HERMES
I know, however, what hurts him most. It is that I do not sit and quibble with him about those obscure, subtle themes of his, like “whether the soul is immortal,” and “when God made the world, how many pints of pure, changeless substance he poured into the vessel in which he concocted the universe,”Cf. Plato, Timaeus354 and41D. and “whether rhetoric is the false counterpart of a subdivision of political science, the fourth form of parasitic occupation.”Cf. Plato, Gorgias 463 B, D, 465C. Somehow he delights in dissecting such problems, just as people like to scratch where it itches. Reflection is sweet to him, and he sets great store by himself if they say that not everyone can grasp his penetrating speculations about “ideas.”
That is what he expects of me, naturally; and he demands those wings of his and gazes on high without seeing what lies at his feet. As far as the rest of it goes, he cannot complain, I am sure, that I have stripped him of that Greek mantle and shifted him into a foreign one, even though I myself am considered foreign. Indeed I should be doing wrong to transgress in that way against him. and to steal away his native costume. I have made the best defence that I can. Please cast the same ballot as before. (The votes are counted.)
