19–21
Sixth Dealer
That is all right. We will get in a supply of Carian fig-cakes,
Zeus
Call the next lot. Stoicism; the creed of the sorrowful countenance, the close-cropped creed.
Heraclitus
Ah yes, several customiers, I fancy, are on the look-out for him. Virtue incarnate! The very quintessence of creeds! Who is for universal monopoly?
Seventh Dealer
How are we to understand that?
Heraclitus
Why, here is monopoly of wisdom, monopoly of beauty, monopoly of courage, monopoly of justice. Sole king, sole orator, sole legislator, sole millionaire.
Seventh Dealer
And I suppose sole cook, sole tanner, sole carpenter, and all that?
5
Seventh Dealer
Regard me as your purchaser, good fellow, and tell me all about yourself. I dare say you think it rather hard to be sold for a slave?
Chrysippus
Not at all. These things are beyond our control. And what is beyond our control is indifferent.
Seventh Dealer
I don’t see how you make that out.
Chrysippus
What! Have you yet to learn that of indifferentia some are praepostta and others rejecta?
Seventh Dealer
Still I don’t quite see.
5
Chrysippus
No; how should you? You are not familiar with our terms. You lack the comprebensio vist. The earnest student of logic knows this and more than this. He understands the nature of subject, predicate, and contingent, and the distinctions between them.
Seventh Dealer
Now in Wisdom’s name, tell me, pray, what is a predicate? what is a contingent? ‘There is a ring about those words that takes my fancy.
