"In that lies their undeniably great force. They instinctively choose as eccentric, as loud, and as striking forms and draperies of ideas as possible, so as to rouse the apathetic Philistine to an interest in what they say. They are full of absurdities; but which of us here can now after centuries of experience venture to make light of the power of the absurd?
"Error and Absurdity are so powerful, so necessary, so inevitable, that Protagoras was perhaps not quite wrong in saying that Truth herself is only a particular species of Error.
"Once, many years ago, I despised the Cynics, and my own master Socrates made light of them. But at present I think differently. When Socrates said, with subtle sarcasm, to Antisthenes: 'I see your vanity peeping out through the holes of your shabby garment,' Antisthenes might have retorted to him: 'And I, O Socrates, see through these very holes how short-sighted you are.'
"For have we not lived to see that while all revere Socrates in words, they follow the pupils of Antisthenes in deeds? The Cynics, fathered by Antisthenes, begot the Stoics; and the Stoics were the main ferment in the rise and spread of Christianity. Many of the sayings and teachings and doings of the Cynics, which we at Athens made most fun of, have long since become the sinews and fibres of Christian ideas and institutions. There is greater similarity and mental propinquity between Antisthenes or Diogenes and St Paul, than between Socrates and St Augustine of Hippo.
"I pray thee, O Zeus, to let us for a moment see this town of Pompeii as it was a day before its destruction, with all its life in the streets and the Forum, so as to give us an ocular proof of the truth of what I just now said about the Cynics and Eccentrics of Antiquity, and what I am going to apply to the modern Cynics, literary or other."
Thereupon Zeus, by a wave of his hand, placed the whole Assembly in the shadow as if encircled by a vast mantle of darkness, and shed a strange and supramundane light on the town of Pompeii, which grew up at sight from the ground, putting on life and movement and beauty on all its houses, narrow streets, gardens, and squares. The ancient population filled, in ceaseless movement, every part of the charming city. Richly dressed ladies, carried in sedan-chairs by black slaves; patricians in spotless togas, followed by crowds of clients; magistrates preceded by lictors; soldiers recruited from all nations; tradesmen from every part of the Roman Empire; all these and innumerable others, visitors from the neighbouring cities, thronged the streets, and the whole population seemed to breathe nothing but joy and a sense of exuberant life.
In one of the squares there was a hilarious crowd listening, with loud derision and ironical applause, to a haggard, miserably clad, old man who, addressing them in Ionian Greek, with the strong guttural accent of the Asiatics, stood on one of the high jumping-stones of the pavement, and spoke with fanatic fervour of the nameless sinfulness of the people of Pompeii. With him were two or three other persons of the same description, joining him from time to time in his imprecations against the "doomed town."
The old man told them that their whole life was rotten through and through, a permanent lie, a contradiction to itself, a sure way to damnation. He thundered against the soldiers jeering at him in the crowd, calling them cowards, butchers, wretches, and the sinners of all sinners. He sneered at one of the priests of Isis present in the crowd, telling the people that there was only one true belief, and no other.