theories of morals or metaphysics, or in the most ingenious fencing with the weapons of logic and rhetoric—spread itself in Lucian's day, that the abuses of the Schools presented an ample and tempting field for so keen a satirist. Add to this that he himself had been very much as it were behind the scenes; that in so far as he had been a real seeker after wisdom and an honest teacher of the truth, he had seen how these were disregarded by the pretended philosophers of his day; or in so far as he had lent himself to the common temptation, and had regarded gain and reputation more than a conscientious utterance of what truth he knew, he would have experienced how very readily a few specious phrases and plausible assertions pass for wisdom with the multitude, and how often the unintelligible may be made to do duty for the sublime.
Next to the absurdities of the popular religion, then, those of the pretenders to philosophy lay invitingly open to the attack of the satirist. The fact that in both cases such attack had to be made upon a strong position, guarded by much popular prejudice and by many private interests, would he only an additional reason for engaging in it. He looked upon both systems as what a modern satirist would call "enormous shams," and the success of the imposture made the work of unmasking it all the more exciting. In both cases, truth suffered more or less under the undiscriminating ridicule which could not afford to spoil its point by making distinctions and exceptions. As in his merciless dissection of the so-called divinities of
