And now do you speak! You really look as if you had something wonderful to deliver.
-- Well then, Lucian! to me it seems quite possible for one who has learned the doctrines of the Stoics only, to attain from those a knowledge [157] of the truth, without proceeding to inquire into all the various tenets of the others.

Look at the question in this way.

If one told you that twice two make four, would it be necessary for you to go the whole round of the arithmeticians, to see whether any one of them will say that twice two make five, or seven?
Would you not see at once that the man tells the truth?
-- At once.
-- Why then do you find it impossible that one who has fallen in with the Stoics only, in their enunciation of what is true, should adhere to them, and seek after no others; assured that four could never be five, even if fifty Platos, fifty Aristotles said so?
-- You are beside the point, Hermotimus! You are likening open questions to principles universally received.

Have you ever met any one who said that twice two make five, or seven?
-- No! only a madman would say that.
-- And have you ever met, on the other hand, a Stoic and an Epicurean who were agreed upon the beginning and the end, the principle and the final cause, of things?
Never! Then your parallel is false.

We are inquiring to which of the sects philosophic truth belongs, and you seize on it by anticipation, and assign it to the Stoics, alleging, what is by no means clear, that it is they for whom twice two make four.