. To compare it with the
vulgar arts is silly, and, in a way, more appropriate
to someone who is trying to belittle its dignity. We
must prove that it excels the finest and greatest
of them. It is universally admitted that rhetoric and
philosophy, which some people even make out to be
sciences because of their nobility, are the greatest.
Therefore, if I should prove that Parasitic is far
superior to these, obviously it will appear preeminent
among the other arts, like Nausicaa among her
handmaidens. Odyssey6, 102-109. 
 
It excels both rhetoric and philosophy, in the first
place in its objective reality; for it has this, and they
have not. We do not hold one and the same view
about rhetoric; some of us call it an art, some a
want of art, others a depraved art, and others something else. So too with philosophy, which is not
uniform and consistent; for Epicurus has on opinion
about things, the Stoics another, the Academics
another, the Peripatetics another; in brief, everybody claims that philosophy is something different,
and up to now, at all events, it cannot be said either
that the same men control opinion or that their art
is one. By this it is clear what conclusion remains to
be drawn. I maintain that there can be no art at all
which has not objective reality. For how else can you


 

explain it that arithmetic is one and the same, and
twice two is four not only here but in Persia, and
all its doctrines are in tune not only in Greece but
in strange lands, yet we see many different philosophies, all of them out of tune both in their beginnings and in their ends?
 TYCHIADES 
You are right: they say philosophy is one, but
they themselves make it many.
 SIMON 
As far as the other arts are concerned, if there
should be some discord in them, one might pass it
over, thinking it excusable, since they are subordinate and their knowledges are not exempt from
change. But who could endure that philosophy
should not be one, and in better tune with itself
than a musical instrument? Well now, philosophy
is not one, for I see that it is infinitely many; yet
it cannot be many, for wisdom is one.
 
The same can be said, too, of the objective reality
of rhetoric. When all do not express the same views
about one subject, but there is a battle royal of contradictory declarations, that is the greatest proot
that the subject of which there is not a single definite conception does not exist at all; for to enquire
whether it is this rather than that, and never to agree

 

that it is one, does away with the very existence of
the subject that is questioned.
 
This is not the case, however, with Parasitic.
Both among Greeks and among foreigners it is one
and uniform and consistent, and nobody can say that
it is practised in one way by this set of men and in
another by that set. Nor are there, it seems, among
parasites any sects like the Stoics or the Epicureans,
holding different doctrines; no, there is concord
among them all, and agreement in their works and
in their end. So to my thinking Parasitic may well
be, in this respect at least, actually wisdom.