The Fifth Epistle

The Fifth Epistle is a document found in ULTHAR-3, on the Red terminal.

AUTHOR: PSEUDO-STRATON

The Epistles of Straton of Stageira are generally considered to be pseudoepigraphical, written centuries after Straton's death. They are often associated with radical movements in Hellenistic Judaism, although this identification remains controversial. Only fragments of three out of an alleged twenty-one epistles survive.

The Fifth Epistle: Regarding the World to Come

What good is knowledge of virtue, brothers, if it does not make the world more virtuous? Is wisdom to be hoarded by those few citizens that can afford the time to study, and then lost upon their death? [text illegible] Yet likewise it is with those who castigate the philosophers and say the path to virtue is already known - how convenient for them, that nothing need be changed!

We must learn to make greater demands: of ourselves, of those who claim the right to rule us, and of philosophy itself! For all of these must serve the world that is to come, in which the toils and sorrows of our children upon the Earth will be ended; then every man will be a philosopher, and even the lowliest cook will have the wisdom to rule. And then shall begin [text illegible]

This world will come, I assure you, though it may take many years, and when it has come those of us who failed to work towards its coming will be judged harshly.

BARZAI:

Do we live in the world that is to come? And if we do, how do we judge those who failed to do their part? I myself do not condemn them, but pity them, and hope that we can give meaning to all the lives that brought us here, including theirs.