My ignorance of many natural phenomena is no excuse for your ignorance as to the origin of souls. You ought, according to your boasting dream to know everything. The thing of most importance was forgotten in your cargo of Eastern wares.

31. Another part of my ‘smoke’ which you frequently laugh at is my pretence, as you say, to know what I do not know, and the parade I make of great teachers to deceive the common and ignorant people. You, of course, are a man not of smoke but of flame, or rather of lightning; you fulminate when you speak; you cannot contain the flames which have been conceived within your mouth, and like Barchochebas,³¹⁹⁴ the leader of the revolt of the Jews, who used to hold in his mouth a lighted straw and blow it out so as to appear to be breathing forth flame: so you also, like a second Salmoneus,³¹⁹⁵ brighten the whole path on which you tread, and reproach us as mere men of smoke, to whom perhaps the words might be applied,³¹⁹⁶ “Thou touchest the hills and they smoke.” You do not understand the allusion of the Prophet³¹⁹⁷ when he speaks of the smoke of the locusts; it is no doubt the beauty of your eyes which makes it impossible for you to bear the pungency of our smoke.