No More Learning

Has any gentleman a use for the Lap of Luxury? Who
bids?

_Third D_. Come and tell me what you know. If you are a practical
creed, I will have you.

_Her_. Please not to worry him with questions, sir. He is drunk, and
cannot answer; his tongue plays him tricks, as you see.

_Third D_. And who in his senses would buy such an abandoned
reprobate? How he smells of scent! And how he slips and staggers
about! Well, you must speak for him, Hermes. What can he do? What is
his line?

_Her_. Well, for any gentleman who is not strait-laced, who loves a
pretty girl, a bottle, and a jolly companion, he is the very thing. He
is also a past master in gastronomy, and a connoisseur in
voluptuousness generally. He was educated at Athens, and has served
royalty in Sicily [Footnote: See _Aristippus_ in Notes. ], where he had
a very good character. Here are his principles in a nutshell: Think
the worst of things: make the most of things: get all possible
pleasure out of things.

_Third D_. You must look for wealthier purchasers. My purse is not
equal to such a festive creed.

_Her_. Zeus, this lot seems likely to remain on our hands.

_Zeus_. Put it aside, and up with another. Stay, take the pair from
Abdera and Ephesus; the creeds of Smiles and Tears. They shall make
one lot.

_Her_. Come forward, you two. Lot No. 4. A superlative pair. The
smartest brace of creeds on our catalogue.

_Fourth D_. Zeus! What a difference is here! One of them does nothing
but laugh, and the other might be at a funeral; he is all tears. --You
there! what is the joke?

_Democr_. You ask? You and your affairs are all one vast joke.

_Fourth D_. So! You laugh at us? Our business is a toy?

_Democr_. It is. There is no taking it seriously. All is vanity. Mere
interchange of atoms in an infinite void.

_Fourth D_. _Your_ vanity is infinite, if you like. Stop that
laughing, you rascal. --And you, my poor fellow, what are you crying
for? I must see what I can make of you.

_Heracl_. I am thinking, friend, upon human affairs; and well may I
weep and lament, for the doom of all is sealed. Hence my compassion
and my sorrow. For the present, I think not of it; but the future! --
the future is all bitterness. Conflagration and destruction of the
world. I weep to think that nothing abides. All things are whirled
together in confusion. Pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance,
great and small; up and down they go, the playthings of Time.

_Fourth D_. And what is Time?

_Heracl_. A child; and plays at draughts and blindman's-bluff.

_Fourth D_. And men?

_Heracl_. Are mortal Gods.

_Fourth D_. And Gods?

_Heracl_. Immortal men.

_Fourth D_. So! Conundrums, fellow? Nuts to crack? You are a very
oracle for obscurity.

_Heracl_. Your affairs do not interest me.

_Fourth D_. No one will be fool enough to bid for you at that
rate.

_Heracl_. Young and old, him that bids and him that bids not, a
murrain seize you all!

_Fourth D_. A sad case. He will be melancholy mad before long. Neither
of these is the creed for my money.

_Her_. No one bids.

_Zeus_. Next lot.

_Her_. The Athenian there? Old Chatterbox?

_Zeus_. By all means.

_Her_. Come forward! --A good sensible creed this. Who buys Holiness?

_Fifth D_. Let me see. What are you good for?

_Soc_. I teach the art of love.

_Fifth D_. A likely bargain for me! I want a tutor for my young
Adonis.

_Soc_. And could he have a better? The love I teach is of, the spirit,
not of the flesh. Under my roof, be sure, a boy will come to no harm.

_Fifth D_. Very unconvincing that. A teacher of the art of love, and
never meddle with anything but the spirit? Never use the opportunities
your office gives you?

_Soc_. Now by Dog and Plane-tree, it is as I say!

_Fifth D_. Heracles! What strange Gods are these?

_Soc_. Why, the Dog is a God, I suppose? Is not Anubis made much of in
Egypt? Is there not a Dog-star in Heaven, and a Cerberus in the lower
world?

_Fifth D_. Quite so. My mistake. Now what is your manner of life?

_Soc_. I live in a city of my own building; I make my own laws, and
have a novel constitution of my own.

__Fifth D. I should like to hear some of your statutes.

_Soc_. You shall hear the greatest of them all. No woman shall be
restricted to one husband. Every man who likes is her husband.

_Fifth D_. What! Then the laws of adultery are clean swept away?

_Soc_. I should think they were! and a world of hair-splitting with
them.

_Fifth D_. And what do you do with the handsome boys?

_Soc_. Their kisses are the reward of merit, of noble and spirited
actions.

_Fifth D_. Unparalleled generosity! --And now, what are the main
features of your philosophy?

_Soc_. Ideas and types of things. All things that you see, the earth
and all that is upon it, the sea, the sky,--each has its counterpart
in the invisible world.

_Fifth D_. And where are they?

_Soc_. Nowhere. Were they anywhere, they were not what they are.

_Fifth D_. I see no signs of these 'types' of yours.

_Soc_. Of course not; because you are spiritually blind. _I_ see the
counterparts of all things; an invisible you, an invisible me;
everything is in duplicate.

_Fifth D_. Come, such a shrewd and lynx-eyed creed is worth a bid. Let
me see. What do you want for him?

_Her_. Five hundred.

_Fifth D_. Done with you. Only I must settle the bill another day.

_Her_. What name?

_Fifth D_. Dion; of Syracuse.

_Her_. Take him, and much good may he do you. Now I want Epicureanism.
Who offers for Epicureanism? He is a disciple of the laughing creed
and the drunken creed, whom we were offering just now. But he has one
extra accomplishment--impiety. For the rest, a dainty, lickerish
creed.

_Sixth D_. What price?

_Her_. Eight pounds.

_Sixth D_. Here you are. By the way, you might let me know what he
likes to eat.

_Her_. Anything sweet.
Anything with honey in it. Dried figs are his
favourite dish.

_Sixth D_. That is all right. We will get in a supply of Carian
fig-cakes.

_Zeus_. Call the next lot. Stoicism; the creed of the sorrowful
countenance, the close-cropped creed.

_Her_. Ah yes, several customers, I fancy, are on the look-out for
him. Virtue incarnate! The very quintessence of creeds! Who is for
universal monopoly?

_Seventh D_. How are we to understand that?

_Her_. Why, here is monopoly of wisdom, monopoly of beauty, monopoly
of courage, monopoly of justice. Sole king, sole orator, sole
legislator, sole millionaire.

_Seventh D_. And I suppose sole cook, sole tanner, sole carpenter, and
all that?

_Her_. Presumably.

_Seventh D_. Regard me as your purchaser, good fellow, and tell me all
about yourself. I dare say you think it rather hard to be sold for a
slave?

_Chrys_. Not at all. These things are beyond our control. And what is
beyond our control is indifferent.

_Seventh D_. I don't see how you make that out.

_Chrys_. What! Have you yet to learn that of _indifferentia_ some are
_praeposita_ and others _rejecta_?

_Seventh D_. Still I don't quite see.

_Chrys_. No; how should you? You are not familiar with our terms. You
lack the _comprehensio visi_. The earnest student of logic knows this
and more than this. He understands the nature of subject, predicate,
and contingent, and the distinctions between them.

_Seventh D_. Now in Wisdom's name, tell me, pray, what is a predicate?
what is a contingent? There is a ring about those words that takes my
fancy.

_Chrys_. With all my heart. A man lame in one foot knocks that foot
accidentally against a stone, and gets a cut. Now the man is _subject_
to lameness; which is the _predicate_. And the cut is a _contingency_.

_Seventh D_. Oh, subtle! What else can you tell me?

_Chrys_. I have verbal involutions, for the better hampering,
crippling, and muzzling of my antagonists. This is performed by the
use of the far-famed syllogism.

_Seventh D_. Syllogism! I warrant him a tough customer.

_Chrys_. Take a case. You have a child?

_Seventh D_. Well, and what if I have?

_Chrys_. A crocodile catches him as he wanders along the bank of a
river, and promises to restore him to you, if you will first guess
correctly whether he means to restore him or not. Which are you going
to say?

_Seventh D_. A difficult question. I don't know which way I should get
him back soonest. In Heaven's name, answer for me, and save the child
before he is eaten up.

_Chrys_. Ha, ha. I will teach you far other things than that.

_Seventh D_. For instance?

_Chrys_. There is the 'Reaper. ' There is the 'Rightful Owner. ' Better
still, there is the 'Electra' and the 'Man in the Hood. '

_Seventh D_. Who was he? and who was Electra?

_Chrys_. She was _the_ Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, to whom the
same thing was known and unknown at the same time. She knew that
Orestes was her brother: yet when he stood before her she did not know
(until he revealed himself) that her brother was Orestes. As to the
Man in the Hood, he will surprise you considerably. Answer me now: do
you know your own father?

_Seventh D_. Yes.

_Chrys_. Well now, if I present to you a man in a hood, shall you know
him? eh?

_Seventh D_. Of course not.

_Chrys_. Well, but the Man in the Hood is your father. You don't know
the Man in the Hood. Therefore you don't know your own father.

_Seventh D_. Why, no. But if I take his hood off, I shall get at the
facts. Now tell me, what is the end of your philosophy? What happens
when you reach the goal of virtue?

_Chrys_. In regard to things external, health, wealth, and the like, I
am then all that Nature intended me to be. But there is much previous
toil to be undergone. You will first sharpen your eyes on minute
manuscripts, amass commentaries, and get your bellyful of outlandish
terms. Last but not least, it is forbidden to be wise without repeated
doses of hellebore.

_Seventh D_. All this is exalted and magnanimous to a degree. But what
am I to think when I find that you are also the creed of
cent-per-cent, the creed of the usurer? Has _he_ swallowed his
hellebore? is _he_ made perfect in virtue?

_Chrys_. Assuredly. On none but the wise man does usury sit well.
Consider. His is the art of putting two and two together, and usury is
the art of putting interest together. The two are evidently connected,
and one as much as the other is the prerogative of the true believer;
who, not content, like common men, with simple interest, will also
take interest _upon_ interest. For interest, as you are probably
aware, is of two kinds. There is simple interest, and there is its
offspring, compound interest. Hear Syllogism on the subject. 'If I
take simple interest, I shall also take compound. But I _shall_
take simple interest: therefore I shall take compound. '

_Seventh D_. And the same applies to the fees you take from your
youthful pupils? None but the true believer sells virtue for a fee?

_Chrys_. Quite right. I take the fee in my pupil's interest, not
because I want it. The world is made up of diffusion and accumulation.
I accordingly practise my pupil in the former, and myself in the
latter.

_Seventh D_. But it ought to be the other way. The pupil ought to
accumulate, and you, 'sole millionaire,' ought to diffuse.

_Chrys_. Ha! you jest with me? Beware of the shaft of insoluble
syllogism.

_Seventh D_. What harm can that do?

_Chrys_. It cripples; it ties the tongue, and turns the brain. Nay, I
have but to will it, and you are stone this instant.

_Seventh D_. Stone! You are no Perseus, friend?

_Chrys_. See here. A stone is a body?

_Seventh D_. Yes.

_Chrys_. Well, and an animal is a body?

_Seventh D_. Yes.

_Chrys_. And you are an animal?

_Seventh D_. I suppose I am.

_Chrys_. Therefore you are a body. Therefore a stone.

_Seventh D_. Mercy, in Heaven's name! Unstone me, and let me be flesh
as heretofore.

_Chrys_. That is soon done. Back with you into flesh! Thus: Is every
body animate?

_Seventh D_. No.

_Chrys_. Is a stone animate?

_Seventh D_. No.

_Chrys_. Now, you are a body?

_Seventh D_. Yes.

_Chrys_. And an animate body?

_Seventh D_. Yes.

_Chrys_. Then being animate, you cannot be a stone.

_Seventh D_. Ah! thank you, thank you. I was beginning to feel my
limbs growing numb and solidifying like Niobe's. Oh, I must have you.
What's to pay?

_Her_. Fifty pounds.

_Seventh D_. Here it is.

_Her_. Are you sole purchaser?

_Seventh D_.