Our masters lie beneath these stones.

Here is the lawgiver who made the law to which I submit to-day; the architect who built my house, the poet who created the illusions which still disturb us; the orator who swayed us before our birth.

Here are all the artisans of our knowledge, true or false, of our wisdom and of our follies.

There they lie, the inexorable leaders, whom we dare not disobey.

In them dwells strength, continuity, and duration.
What does a generation of living folk amount to, in comparison with the numberless generations of the dead?
What is our will of a day before the will of a thousand centuries?
Can we rebel against them?
Why, we have not even time to disobey them!" "At last you are coming to the point, Dr.Socrates!" said Constantin Marc.