numberless fools they behold now, strikes them very strongly, and gives them a delightful relish for their present happiness.
T.
It must be so. And when they have seen these things, where do they then go?
O.
Wherever they please. Safely they may travel where they will: In all times, and in all places they are secure, as their integrity is their defence. Every where they live esteemed and beloved by all. The female monsters I have mentioned, Grief, Trouble, Lust, Avarice, or Poverty, have now no power to hurt them; but as if possessed of some virtuous drug, they can grasp the viper, and defy destruction.
T.
What you say is just. But who are all these persons descending the hill?
O.
Those that are crowned (the old man said) are the happy few I have described. You see what joy is in their faces: And those

who seem forlorn and desperate, under the command of certain women, are such who by their folly have not found the way to true learning; or stopping at the rough and narrow ascent you observed, went to look for an easier path, and so quite lost the road. The tormentors who drive them on are, Trouble, Despair, Ignominy, and Ignorance. Wretched you see them return into the first inclosure, to Luxury and Incontinence▪ and yet they do not accuse themselves as the authors of their own ruin, which is very strange; but rail at Wisdom, and revile her ways; asserting, that the true pleasures of life are only to be found in luxury and riot. Like the brutes, they place the whole satisfaction of man in the gratification of sensual appetite.
T.
But who are those other lovely women, who return down the hill so full of gaiety and mirth?
O.
They are the opinions, who having conducted the virtuous to the region of light, are coming back to invite and carry others thither, by shewing them the felicity and success of those they brought to the mansion of Wisdom.
T.
And do the opinions never enter with those they bring into that happy place, where the virtues and true learning reside?
O.
No: Opinion can never reach to science; they only deliver their charge into the hands

of wisdom, and then, like ships that give up their lading, in order to sail for a new cargo, they return to bring other Eleves to reason and felicity.
T.
This explanation of the table, (I said) is quite satisfactory: But you have not yet informed us,