Mean. My brain also is out of fashion. It is quite natural for a child to resemble its father.
Tim. Then you must not be surprised if your books, like everything contrary to the custom of the day, are ill received.
Mean. That is a small misfortune. They were not written for the purpose of begging a little bread at the doors of the rich.
? Tim. Forty or fifty years ago, philosophers used to say hard things about the human race, but now they do just the contrary.
Mean. Do you believe that forty or fifty years ago the philosophers were right or wrong in their statements?
Tim. More often right than wrong.
Mean. Do you think that in these forty or fifty years the human race has changed to the opposite of what it then was?
Tim. Not at all. But that has nothing to do with the question.
Elean. Why not? Has humanity progressed in strength and perfection, that the writers of to-day should be constrained to flatter, and compelled to reverence it?
Tim. What have such pleasantries to do with so grave a matter?