questions, or pondering some tricky problem; never a vacant mind, even in
the streets; always on the stretch and in earnest, bent on advancing in
your studies.

_Her_. I admit the impeachment; I was running over the details of
what he said in yesterday's lecture. One must lose no chance, you know;
the Coan doctor [Footnote: Hippocrates] spoke so truly: _ars longa,
vita brevis_. And what be referred to was only physic--a simpler
matter. As to philosophy, not only will you never attain it, however long
you study, unless you are wide awake all the time, contemplating it with
intense eager gaze; the stake is so tremendous, too,--whether you shall
rot miserably with the vulgar herd, or be counted among philosophers and
reach Happiness.

_Ly_. A glorious prize, indeed! however, you cannot be far off it
now, if one may judge by the time you have given to philosophy, and the
extraordinary vigour of your long pursuit. For twenty years now, I should
say, I have watched you perpetually going to your professors, generally
bent over a book taking notes of past lectures, pale with thought and
emaciated in body. I suspect you find no release even in your dreams, you
are so wrapped up in the thing. With all this you must surely get hold of
Happiness soon, if indeed you have not found it long ago without telling
us.

_Her_. Alas, Lycinus, I am only just beginning to get an inkling of
the right way. Very far off dwells Virtue, as Hesiod says, and long and
steep and rough is the way thither, and travellers must bedew it with
sweat.

_Ly_. And you have not yet sweated and travelled enough?