The Scythian or Consul (69)

So find a competent teacher to give you instruction in demonstration and the art of distinguishing matters in dispute, and you will certainly find an end to your difficulties. At once the best will be clear to you, truth and falsehood will be proved under the scrutiny of this art of demonstration, and you will make a sound choice, and having made your judgment you will practise philosophy, and you will have won your thrice-desired happiness and live with her, possessing all good things in one package.

Well done, Lycinus! What you say is far better and full of great hopes. We must look for a man, it seems, who will make us able to judge and to distinguish and able in the highest degree to prove a case. What follows will be easy now and no trouble, and it will not need much time. Now I am indeed grateful to you for finding this excellent short-cut for us.

No, you certainly have no reason to be grateful to me yet. I have discovered and told you nothing to bring you nearer to your hope. In fact we are much farther away than we were before, and as the proverb has it “a deal of toil and we’re where we were.”

What do you mean? This seems to me a hurtful and pessimistic statement.