Ah, Lucian, we have need of you, of your sense and of your mockery! Here, where faith is sick and superstition is waking afresh; where gods come rarely, and spectres appear at five shillings an interview; where science is popular, and philosophy cries aloud in the market-place, and clamour does duty for government, and Thais and Lais are names of power—here, Lucian, is room and scope for you. Can I not imagine a new “Auction of Philosophers,” and what wealth might be made by him who bought these popular sages and lecturers at his estimate, and vended them at their own?
Hermes: Whom shall we put first up to auction?
Zeus: That German in spectacles; he seems a highly respectable man.
Hermes: Ho, Pessimist, come down and let the public view you.
Zeus: Go on, put him up and have done with him.
Hermes: Who bids for the Life Miserable, for extreme, complete, perfect, unredeemable perdition? What offers for the universal extinction of the species, and the collapse of the Conscious?
A Purchaser: He does not look at all a bad lot. May one put him through his paces?
Hermes: Certainly; try your luck.
Purchaser: What is your name?
Pessimist: Hartmann.