[6] Let us consider the first to begin with. To me, then, the Well seems to be a symbol of knowledge; for the nature of knowledge is to be very deep, not superficial; it does not display itself openly, but loves to hide itself in secrecy; it is discovered not easily but with difficulty and with much labour. And all this may be seen not only in branches of knowledge which contain a whole multitude of important problems, but in the simplest studies as well.
[7] Just choose any art you please, not the best of them I beg of you, but the most ignoble of them all, which perhaps no free man whatever brought up in a city would voluntarily practise, and even in the country a servant who has to grapple with a harsh and ill-conditioned master, who forces him to many a distasteful task, would only undertake reluctantly.
[8] For it will be found to be not a simple but a subtle matter, one “which needs both hands to take it,” hard to discover and hard to master, a foe to hesitation and negligence and indifference, demanding abundance of zest and enthusiasm, of hard toil and anxious thought.
This is why the diggers of this well say that they found no water in it (Gen. 26:32), inasmuch as the ends pursued in the different branches of knowledge prove to be not only hard to reach, but absolutely beyond finding.
[9] That is why one man is a better scholar or geometrician than another, because no limit can be set to the extensions and enlargements of his subject in all directions. For what still remains is always waiting to engage us in fuller force than what we have already learned; so that the man who is supposed to have reached the very end of knowledge, is considered in the judgement of another to have come half way; while if Truth give her verdict, he is pronounced to be just beginning.
[10] For “life is short,” said one, “and art is long” ; and he best apprehends its greatness who honestly sounds its depths, and digs it like a well.
So there is a story that a grey-haired man of great age shed tears when dying, not in any cowardly fear of death, but by reason of his yearning for education, and the thought that he is now first entering upon it, when he takes his final leave of it.
[11] For the soul is just blossoming into knowledge, when the body’s bloom is withering away through the passing of years. So it is a hard fate to be tripped up by the heels before one has attained the prime of youthful strength to apprehend things more accurately. This experience is common to all who love to learn, who see new results of thought and study rise like a shining light in addition to the old. Many of these does the soul, if it be not cursed with barrenness, bring forth; many does Nature of herself shew to those whose understanding is sharp-sighted, without giving any sign beforehand of their coming.
So then the well of knowledge, the well without limit or ending, has been shewn to be such as I have described.
[12] Why it was named “Oath” I must now tell you. Matters that are in doubt are decided by an oath, insecure things made secure, assurance given to that which lacked it. From this we conclude that there is nothing which can be asserted with greater certainty than that wisdom is essentially without end or limit.
[13] While then it is well to agree with one who discourses on these truths even if he takes no oath, let anyone who is not very prone to assent do so when the speaker is on his oath. And no one need shrink from taking such an oath, for he may rest assured that his name will appear on the register of those who have sworn truly.