"'Whether he really knew what a noun was? Whether he liked male terminations, or preferred to revel in female endings? Whether he was not prejudiced against pronouns, or felt an idiosyncracy against the letters b, k, and z? "'If the man cannot satisfactorily answer all these pertinent questions, I declare him to be a fraud. I tell him straight into his face that he never existed, and then I revile him as a low character for pretending an existence that is totally unfounded. Now, as to your case. You say, you are Socrates. Can you answer any of the questions I enumerated? Let us take the first question: "Who asked you to exist?"' "'Athens, I presume,' said Socrates. "'Athens? To dispose of this answer, we must first of all see whether Athens existed. I put it to you, sir, can you prove that Athens existed?' "'I can; for, it still exists.' "'Note the glaring fallacy! A thing that now exists, now, that is, on the brink of the present and the future, can that be said to have _eo ipso_ existed in the past? I put it to you most seriously, is the brink of the present, the past? Is the brink of the future, the past? Can, then, the brink of the present _and_ the future be called the past? Athens may have existed. That is, a number of houses and streets, once called Athens, may have existed. But can you say, I put it to you most mostly, can you say that the houses of Athens asked you to exist? Or did the streets do so?' "'By Athens we mean the Athenians.' "'Oh, I see, the Athenians. Who were they? Two-thirds were foreign slaves; one-fifth were _metiks_, that is, denizens of foreign extraction. Consequently, two-thirds and one-fifth being thirteen-fifteenths, the overwhelming majority of the town being _uitlanders_, you cannot possibly be said to have been asked into existence by them. Remain two-fifteenths of Athenians proper. Of these the great majority were your enemies, who drove you into death. Can they, who furiously clamoured for your death, be said to have violently wished for your birth? "'Remain, therefore, only a handful of Athenians who _may_ have desired you to exist. How could they give due expression to their wish? In the Assembly matters were decided by a majority, which they did not control. In the law courts were hundreds, nay thousands of judges in each case, of whom, as _per supra_, the great majority were your enemies, who would have decided against your birth. In the Temples such decisions were never taken. "'The intention of your prenatal friends could thus remain but a mere private wish of a few citizens, but could not possibly be an inherent tendency or desire of Athens. _Quod erat demonstrandum._ And since you have been unable to give a satisfactory answer to the first of the crucial questions, I put you down as a suspect.' "I did not say anything," said Socrates. "I was amazed beyond expression that such nonsense could be allowed to pose as searching and 'scientific' analysis of facts. But he triumphantly continued: