etire into the
desert, and eschew the conversation of mankind.

_Lucian._ No, indeed; but I would wish the greater part of your people
to eschew mine, for they bring all the worst of the desert with them
whenever they enter; its smothering heats, its blinding sands, its
sweeping suffocation. Return to the pure spirit of the Essenes,
without their asceticism; cease from controversy, and drop party
designations. If you will not do this, do less, and be merely what you
profess to be, which is quite enough for an honest, a virtuous, and a
religious man.

_Timotheus._ Cousin Lucian, I did not come hither to receive a lecture
from you.

_Lucian._ I have often given a dinner to a friend who did not come to
dine with me.

_Timotheus._ Then, I trust, you gave him something better for dinner
than bay-salt and dandelions. If you will not assist us in nettling
our enemies a little for their absurdities and impositions, let me
entreat you, however, to let us alone, and to make no remarks on us.
I myself run into no extravagances, like the Essenes, washing and
fasting, and retiring into solitude. I am not called to them; when I
am, I go.

_Lucian._ I am apprehensive the Lord may afflict you with deafness in
that ear.

_Timotheus._ Nevertheless, I am indifferent to the world, and all
things in it. This, I trust, you will acknowledge to be true religion
and true philosophy.

_Lucian._ That is not philosophy which betrays an indifference to
those for whose benefit philosophy was designed; and those are the
whole human race. But I hold it to be the most unphilosophical thing
in the world to call away men from useful occupations and mutual help,
to profitless speculations and acrid controversies. Censurable enough,
and contemptible, too, is that supercilious philosopher, sneeringly
sedate, who narrates in full and flowing periods the persecutions and
tortures of a fellow-man, led astray by his credulity, and ready to
die in the assertion of what in his soul he believes to be the truth.
But hardly less censurable, hardly less contemptible, is the
tranquilly arrogant sectarian, who denies that wisdom or honesty can
exist beyond the limits of his own ill-lighted chamber.

_Timotheus._ What! is he sanguinary?

_Lucian._ Whenever he can be, he is; and he always has it in his power
to be even worse than that, for he refuses his custom to the
industrious and honest shopkeeper who has been taught to think
differently from himself in