the Christians, to whom the
errors of the Jews are too often imputed.

DORION. If I understood you aright, Zenothemis, you said that three
wonderful men--Jesus, Basilides, and Valentinus--had discovered secrets
which had remained hidden from Pythagoras and Plato, and all the
philosophers of Greece, and even from the divine Epicurus, who, however,
has freed men from the dread of empty terrors. You would greatly oblige
me by telling me by what means these three mortals acquired knowledge
which had eluded the most contemplative sages.

ZENOTHEMIS. Must I repeat to you, Dorion, that science and cogitation
are but the first steps to knowledge, and that ecstasy alone leads to
eternal truth?

HERMODORUS. It is true, Zenothemis, that the soul is nourished on
ecstasy, as the cicada is nourished on dew. But we may even say more:
the mind alone is capable of perfect rapture. For man is of a threefold
nature, composed of material body, of a soul which is more subtle, but
also material, and of an incorruptible mind. When, emerging from the
body as from a palace suddenly given over to silence and solitude and
flying through the gardens of the soul, the mind diffuses itself in God,
it tastes the delights of an anticipated death, or rather of a future
life, for to die is to live; and in that condition, partaking of divine
purity, it possesses both infinite joy and complete knowledge. It enters
into the unity which is All. It is perfected.

NICIAS. That is very fine; but, to say the truth, Hermodorus, I do not
see much difference between All and Nothing. Words even seem to fail to
make the distinction. Infinity is terribly like nothingness--they are
both inconceivable to the mind. In my opinion perfection costs too dear;
we pay for it with all our being, and to possess it must cease to
exist. That is a calamity from which God Himself is not free, for the
philosophers are doing their best to perfect Him. After all, if we do
not know what it is _not_ to be, we are equally ignorant what it is to
_be_. We know nothing. It is said that it is impossible for men to agree
on this question. I believe--in spite of our noisy disputes--that it is,
on the contrary, impossible for men not to become some day all at unity
buried under the mass of contradictions, a Pelion on Ossa, which they
themselves have raised.

COTTA. I am very fond of philosophy, and study it in my leisure time.
But I never understand it well, except in Cicero's books. Slaves