do _you_ propose?--It is the old question again. To follow and join
philosophic forces with whomsoever you first fall in with, and let him
thank Fortune for his proselyte?

_Her_. What is the good of answering your questions? You say no one
can judge for himself, unless he can devote the life of a phoenix to
going round experimenting; and on the other hand you refuse to trust
either previous experience or the multitude of favourable testimony.

_Ly_. Where is your multitude, with knowledge and experience _of all_?
Never mind the multitude; one man who answers the description will do for
me. But if you mean the people who do not know, their mere numbers will
never persuade me, as long as they pronounce upon all from knowledge of,
at the most, one.

_Her_. Are you the only man who has found the truth, and are all the
people who go in for philosophy fools?

_Ly_. You wrong me, Hermotimus, when you imply that I put myself
above other people, or rank myself at all with those who know; you forget
what I said; I never claimed to know the truth better than others, only
confessed that I was as ignorant of it as every one else.

_Her_. Well, but, Lycinus, it may be all very well to insist on going the
round, testing the various statements, and eschewing any other method of
choice; but it is ridiculous to spend so many years on each experiment, as
though there were no such thing as judging from samples. That device seems
to me quite simple, and economical of time. There is a story that some
sculptor, Phidias, I think, seeing a single claw, calculated from it the
size of the lion, if it were modelled proportionally. So, if some one were