philosophers and wine-merchants both sell their wares, mostly resorting
to adulteration, fraud, and false measures, in the process. But let us
look into your real meaning. You say all the wine in a cask is of the
same quality--which is perfectly reasonable; further, that any one who
draws and tastes quite a small quantity will know at once the quality of
the whole--of which the same may be said; I should never have thought of
objecting. But mark what comes now: do philosophy and its professors
(your own, for instance) give you every day the same remarks on the same
subjects, or do they vary them? They vary them a great deal, friend; you
would never have stuck to your master through your twenty years'
wandering--quite a philosophic Odyssey--if he had always said the same
thing; one hearing would have been enough.

_Her_. So it would.

_Ly_. How could you have known the whole of his doctrines from the
first taste, then? They were not homogeneous, like the wine; novelty
to-day, and novelty to-morrow on the top of it. Consequently, dear friend,
short of drinking the whole cask, you might soak to no purpose;
Providence seems to me to have hidden the philosophic Good right at the
bottom, underneath the lees. So you will have to drain it dry, or you
will never get to that nectar for which I know you have so long thirsted.
According to your idea, it has such virtue that, could you once taste it
and swallow the very least drop, you would straightway have perfect
wisdom; so they say the Delphian prophetess is inspired by one draught of
the sacred spring with answers for those who consult the oracle. But it
seems not to be so; you have drunk more than half the cask; yet you told
me you were only beginning yet.

Now see whether this is not a better analogy. You shall keep your