trouble is that he has based his hope on what he has seen in a
dream, or his own fancy has put together; without previous thought
whether what he desires is in itself attainable and within the compass
of human nature. Even so, methinks, has it happened with you. As you
dreamed, so largely, of those wonderful things, came Reason, and woke
you up from sleep, a little roughly: and then you are angry with
Reason, your eyes being still but half open, and find it hard to shake
off sleep for the pleasure of what you saw therein. Only, [169] don't
be angry with me, because, as a friend, I would not suffer you to pass
your life in a dream, pleasant perhaps, but still only a dream--because
I wake you up and demand that you should busy yourself with the proper
business of life, and send you to it possessed of common sense. What
your soul was full of just now is not very different from those Gorgons
and Chimaeras and the like, which the poets and the painters construct
for us, fancy-free:--things which never were, and never will be, though
many believe in them, and all like to see and hear of them, just
because they are so strange and odd.

And you too, methinks, having heard from some such maker of marvels of
a certain woman of a fairness beyond nature--beyond the Graces, beyond
Venus Urania herself--asked not if he spoke truth, and whether this
woman be really alive in the world, but straightway fell in love with
her; as they say that Medea was enamoured of Jason in a dream. And what
more than anything else seduced you, and others like you, into that
passion, for a vain idol of the fancy, is, that he who told you about
that fair woman, from the very moment when you first believed that what
he said was true, brought forward all the rest in consequent order.
Upon her alone your eyes were fixed; by her he led you along, when once
you had given him a hold upon you--led you along the straight road, as
he said, to the beloved one. All was easy after that. [170] None of
you asked again whether it was the true way; following one after
another, like sheep led by the green bough in the hand of the shepherd.
He moved you hither and thither with his finger, as easily as water
spilt on a table!

My friend! Be not so lengthy in preparing the banquet, lest you die of
hunger! I saw one who poured water into a mortar, and ground it with
all his might with a pestle of iron, fancying he did a thing useful and
necessary; but it remained wate