No More Learning

But _we_ have no
design against the Gods: why should not we take the hint, and make an
erection of mountains piled one on the top of another? From such a
height we should get a better view.

_Ch_. What, shall we two be able to lift Pelion or Ossa?

_Her_. Why not? We are gods; I should hope we are as good as those two
infants.

_Ch_. Yes; but I should never have thought we could do such a job as
that.

_Her_. Ah, my dear Charon, you don't understand these things; you have
no imagination. To the lofty spirit of Homer this is simplicity
itself. Just a couple of lines, and the mountains are in place;--we
have only to walk up. I wonder you make such a marvel of this. You
know Atlas, of course? He holds up the entire heaven by himself, Gods
and all. And I dare say you have heard how my brother Heracles
relieved him once, and took the burden on his own shoulders for a
time?

_Ch_. Yes, I have heard it. But you and the poets best know whether it
is true.

_Her_. Oh, perfectly true. What should induce wise men to lie? --Come,
let us get to work on Ossa first; for so the masterbuilder directs:

Ossa first;
On Ossa leafy Pelion.

There! What think you of this? Is it suave work? is it poetry? I must
run up, and see whether we shall want another storey. Oh dear, we are
no way up as yet. On the East, it is all I can do to make out Ionia
and Lydia; on the West is nothing but Italy and Sicily; on the North,
nothing to be seen beyond the Danube; and on the South, Crete, none
too clear. It looks to me as if we should want Oeta, my nautical
friend; and Parnassus into the bargain.

_Ch_. So be it; but take care not to make the height too great for the
width; or down we shall come, ladder and all, and pay our footing in
the Homeric school of architecture with a cracked crown apiece.

_Her_. No fear; all will be safe enough. Pass Oeta along. Now trundle
Parnassus up. There; I'll go up again. . . . That's better! A fine view.
You can come now.

_Ch_. Give me a hand up, Hermes. This _is_ an erection, and no
mistake!

_Her_. Well, you know, you would see everything. Safety is one thing,
my friend, and sight-seeing is another. Here is my hand; hang on, and
keep clear of the slippery bits. There, now _you_ are up. Let us sit
down; here are two peaks, one for each of us. Now take a general look
round at the prospect.

_Ch_. I see a vast stretch of land, and a huge lake surrounding it,
and mountains, and rivers bigger than Cocytus and Pyriphlegethon; and
men, tiny little things! and I suppose their dens.

_Her. Dens_? Those are cities!

_Ch_. I tell you what it is, Hermes; all this is no use. Here have we
been shifting about Parnassus (Castalia and all complete), and Oeta,
and these others, and we might have spared ourselves the trouble!

_Her_. How so?

_Ch_. Why, I can make nothing out up here. These cities and mountains
look for all the world like a map. It is _men_ that I am after; I want
to see what they do, and hear what they say. That is what I was
laughing about just now, when first you met me, and asked me what the
joke was. I had heard something that tickled me hugely.

_Her_. And what might that be?

_Ch_. One of them had been asked by a friend to dinner, I think it
was, the next day. 'Depend on it,' says he, 'I'll be with you. ' And
before the words were out of his mouth, down came a tile--started
somehow from the roof--and he was a dead man! Ha, ha, thought I,
_that_ promise will never be kept. So I think I shall go down again; I
want to see and hear.

_Her_. Sit where you are. I will soon put that right; you shall see
with the best; Homer has a charm for this too. Now, the moment I say
the lines, there must be no more dull eyes; all must be clear as
daylight. Don't forget!

_Ch_. Say on.

_Her_.

See, from before thine eyes I lift the veil;
So shalt thou clearly know both God and man.

Well? Are the eyes any better?

_Ch_. A marvellous improvement! Lynceus is blind to me. Now, the next
thing I want is information. I have some questions to ask. Will you
have them couched in the Homeric style, to convince you that I am not
wholly unversed in his poems?

_Her_. And how should you know anything of Homer? A seaman, chained to
the oar!

_Ch_. Come, come; no abuse of my profession. The fact is, when he
died, and I ferried him over, I heard a good many of his ballads, and
a few of them still run in my head. There was a pretty stiff gale on
at the time, too. You see, he began singing a song about Posidon,
which boded no good to us mariners,--how Posidon gathered the clouds,
and stirred the depths with his trident, as with a ladle, and roused
the whirlwind, and a good deal more (enough to raise a storm of
itself),--when suddenly there came a black squall which nearly
capsized the boat. The poet was extremely ill, and disgorged such an
avalanche of minstrelsy (Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, all came up
bodily), that I had no difficulty in preserving a few snatches. I
should like to know, for instance,

Who is yon hero, stout and strong and tall,
O'ertopping all mankind by head and shoulders?

_Her_. That is Milo of Croton, the athlete. He has just picked up a
bull, and is carrying it along the race-course; and the Greeks are
applauding him.

_Ch_. It would be more to the point, if they were to offer their
congratulations to _me_. I shall presently be picking up Milo himself,
and putting him into my boat; that will be after he has had his fall
from Death, that most invincible of antagonists, who will have him on
his back before he knows what is happening. We shall hear a sad tale
then, no doubt, of the crowns and the applause he has left behind him.
Meanwhile, he is mightily elated over the bull exploit, and the
distinction it has won him. What is one to think? Does it ever occur
to him that he must _die_ some day?

_Her_. How should he think of death? He is at his zenith.

_Ch_. Well, never mind him. We shall have sport enough with him before
long; he will come aboard with no strength left to pick up a gnat, let
alone a bull. But pray,

Who is yon haughty hero?
No Greek, to judge by his dress.

_Her_. That is Cyrus, son of Cambyses, who transferred to the Persians
the ancient empire of the Medes. He has lately conquered Assyria, and
reduced Babylon; and now it looks as if he meditated an invasion of
Lydia, to complete his dominion by the overthrow of Croesus.

_Ch_. And whereabouts is Croesus?

_Her_. Look over there. You see the great city with the triple wall?
That is Sardis. And there, look, is Croesus himself, reclining on a
golden couch, and conversing with Solon the Athenian. Shall we listen
to what they are saying?

_Ch_. Yes, let us.

_Cr. Stranger, you have now seen my stores of treasure, my heaps of
bullion, and all my riches. Tell me therefore, whom do you account the
happiest of mankind_?

_Ch_. What will Solon say, I wonder?

_Her_. Trust Solon; he will not disgrace himself.

_So_. _Croesus, few men are happy. Of those whom I know, the happiest,
I think, were Cleobis and Biton, the sons of the Argive priestess_.

_Ch_. Ah, he means those two who yoked themselves to a waggon, and
drew their mother to the temple, and died the moment after. It was but
the other day.

_Cr_. _Ah. So they are first on the list. And who comes next_?

_So_. _Tellus the Athenian, who lived a righteous life, and died for
his country_.

_Cr_. _And where do I come, reptile_?

_So_. _That I am unable to say at present, Croesus; I must see you end
your days first. Death is the sure test;--a happy end to a life of
happiness_.

_Ch_. Bravo, Solon; _you_ have not forgotten us! As you say, Charon's
ferry is the proper place for the decision of these questions. --But
who are these men whom Croesus is sending out? And what have they got
on their shoulders?

_Her_. Those are bars of gold; they are going to Delphi, to pay for an
oracle, which oracle will presently be the ruin of Croesus. But
oracles are a hobby of his.

_Ch_. Oh, so that is _gold_, that glittering yellow stuff, with just a
tinge of red in it. I have often heard of gold, but never saw it
before.

_Her_. Yes, that is the stuff there is so much talking and squabbling
about.

_Ch_. Well now, I see no advantages about it, unless it is an
advantage that it is heavy to carry.

_Her_. Ah, you do not know what it has to answer for; the wars and
plots and robberies, the perjuries and murders; for this men will
endure slavery and imprisonment; for this they traffic and sail the
seas.

_Ch_. For this stuff? Why, it is not much different from copper. I
know copper, of course, because I get a penny from each passenger.

_Her_. Yes, but copper is plentiful, and therefore not much esteemed
by men. Gold is found only in small quantities, and the miners have to
go to a considerable depth for it. For the rest, it comes out of the
earth, just the same as lead and other metals.

_Ch_. What fools men must be, to be enamoured of an object of this
sallow complexion; and of such a weight!

_Her_. Well, Solon, at any rate, seems to have no great affection for
it. See, he is making merry with Croesus and his outlandish
magnificence. I think he is going to ask him a question. Listen.

_So_. Croesus, will those bars be any use to Apollo, do you think?

_Cr_. Any use! Why there is nothing at Delphi to be compared to them.

_So_.
And that is all that is wanting to complete his happiness, eh? --
some bar gold?

_Cr_. Undoubtedly.

_So_. Then they must be very hard up in Heaven, if they have to send
all the way to Lydia for their gold supply?

_Cr_. Where else is gold to be had in such abundance as with us?

_So_. Now is any iron found in Lydia?

_Cr_. Not much.

_So_. Ah; so you are lacking in the more valuable metal.

_Cr_. More valuable? Iron more valuable than gold?

_So_. Bear with me, while I ask you a few questions, and I will
convince you it is so.

_Cr_. Well?

_So_. Of protector and protege, which is the better man?

_Cr_. The protector, of course.

_So_. Now in the event of Cyrus's invading Lydia--there is some talk
of it--shall you supply your men with golden swords? or will iron be
required, on the occasion?

_Cr_. Oh, iron.

_So_. Iron accordingly you must have, or your gold would be led
captive into Persia?

_Cr_. Blasphemer!

_So_. Oh, we will hope for the best. But it is clear, on your own
admission, that iron is better than gold.

_Cr_. And what would you have me do? Recall the gold, and offer the
God bars of iron?

_So_. He has no occasion for iron either. Your offering (be the metal
what it may) will fall into other hands than his. It will be snapped
up by the Phocians, or the Boeotians, or the God's own priests; or by
some tyrant or robber. Your goldsmiths have no interest for Apollo.

_Cr_. You are always having a stab at my wealth. It is all envy!

_Her_. This blunt sincerity is not to the Lydian's taste. Things are
come to a strange pass, he thinks, if a poor man is to hold up his
head, and speak his mind in this frank manner! He will remember Solon
presently, when the time comes for Cyrus to conduct him in chains to
the pyre. I heard Clotho, the other day, reading over the various
dooms. Among other things, Croesus was to be led captive by Cyrus, and
Cyrus to be murdered by the queen of the Massagetae. There she is:
that Scythian woman, riding on a white horse; do you see?

_Ch_. Yes.

_Her_. That is Tomyris. She will cut off Cyrus's head, and put it into
a wine-skin filled with blood. And do you see his son, the boy there?
That is Cambyses. He will succeed to his father's throne; and, after
innumerable defeats in Libya and Ethiopia, will finally slay the god
Apis, and die a raving madman.

_Ch_. What fun! Why, at this moment no one would presume to meet their
eyes; from such a height do they look down on the rest of mankind. Who
would believe that before long one of them will be a captive, and the
other have his head in a bottle of blood? --But who is that in the
purple robe, Hermes? --the one with the diadem? His cook has just been
cleaning a fish, and is now handing him a ring,--"in yonder sea-girt
isle"; "'tis, sure, some king. "

_Her_. Ha, ha! A parody, this time. --That is Polycrates, tyrant of
Samos. He is extremely well pleased with his lot: yet that slave who
now stands at his side will betray him to the satrap Oroetes, and he
will be crucified. It will not take long to overturn _his_
prosperity, poor man! This, too, I had from Clotho.

_Ch_. I like Clotho; she is a lady of spirit. Have at them, madam! Off
with their heads! To the cross with them! Let them know that they are
men. And let them be exalted in the meantime; the higher they mount,
the heavier will be the fall. I shall have a merry time of it
hereafter, identifying their naked shades, as they come aboard; no
more purple robes then; no tiaras; no golden couches!

_Her_. So much for royalty; and now to the common herd. Do you see
them, Charon;--on their ships and on the field of battle; crowding the
law-courts and following the plough; usurers here, beggars there?

_Ch_. I see them. What a jostling life it is! What a world of ups and
downs! Their cities remind me of bee-hives. Every man keeps a sting
for his neighbour's service; and a few, like wasps, make spoil of
their weaker brethren. But what are all these misty shapes that beset
them on every side?

_Her_. Hopes, Fears, Follies, Pleasures, Greeds, Hates, Grudges, and
such like. They differ in their habits. The Folly is a domestic
creature, with vested rights of its own. The same with the Grudge, the
Hate, the Envy, the Greed, the Know-not, and the What's-to-do. But the
Fear and the Hope fly overhead. The Fear swoops on its prey from
above; sometimes it is content with startling a man out of his wits,
sometimes it frightens him in real earnest. The Hope hovers almost
within reach, and just when a man thinks he is going to catch it, off
it flies, and leaves him gaping--like Tantalus in the water, you know.
Now look closely, and you will make out the Fates up aloft, spinning
each man his spindle-full; from that spindle a man hangs by a narrow
thread. Do you see what looks like a cobweb, coming down to each man
from the spindles?

_Ch_. I see each has a very slight thread. They are mostly entangled,
one with another, and that other with a third.

_Her_. Of course they are. Because the first man has got to be
murdered by the second, and he by the third; or again, B is to be A's
heir (A's thread being the shorter), and C is to be B's. That is what
the entangling means. But you see what thin threads they all have to
depend on. Now here is one drawn high up into the air; presently his
thread will snap, when the weight becomes too much for it, and down he
will come with a bang: whereas yonder fellow hangs so low that when he
does fall it makes no noise; his next-door neighbours will scarcely
hear him drop.

_Ch_. How absurd it all is!

_Her_. My dear Charon, there is no word for the absurdity of it. They
do take it all so seriously, that is the best of it; and then, long
before they have finished scheming, up comes good old Death, and
whisks them off, and all is over! You observe that he has a fine staff
of assistants at his command;--agues, consumptions, fevers,
inflammations, swords, robbers, hemlock, juries, tyrants,--not one of
which gives them a moment's concern so long as they are prosperous;
but when they come to grief, then it is Alack! and Well-a-day! and Oh
dear me! If only they would start with a clear understanding that they
are mortal, that after a brief sojourn on the earth they will wake
from the dream of life, and leave all behind them,--they would live
more sensibly, and not mind dying so much. As it is, they get it into
their heads that what they possess they possess for good and all; the
consequence is, that when Death's officer calls for them, and claps on
a fever or a consumption, they take it amiss; the parting is so wholly
unexpected. Yonder is a man building his house, urging the workmen to
use all dispatch. How would he take the news, that he was just to see
the roof on and all complete, when he would have to take his
departure, and leave all the enjoyment to his heir? --hard fate, not
once to sup beneath it! There again is one rejoicing over the birth of
a son; the child is to inherit his grandfather's name, and the father
is celebrating the occasion with his friends. He would not be so
pleased, if he knew that the boy was to die before he was eight years
old! It is natural enough: he sees before him some happy father of an
Olympian victor, and has no eyes for his neighbour there, who is
burying a child; _that_ thin-spun thread escapes his notice. Behold,
too, the money-grubbers, whom the aforesaid Death's-officers will
never permit to be money-spenders; and the noble army of litigant
neighbours!

_Ch_. Yes! I see it all; and I ask myself, what is the satisfaction in
life? What is it that men bewail the loss of? Take their kings; they
seem to be best off, though, as you say, they have their happiness on
a precarious tenure; but apart from that, we shall find their
pleasures to be outweighed by the vexations inseparable from their
position--worry and anxiety, flattery here, conspiracy there, enmity
everywhere; to say nothing of the tyranny of Sorrow, Disease, and
Passion, with whom there is confessedly no respect of persons. And if
the king's lot is a hard one, we may make a pretty shrewd guess at
that of the commoner. Come now, I will give you a similitude for the
life of man. Have you ever stood at the foot of a waterfall, and
marked the bubbles rising to the surface and gathering into foam? Some
are quite small, and break as soon as they are born. Others last
longer; new ones come to join them, and they swell up to a great size:
yet in the end they burst, as surely as the rest; it cannot be
otherwise. There you have human life. All men are bubbles, great or
small, inflated with the breath of life. Some are destined to last for
a brief space, others perish in the very moment of birth: but all must
inevitably burst.

_Her_. Homer compares mankind to leaves. Your simile is full as good
as his.

_Ch_. And being the things they are, they do--the things you see;
squabbling among themselves, and contending for dominion and power and
riches, all of which they will have to leave behind them, when they
come down to us with their penny apiece. Now that we are up here, how
would it be for me to cry out to them at the top of my voice, to
abstain from their vain endeavours, and live with the prospect of
Death before their eyes? 'Fools' (I might say), 'why so much in
earnest? Rest from your toils. You will not live for ever. Nothing of
the pomp of this world will endure; nor can any man take anything
hence when he dies. He will go naked out of the world, and his house
and his lands and his gold will be another's, and ever another's. ' If
I were to call out something of this sort, loud enough for them to
hear, would it not do some good? Would not the world be the better for
it?

_Her_. Ah, my poor friend, you know not what you say. Ignorance and
deceit have done for them what Odysseus did for his crew when he was
afraid of the Sirens; they have waxed men's ears up so effectually,
that no drill would ever open them. How then should they hear you? You
might shout till your lungs gave way. Ignorance is as potent here as
the waters of Lethe are with you. There are a few, to be sure, who
from a regard for Truth have refused the wax process; men whose eyes
are open to discern good and evil.

_Ch_. Well then, we might call out to _them_?

_Her_. There again: where would be the use of telling them what they
know already? See, they stand aloof from the rest of mankind, and
scoff at all that goes on; nothing is as they would have it. Nay, they
are evidently bent on giving life the slip, and joining you. Their
condemnations of folly make them unpopular here.

_Ch_. Well done, my brave boys! There are not many of them, though,
Hermes.

_Her_. These must serve. And now let us go down.

_Ch_. There is still one thing I had a fancy to see. Show me the
receptacles into which they put the corpses, and your office will have
been discharged.

_Her_. Ah, _sepulchres_, those are called, or _tombs_, or _graves_.
Well, do you see those mounds, and columns, and pyramids, outside the
various city walls? Those are the store-chambers of the dead.

_Ch_. Why, they are putting flowers on the stones, and pouring costly
essences upon them. And in front of some of the mounds they have piled
up faggots, and dug trenches. Look: there is a splendid banquet laid
out, and they are burning it all; and pouring wine and mead, I suppose
it is, into the trenches! What does it all mean?

_Her_. What satisfaction it affords to their friends in Hades, I am
unable to say. But the idea is, that the shades come up, and get as
close as they can, and feed upon the savoury steam of the meat, and
drink the mead in the trench.

_Ch_. Eat and drink, when their skulls are dry bone? But I am wasting
my breath: you bring them down every day;--_you_ can say whether they
are likely ever to get up again, once they are safely underground!
That would be too much of a good thing! You would have your work cut
out for you and no mistake, if you had not only to bring them down,
but also to take them up again when they wanted a drink. Oh, fools and
blockheads! You little know how we arrange matters, or what a gulf is
set betwixt the living and the dead!

The buried and unburied, both are Death's.
He ranks alike the beggar and the king;
Thersites sits by fair-haired Thetis' son.