No More Learning

Hector receives sacrifice
at Troy: Protesilaus just across the water on Chersonese. Ever since
the number of Gods has thus multiplied, perjury and temple-robbery have
been on the increase. In short, men do not care two straws about us;
nor can I blame them.

That is all I have to say on the subject of bastards and new
importations. But I have also observed with considerable amusement
the introduction of various strange names, denoting persons who
neither have nor could conceivably have any existence among us. Show
me this Virtue of whom we hear so much; show me Nature, and Destiny,
and Fortune, if they are anything more than unsubstantial names, the
vain imaginings of some philosopher's empty head. Yet these flimsy
personifications have so far gained upon the weak intelligences of
mankind, that not a man will now sacrifice to us, knowing that though
he should present us with a myriad of hecatombs, Fortune will none
the less work out that destiny which has been appointed for each man
from the beginning. I should take it kindly of you, sir, if you would
tell me whether you _have_ ever seen Virtue or Fortune or Destiny
anywhere? I know that you must have heard of them often enough, from
the philosophers, unless your ears are deaf enough to be proof against
their bawlings.

Much more might be said: but I forbear. I perceive that the public
indignation has already risen to hissing point; especially in those
quarters in which my plain truths have told home.

In conclusion, sir, I have drawn up a bill dealing with this subject;
which, with your permission, I shall now read.

_Zeus. _ Very well; some of your points are reasonable enough. We must
put a check on these abuses, or they will get worse.

_Mo. _ On the seventh day of the month in the prytany of Zeus and the
presidency of Posidon Apollo in the chair the following Bill introduced
by Sleep was read by Momus son of Night before a true and lawful
meeting of the Assembly whom Fortune direct.

Whereas _numerous persons both Greeks and barbarians being in no way
entitled to the franchise have by means unknown procured their names
to be enrolled on our register filling the Heavens with false Gods
troubling our banquets with a tumultuous rout of miscellaneous polyglot
humanity and causing a deficiency in the supplies of ambrosia and
nectar whereby the price of the latter commodity owing to increased
consumption has risen to four pounds the half-pint_:

And whereas _the said persons have presumptuously forced themselves
into the places of genuine and old-established deities and in
contravention of law and custom have further claimed precedence of the
same deities upon the Earth_:

It has seemed good to the Senate and People _that an Assembly be
convened upon Olympus at or about the time of the winter solstice for
the purpose of electing a Commission of Inquiry the Commissioners to
be duly-qualified Gods seven in number of whom three to be appointed
from the most ancient Senate of Cronus and the remaining four from
the twelve Gods of whom Zeus to be one and the said Commissioners
shall before taking their seats swear by Styx according to the
established form and Hermes shall summon by proclamation all such as
claim admission to the Assembly to appear and bring with them sworn
witnesses together with documentary proofs of their origin and all
such persons shall successively appear before the Commissioners and
the Commissioners after examination of their claims shall either
declare them to be Gods or dismiss them to their own tombs and family
vaults and if the Commissioners subsequently discover in Heaven any
person so disqualified from entering such person shall be thrown into
Tartarus and further each God shall follow his own profession and no
other and it shall not be lawful either for Athene to heal the sick
or for Asclepius to deliver oracles or for Apollo to practise three
professions at once but only one either prophecy or music or medicine
according as he shall select and instructions shall be issued to
philosophers forbidding them either to invent meaningless names or to
talk nonsense about matters of which they know nothing and if a temple
and sacrificial honours have already been accorded to any disqualified
person his statue shall be thrown down and that of Zeus or Hera or
Athene or other God substituted in its place and his city shall provide
him with a tomb and set up a pillar in lieu of his altar and against
any person refusing to appear before the Commissioners in accordance
with the proclamation judgement shall be given by default. _

That, gentlemen, is the Bill.

_Zeus. _ And a very equitable one it is, Momus. All in favour of
this Bill hold up their hands! Or no: our opponents are sure to
be in a majority. You may all go away now, and when Hermes makes
the proclamation, every one must come, bringing with him complete
particulars and proofs, with his father's and mother's names, his tribe
and clan, and the reason and circumstances of his deification. And any
of you who fail to produce your proofs will find it is no use having
great temples on the Earth, or passing _there_ for Gods; that will not
help you with the Commissioners.

F.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Anubis.

[25] Apis.

[26] Amphiaraus, the father of Amphilochus, neither slew his own
mother, Hypermnestra, nor procured her death. He did, however, procure
the death of his wife, Eriphyle, at the hand of her son Alcmaeon; and
in this remote sense was a matricide. It must be confessed that a great
deal of the peculiar guilt of matricide evaporates in the process of
explanation. The reader may prefer to suppose simply that Lucian has
made a slip.




THE CYNIC


_Lycinus. A Cynic_

_Ly. _ Give an account of yourself, my man. You wear a beard and let
your hair grow; you eschew shirts; you exhibit your skin; your feet
are bare; you choose a wandering, outcast, beastly life; unlike other
people, you make your own body the object of your severities; you go
from place to place sleeping on the hard ground where chance finds you,
with the result that your old cloak, neither light nor soft nor gay to
begin with, has a plentiful load of filth to carry about with it. Why
_is_ it all?

_Cy. _ It meets my needs. It was easy to come by, and it gives its owner
no trouble. It is the cloak for me.

Pray tell me, do you not call extravagance a vice?

_Ly. _ Oh, yes.

_Cy. _ And economy a virtue?

_Ly. _ Yes, again.

_Cy. _ Then, if you find me living economically, and others
extravagantly, why blame me instead of them?

_Ly. _ I do not call your life more economical than other people's; I
call it more destitute--destitution and want, that is what it is; you
are no better than the poor who beg their daily bread.

_Cy. _ That brings us to the questions, What is want, and what is
sufficiency? Shall we try to find the answers?

_Ly. _ If you like, yes.

_Cy. _ A man's sufficiency is that which meets his necessities; will
that do?

_Ly. _ I pass that.

_Cy. _ And want occurs when the supply falls short of necessity--does
not meet the need?

_Ly. _ Yes.

_Cy. _ Very well, then, I am not in want; nothing of mine fails to
satisfy my need.

_Ly. _ How do you make that out?

_Cy. _ Well, consider the purpose of anything we require; the purpose of
a house is protection?

_Ly. _ Yes.

_Cy. _ Clothing--what is that for? protection too, I think.

_Ly. _ Yes.

_Cy. _ But now, pray, what is the purpose of the protection, in turn?
the better condition of the protected, I presume.

_Ly. _ I agree.

_Cy. _ Then do you think my feet are in worse condition than yours?

_Ly. _ I cannot say.

_Cy. _ Oh, yes; look at it this way; what have feet to do?

_Ly. _ Walk.

_Cy. _ And do you think my feet walk worse than yours, or than the
average man's?

_Ly. _ Oh, not that, I dare say.

_Cy. _ Then they are not in worse condition, if they do their work as
well.

_Ly. _ That may be so.

_Cy. _ So it appears that, as far as feet go, I am in no worse condition
than other people.

_Ly. _ No, I do not think you are.

_Cy. _ Well, the rest of my body, then? If it is in worse condition, it
must be weaker, strength being the virtue of the body. Is mine weaker?

_Ly. _ Not that I see.

_Cy. _ Consequently, neither my feet nor the rest of my body need
protection, it seems; if they did, they would be in bad condition;
for want is always an evil, and deteriorates the thing concerned. But
again, there is no sign, either, of my body's being nourished the worse
for its nourishment's being of a common sort.

_Ly. _ None whatever.

_Cy. _ It would not be healthy, if it were badly nourished; for bad food
injures the body.

_Ly. _ That is true.

_Cy. _ If so, it is for you to explain why you blame me and depreciate
my life and call it miserable.

_Ly. _ Easily explained. Nature (which you honour) and the Gods have
given us the earth, and brought all sorts of good things out of it,
providing us with abundance not merely for our necessities, but for
our pleasures; and then you abstain from all or nearly all of it, and
utilize these good things no more than the beasts. Your drink is water,
just like theirs; you eat what you pick up, like a dog, and the dog's
bed is as good as yours; straw is enough for either of you. Then your
clothes are no more presentable than a beggar's. Now, if this sort of
contentment is to pass for wisdom, God must have been all wrong in
making sheep woolly, filling grapes with wine, and providing all our
infinite variety of oil, honey, and the rest, that we might have food
of every sort, pleasant drink, money, soft beds, fine houses, all the
wonderful paraphernalia of civilization, in fact; for the productions
of art are God's gifts to us too. To live without all these would be
miserable enough even if one could not help it, as prisoners cannot,
for instance; it is far more so if the abstention is forced upon a man
by himself; it is then sheer madness.

_Cy. _ You may be right. But take this case, now. A rich man, indulging
genial kindly instincts, entertains at a banquet all sorts and
conditions of men; some of them are sick, others sound, and the dishes
provided are as various as the guests. There is one of these to whom
nothing comes amiss; he has his finger in every dish, not only the
ones within easy reach, but those some way off that were intended for
the invalids; this though he is in rude health, has not more than one
stomach, requires little to nourish him, and is likely to be upset by a
surfeit. What is your opinion of this gentleman? is he a man of sense?

_Ly. _ Why, no.

_Cy. _ Is he temperate?

_Ly. _ No, nor that.

_Cy. _ Well, then there is another guest at the same table; he seems
unconscious of all that variety, fixes on some dish close by that suits
his need, eats moderately of it and confines himself to it without a
glance at the rest. You surely find him a more temperate and better man
than the other?

_Ly. _ Certainly.

_Cy. _ Do you see, or must I explain?

_Ly. _ What?

_Cy. _ That the hospitable entertainer is God, who provides this variety
of all kinds that each may have something to suit him; this is for the
sound, that for the sick; this for the strong and that for the weak; it
is not all for all of us; each is to take what is within reach, and of
that only what he most needs.

Now you others are like the greedy unrestrained person who lays hands
on everything; local productions will not do for you, the world must be
your storehouse; your native land and its seas are quite insufficient;
you purchase your pleasures from the ends of the earth, prefer the
exotic to the home growth, the costly to the cheap, the rare to the
common; in fact you would rather have troubles and complications than
avoid them. Most of the precious instruments of happiness that you
so pride yourselves upon are won only by vexation and worry. Give a
moment's thought, if you will, to the gold you all pray for, to the
silver, the costly houses, the elaborate dresses, and do not forget
their conditions precedent, the trouble and toil and danger they
cost--nay, the blood and mortality and ruin; not only do numbers perish
at sea on their account, or endure miseries in the acquisition or
working of them; besides that, they have very likely to be fought for,
or the desire of them makes friends plot against friends, children
against parents, wives against husbands.

And how purposeless it all is! embroidered clothes have no more warmth
in them than others, gilded houses keep out the rain no better, the
drink is no sweeter out of a silver cup, or a gold one for that matter,
an ivory bed makes sleep no softer; on the contrary, your fortunate man
on his ivory bed between his delicate sheets constantly finds himself
wooing sleep in vain. And as to the elaborate dressing of food, I need
hardly say that instead of aiding nutrition it injures the body and
breeds diseases in it.

As superfluous to mention the abuse of the sexual instinct, so easily
managed if indulgence were not made an object. And if madness and
corruption were limited to that--; but men must take nowadays to
perverting the use of everything they have, turning it to unnatural
purposes, like him who insists on making a carriage of a couch.

_Ly. _ Is there such a person?

_Cy. _ Why, he is you; you for whom men are beasts of burden, you who
make them shoulder your couch-carriages, and loll up there yourselves
in luxury, driving your men like so many asses and bidding them turn
this way and not that; this is one of the outward and visible signs of
your happiness.

Again, when people use edible things not for food but to get dye out
of--the murex-dyers, for instance--are they not abusing God's gifts?

_Ly. _ Certainly not; the flesh of the murex can provide a pigment as
well as food.

_Cy. _ Ah, but it was not made for that. So you can _force_ a
mixing-bowl to do the work of a saucepan; but that is not what it
was made for. However, it is impossible to exhaust these people's
wrong-headedness; it is endless. And because I will not join them, you
reproach me. My life is that of the orderly man I described; I make
merry on what comes to hand, use what is cheap, and have no yearning
for the elaborate and exotic.

Moreover, if you think that because I need and use but few things I
live the life of a beast, that argument lands you in the conclusion
that the Gods are yet lower than the beasts; for they have no needs at
all. But to clear your ideas on the comparative merits of great and
small needs, you have only to reflect that children have more needs
than adults, women than men, the sick than the well, and generally the
inferior than the superior. Accordingly, the Gods have no needs, and
those men the fewest who are nearest Gods.

Take Heracles, the best man that ever lived, a divine man, and rightly
reckoned a God; was it wrong-headedness that made him go about in
nothing but a lion's skin, insensible to all the needs you feel? No,
he was not wrong-headed, who righted other people's wrongs; he was not
poor, who was lord of land and sea. Wherever he went, he was master;
he never met his superior or his equal as long as he lived. Do you
suppose he could not get sheets and shoes, and therefore went as he
did? absurd! he had self-control and fortitude; he wanted power, and
not luxury.

And Theseus his disciple--king of all the Athenians, son of 14.
Poseidon, says the legend, and best of his generation,--he too chose to
go naked and unshod; it was _his_ pleasure to let his hair and beard
grow; and not his pleasure only, but all his contemporaries'; they were
better men than you, and would no more have let you shave them than a
lion would; soft smooth flesh was very well for women, they thought;
as for them, they were men, and were content to look it; the beard was
man's ornament, like the lion's, or the horse's mane; God had made
certain beautiful and decorative additions to those creatures; and so
he had to man, in the beard. Well, I admire those ancients and would
fain be like them; I have not the smallest admiration for the present
generation's wonderful felicity--tables! clothes! bodies artificially
polished all over! not a hair to grow on any of the places where
nature plants it!

My prayer would be that my feet might be just hoofs, like Chiron's in
the story, that I might need bedclothes no more than the lion, and
costly food no more than the dog. Let my sufficient bed be the whole
earth, my house this universe, and the food of my choice the easiest
procurable. May I have no need, I nor any that I call friend, of gold
and silver. For all human evils spring from the desire of these,
seditions and wars, conspiracies and murders. The fountain of them all
is the desire of more. Never be that desire mine; let me never wish for
more than my share, but be content with less.

Such are our aspirations--considerably different from other people's.
It is no wonder that our get-up is peculiar, since the peculiarity of
our underlying principle is so marked. I cannot make out why you allow
a harpist his proper robe and get-up--and so the flute-player has his,
and the tragic actor his--, but will not be consistent and recognize
any uniform for a good man; the good man must be like every one else,
of course, regardless of the fact that every one else is all wrong.
Well, if the good are to have a uniform of their own, there can be
none better than that which the average sensual man will consider most
improper, and reject with most decision for himself.

Now my uniform consists of a rough hairy skin, a threadbare cloak,
long hair, and bare feet, whereas yours is for all the world that of
some minister to vice; there is not a pin to choose between you--the
gay colours, the soft texture, the number of garments you are swathed
in, the shoes, the sleeked hair, the very scent of you; for the more
blessed you are, the more do you exhale perfumes like his. What value
can one attach to a man whom one's nose would identify for one of those
minions? The consequence is, you are equal to no more work than they
are, and to quite as much pleasure.
You feed like them, you sleep
like them, you walk like them--except so far as you avoid walking by
getting yourselves conveyed like parcels by porters or animals; as
for me, my feet take me anywhere that I want to go. I can put up with
cold and heat and be content with the works of God--such a miserable
wretch am I--, whereas you blessed ones are displeased with everything
that happens and grumble without ceasing; what is is intolerable, what
is not you pine for, in winter for summer, in summer for winter, in
heat for cold, in cold for heat, as fastidious and peevish as so many
invalids; only their reason is to be found in their illness, and yours
in your characters.

And then, because we occasionally make mistakes in practice, you
recommend us to change our plan and correct our principles, the fact
being that you in your own affairs go quite at random, never acting
on deliberation or reason, but always on habit and appetite. You are
no better than people washed about by a flood; they drift with the
current, you with your appetites. There is a story of a man on a
vicious horse that just gives your case. The horse ran away with him,
and at the pace it was going at he could not get off. A man in the way
asked him where he was off to; 'wherever this beast chooses,' was the
reply. So if one asked you where you were bound for, if you cared to
tell the truth you would say either generally, wherever your appetites
chose, or in particular, where pleasure chose to-day, where fancy chose
to-morrow, and where avarice chose another day; or sometimes it is
rage, sometimes fear, sometimes any other such feeling, that takes you
whither it will. You ride not one horse, but many at different times,
all vicious, and all out of control. They are carrying you straight for
pits and cliffs; but you do not realize that you are bound for a fall
till the fall comes.

The old cloak, the shaggy hair, the whole get-up that you ridicule, has
this effect: it enables me to live a quiet life, doing as I will and
keeping the company I want. No ignorant uneducated person will have
anything to say to one dressed like this; and the soft livers turn the
other way as soon as I am in sight. But the refined, the reasonable,
the earnest, seek me out; they are the men who seek me, because they
are the men I wish to see. At the doors of those whom the world counts
happy I do not dance attendance; their gold crowns and their purple I
call ostentation, and them I laugh to scorn.

These externals that you pour contempt upon, you may learn that they
are seemly enough not merely for good men, but for Gods, if you will
look at the Gods' statues; do those resemble you, or me? Do not confine
your attention to Greece; take a tour round the foreign temples too,
and see whether the Gods treat their hair and beards like me, or let
the painters and sculptors shave them. Most of them, you will find,
have no more shirt than I have, either. I hope you will not venture to
describe again as mean an appearance that is accepted as godlike.

H.




THE PURIST PURIZED


_Lycinus. Purist_

_Ly. _ Are you the man whose scent is so keen for a blunder, and who is
himself blunder-proof?

_Pur. _ I think I may say so.

_Ly. _ I suppose one must be blunder-proof, to detect the man who is not
so?

_Pur. _ Assuredly.

_Ly. _ Do I understand that you are proof?

_Pur. _ How could I call myself educated, if I made blunders at my age?

_Ly. _ Well, shall you be able to detect a culprit, and convict him if
he denies it?

_Pur. _ Of course I shall.

_Ly. _ Catch me out, then; I will make one just now.

_Pur. _ Say on.

_Ly. _ Why, the deed is done, and you have missed it.

_Pur. _ You are joking, of course?

_Ly. _ No, upon my honour. The blunder is made, and you none the wiser.
Well, try again; but you are not infallible on these sort of things.

_Pur. _ Well?

_Ly. _ Again, the blunder made, and you unconscious.

_Pur. _ How can that be, before you have opened your lips?

_Ly. _ Oh yes, I opened them, and to a blunder; but you never see them.
I quite doubt you seeing this one even.

_Pur. _ Well, there is something very queer about it if I do not know a
solecism when I hear it.

_Ly. _ One begins to doubt, when a man has missed three.

_Pur. _ Three? What do you mean?

_Ly. _ A complete triolet of them.

_Pur. _ You are certainly joking.

_Ly. _ And you are as certainly a poor detective.

_Pur. _ If you were to say something, one might have a chance.

_Ly. _ Four chances you have had, and no result. It would have been a
fine feather in your hat to have got them all.

_Pur. _ Nothing fine about it; it is no more than I undertook.

_Ly. _ Why, there you are again!

_Pur. _ Again?

_Ly. _ 'Feather in your hat'!

_Pur. _ I don't know what you mean.

_Ly. _ Precisely; you do not know. And now suppose you go first; you do
not like following, that is what it is; you understand, if you chose.

_Pur. _ Oh, I am willing enough; only you have not made any solecisms in
the usual sense.

_Ly. _ How about that last? Now watch me well, as you did not get me
that time.

_Pur. _ I cannot say I did.

_Ly. _ Now for a rabbit, then; there, that's him! Has he got by? There
he is, that's him, I tell you. Hims enough to fill a warren, if you
don't wake up.

_Pur. _ Oh, I am wide awake.

_Ly. _ Well, they are gone.

_Pur. _ Never!

_Ly. _ The fact is, your too much learning renders you unconscious to
solecisms; whatever case I take, it is always the same.

_Pur. _ What you mean by that I am sure I don't know; but I have often
caught people out in blunders.

_Ly. _ Well, you will catch me about the time that you are a sucking
child again. By the way, a babe laying in his cradle would hardly jar
on your notions of grammar, if you have not yet got me.

_Pur. _ Well, I am convinced.

_Ly. _ Now, if we cannot detect blunders like these, we are not likely
to know much about our own; you see, you have just missed another. Very
well now, never again call yourself competent either to detect blunders
or to avoid them.

This is my blunt way, you see. Socrates of Mopsus, with whom I was
acquainted in Egypt, used to put his corrections more delicately, so as
not to humiliate the offender. Here are some specimens:

What time do you set out on your travels? --What time? Oh, I see, you
thought I started to-day.

The patrimonial income supplies me well enough. --Patrimonial? But your
father is not dead?

So-and-so is a tribes-man of mine. --Oh, you are a savage, are you?

The fellow is a boozy. --Oh, Boozy was his mother's name, was it?

Worser luck I never knew. --Well, you need not make it worserer.

I always said he had a good 'eart. --Yes, quite an artist.

So glad to see you, old cock! --Come, allow me humanity.

Contemptuous fellow! I would not go near him. --If he were contemptible,
it would not matter, I suppose.

He is the most unique of friends. --Good; one likes degrees in
uniqueness.

How aggravating! --Indeed? what does it aggravate?

So I ascended up. --Ingenious man, doubling your speed like that.

I had to do it; I was in an engagement. --Like Xenophon's hoplites.

I got round him. --Comprehensive person.

They went to law, but were compounded. --You don't say they didn't get
apart again?

He would apply the same delicate treatment to people unsound in their
Attic.

'That's the truth of it,' said some one, 'between you and I. ' 'Ah no,
you will have to admit that you and me are wrong there. '

Another person giving a circumstantial account of a local legend said:
'So when she mingled with Heracles--' 'Without Heracles's mingling with
her? '

He asked a man who told him that he must have a close crop, what his
particular felony had been.

'There I quarrel,' said his opponent in an argument. 'It takes two to
make a quarrel. '

When some one described his sick servant as undergoing torture, he
asked, 'What for? what do they suppose they are going to get out of
him? '

Some one was said to be going ahead in his studies. 'Let me see,' he
said; 'it is Plato, I think, who calls that making progress. '

'Will we have a fine day? ' 'If God shall. '

'Archaist, curse not thy friend! ' he retorted, to a man who called him
curst instead of crusty.

A man once used the phrase, 'I was trying to save his face. ' 'But is he
in any danger of losing it? ' asked Socrates.

'Chided,' said one man, 'chode,' another. He disclaimed all
acquaintance with either form.

A person who volunteered 'but and if' was commended for his generosity.

Some one tried him with 'y-pleased'; 'no, no,' said he; 'that is too
much of a good thing. '

'I expect him momently,' some one announced. 'A good phrase,' he said;
'so is "minutely"; we have excellent authority for "daily. "'

'Look you! ' said a man, meaning 'look. ' 'Yes, what am I to look you at? '

He took up a man who said, 'Yes, I can grapple with that,' meaning that
he understood, with 'Oh, you are going to throw me, are you? how? '

'How shrill those fives are! ' said some one. 'Oh, come now,' said
Socrates; 'seditions and strives, but not drums and fives. '

'That man is heavily weighed,' one man observed. 'You are quite right;
there is no such word as weighted. '

'He has thrived on it,' some one assured him. 'The people among whom he
has thrived cannot be very particular. '

People were very fond of calling it at-one-ment. 'Yes, all right,' he
would say; 'I know what it means. '

Mention being made of a black-hen, he supposed that would be the female
of the grey-cock.

Some one said he had been eating sparrowgrass. 'You'll be trying
groundsel next,' was his comment.

But enough of Socrates. Shall we have another match on the old lines?
I will give you nothing but first-rate ones. Have your eyes open. You
will surely be able to do it now, after hearing such a list of them.

_Pur. _ I am by no means so sure of that. Proceed, however.