Letters

² Where then is the need of having recourse to dreams and of hiring their interpreters, and making me matter for talk over the cups at public entertainments? Had slander been launched against me in any other quarter, I should have called you to witness to prove what I think, and now I ask every one of you to remember those old days when I was invited by your city to take charge of the education of the young, and a deputation of the first men among you came to see me. Afterwards, when you all crowded round me, what were you not ready to give?

What not to promise? Nevertheless you were not able to keep me. How then could I, who at that time would not listen when you invited me, now attempt to thrust myself on you uninvited? How could I, who when you complimented and admired me, avoided you, have been intending to court you now that you calumniate me? Nothing of the kind, sirs; I am not quite so cheap. No man in his senses would go on board a boat without a steersman, or get alongside a Church where the men sitting at the helm are themselves stirring up tempest and storm.

Whose fault was it that the town was all full of tumult, when some were running away with no one after them, and others stealing off when no invader was near, and all the wizards and dream-tellers were flourishing their bogeys? Whose fault was it else? Does not every child know that it was the mob-leaders'? The reasons of their hatred to me it would be bad taste on my part to recount; but they are quite easy for you to apprehend. When bitterness and division have come to the last pitch of savagery, and the explanation of the cause is altogether groundless and ridiculous, then the mental disease is plain, dangerous indeed to other people's comfort, but greatly and personally calamitous to the patient.

And there is one charming point about them. Torn and racked with inward agony as they are, they cannot yet for very shame speak out about it. The state they are in may be known not only from their behaviour to me, but from the rest of their conduct. If it were unknown, it would not much matter. But the veritable cause of their shunning communication with me may be unperceived by the majority among you. Listen; and I will tell you.