Thereupon the disciple of Apollonius took the old man's hand, pressed it with emotion, kissed him, and turning away from him, walked off, plunged in deep thought. A minute later the supramundane light over Pompeii disappeared, and the Assembly of the gods and heroes was again in the mild rays of Selene. * * * * * "Can anyone here," continued Plato, "deny that that crowd together with the philosopher was quite mistaken in their appreciation of the eccentric old man, and that the silent pupil of Apollonius alone was right? "Cynics and Eccentrics have at all times been the forerunners of vast popular movements. The flagellants, the Beguins and Lollards, and countless other Cynics in the latter half of the Middle Ages preceded the Reformation. "And was not the French Revolution, or the vastest effort at realising Ideals ever made by the little ones down here, preceded by a Cynic and his pamphlets, by Jean Jacques Rousseau? "No Greek town would have endured within its walls a youth so completely shattered in all his moral build, as was Rousseau. He was thoroughly and hopelessly demoralised in character, _décousu_ and eccentric in thought, and badly tutored in point of knowledge. The clever woman that was his protectress, mistress, and guide, and who displayed a marvellous capacity for devising jobs and an inexhaustible resourcefulness in turning things and persons to practical use, could yet never discover any usefulness in Jean Jacques. "He wrote, later on, novels, political treatises, botanical ones, musical ones. In truth he never wrote a novel; he wrote nothing but pamphlets; stirring, wild, eccentric, enchanting pamphlets. He was not, like Beaumarchais, a pamphleteer and yet a writer of a real, and immortal comedy, itself a political pamphlet. Rousseau was a writing stump-orator doing anticipative yeoman's work for the Revolution. "So are all the Cynics. So are Ibsen, Tolstoy; so is Shaw. Their dramas may be, say _are_ no dramas at all; their novels may be, say _are_ no novels at all; their serious treatises are neither serious nor treatises; and yet they are, and always will be great _effectological_ centres. They attack the whole fabric of the extant civilisation; by this one move they rally round them both the silent and the loud enemies of WHAT IS, and the eager friends of what OUGHT TO BE. Of these malcontents there always is a great number; especially in times of prolonged peace. "A war, a real, good national war would immediately sweep away all these social malcontents. "That's why the leaders of the Cynics, and more especially Tolstoy and Shaw, hate war. It is their mar-feast, their kill-joy; their microbes do not prosper in times of war. "Without the fatal and all but universal peace of the period from 50 A.D. to 190 A.D., Christianity could never have made any headway in the Roman Empire; just as we got rid of our Cynics by the second Athenian Empire and its great wars.