populace by throwing dirt upon the robe of a magistrate, merely because
he wore that robe, and you did not.

_Diogenes_.--A philosopher cannot better display his wisdom than by
throwing contempt on that pageantry which the ignorant multitude gaze at
with a senseless veneration.

_Plato_.--He who tries to make the multitude venerate nothing is more
senseless than they. Wise men have endeavoured to excite an awful
reverence in the minds of the vulgar for external ceremonies and forms,
in order to secure their obedience to religion and government, of which
these are the symbols. Can a philosopher desire to defeat that good
purpose?

_Diogenes_.--Yes, if he sees it abused to support the evil purposes of
superstition and tyranny.

_Plato_.--May not the abuse be corrected without losing the benefit? Is
there no difference between reformation and destruction.

_Diogenes_.--Half-measures do nothing. He who desires to reform must not
be afraid to pull down.

_Plato_.--I know that you and your sect are for pulling down everything
that is above your own level. Pride and envy are the motives that set
you all to work. Nor can one wonder that passions, the influence of
which is so general, should give you many disciples and many admirers.

_Diogenes_.--When you have established your Republic, if you will admit
me into it I promise you to be there a most respectful subject.

_Plato_.--I am conscious, Diogenes, that my Republic was imaginary, and
could never be established. But they show as little knowledge of what is
practicable in politics as I did in that book, who suppose that the
liberty of any civil society can be maintained by the destruction of
order and decency or promoted by the petulance of unbridled defamation.

_Diogenes_.--I never knew any government angry at defamation, when it
fell on those who disliked or obstructed its measures. But I well
remember that the thirty tyrants at Athens called opposition to them the
destruction of order and decency.

_Plato_.--Things are not altered by names.

_Diogenes_.--No, but names have a strange power to impose on weak
understandings. If, when you were in Egypt, you had laughed at the
worship of an onion, the priests would have called you an atheist, and
the people would have stoned you. But I presume that, to have the honour
of being initiated into the mysteries of that reverend hierarchy, you
bowed as low to it as any of their devout disciples. Unfortunatel