, without the right and unremitting application of them; and
that, in the sight of Humanity and Wisdom, it is better to erect one
cottage than to demolish a hundred cities. Down to the present day we
have been taught little else than falsehood. We have been told to do
this thing and that: we have been told we shall be punished unless we
do: but at the same time we are shown by the finger that prosperity
and glory, and the esteem of all about us, rest upon other and very
different foundations. Now, do the ears or the eyes seduce the most
easily and lead the most directly to the heart? But both eyes and ears
are won over, and alike are persuaded to corrupt us.

_Timotheus._ Cousin Lucian, I was leaving you with the strangest of
all notions in my head. I began to think for a moment that you doubted
my sincerity in the religion I profess; and that a man of your
admirable good sense, and at your advanced age, could reject that only
sustenance which supports us through the grave into eternal life.

_Lucian._ I am the most docile and practicable of men, and never
reject what people set before me: for if it is bread, it is good for
my own use; if bone or bran, it will do for my dog or mule. But,
although you know my weakness and facility, it is unfair to expect I
should have admitted at once what the followers and personal friends
of your Master for a long time hesitated to receive. I remember to
have read in one of the early commentators, that His disciples
themselves could not swallow the miracle of the loaves; and one who
wrote more recently says, that even His brethren did not believe in
Him.

_Timotheus._ Yet, finally, when they have looked over each other's
accounts, they cast them up, and make them all tally in the main sum;
and if one omits an article, the next supplies its place with a
commodity of the same value. What would you have? But it is of little
use to argue on religion with a man who, professing his readiness to
believe, and even his credulity, yet disbelieves in miracles.

_Lucian._ I should be obstinate and perverse if I disbelieved in the
existence of a thing for no better reason than because I never saw it,
and cannot understand its operations. Do you believe, O Timotheus,
that Perictione, the mother of Plato, became his mother by the sole
agency of Apollo's divine spirit, under the phantasm of that god?

_Timotheus._ I indeed believe such absurdities?

_Lucian._ You touch me on a vital part if you