“I know I say true,” returned the sage in a tone of playfulness he had more than once used; “I know I say true; and had I before needed evidence to confirm my opinion, this our present conversation would have afforded it.”
“How so?”
“Nay, were I to explain, you would not now credit me: No man can see his own prejudices; no, though a philosopher should point at them. But patience, patience! Time and opportunity shall right all things. Why, you did not think,” he resumed after a short pause, “you did not really think you were without prejudices? Eighteen, not more, if I may judge by complexion, and without prejudices! Why, I should hardly dare to assert I was myself without them, and I believe I have fought harder and somewhat longer against them than you can have done.”
“What would you have me do?” asked the youth, timidly.
“Have you do?—Why, I would have you do a very odd thing—No other than to take a turn or two in Epicurus’s garden.”
“Epicurus’s garden! Oh! Jupiter!”
“Very true, by Juno!”
“What! To hear the laws of virtue confounded and denied?—To hear vice exculpated, advocated, panegyrized?—Impiety and atheism professed and inculcated?—To witness the nocturnal orgies of vice and debauchery?—Ye gods, what horrors has Timocrates revealed!”
“Horrors, in truth, somewhat appalling, my young friend; but I should apprehend Timocrates to be a little mistaken. That the laws of virtue were ever confounded and denied, or vice advocated and panegyrized, by any professed teacher, I incline to doubt. And were I really to hear such things, I should simply conclude the speaker mad, or otherwise that he was amusing himself by shifting the meaning of words, and that by the term virtue he understood vice, and so by the contrary. As to the inculcating of impiety and atheism, this may be exaggerated or misunderstood. Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him. Upon the nocturnal orgies of vice and debauchery I can say nothing; I am too profoundly ignorant of these matters, either to exculpate or condemn them. Such things may be, and I never hear of them. All things are possible. Yes,” turning his benignant face full upon the youth, “even that Timocrates should lie.”
“This possibility had indeed not occurred to me.”