{"id":"01KG8AK9ZHCCN1GS61RRV090KD","cid":"bafkreictmowqiu72g7bqvu57jfe57656okvqtzqn6dpmipykkdb23aqzdu","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":8493,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:57.725Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","start_line":8418,"text":"fact. And yet something in you bids me think now, that whatever latent\r\ndesign your impostor friend might have had upon you, it as yet remains\r\nunaccomplished. You read his label.\"\r\n\r\n\"And what did it say? 'This is a genial soul,' So you see you must\r\neither give up your doctrine of labels, or else your prejudice against\r\nmy friend. But tell me,\" with renewed earnestness, \"what do you take him\r\nfor? What is he?\"\r\n\r\n\"What are you? What am I? Nobody knows who anybody is. The data which\r\nlife furnishes, towards forming a true estimate of any being, are as\r\ninsufficient to that end as in geometry one side given would be to\r\ndetermine the triangle.\"\r\n\r\n\"But is not this doctrine of triangles someway inconsistent with your\r\ndoctrine of labels?\"\r\n\r\n\"Yes; but what of that? I seldom care to be consistent. In a\r\nphilosophical view, consistency is a certain level at all times,\r\nmaintained in all the thoughts of one's mind. But, since nature is\r\nnearly all hill and dale, how can one keep naturally advancing in\r\nknowledge without submitting to the natural inequalities in the\r\nprogress? Advance into knowledge is just like advance upon the grand\r\nErie canal, where, from the character of the country, change of level is\r\ninevitable; you are locked up and locked down with perpetual\r\ninconsistencies, and yet all the time you get on; while the dullest part\r\nof the whole route is what the boatmen call the 'long level'--a\r\nconsistently-flat surface of sixty miles through stagnant swamps.\"\r\n\r\n\"In one particular,\" rejoined the cosmopolitan, \"your simile is,\r\nperhaps, unfortunate. For, after all these weary lockings-up and\r\nlockings-down, upon how much of a higher plain do you finally stand?\r\nEnough to make it an object? Having from youth been taught reverence for\r\nknowledge, you must pardon me if, on but this one account, I reject your\r\nanalogy. But really you someway bewitch me with your tempting discourse,\r\nso that I keep straying from my point unawares. You tell me you cannot\r\ncertainly know who or what my friend is; pray, what do you conjecture\r\nhim to be?\"\r\n\r\n\"I conjecture him to be what, among the ancient Egyptians, was called a\r\n----\" using some unknown word.\r\n\r\n\"A ----! And what is that?\"\r\n\r\n\"A ---- is what Proclus, in a little note to his third book on the\r\ntheology of Plato, defines as ---- ----\" coming out with a sentence of\r\nGreek.\r\n\r\nHolding up his glass, and steadily looking through its transparency, the\r\ncosmopolitan rejoined: \"That, in so defining the thing, Proclus set it\r\nto modern understandings in the most crystal light it was susceptible\r\nof, I will not rashly deny; still, if you could put the definition in\r\nwords suited to perceptions like mine, I should take it for a favor.\r\n\r\n\"A favor!\" slightly lifting his cool eyebrows; \"a bridal favor I\r\nunderstand, a knot of white ribands, a very beautiful type of the purity\r\nof true marriage; but of other favors I am yet to learn; and still, in a\r\nvague way, the word, as you employ it, strikes me as unpleasingly\r\nsignificant in general of some poor, unheroic submission to being done\r\ngood to.\"\r\n\r\nHere the goblet of iced-water was brought, and, in compliance with a\r\nsign from the cosmopolitan, was placed before the stranger, who, not\r\nbefore expressing acknowledgments, took a draught, apparently\r\nrefreshing--its very coldness, as with some is the case, proving not\r\nentirely uncongenial.\r\n\r\nAt last, setting down the goblet, and gently wiping from his lips the\r\nbeads of water freshly clinging there as to the valve of a coral-shell\r\nupon a reef, he turned upon the cosmopolitan, and, in a manner the most\r\ncool, self-possessed, and matter-of-fact possible, said: \"I hold to the\r\nmetempsychosis; and whoever I may be now, I feel that I was once the\r\nstoic Arrian, and have inklings of having been equally puzzled by a word\r\nin the current language of that former time, very probably answering to\r\nyour word _favor_.\"\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJMVHXZ1WH9JRWME9D7FK","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JMR8XVKPA0G8ADAPC4","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AK98QP9YBME4EMNDYQBD4","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AK9ZH0XMEDC92VAJ49W2E","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:59.985Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:13.393Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}