Simonides to tell him what God is. The poet answered him that it was not a question that could be immediately answered, and that he wanted a whole day to think upon it. When that term was over, Hiero asked the answer; but Simonides desired two days more to consider of it. This was not the last delay he asked; he was often called on to give an answer, and every time he desired double the time he had last demanded. The tyrant, wondering at it, desired to know the reason of it. I do so, answered Simonides, because the more I examine the matter, the more obscure it appears to me. "After reading all that has been written," says the poet Poe, "and all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment." "I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of me," says Emerson.... "I am very content with knowing, if only I could know.... To know a little, would be worth the expense of this world." "You read of but one wise man," says Congreve, "and all that he knew was—that he knew nothing." "The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge." "If God," said Lessing, "held all truth shut in his right hand, and in his left nothing but the restless instinct for truth, though with the condition of forever and ever erring, and should say to me, Choose! I would bow reverently to his left hand, and say, Father, give! Pure truth is for Thee alone!"