When I was in this state of mind I thought it well to take my fill of solitude, and to ‘shun the busy haunts of men’ and so I went off to a spot not far from the sea. Now when I had come near the very place I intended to reach, and hoped to be quite alone, a venerable and elderly person, followed me somewhat closely. He was of an aspect which invited anything but contempt, giving, as it did, the impression of a kindly and grave disposition. I turned back towards him, and standing still looked at him rather keenly.
‘Do you know me?’ said he. I said that I did not. ‘Why then,’ he said to me, ‘do you gaze at me in this fashion?’ ‘I am surprised,’ said I, ‘that you happened to be in the same place as myself. For I did not expect to see anyone here.’ ‘I am anxious,’ he said, ‘about some members of my household. They have gone away from me, and therefore I have come to see after them myself, on the chance of their putting in an appearance somewhere. But you — what are you doing here?’ He added.
‘I like’, said I, ‘spending time in this way, for my talks with myself are unhindered, and such spots as these are very advantageous for rational meditation.’
‘Are you then a kind of student of reason,’ he said, ‘and not at all a student of action, nor a student of truth, and do not try to show wisdom in practice more than in theory? ’
‘Yet what better act,’ I said, ‘could any one perform than this, to shew forth reason as the governor of all things, and grasping it, and carried along by it, to have a clear vision of the errors of others and their habits, and how they do nothing sound or pleasing to God. But without philosophy and right reason none can possibly have practical wisdom. Therefore every human being ought to study philosophy, and deem it the greatest and most valuable act of all, putting all other things in the second and third place. For, if they are made dependent on philosophy, they are of some value and worthy of acceptation, but if deprived of it, and lacking its accompaniment, they are, for those who pursue them, only burdensome and vulgar.’
‘It is philosophy then that produces happiness?’ he replied. ‘Most certainly’, I said, ‘and it alone’.
‘Well, what is philosophy,’ he says, ‘and what is the happiness produced by it? Tell me, if there is nothing to prevent your doing so.’
‘Philosophy,’ said I, ‘is the science of reality and the knowledge of truth; and happiness is the reward of this science and wisdom.
‘And what do you yourself call God?’ he said.
‘That which is ever the same in being and in manner of being, and is the cause of existence to all else — this of a certainty is God.’ Such was my answer, and he was pleased with my words, and so he asked me another question.
‘Is not science (skill) a name common to different things? For in all the arts he that has skill in any one of them is called skilful, for example, in military matters, navigation, and medicine. But in things that concern the divine and the human it is not so. Is there a science that affords cognizance of the human and the divine, and then cognition of the divinity and righteousness of the latter?’
‘Certainly,’ I said.
‘Well then, is the knowledge of man and God similar to that of music, arithmetic, astronomy or anything of that sort?’
‘Not at all,’ I said.
‘Then you did not answer me rightly,’ said he. ‘For the former come to us as the result of learning, or of some expenditure of time, while the latter give skill by sight. If one were to tell you that there is in India an animal different in nature from all others, and of such and such appearance, of many forms and many colours, you would have no knowledge of it before seeing it, and could not even give any account of it unless you had heard from some one who had seen it. ’
‘Certainly not,’ I say.
‘How can it be then,’ he said, ‘that philosophers can either think or say anything true about God, when they have no sound knowledge (science) of Him, for they have neither ever seen Him or heard from any one who has.’
‘Yet it is not with the actual eyes, my Father,’ said I, ‘that the divine is to be seen, as in the case of all other living beings, but He is to be grasped by the mind alone, as Plato says, and with him I agree.’