22–23
STOIC
Courage! I'll teach you other things that are more wonderful.
STOIC
The Reaper, the Master,Neither of these are accurately known. The Reaper was based on the fallacious employment of the negative, and proved that a man who was going to reap a field could not possibly reap it. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, is said to have paid 200 minas to a logician who taught him seven varieties of this fallacy. The Master consisted of four propositions, of which you could take any three and disprove the fourth. and above all, the Electra and the Veiled Figure.
10
BUYER
What do you mean by the Veiled Figure and the Electra?
STOIC
The Electra is the famous Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, who at once knew and did not know the same thing; for when Orestes stood beside her before the recognition she knew that Orestes was her brother, but did not know that this was Orestes.Here again Lucian does scant justice to the fallacy, which he really gives away by his statement of it. It should run: ‘she at once knew and did not know that Orestes was her brother, for she did not know that this man was her brother; but this man was Orestes.” As to the Veiled Figure, you shall hear a very wonderful argument. Tell me, do you know your own father?
STOIC
But if I put a veiled figure before you and asked you if you know him, what will you say?
BUYER
That I don’t, of course.
15
STOIC
But the veiled figure turns out to be your own father; so if you don’t know him, you evidently don’t know your own father.
