13–14
BUYER
Zeus! What a contrast! One of thei never stops laughing, and the other is apparently mourning a death, as he weeps incessantly. What is the matter, man? Why are you laughing?
DEMOCRITEAN
Dost thou need to ask? Because to me it seemeth that all your affairs are laughable, and yourselves as well.
BUYER
What, are you laughing at us all, and do you think nothing of our affairs?
5
DEMOCRITEAN
Even so; for there is nothing serious in them, but everything is a hollow mockery, drift of atoms, infinitude.
BUYER
No indeed, but you yourself are a hollow mockery in very truth and an infinite ass.
Oh, what effrontery! Will you never stop laughing? (Zo the other.) But you, why do youcry? For I think it is much more becoming to talk with you.
HERACLITEAN
Because I consider, O stranger, that the affairs of man are woeful and tearful, and there is naught in them that is not foredoomed; therefore I pity and grieve for men. And their present woes I do not consider great, but those to come in future will be wholly bitter; I speak of the great conflagrations and the collapse of the universe. It is for this that I grieve, and because nothing is fixed, but all things are in a manner stirred up into porridge, and joy and joylessness, wisdom and unwisdom, great and small are all but the same, circling about, up and down, and interchanging in the game of Eternity.
BUYER
And what is Eternity?
HERACLITEAN
A child playing a game, moving counters, in discord, in concord.
HERACLITEAN
Immortal men.
