e dust here. Well! we, 'the vulgar herd,' as we creep along, will
not forget you in our prayers, when you are seated up there above the
clouds, whither you have been so long hastening. But tell me,
Hermotimus!--when do you expect to arrive there?

--Ah! that I know not. In twenty years, [147] perhaps, I shall be
really on the summit.--A great while! you think. But then, again, the
prize I contend for is a great one.

--Perhaps! But as to those twenty years--that you will live so long.
Has the master assured you of that? Is he a prophet as well as a
philosopher? For I suppose you would not endure all this, upon a mere
chance--toiling day and night, though it might happen that just ere the
last step, Destiny seized you by the foot and plucked you thence, with
your hope still unfulfilled.

--Hence, with these ill-omened words, Lucian! Were I to survive but
for a day, I should be happy, having once attained wisdom.

--How?--Satisfied with a single day, after all those labours?

--Yes! one blessed moment were enough!

--But again, as you have never been, how know you that happiness is to
be had up there, at all--the happiness that is to make all this worth
while?

--I believe what the master tells me. Of a certainty he knows, being
now far above all others.

--And what was it he told you about it? Is it riches, or glory, or
some indescribable pleasure?

--Hush! my friend! All those are nothing in comparison of the life
there.

--What, then, shall those who come to the [148] end of this
discipline--what excellent thing shall they receive, if not these?

--Wisdom, the absolute goodness and the absolute beauty, with the sure
and certain knowledge of all things--how they are. Riches and glory
and pleasure--whatsoever belongs to the body--they have cast from them:
stripped bare of all that, they mount up, even as Hercules, consumed in
the fire, became a god. He too cast aside all that he had of his
earthly mother, and bearing with him the divine element, pure and
undefiled, winged his way to heaven from the discerning flame. Even so
do they, detached from all that others prize, by the burning fire of a
true philosophy, ascend to the highest degree of happiness.

--Strange! And do they never come down again from the heights to help
those whom they left below? Must they, when they be once come thither,
there remain for ever, laughing, as you say, at what other men prize?

--More than that! They whos