—The very point, Lucian! Had it depended on him I should long ago have been caught up. ’Tis I, am wanting.
—Well! keep your eye fixed on the journey’s end, and that happiness there above, with confidence in his goodwill.
—Ah! there are many who start cheerfully on the journey and proceed a certain distance, but lose heart when they light on the obstacles of the way. Only, those who endure to the end do come to the mountain’s top, and thereafter live in Happiness:—live a wonderful manner of life, seeing all other people from that great height no bigger than tiny ants.
—What little fellows you make of us—less than the pygmies—down in the dust here. Well! we, ‘the vulgar herd,’ as we creep along, will not forget you in our prayers, when you are seated up there above the clouds, whither you have been so long hastening. But tell me, Hermotimus!—when do you expect to arrive there?
—Ah! that I know not. In twenty years, perhaps, I shall be really on the summit.—A great while! you think. But then, again, the prize I contend for is a great one.
—Perhaps! But as to those twenty years—that you will live so long. Has the master assured you of that? Is he a prophet as well as a philosopher? For I suppose you would not endure all this, upon a mere chance—toiling day and night, though it might happen that just ere the last step, Destiny seized you by the foot and plucked you thence, with your hope still unfulfilled.
—Hence, with these ill-omened words, Lucian! Were I to survive but for a day, I should be happy, having once attained wisdom.
—How?—Satisfied with a single day, after all those labours?
—Yes! one blessed moment were enough!
—But again, as you have never been, how know you that happiness is to be had up there, at all—the happiness that is to make all this worth while?