Another kind of pleasantry which he brings forward is interesting, inasmuch as after having been in fashion among the grammarians, and reviving among the monks in the middle ages it has now fallen entirely out of use. It may be regarded as being a kind of continuation of the philosophical "hard questions" of ancient times, originated with the Sophists, and was entirely confined to logical subtleties affording diversion, but not awakening any emotion sufficient to cause laughter. Lucian makes a parasite ask his host after dinner to solve such riddles as "The Sorites and the Reaper," and the "Horned Syllogism." The latter proposition was, "What you have not lost that you still have. You have not lost horns, therefore you have horns." In "The Sale of the Philosophers," in which Jupiter puts them all up to auction to see what will be bid for them, Chrysippus gives some similar examples. "A stone is a substance, is it not?" "Certainly." "A living being is also a substance." "Yes." "And you are a living being--therefore you are a stone." Chrysippus then offers to turn him back into a man. "Is every substance a living being?" "No." "Is a stone a living being?" "No." "But you are a substance?" "Yes." "And a living being; then, although you are a substance you are not a stone, because you are a living being." Lucian's crusade against vice is of so general a kind as to remind us more of some of the old philosophers than of the Roman satirists. At the same time he says he has only spoken against impostors, and is only the enemy of false pretence, quackery, lies, and puffing. But we may suppose that he would not be sparing of his lash in any direction, for in the "Resuscitated Philosophers," he observes, "Philosophy says that ridicule can never make anything worse than it is in itself, and whatever is beautiful and good comes out with more lustre from it, and, like gold, is rendered splendid by the strokes of the hammer."