Ἑρμότιμος ἢ Περὶ Αἱρέσεων

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66

LYCINUS

In this way. Suppose our true number to be twenty. Now let someone take twenty beans in his hand, and then close it and ask any ten people how many beans he has in his hand. Suppose one man guesses seven, another five, another thirty, some other ten or fifteen, in short every one differently; nevertheless it is possible for someone by some chance to guess the truth, isn’t it?

HERMOTIMUS

Yes.

LYCINUS

Yet it is not at all impossible for everyone to guess different numbers and for all these numbers to be wrong and untrue, and for not one of them to say that the man has twenty beans. Do you agree?

HERMOTIMUS

It is not impossible. 5

LYCINUS

In the same way, then, all those who study philosophy are trying to find out what happiness is, and each one says it is something different—pleasure, beauty, and all the other things they say about it. Very likely one of these things is happiness, but it is not unlikely that it is something quite different from every one of them. We seem to have gone in the wrong direction, hastening to the end before we have found the beginning. We should first, I think, have ascertained that the truth has been discovered, and that one or other of the philosophers really has knowledge of it. Then the next step would be to find out whom to believe.

HERMOTIMUS

This is what you are saying, then, Lycinus, that even if we go through all philosophy, we shall not even then really be able to discover the truth.