H. Then take thought, and ask pardon of the gods for your notes to Homer, who makes us too tall for you.
W. In truth you are enormous; I never imagined anything like it.
H. Is it my fault, man, that you have such a narrow-chested imagination? What sort of a Hercules is the one you are for ever prating about, and what is it he fights for? For virtue? What's the motto again? Have you ever seen virtue, Wieland? I have been a good deal about in the world too, and I never yet met such a thing.
W. What! You do not know that virtue for which my Hercules does everything, ventures all?
H. Virtue! I heard the word for the first time down here from a couple of silly fellows who couldn't tell me what they meant by it.
W. No more could I. But don't let us waste words upon that I wish you had read my poems; if you had, you would see that at bottom I don't care so very much about virtue myself—it is an ambiguous sort of thing.
H. It is a monstrosity, like every other phantasy which cannot exist in the world as we know it. Your virtue reminds me of a centaur. So long as it prances about in your imagination, how splendid it is, how strong! and when the sculptor represents it for you, what a superhuman form! But anatomise it, and you find four lungs, two hearts, and two stomachs. It dies at the moment of birth like any other monstrosity, or, to be more correct, it never existed anywhere but in your brain.[1]
W. But virtue must be something, must be somewhere.
By the eternal beard of my father, who doubted it? Meseems it dwelt with us, in demigods and heroes. Do you suppose we lived like brute beasts? We had splendid fellows among us.
W. What do you call splendid fellows?