No More Learning

He explained that the wires in
modern coils were of a compound called platinoid lately discovered by
F. W. Martino.

He spoke clearly the initials and surname of the discoverer. Moynihan
whispered from behind:

--Good old Fresh Water Martin!

--Ask him, Stephen whispered back with weary humour, if he wants a
subject for electrocution. He can have me.

Moynihan, seeing the professor bend over the coils, rose in his bench
and, clacking noiselessly the fingers of his right hand, began to call
with the voice of a slobbering urchin:

--Please teacher! This boy is after saying a bad word, teacher.

--Platinoid, the professor said solemnly, is preferred to German
silver because it has a lower coefficient of resistance by changes of
temperature. The platinoid wire is insulated and the covering of silk
that insulates it is wound on the ebonite bobbins just where my finger
is. If it were wound single an extra current would be induced in the
coils. The bobbins are saturated in hot paraffin wax. . .

A sharp Ulster voice said from the bench below Stephen:

--Are we likely to be asked questions on applied science?

The professor began to juggle gravely with the terms pure science and
applied science. A heavy-built student, wearing gold spectacles, stared
with some wonder at the questioner. Moynihan murmured from behind in
his natural voice:

--Isn't MacAlister a devil for his pound of flesh?

Stephen looked coldly on the oblong skull beneath him overgrown with
tangled twine-coloured hair. The voice, the accent, the mind of the
questioner offended him and he allowed the offence to carry him towards
wilful unkindness, bidding his mind think that the student's father
would have done better had he sent his son to Belfast to study and have
saved something on the train fare by so doing.

The oblong skull beneath did not turn to meet this shaft of thought and
yet the shaft came back to its bowstring; for he saw in a moment the
student's whey-pale face.

--That thought is not mine, he said to himself quickly. It came from
the comic Irishman in the bench behind. Patience. Can you say with
certitude by whom the soul of your race was bartered and its elect
betrayed--by the questioner or by the mocker? Patience. Remember
Epictetus. It is probably in his character to ask such a question at
such a moment in such a tone and to pronounce the word SCIENCE as a
monosyllable.

The droning voice of the professor continued to wind itself slowly
round and round the coils it spoke of, doubling, trebling, quadrupling
its somnolent energy as the coil multiplied its ohms of resistance.

Moynihan's voice called from behind in echo to a distant bell:

--Closing time, gents!

The entrance hall was crowded and loud with talk. On a table near the
door were two photographs in frames and between them a long roll of
paper bearing an irregular tail of signatures. MacCann went briskly to
and fro among the students, talking rapidly, answering rebuffs and
leading one after another to the table. In the inner hall the dean of
studies stood talking to a young professor, stroking his chin gravely
and nodding his head.

Stephen, checked by the crowd at the door, halted irresolutely. From
under the wide falling leaf of a soft hat Cranly's dark eyes were
watching him.

--Have you signed? Stephen asked.

Cranly closed his long thin-lipped mouth, communed with himself an
instant and answered:

--EGO HABEO.

--What is it for?

--QUOD?

--What is it for?

Cranly turned his pale face to Stephen and said blandly and bitterly:

--PER PAX UNIVERSALIS.

Stephen pointed to the Tsar's photograph and said:

--He has the face of a besotted Christ.

The scorn and anger in his voice brought Cranly's eyes back from a calm
survey of the walls of the hall.

--Are you annoyed? he asked.

--No, answered Stephen.

--Are you in bad humour?

--No.

--CREDO UT VOS SANGUINARIUS MENDAX ESTIS, said Cranly, QUIA FACIES
VOSTRA MONSTRAT UT VOS IN DAMNO MALO HUMORE ESTIS.

Moynihan, on his way to the table, said in Stephen's ear:

--MacCann is in tiptop form. Ready to shed the last drop. Brand new
world. No stimulants and votes for the bitches.

Stephen smiled at the manner of this confidence and, when Moynihan had
passed, turned again to meet Cranly's eyes.

--Perhaps you can tell me, he said, why he pours his soul so freely
into my ear. Can you?

A dull scowl appeared on Cranly's forehead. He stared at the table
where Moynihan had bent to write his name on the roll, and then said
flatly:

--A sugar!

--QUIS EST IN MALO HUMORE, said Stephen, EGO AUT VOS?

Cranly did not take up the taunt. He brooded sourly on his judgement
and repeated with the same flat force:

--A flaming bloody sugar, that's what he is!

It was his epitaph for all dead friendships and Stephen wondered
whether it would ever be spoken in the same tone over his memory. The
heavy lumpish phrase sank slowly out of hearing like a stone through a
quagmire. Stephen saw it sink as he had seen many another, feeling its
heaviness depress his heart. Cranly's speech, unlike that of Davin, had
neither rare phrases of Elizabethan English nor quaintly turned
versions of Irish idioms. Its drawl was an echo of the quays of Dublin
given back by a bleak decaying seaport, its energy an echo of the
sacred eloquence of Dublin given back flatly by a Wicklow pulpit.

The heavy scowl faded from Cranly's face as MacCann marched briskly
towards them from the other side of the hall.

--Here you are! said MacCann cheerily.

--Here I am! said Stephen.

--Late as usual. Can you not combine the progressive tendency with a
respect for punctuality?

--That question is out of order, said Stephen. Next business.

His smiling eyes were fixed on a silver-wrapped tablet of milk chocolate
which peeped out of the propagandist's breast-pocket. A little ring of
listeners closed round to hear the war of wits. A lean student with
olive skin and lank black hair thrust his face between the two, glancing
from one to the other at each phrase and seeming to try to catch each
flying phrase in his open moist mouth. Cranly took a small grey handball
from his pocket and began to examine it closely, turning it over and over.

--Next business? said MacCann. Hom!

He gave a loud cough of laughter, smiled broadly and tugged twice at
the straw-coloured goatee which hung from his blunt chin.

--The next business is to sign the testimonial.

--Will you pay me anything if I sign? asked Stephen.

--I thought you were an idealist, said MacCann.

The gipsy-like student looked about him and addressed the onlookers in
an indistinct bleating voice.

--By hell, that's a queer notion. I consider that notion to be a
mercenary notion.

His voice faded into silence. No heed was paid to his words. He turned
his olive face, equine in expression, towards Stephen, inviting him to
speak again.

MacCann began to speak with fluent energy of the Tsar's rescript, of
Stead, of general disarmament arbitration in cases of international
disputes, of the signs of the times, of the new humanity and the new
gospel of life which would make it the business of the community to
secure as cheaply as possible the greatest possible happiness of the
greatest possible number.

The gipsy student responded to the close of the period by crying:

--Three cheers for universal brotherhood!

--Go on, Temple, said a stout ruddy student near him. I'll stand you a
pint after.

--I'm a believer in universal brotherhood, said Temple, glancing about
him out of his dark oval eyes. Marx is only a bloody cod.

Cranly gripped his arm tightly to check his tongue, smiling uneasily,
and repeated:

--Easy, easy, easy!

Temple struggled to free his arm but continued, his mouth flecked by a
thin foam:

--Socialism was founded by an Irishman and the first man in Europe who
preached the freedom of thought was Collins. Two hundred years ago. He
denounced priestcraft, the philosopher of Middlesex. Three cheers for
John Anthony Collins!

A thin voice from the verge of the ring replied:

--Pip! pip!

Moynihan murmured beside Stephen's ear:

--And what about John Anthony's poor little sister:

Lottie Collins lost her drawers;
Won't you kindly lend her yours?

Stephen laughed and Moynihan, pleased with the result, murmured again:

--We'll have five bob each way on John Anthony Collins.

--I am waiting for your answer, said MacCann briefly.

--The affair doesn't interest me in the least, said Stephen wearily.
You know that well. Why do you make a scene about it?

--Good! said MacCann, smacking his lips. You are a reactionary, then?

--Do you think you impress me, Stephen asked, when you flourish your
wooden sword?

--Metaphors! said MacCann bluntly. Come to facts.

Stephen blushed and turned aside. MacCann stood his ground and said with
hostile humour:

--Minor poets, I suppose, are above such trivial questions as the
question of universal peace.

Cranly raised his head and held the handball between the two students
by way of a peace-offering, saying:

--PAX SUPER TOTUM SANGUINARIUM GLOBUM.

Stephen, moving away the bystanders, jerked his shoulder angrily in the
direction of the Tsar's image, saying:

--Keep your icon. If we must have a Jesus let us have a legitimate
Jesus.

--By hell, that's a good one! said the gipsy student to those about
him, that's a fine expression. I like that expression immensely.

He gulped down the spittle in his throat as if he were gulping down the
phrase and, fumbling at the peak of his tweed cap, turned to Stephen,
saying:

--Excuse me, sir, what do you mean by that expression you uttered just
now?

Feeling himself jostled by the students near him, he said to them:

--I am curious to know now what he meant by that expression.

He turned again to Stephen and said in a whisper:

--Do you believe in Jesus? I believe in man. Of course, I don't know
if you believe in man. I admire you, sir. I admire the mind of man
independent of all religions. Is that your opinion about the mind of
Jesus?

--Go on, Temple, said the stout ruddy student, returning, as was his
wont, to his first idea, that pint is waiting for you.

--He thinks I'm an imbecile, Temple explained to Stephen, because I'm a
believer in the power of mind.

Cranly linked his arms into those of Stephen and his admirer and said:

--NOS AD MANUM BALLUM JOCABIMUS.

Stephen, in the act of being led away, caught sight of MacCann's
flushed blunt-featured face.

--My signature is of no account, he said politely. You are right to go
your way. Leave me to go mine.

--Dedalus, said MacCann crisply, I believe you're a good fellow but
you have yet to learn the dignity of altruism and the responsibility of
the human individual.

A voice said:

--Intellectual crankery is better out of this movement than in it.

Stephen, recognizing the harsh tone of MacAlister's voice did not turn
in the direction of the voice. Cranly pushed solemnly through the
throng of students, linking Stephen and Temple like a celebrant
attended by his ministers on his way to the altar.

Temple bent eagerly across Cranly's breast and said:

--Did you hear MacAlister what he said? That youth is jealous of you.
Did you see that? I bet Cranly didn't see that. By hell, I saw that at
once.

As they crossed the inner hall, the dean of studies was in the act of
escaping from the student with whom he had been conversing. He stood at
the foot of the staircase, a foot on the lowest step, his threadbare
soutane gathered about him for the ascent with womanish care, nodding
his head often and repeating:

--Not a doubt of it, Mr Hackett! Very fine! Not a doubt of it!

In the middle of the hall the prefect of the college sodality was
speaking earnestly, in a soft querulous voice, with a boarder. As he
spoke he wrinkled a little his freckled brow and bit, between his
phrases, at a tiny bone pencil.

--I hope the matric men will all come. The first arts' men are pretty
sure. Second arts, too. We must make sure of the newcomers.

Temple bent again across Cranly, as they were passing through the
doorway, and said in a swift whisper:

--Do you know that he is a married man? he was a married man before
they converted him. He has a wife and children somewhere. By hell, I
think that's the queerest notion I ever heard! Eh?

His whisper trailed off into sly cackling laughter. The moment they
were through the doorway Cranly seized him rudely by the neck and shook
him, saying:

--You flaming floundering fool! I'll take my dying bible there isn't a
bigger bloody ape, do you know, than you in the whole flaming bloody
world!

Temple wriggled in his grip, laughing still with sly content, while
Cranly repeated flatly at every rude shake:

--A flaming flaring bloody idiot!

They crossed the weedy garden together. The president, wrapped in a
heavy loose cloak, was coming towards them along one of the walks,
reading his office. At the end of the walk he halted before turning and
raised his eyes. The students saluted, Temple fumbling as before at the
peak of his cap. They walked forward in silence. As they neared the
alley Stephen could hear the thuds of the players' hands and the wet
smacks of the ball and Davin's voice crying out excitedly at each
stroke.

The three students halted round the box on which Davin sat to follow
the game. Temple, after a few moments, sidled across to Stephen and
said:

--Excuse me, I wanted to ask you, do you believe that Jean-Jacques
Rousseau was a sincere man?

Stephen laughed outright. Cranly, picking up the broken stave of a cask
from the grass at his feet, turned swiftly and said sternly:

--Temple, I declare to the living God if you say another word, do you
know, to anybody on any subject, I'll kill you SUPER SPOTTUM.

--He was like you, I fancy, said Stephen, an emotional man.

--Blast him, curse him! said Cranly broadly. Don't talk to him at all.
Sure, you might as well be talking, do you know, to a flaming
chamber-pot as talking to Temple. Go home, Temple. For God's sake, go
home.

--I don't care a damn about you, Cranly, answered Temple, moving out of
reach of the uplifted stave and pointing at Stephen. He's the only man
I see in this institution that has an individual mind.

--Institution! Individual! cried Cranly. Go home, blast you, for
you're a hopeless bloody man.

--I'm an emotional man, said Temple. That's quite rightly expressed.
And I'm proud that I'm an emotionalist.

He sidled out of the alley, smiling slyly.
Cranly watched him with a
blank expressionless face.

--Look at him! he said. Did you ever see such a go-by-the-wall?

His phrase was greeted by a strange laugh from a student who lounged
against the wall, his peaked cap down on his eyes. The laugh, pitched
in a high key and coming from a so muscular frame, seemed like the
whinny of an elephant. The student's body shook all over and, to ease
his mirth, he rubbed both his hands delightedly over his groins.

--Lynch is awake, said Cranly.

Lynch, for answer, straightened himself and thrust forward his chest.

--Lynch puts out his chest, said Stephen, as a criticism of life.

Lynch smote himself sonorously on the chest and said:

--Who has anything to say about my girth?

Cranly took him at the word and the two began to tussle. When their
faces had flushed with the struggle they drew apart, panting. Stephen
bent down towards Davin who, intent on the game, had paid no heed to
the talk of the others.

--And how is my little tame goose? he asked. Did he sign, too?

Davin nodded and said:

--And you, Stevie?

Stephen shook his head.

--You're a terrible man, Stevie, said Davin, taking the short pipe
from his mouth, always alone.

--Now that you have signed the petition for universal peace, said
Stephen, I suppose you will burn that little copybook I saw in your
room.

As Davin did not answer, Stephen began to quote:

--Long pace, fianna! Right incline, fianna! Fianna, by numbers,
salute, one, two!

--That's a different question, said Davin. I'm an Irish nationalist,
first and foremost. But that's you all out. You're a born sneerer,
Stevie.

--When you make the next rebellion with hurleysticks, said Stephen,
and want the indispensable informer, tell me. I can find you a few in
this college.

--I can't understand you, said Davin. One time I hear you talk against
English literature. Now you talk against the Irish informers. What with
your name and your ideas--Are you Irish at all?

--Come with me now to the office of arms and I will show you the tree
of my family, said Stephen.

--Then be one of us, said Davin. Why don't you learn Irish? Why did you
drop out of the league class after the first lesson?

--You know one reason why, answered Stephen.

Davin tossed his head and laughed.

--Oh, come now, he said. Is it on account of that certain young lady
and Father Moran? But that's all in your own mind, Stevie. They were
only talking and laughing.

Stephen paused and laid a friendly hand upon Davin's shoulder.

--Do you remember, he said, when we knew each other first? The first
morning we met you asked me to show you the way to the matriculation
class, putting a very strong stress on the first syllable. You
remember? Then you used to address the jesuits as father, you remember?
I ask myself about you: IS HE AS INNOCENT AS HIS SPEECH?

--I'm a simple person, said Davin. You know that. When you told me
that night in Harcourt Street those things about your private life,
honest to God, Stevie, I was not able to eat my dinner. I was quite
bad. I was awake a long time that night. Why did you tell me those
things?

--Thanks, said Stephen. You mean I am a monster.

--No, said Davin. But I wish you had not told me.

A tide began to surge beneath the calm surface of Stephen's
friendliness.

--This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I
shall express myself as I am.

--Try to be one of us, repeated Davin. In heart you are an Irish man
but your pride is too powerful.

--My ancestors threw off their language and took another, Stephen said.
They allowed a handful of foreigners to subject them. Do you fancy I am
going to pay in my own life and person debts they made? What for?

--For our freedom, said Davin.

--No honourable and sincere man, said Stephen, has given up to you his
life and his youth and his affections from the days of Tone to those of
Parnell, but you sold him to the enemy or failed him in need or reviled
him and left him for another. And you invite me to be one of you. I'd
see you damned first.

--They died for their ideals, Stevie, said Davin. Our day will come
yet, believe me.

Stephen, following his own thought, was silent for an instant.

--The soul is born, he said vaguely, first in those moments I told you
of. It has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the
body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets
flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality,
language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.

Davin knocked the ashes from his pipe.

--Too deep for me, Stevie, he said. But a man's country comes first.
Ireland first, Stevie. You can be a poet or a mystic after.

--Do you know what Ireland is? asked Stephen with cold violence.
Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

Davin rose from his box and went towards the players, shaking his head
sadly. But in a moment his sadness left him and he was hotly disputing
with Cranly and the two players who had finished their game. A match of
four was arranged, Cranly insisting, however, that his ball should be
used. He let it rebound twice or thrice to his hand and struck it strongly
and swiftly towards the base of the alley, exclaiming in answer to its
thud:

--Your soul!

Stephen stood with Lynch till the score began to rise. Then he plucked
him by the sleeve to come away. Lynch obeyed, saying:

--Let us eke go, as Cranly has it.

Stephen smiled at this side-thrust.

They passed back through the garden and out through the hall where the
doddering porter was pinning up a hall notice in the frame. At the foot
of the steps they halted and Stephen took a packet of cigarettes from
his pocket and offered it to his companion.

--I know you are poor, he said.

--Damn your yellow insolence, answered Lynch.

This second proof of Lynch's culture made Stephen smile again.

--It was a great day for European culture, he said, when you made up
your mind to swear in yellow.

They lit their cigarettes and turned to the right. After a pause
Stephen began:

--Aristotle has not defined pity and terror. I have. I say--

Lynch halted and said bluntly:

--Stop! I won't listen! I am sick. I was out last night on a yellow
drunk with Horan and Goggins.

Stephen went on:

--Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of
whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with
the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the
presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and
unites it with the secret cause.

--Repeat, said Lynch.

Stephen repeated the definitions slowly.

--A girl got into a hansom a few days ago, he went on, in London. She
was on her way to meet her mother whom she had not seen for many years.
At the corner of a street the shaft of a lorry shivered the window of
the hansom in the shape of a star. A long fine needle of the shivered
glass pierced her heart. She died on the instant. The reporter called
it a tragic death. It is not. It is remote from terror and pity
according to the terms of my definitions.

--The tragic emotion, in fact, is a face looking two ways, towards
terror and towards pity, both of which are phases of it. You see I use
the word ARREST. I mean that the tragic emotion is static. Or rather
the dramatic emotion is. The feelings excited by improper art are
kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to
something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts
which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper
arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore
static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing.

--You say that art must not excite desire, said Lynch. I told you that
one day I wrote my name in pencil on the backside of the Venus of
Praxiteles in the Museum. Was that not desire?

--I speak of normal natures, said Stephen. You also told me that when
you were a boy in that charming carmelite school you ate pieces of
dried cowdung.

Lynch broke again into a whinny of laughter and again rubbed both his
hands over his groins but without taking them from his pockets.

--O, I did! I did! he cried.

Stephen turned towards his companion and looked at him for a moment
boldly in the eyes. Lynch, recovering from his laughter, answered his
look from his humbled eyes. The long slender flattened skull beneath
the long pointed cap brought before Stephen's mind the image of a
hooded reptile. The eyes, too, were reptile-like in glint and gaze. Yet
at that instant, humbled and alert in their look, they were lit by one
tiny human point, the window of a shrivelled soul, poignant and
self-embittered.

--As for that, Stephen said in polite parenthesis, we are all animals.
I also am an animal.

--You are, said Lynch.

--But we are just now in a mental world, Stephen continued. The desire
and loathing excited by improper esthetic means are really not esthetic
emotions not only because they are kinetic in character but also
because they are not more than physical. Our flesh shrinks from what it
dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely
reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are
aware that the fly is about to enter our eye.

--Not always, said Lynch critically.

--In the same way, said Stephen, your flesh responded to the stimulus
of a naked statue, but it was, I say, simply a reflex action of the
nerves. Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion
which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens,
or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis,
an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged, and
at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty.

--What is that exactly? asked Lynch.

--Rhythm, said Stephen, is the first formal esthetic relation of part
to part in any esthetic whole or of an esthetic whole to its part or
parts or of any part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part.

--If that is rhythm, said Lynch, let me hear what you call beauty;
and, please remember, though I did eat a cake of cowdung once, that I
admire only beauty.

Stephen raised his cap as if in greeting. Then, blushing slightly, he
laid his hand on Lynch's thick tweed sleeve.

--We are right, he said, and the others are wrong. To speak of these
things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it,
to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again,
from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and
colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty
we have come to understand--that is art.

They had reached the canal bridge and, turning from their course, went
on by the trees. A crude grey light, mirrored in the sluggish water and
a smell of wet branches over their heads seemed to war against the
course of Stephen's thought.

--But you have not answered my question, said Lynch. What is art? What
is the beauty it expresses?

--That was the first definition I gave you, you sleepy-headed wretch,
said Stephen, when I began to try to think out the matter for myself.
Do you remember the night? Cranly lost his temper and began to talk
about Wicklow bacon.

--I remember, said Lynch. He told us about them flaming fat devils of
pigs.

--Art, said Stephen, is the human disposition of sensible or
intelligible matter for an esthetic end. You remember the pigs and
forget that. You are a distressing pair, you and Cranly.

Lynch made a grimace at the raw grey sky and said:

--If I am to listen to your esthetic philosophy give me at least
another cigarette. I don't care about it. I don't even care about
women. Damn you and damn everything. I want a job of five hundred a
year. You can't get me one.

Stephen handed him the packet of cigarettes. Lynch took the last one
that remained, saying simply:

--Proceed!

--Aquinas, said Stephen, says that is beautiful the apprehension of
which pleases.

Lynch nodded.

--I remember that, he said, PULCRA SUNT QUAE VISA PLACENT.

--He uses the word VISA, said Stephen, to cover esthetic apprehensions of
all kinds, whether through sight or hearing or through any other avenue of
apprehension. This word, though it is vague, is clear enough to keep
away good and evil which excite desire and loathing. It means certainly
a stasis and not a kinesis. How about the true? It produces also a
stasis of the mind. You would not write your name in pencil across the
hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle.

--No, said Lynch, give me the hypotenuse of the Venus of Praxiteles.

--Static therefore, said Stephen. Plato, I believe, said that beauty
is the splendour of truth. I don't think that it has a meaning, but the
true and the beautiful are akin. Truth is beheld by the intellect which
is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the intelligible;
beauty is beheld by the imagination which is appeased by the most
satisfying relations of the sensible. The first step in the direction
of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself,
to comprehend the act itself of intellection. Aristotle's entire system
of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think,
rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same time
and in the same connexion belong to and not belong to the same subject.