Complete with exceptions specified in the preface
What work nobler than transplanting foreign thought into the barrendomestic soil? except indeed planting thought of your own, whichthe fewest are privileged to do.—Sartor Resartus.
At each flaw, be this your first thought: the author doubtless saidsomething quite different, and much more to the point. And then youmay hiss me off, if you will.—LUCIAN, Nigrinus, 9.
(LUCIAN) The last great master of Attic eloquence and Attic wit.—Lord Macaulay.
It was in the book of Fate that even this age of ours should not bedestitute entirely of noteworthy and memorable men, but produce abody of extraordinary power, and a mind of surpassing wisdom. Myallusions are to Sostratus the Boeotian, whom the Greeks called,and believed to be, Heracles; and more particularly to thephilosopher Demonax. I saw and marvelled at both of them, and withthe latter I long consorted. I have written of Sostratus elsewhere[Footnote: The life of Sostratus is not extant.], and described hisstature and enormous strength, his open-air life on Parnassus,sleeping on the grass and eating what the mountain afforded, theexploits that bore out his surname—robbers exterminated, roughplaces made smooth, and deep waters bridged.
This time I am to write of Demonax, with two sufficient ends inview: first, to keep his memory green among good men, as far as inme lies; and secondly, to provide the most earnest of our risinggeneration, who aspire to philosophy, with a contemporary pattern,that they may not be forced back upon the ancients for worthymodels, but imitate this best—if I am any judge—of allphilosophers.
He came of a Cyprian family which enjoyed considerable property andpolitical influence. But his views soared above such things asthese; he claimed nothing less than the highest, and devotedhimself to philosophy. This was not due to any exhortations ofAgathobulus, his predecessor Demetrius, or Epictetus. He did indeedenjoy the converse of all these, as well as of Timocrates ofHeraclea, that wise man whose gifts of expression and ofunderstanding were equal. It was not, however, to the exhortationsof any of these, but to a natural impulse towards the good, aninnate yearning for philosophy which manifested itself in childishyears, that