No More Learning

However, it is all the better this time; you
fancied yourself out, but you have flopped into the net again.

_Her_. What do you mean?

_Ly_. You take a thing whose nature is self-evident and universally
admitted, like wine, and argue from it to perfectly unlike things, whose
nature is obscure and generally debated. In fact I cannot tell what
analogy you find between philosophy and wine; there is just one, indeed:
philosophers and wine-merchants both sell their wares, mostly resorting
to adulteration, fraud, and false measures, in the process. But let us
look into your real meaning. You say all the wine in a cask is of the
same quality--which is perfectly reasonable; further, that any one who
draws and tastes quite a small quantity will know at once the quality of
the whole--of which the same may be said; I should never have thought of
objecting. But mark what comes now: do philosophy and its professors
(your own, for instance) give you every day the same remarks on the same
subjects, or do they vary them? They vary them a great deal, friend; you
would never have stuck to your master through your twenty years'
wandering--quite a philosophic Odyssey--if he had always said the same
thing; one hearing would have been enough.

_Her_. So it would.

_Ly_. How could you have known the whole of his doctrines from the
first taste, then? They were not homogeneous, like the wine; novelty
to-day, and novelty to-morrow on the top of it. Consequently, dear friend,
short of drinking the whole cask, you might soak to no purpose;
Providence seems to me to have hidden the philosophic Good right at the
bottom, underneath the lees. So you will have to drain it dry, or you
will never get to that nectar for which I know you have so long thirsted.
According to your idea, it has such virtue that, could you once taste it
and swallow the very least drop, you would straightway have perfect
wisdom; so they say the Delphian prophetess is inspired by one draught of
the sacred spring with answers for those who consult the oracle. But it
seems not to be so; you have drunk more than half the cask; yet you told
me you were only beginning yet.

Now see whether this is not a better analogy. You shall keep your
merchant, and your cask; but the contents of the latter are not to be
wine, but assorted seeds. On the top is wheat, next beans, then barley,
below that lentils, then peas--and other kinds yet. You go to buy seeds,
and he takes some wheat out of that layer, and puts it in your hand as a
sample; now, could you tell by looking at that whether the peas were
Sound, the lentils tender, and the beans full?

_Her_. Impossible.

_Ly_. No more can you tell the quality of a philosophy from the first
statements of its professor; it is not uniform, like the wine to which you
compared it, claiming that it must resemble the sample glass; it is
heterogeneous, and it had better not be cursorily tested. If you buy bad
wine, the loss is limited to a few pence; but to rot with the common herd
(in your own words) is not so light a loss. Moreover, your man who wants
to drink up the cask as a preliminary to buying a pint will injure the
merchant, with his dubious sampling; but philosophy knows no such danger;
you may drink your fill, but this cask grows no emptier, and its owner
suffers no loss. It is cut and come again here; we have the converse of
the Danaids' cask; that would not hold what was put into it; it ran
straight through; but here, the more you take away, the more remains.

And I have another similar remark to make about these specimen drops of
philosophy. Do not fancy I am libelling it, if I say it is like hemlock,
aconite, or other deadly poison. Those too, though they have death in
them, will not kill if a man scrapes off the tiniest particle with the
edge of his nail and tastes it; if they are not taken in the right
quantity, the right manner, and the right vehicle, the taker will not
die; you were wrong in claiming that the least possible quantity is
enough to base a generalization on.

_Her_. Oh, have it your own way, Lycinus. Well then, we have got to live a
hundred years, and go through all this trouble? There is no other road to
philosophy?

_Ly_. No, none; and we need not complain; as you very truly said, _ars
longa, vita brevis_. But I do not know what has come over you; you now
make a grievance of it, if you cannot before set of sun develop into a
Chrysippus, a Plato, a Pythagoras.

_Her_. You trap me, and drive me into a corner, Lycinus; yet I never
provoked you; it is all envy, I know, because I have made some progress
in my studies, whereas you have neglected yourself, when you were old
enough to know better.

_Ly_. Seest, then, thy true course? never mind me, but leave me as a
lunatic to my follies, and you go on your way and accomplish what you
have intended all this time.

_Her_. But you are so masterful, you will not let me make a choice, till I
have proved all.

_Ly_. Why, I confess, you will never get me to budge from that. But when
you call me masterful, it seems to me you blame the blameless, as the poet
says; for I am myself being dragged along by reason, until you bring up
some other reason to release me from durance. And here is reason about to
talk more masterfully still, you will see; but I suppose you will
exonerate it, and blame me.

_Her_. What can it be? I am surprised to hear it still has anything in
reserve.

_Ly_. It says that seeing and going through all philosophies will not
suffice, if you want to choose the best of them; the most important
qualification is still missing.

_Her_. Indeed? Which?

_Ly_. Why (bear with me), a critical investigating faculty, mental acumen,
intellectual precision and independence equal to the occasion; without
this, the completest inspection will be useless. Reason insists that the
owner of it must further be allowed ample time; he will collect the rival
candidates together, and make his choice with long, lingering, repeated
deliberation; he will give no heed to the candidate's age, appearance, or
repute for wisdom, but perform his functions like the Areopagites, who
judge in the darkness of night, so that they must regard not the pleaders,
but the pleadings. Then and not till then will you be able to make a sound
choice and live a philosopher.

_Her_. Live? an after life, then. No mortal span will meet your demands;
let me see: go the whole round, examine each with care, on that
examination form a judgement, on that judgement make a choice, on that
choice be a philosopher; so and no otherwise you say the truth may be
found.

_Ly_. I hardly dare tell you--even that is not exhaustive; I am afraid,
after all, the solid basis we thought we had found was imaginary. You know
how fishermen often let down their nets, feel a weight, and pull them up
expecting a great haul; when they have got them up with much toil, behold,
a stone, or an old pot full of sand. I fear our catch is one of those.

_Her_. I don't know what this particular net may be; your nets are all
round me, anyhow.

_Ly_. Well, try and get through; providentially, you are as good a
swimmer as can be. Now, this is it: granted that we go all round
experimenting, and get it done at last, too, I do not believe we shall
have solved the elementary question, whether _any_ of them has the
much-desired; perhaps they are all wrong together.

_Her_. Oh, come now! not one of _them_ right either?

_Ly_. I cannot tell. Do you think it impossible they may all be deluded,
and the truth be something which none of them has yet found?

_Her_. How can it possibly be?

_Ly_. This way: take a correct number, twenty; suppose, I mean, a man has
twenty beans in his closed hand, and asks ten different persons to guess
the number; they guess seven, five, thirty, ten, fifteen--various numbers,
in short. It is possible, I suppose, that one may be right?

_Her_. Yes.

_Ly_. It is not impossible, however, that they may all guess different
incorrect numbers, and not one of them suggest twenty beans. What say you?

_Her_. It is not impossible.

_Ly_. In the same way, all philosophers are investigating the nature of
Happiness; they get different answers one Pleasure, another Goodness,
and so through the list. It is probable that Happiness _is_ one of these;
but it is also not improbable that it is something else altogether. We
seem to have reversed the proper procedure, and hurried on to the end
before we had found the beginning I suppose we ought first to have
ascertained that the truth has actually been discovered, and that some
philosopher or other has it, and only then to have gone on to the next
question, _which_ of them is to be believed.

_Her_. So that, even if we go all through all philosophy, we shall have no
certainty of finding the truth even then; that is what you say.

_Ly_. Please, please do not ask _me_; once more, apply to reason itself.
Its answer will perhaps be that there can be no certainty yet--as long as
we cannot be sure that it is one or other of the things they say it is.

_Her_. Then, according to you, we shall never finish our quest nor
be philosophers, but have to give it up and live the life of laymen. What
you say amounts to that: philosophy is impossible and inaccessible to a
mere mortal; for you expect the aspirant first to choose the best
philosophy; and you considered that the only guarantee of such choice's
being correct was to go through all philosophy before choosing the
truest. Then in reckoning the number of years required by each you
spurned all limits, extended the thing to several generations, and made
out the quest of truth too long for the individual life; and now you
crown all by proving success doubtful even apart from all that; you say
it is uncertain whether the philosophers have ever found truth at all.

_Ly_. Could you state on oath that they have?

_Her_. Not on oath, no.

_Ly_. And yet there is much that I have intentionally spared you, though
it merits careful examination too.

_Her_. For instance?

_Ly_. Is it not said that, among the professed Stoics, Platonists, and
Epicureans, some do know their respective doctrines, and some do not
(without prejudice to their general respectability)?

_Her_. That is true.

_Ly_. Well, don't you think it will be a troublesome business to
distinguish the first, and know them from the ignorant professors?

_Her_. Very.

_Ly_. So, if you are to recognize the best of the Stoics, you will have to
go to most, if not all, of them, make trial, and appoint the best your
teacher, first going through a course of training to provide you with the
appropriate critical faculty; otherwise you might mistakenly prefer the
wrong one. Now reflect on the additional time this will mean; I purposely
left it out of account, because I was afraid you might be angry; all the
same, it is the most important and necessary thing of all in questions
like this--so uncertain and dubious, I mean. For the discovery of truth,
your one and only sure or well-founded hope is the possession of this
power: you _must_ be able to judge and sift truth from falsehood; you must
have the assayer's sense for sound and true or forged coin; if you could
have come to your examination of doctrines equipped with a technical skill
like that, I should have nothing to say; but without it there is nothing
to prevent their severally leading you by the nose; you will follow a
dangled bunch of carrots like a donkey; or, better still, you will be
water spilt on a table, trained whichever way one chooses with a
finger-tip; or again, a reed growing on a river's bank, bending to every
breath, however gentle the breeze that shakes it in its passage.

If you could find a teacher, now, who understood demonstration and
controversial method, and would impart his knowledge to you, you would be
quit of your troubles; the best and the true would straightway be
revealed to you, at the bidding of this art of demonstration, while
falsehood would stand convicted; you would make your choice with
confidence; judgement would be followed by philosophy; you would reach
your long-desired Happiness, and live in its company, which sums up all
good things.

_Her_. Thank you, Lycinus; that is a much better hearing; there is
more than a glimpse of hope in that. We must surely look for a man of
that sort, to give us discernment, judgement, and, above all, the power
of demonstration; then all will be easy and clear, and not too long. I am
grateful to you already for thinking of this short and excellent plan.

_Ly_. Ah, no, I cannot fairly claim gratitude yet. I have not discovered
or revealed anything that will bring you nearer your hope; on the
contrary, we are further off than ever; it is a case of much cry and
little wool.

_Her_. Bird of ill omen, pessimist, explain yourself.

_Ly_. Why, my friend, even if we find some one who claims to know this art
of demonstration, and is willing to impart it, we shall surely not take
his word for it straight off; we shall look about for another man to
resolve us whether the first is telling the truth. Finding number two, we
shall still be uncertain whether our guarantor really knows the difference
between a good judge and a bad, and shall need a number three to guarantee
number two; for how can we possibly know ourselves how to select the best
judge? You see how far this must go; the thing is unending; its nature
does not allow us to draw the line and put a stop to it; for you will
observe that all the demonstrations that can possibly be thought of are
themselves unfounded and open to dispute; most of them struggle to
establish their certainty by appealing to facts as questionable as
themselves; and the rest produce certain truisms with which they compare,
quite illegitimately, the most speculative theories, and then say they
have demonstrated the latter: our eyes tell us there are altars to the
Gods; therefore there must be Gods; that is the sort of thing.

_Her_. How unkindly you treat me, Lycinus, turning my treasure into
ashes; I suppose all these years are to have been lost labour.

_Ly_. At least your chagrin will be considerably lessened by the
thought that you are not alone in your disappointment; practically all
who pursue philosophy do no more than disquiet themselves in vain. Who
could conceivably go through all the stages I have rehearsed? you admit
the impossibility yourself. As to your present mood, it is that of the
man who cries and curses his luck because he cannot climb the sky, or
plunge into the depths of the sea at Sicily and come up at Cyprus, or
soar on wings and fly within the day from Greece to India; what is
responsible for his discontent is his basing of hopes on a dream-vision
or his own wild fancy, without ever asking whether his aspirations were
realizable or consistent with humanity. You too, my friend, have been
having a long and marvellous dream; and now reason has stuck a pin into
you and startled you out of your sleep; your eyes are only half open yet,
you are reluctant to shake off a sleep which has shown you such fair
visions, and so you scold. It is just the condition of the day-dreamer;
he is rolling in gold, digging up treasure, sitting on his throne, or
somehow at the summit of bliss; for dame _How-I-wish_ is a lavish
facile Goddess, that will never turn a deaf ear to her votary, though he
have a mind to fly, or change statures with Colossus, or strike a gold-
reef; well, in the middle of all this, in comes his servant with some
every-day question, wanting to know where he is to get bread, or what he
shall say to the landlord, tired of waiting for his rent; and then he
flies into a temper, as though the intrusive questioner had robbed him of
all his bliss, and is ready to bite the poor fellow's nose off.

As you love me, do not treat me like that. I see you digging up treasure,
spreading your wings, nursing extravagant ideas, indulging impossible
hopes; and I love you too well to leave you to the company of a life-long
dream--a pleasant one, if you will, but yet a dream; I beseech you to get
up and take to some every-day business, such as may direct the rest of
your life's course by common sense. Your acts and your thoughts up to now
have been no more than Centaurs, Chimeras, Gorgons, or what else is
figured by dreams and poets and painters, chartered libertines all, who
reek not of what has been or may be. Yet the common folk believe them,
bewitched by tale and picture just because they are strange and monstrous.

I fancy you hearing from some teller of tales how there is a certain lady
of perfect beauty, beyond the Graces themselves or the Heavenly
Aphrodite, and then, without ever an inquiry whether his tale is true,
and such a person to be found on earth, falling straight in love with
her, like Medea in the story enamoured of a dream-Jason. And what most
drew you on to love, you and the others who worship the same phantom,
was, if I am not mistaken, the consistent way in which the inventor of
the lady added to his picture, when once he had got your ear. That was
the only thing you all looked to, with that he turned you about as he
would, having got his first hold upon you, averring that he was leading
you the straight way to your beloved. After the first step, you see, all
was easy; none of you ever looked round when he came to the entrance, and
inquired whether it was the right one, or whether he had accidentally
taken the wrong; no, you all followed in your predecessors' footsteps,
like sheep after the bell-wether, whereas the right thing was to decide
at the entrance whether you should go in.

Perhaps an illustration will make my meaning clearer: when one of those
audacious poets affirms that there was once a three-headed and six-handed
man, if you accept that quietly without questioning its possibility, he
will proceed to fill in the picture consistently--six eyes and ears,
three voices talking at once, three mouths eating, and thirty fingers
instead of our poor ten all told; if he has to fight, three of his hands
will have a buckler, wicker targe, or shield apiece, while of the other
three one swings an axe, another hurls a spear, and the third wields a
sword. It is too late to carp at these details, when they come; they are
consistent with the beginning; it was about that that the question ought
to have been raised whether it was to be accepted and passed as true.
Once grant that, and the rest comes flooding in, irresistible, hardly now
susceptible of doubt, because it is consistent and accordant with your
initial admissions. That is just your case; your love-yearning would not
allow you to look into the facts at each entrance, and so you are dragged
on by consistency; it never occurs to you that a thing may be self-
consistent and yet false; if a man says twice five is seven, and you take
his word for it without checking the sum, he will naturally deduce that
four times five is fourteen, and so on _ad libitum_. This is the way
that weird geometry proceeds: it sets before beginners certain strange
assumptions, and insists on their granting the existence of inconceivable
things, such as points having no parts, lines without breadth, and so on,
builds on these rotten foundations a superstructure equally rotten, and
pretends to go on to a demonstration which is true, though it starts from
premisses which are false.

Just so you, when you have granted the principles of any school, believe
in the deductions from them, and take their consistency, false as it is,
for a guarantee of truth. Then with some of you, hope travels through,
and you die before you have seen the truth and detected your deceivers,
while the rest, disillusioned too late, will not turn back for shame:
what, confess at their years that they have been abused with toys all
this time? so they hold on desperately, putting the best face upon it and
making all the converts they can, to have the consolation of good company
in their deception; they are well aware that to speak out is to sacrifice
the respect and superiority and honour they are accustomed to; so they
will not do it if it may be helped, knowing the height from which they
will fall to the common level. Just a few are found with the courage to
say they were deluded, and warn other aspirants. Meeting such a one, call
him a good man, a true and an honest; nay, call him philosopher, if you
will; to my mind, the name is his or no one's; the rest either have no
knowledge of the truth, though they think they have, or else have
knowledge and hide it, shamefaced cowards clinging to reputation.

But now for goodness' sake let us drop all this, cover it up with an
amnesty, and let it be as if it had not been said; let us, assume that
the Stoic philosophy, and no other, is correct; then we can examine
whether it is practicable and possible, or its disciples wasting their
pains; it makes wonderful promises, I am told, about the Happiness in
store for those who reach the summit; for none but they shall enter into
full possession of the true Good. The next point you must help me with--
whether you have ever met such a Stoic, such a pattern of Stoicism, as to
be unconscious of pain, untempted by pleasure, free from wrath, superior
to envy, contemptuous of wealth, and, in one word, Happy; such should the
example and model of the Virtuous life be; for any one who falls short in
the slightest degree, even though he is better than other men at all
points, is not complete, and in that case not yet Happy.

_Her_. I never saw such a man.

_Ly_. I am glad you do not palter with the truth. But what are your hopes
in pursuing philosophy, then? You see that neither your own teacher, nor
his, nor his again, and so on to the tenth generation, has been absolutely
wise and so attained Happiness. It will not serve you to say that it is
enough to get near Happiness; that is no good; a person on the doorstep is
just as much outside and in the air as another a long way off, though with
the difference that the former is tantalized by a nearer view. So it is to
get into the neighbourhood of Happiness--I will grant you so much--that
you toil like this, wearing yourself away, letting this great portion of
your life slip from you, while you are sunk in dullness and wakeful
weariness; and you are to go on with it for twenty more years at the
least, you tell me, to take your place when you are eighty--always
assuming some one to assure you that length of days--in the ranks of the
not yet Happy. Or perhaps you reckon on being the exception; you are to
crown your pursuit by attaining what many a good man before you, swifter
far, has pursued and never overtaken.

Well, overtake it, if that is your plan, grasp it and have it whole, this
something, mysterious to me, of which the possession is sufficient reward
for such toils; this something which I wonder how long you will have the
enjoyment of, old man that you will be, past all pleasure, with one foot
in the grave; ah, but perhaps, like a brave soul, you are getting ready
for another life, that you may spend it the better when you come to it,
having learned how to live: as though one should take so long preparing
and elaborating a superlative dinner that he fainted with hunger and
exhaustion!

However, there is another thing I do not think you have observed: Virtue
is manifested, of course, in action, in doing what is just and wise and
manly; but you--and when I say you, I mean the most advanced
philosophers--you do not seek these things and ensue them, but spend the
greater part of your life conning over miserable sentences and
demonstrations and problems; it is the man who does best at these that
you hail a glorious victor. And I believe that is why you admire this
experienced old professor of yours: he nonplusses his associates, knows
how to put crafty questions and inveigle you into pitfalls; so you pay no
attention to the fruit--which consists in action--, but are extremely
busy with the husks, and smother each other with the leaves in your
debates; come now, Hermotimus, what else are you about from morning to
night?

_Her_. Nothing; that is what it comes to.

_Ly_. Is it wronging you to say that you hunt the shadow or the snake's
dead slough, and neglect the solid body or the creeping thing itself? You
are no better than a man pouring water into a mortar and braying it with
an iron pestle; he thinks he is doing a necessary useful job, whereas, let
him bray till all's blue (excuse the slang), the water is as much water as
ever it was.

And here let me ask you whether, putting aside his discourse, you would
choose to resemble your master, and be as passionate, as sordid, as
quarrelsome, ay, and as addicted to pleasure (though that trait of his is
not generally known). Why no answer, Hermotimus? Shall I tell you a plea
for philosophy which I lately heard? It was from the mouth of an old, old
man, who has quite a company of young disciples. He was angrily demanding
his fees from one of these; they were long overdue, he said; the day
stated in the agreement was the first of the month, and it was now the
fifteenth.

The youth's uncle was there, a rustic person without any notion of your
refinements; and by way of stilling the storm, _Come, come, sir_, says he,
_you need not make such a fuss because we have bought words of you and not
yet settled the bill. As to what you have sold us, you have got it still;
your stock of learning is none the less; and in what I really sent the boy
to you for, you have not improved him a bit; he has carried off and
seduced neighbour Echecrates's daughter, and there would have been an
action for assault, only Echecrates is a poor man; but the prank cost me a
couple of hundred. And the other day he struck his mother; she had tried
to stop him when he was smuggling wine out of the house, for one of his
club-dinners, I suppose. As to temper and conceit and impudence and brass
and lying, he was not half so bad twelve months ago as he is now. That is
where I should have liked him to profit by your teaching; and we could
have done, without his knowing the stuff he reels of at table every day:
'a crocodile [Footnote: See _Puzzles_ in Notes. ] seized hold of a baby,'
says he, 'and promised to give it back if its father could answer'--the
Lord knows what; or how, 'day [Footnote: See _Puzzles_ in Notes. ] being,
night cannot be'; and sometimes his worship twists round what we say
somehow or other, till there we are with horns [Footnote: See _Puzzles_ in
Notes. ] on our heads!
We just laugh at it--most of all when he stuffs up
his ears and repeats to himself what he calls temperaments and conditions
and conceptions and impressions, and a lot more like that. And he tells us
God is not in heaven, but goes about in everything, wood and stone and
animals--the meanest of them, too; and if his mother asks him why he talks
such stuff, he laughs at her and says if once he gets the 'stuff' pat off,
there will be nothing to prevent him from being the only rich man, the
only king, and counting every one else slaves and offscourings. _

When he had finished, mark the reverend philosopher's answer. _You should
consider_, he said, _that if he had never come to me, he would have
behaved far worse--very possibly have come to the gallows. As it is,
philosophy and the respect he has for it have been a check upon him, so
that you find he keeps within bounds and is not quite unbearable; the
philosophic system and name tutor him with their presence, and the
thought of disgracing them shames him. I should be quite justified in
taking your money, if not for any positive improvement I have effected,
yet for the abstentions due to his respect for philosophy; the very
nurses will tell you as much: children should go to school, because, even
if they are not old enough to learn, they will at least be out of
mischief there. My conscience is quite easy about him; if you like to
select any of your friends who is acquainted with Stoicism and bring him
here to-morrow, you shall see how the boy can question and answer, how
much he has learnt, how many books he has read on axioms, syllogisms,
conceptions, duty, and all sorts of subjects. As for his hitting his
mother or seducing girls, what have I to do with that? am I his keeper? _

A dignified defence of philosophy for an old man! Perhaps _you_ will say
too that it is a good enough reason for pursuing it, if it will keep us
from worse employments. Were our original expectations from philosophy
at all of a different nature, by the way? did they contemplate anything
beyond a more decent behaviour than the average? Why this obstinate
silence?

_Her_. Oh, why but that I could cry like a baby? It cuts me to the
heart, it is all so true; it is too much for me, when I think of my
wretched, wasted years--paying all that money for my own labour, too! I
am sober again after a debauch, I see what the object of my maudlin
affection is like, and what it has brought upon me.

_Ly_. No need for tears, dear fellow; that is a very sensible fable
of Aesop's. A man sat on the shore and counted the waves breaking;
missing count, he was excessively annoyed. But the fox came up and said
to him: 'Why vex yourself, good sir, over the past ones? you should let
them go, and begin counting afresh. ' So you, since this is your mind, had
better reconcile yourself now to living like an ordinary man; you will
give up your extravagant haughty hopes and put yourself on a level with
the commonalty; if you are sensible, you will not be ashamed to unlearn
in your old age, and change your course for a better.

Now I beg you not to fancy that I have said all this as an anti-Stoic,
moved by any special dislike of your school; my arguments hold against
all schools. I should have said just the same if you had chosen Plato or
Aristotle, and condemned the others unheard. But, as Stoicism was your
choice, the argument has seemed to be aimed at that, though it had no
such special application.

_Her_. You are quite right. And now I will be off to metamorphose
myself. When we next meet, there will be no long, shaggy beard, no
artificial composure; I shall be natural, as a gentleman should. I may go
as far as a fashionable coat, by way of publishing my renunciation of
nonsense. I only wish there were an emetic that would purge out every
doctrine they have instilled into me; I assure you, if I could reverse
Chrysippus's plan with the hellebore, and drink forgetfulness, not of the
world but of Stoicism, I would not think twice about it. Well, Lycinus, I
owe you a debt indeed; I was being swept along in a rough turbid torrent,
unresisting, drifting with the stream; when lo, you stood there and
fished me out, a true _deus ex machina_. I have good enough reason,
I think, to shave my head like the people who get clear off from a wreck;
for I am to make votive offerings to-day for the dispersion of that thick
cloud which was over my eyes. Henceforth, if I meet a philosopher on my
walks (and it will not be with my will), I shall turn aside and avoid him
as I would a mad dog.




HERODOTUS AND AETION


I devoutly wish that Herodotus's other characteristics were imitable; not
all of them, of course--that is past praying for--, but any one of them:
the agreeable style, the constructive skill, the native charm of his
Ionic, the sententious wealth, or any of a thousand beauties which he
combined into one whole, to the despair of imitators. But there is one
thing--the use he made of his writings, and the speed with which he
attained the respect of all Greece; from that you, or I, or any one else,
might take a hint. As soon as he had sailed from his Carian home for
Greece, he concentrated his thoughts on the quickest and easiest method
of winning a brilliant reputation for himself and his works. He might
have gone the round, and read them successively at Athens, Corinth,
Argos, and Sparta; but that would be a long toilsome business, he
thought, with no end to it; so he would not do it in detail, collecting
his recognition by degrees, and scraping it together little by little;
his idea was, if possible, to catch all Greece together. The great
Olympic Games were at hand, and Herodotus bethought him that here was the
very occasion on which his heart was set. He seized the moment when the
gathering was at its fullest, and every city had sent the flower of its
citizens; then he appeared in the temple hall, bent not on sight-seeing,
but on bidding for an Olympic victory of his own; he recited his
_Histories_, and bewitched his hearers; nothing would do but each
book must be named after one of the Muses, to whose number they
corresponded.

He was straightway known to all, better far than the Olympic winners.
There was no man who had not heard his name; they had listened to him at
Olympia, or they were told of him by those who had been there; he had
only to appear, and fingers were pointing at him: 'There is the great
Herodotus, who wrote the Persian War in Ionic, and celebrated our
victories. ' That was what he made out of his _Histories_; a single
meeting sufficed, and he had the general unanimous acclamation of all
Greece; his name was proclaimed, not by a single herald; every spectator
did that for him, each in his own city.

The royal road to fame was now discovered; it was the regular practice of
many afterwards to deliver their discourses at the festival; Hippias the
rhetorician was on his own ground there; but Prodicus came from Ceos,
Anaximenes from Chios, Polus from Agrigentum; and a rapid fame it
brought, to them and many others.

However, I need not have cited ancient rhetoricians, historians, and
chroniclers like these; in quite recent times the painter Aetion is said
to have brought his picture, _Nuptials of Roxana and Alexander_, to
exhibit at Olympia; and Proxenides, High Steward of the Games on the
occasion, was so delighted with his genius that he gave him his daughter.

It must have been a very wonderful picture, I think I hear some one say,
to make the High Steward give his daughter to a stranger. Well, I have
seen it--it is now in Italy--, so I can tell you. A fair chamber, with
the bridal bed in it; Roxana seated--and a great beauty she is--with
downcast eyes, troubled by the presence of Alexander, who is standing.
Several smiling Loves; one stands behind Roxana, pulling away the veil on
her head to show her to Alexander; another obsequiously draws off her
sandal, suggesting bed-time; a third has hold of Alexander's mantle, and
is dragging him with all his might towards Roxana. The King is offering
her a garland, and by him as supporter and groom's-man is Hephaestion,
holding a lighted torch and leaning on a very lovely boy; this is
Hymenaeus, I conjecture, for there are no letters to show. On the other
side of the picture, more Loves playing among Alexander's armour; two are
carrying his spear, as porters do a heavy beam; two more grasp the
handles of the shield, tugging it along with another reclining on it,
playing king, I suppose; and then another has got into the breast-plate,
which lies hollow part upwards; he is in ambush, and will give the royal
equipage a good fright when it comes within reach.

All this is not idle fancy, on which the painter has been lavishing
needless pains; he is hinting that Alexander has also another love, in
War; though he loves Roxana, he does not forget his armour. And, by the
way, there was some extra nuptial virtue in the picture itself, outside
the realm of fancy; for it did Aetion's wooing for him. He departed with
a wedding of his own as a sort of pendant to that of Alexander;
_his_ groom's-man was the King; and the price of his marriage-piece
was a marriage.

Herodotus, then (to return to him), thought that the Olympic festival
would serve a second purpose very well--that of revealing to the Greeks a
wonderful historian who had related their victories as he had done. As
for me--and in Heaven's name do not suppose me so beside myself as to
intend any comparison between my works and his; I desire his favour too
much for that--but one experience I have in common with him. On my first
visit to Macedonia, _my_ thoughts too were busy with my best policy.
My darling wish was to be known to you all, and to exhibit my writings to
as many Macedonians as might be; I decided that it would be too great an
undertaking at such a time of year to go round in person visiting city by
city; but if I seized the occasion of this your meeting, appeared before
you all, and delivered my discourse, my aspirations, I thought, might be
realized that way.

And now here are you met together, the _elite_ of every city, the
true soul of Macedonia; the town which lodges you is the chief of all,
little enough resembling Pisa, with its crowding, its tents and hovels
and stifling heat; there is as great a difference between this audience
and that promiscuous crowd, mainly intent upon mere athletics, and
thinking of Herodotus only as a stop-gap; here we have orators,
historians, professors, the first in each kind--that is much in itself;
my arena, it seems, need not suffer from comparison with Olympia. And
though, if you insist on matching me with the Polydamases, Glaucuses, and
Milos of literature, you must think me a very presumptuous person, it is
open to you on the other hand to put them out of your thoughts
altogether; and if you strip and examine me independently, you may decide
that at least I need not be whipped. [Footnote: Cf. _Remarks addressed
to an Illiterate Book-fancier_, 9. ] Considering the nature of the
contest, I may well be satisfied with that measure of success.




ZEUXIS AND ANTIOCHUS


I was lately walking home after lecturing, when a number of my audience
(you are now my friends, gentlemen, and there can be no objection to my
telling you this)--these persons, then, came to me and introduced
themselves, with the air of admiring hearers. They accompanied me a
considerable way, with such laudatory exclamations that I was reduced to
blushing at the discrepancy between praise and thing praised. Their chief
point, which they were absolutely unanimous in emphasizing, was that the
substance of my work was so fresh, so crammed with novelty. I had better
give you their actual phrases: 'How new! What paradoxes, to be sure! What
invention the man has! His ideas are quite unequalled for originality. '
They said a great deal of this sort about my fascinating lecture, as they
called it; they could have had no motive for pretending, or addressing
such flatteries to a stranger who had no independent claims on their
attention.

These commendations, to be quite frank, were very far from gratifying to
me; when at length they left me to myself, my reflections took this
course:--_So the only attraction in my work is that it is unusual, and
does not follow the beaten track; good vocabulary, orthodox composition,
insight, subtlety, Attic grace, general constructive skill--these may for
aught I know be completely wanting; else indeed they would hardly have
left them unnoticed, and approved my method only as new and startling.
Fool that I was, I did indeed guess, when they jumped up to applaud, that
novelty was part of the attraction; I knew that Homer spoke truly when he
said there is favour for the new song; but I did not see that novelty was
to have so vast a share--the whole, indeed--of the credit; I thought it
gave a sort of adventitious charm, and contributed, its part to the
success, but that the real object of commendation--what extracted the
cheers--was those other qualities. Why, I have been absurdly self-
satisfied, and come very near believing them when they called me the one
and only real Greek, and such nonsense. But behold, my gold is turned to
ashes; my fame, after all, is little different from that enjoyed by a
conjuror. _

Now I should like to give you an illustration from painting. The great
Zeuxis, after he had established his artistic supremacy, seldom or never
painted such common popular subjects as Heroes, Gods, and battle-pieces;
he was always intent on novelty; he would hit upon some extravagant and
strange design, and then use it to show his mastery of the art. One of
these daring pieces of his represented a female Centaur, nursing a pair
of infant Centaur twins. There is a copy of the picture now at Athens,
taken exactly from the original. The latter is said to have been put on
ship--board for Italy with the rest of Sulla's art treasures, and to have
been lost with them by the sinking of the ship, off Malea, I think it
was. The picture of the picture I have seen, and the best word-picture I
can manage of that I am now to give you; I am no connoisseur, you must
understand, but I have a vivid recollection of it as I saw it in an
Athenian studio not long ago; and my warm admiration of it as a work of
art may perhaps inspire me with a clear description.

On fresh green-sward appears the mother Centaur, the whole equine part of
her stretched on the ground, her hoofs extended backwards; the human part
is slightly raised on the elbows; the fore feet are not extended like the
others, for she is only partially on her side; one of them is bent as in
the act of kneeling, with the hoof tucked in, while the other is
beginning to straighten and take a hold on the ground--the action of a
horse rising. Of the cubs she is holding one in her arms suckling it in
the human fashion, while the other is drawing at the mare's dug like a
foal. In the upper part of the picture, as on higher ground, is a Centaur
who is clearly the husband of the nursing mother; he leans over laughing,
visible only down to the middle of his horse body; he holds a lion whelp
aloft in his right hand, terrifying the youngsters with it in sport.

There are no doubt qualities in the painting which evade analysis by a
mere amateur, and yet involve supreme craftsmanship--such things as
precision of line, perfect mastery of the palette, clever brush-work,
management of shadow, perspective, proportion, and relation of the parts
to the whole; but I leave all that to the professionals whose business it
is to appreciate it; what strikes _me_ especially about Zeuxis is
the manifold scope which he has found for his extraordinary skill, in a
single subject. You have in the husband a truly terrible savage creature;
his locks toss about, he is almost covered with hair, human part as well
as equine; the shoulders high to monstrosity; the look, even in his merry
mood, brutal, uncivilized, wild.

In contrast with him, the animal half of the female is lovely; a
Thessalian filly, yet unbroken and unbacked, might come nearest; and the
human upper half is also most beautiful, with the one exception of the
ears, which are pointed as in a satyr. At the point of junction which
blends the two natures, there is no sharp line of division, but the most
gradual of transitions; a touch here, a trait there, and you are
surprised to find the change complete. It was perfectly wonderful, again,
to see the combination of wildness and infancy, of terrible and tender,
in the young ones, looking up in baby curiosity at the lion-cub, while
they held on to breast and dug, and cuddled close to their dam.

Zeuxis imagined that when the picture was shown the technique of it would
take visitors by storm. Well, they did acclaim him; they could hardly
help that, with such a masterpiece before them; but their commendations
were all in the style of those given to me the other night; it was the
strangeness of the idea, the fresh unhackneyed sentiment of the picture,
and so on. Zeuxis saw that they were preoccupied with the novelty of his
subject, art was at a discount, and truth of rendering quite a minor
matter. 'Oh, pack it up, Miccio,' he said to his pupil, 'and you and the
others take it home; these people are delighted with the earthy part of
the work; the questions of its aim, its beauty, its artistic merit, are
of no importance whatever; novelty of subject goes for much more than
truth of rendering. '

So said Zeuxis, not in the best of tempers. Antiochus Soter had a
somewhat similar experience about his battle with the Galatians. If you
will allow me, I propose to give you an account of that event also. These
people were good fighters, and on this occasion in great force; they were
drawn up in a serried phalanx, the first rank, which consisted of steel-
clad warriors, being supported by men of the ordinary heavy-armed type to
the depth of four-and-twenty; twenty thousand cavalry held the flanks;
and there were eighty scythed, and twice that number of ordinary war
chariots ready to burst forth from the centre. These dispositions filled
Antiochus with apprehension, and he thought the task was too hard for
him. His own preparations had been hurried, on no great scale, and
inadequate to the occasion; he had brought quite a small force, mostly of
skirmishers and light-armed troops; more than half his men were without
defensive armour. He was disposed to negotiate and find some honourable
composition.

Theodotas of Rhodes, however, a brave and skilful officer, put him in
heart again. Antiochus had sixteen elephants; Theodotas advised him to
conceal these as well as he could for the present, not letting their
superior height betray them; when the signal for battle was given, the
shock just at hand, the enemy's cavalry charging, and their phalanx
opening to give free passage to the chariots, then would be the time for
the elephants. A section of four was to meet the cavalry on each flank,
and the remaining eight to engage the chariot squadron. 'By this means,'
he concluded, 'the horses will be frightened, and there will be a
stampede into the Galatian infantry. ' His anticipations were realized,
thus:

Neither the Galatians nor their horses had ever seen an elephant, and
they were so taken aback by the strange sight that, long before the
beasts came to close quarters, the mere sound of their trumpeting, the
sight of their gleaming tusks relieved against dark bodies, and minatory
waving trunks, was enough; before they were within bow-shot, the enemy
broke and ran in utter disorder; the infantry were spitted on each
other's spears, and trampled by the cavalry who came scurrying on to
them. The chariots, turning in like manner upon their own friends,
whirled about among them by no means harmlessly; it was a Homeric scene
of 'rumbling tumbling cars'; when once the horses shied at those
formidable elephants, off went the drivers, and 'the lordless chariots
rattled on,' their scythes maiming and carving any of their late masters
whom they came within reach of; and, in that chaos, many were the
victims. Next came the elephants, trampling, tossing, tearing, goring;
and a very complete victory they had made of it for Antiochus.

The carnage was great, and all the Galatians were either killed or
captured, with the exception of a quite small band which got off to the
mountains; Antiochus's Macedonians sang the Paean, gathered round,
and garlanded him with acclamations on the glorious victory. But the
King--so the story goes--was in tears; 'My men,' he said, 'we have more
reason for shame; saved by those sixteen brutes! if their strangeness
had not produced the panic, where should we have been? ' And on the
trophy he would have nothing carved except just an elephant.

Gentlemen, _de me fabula_; are my resources like those of Antiochus--
quite unfit for battle on the whole, but including some elephants, some
queer impositions, some jugglery, in fact? That is what all the praise I
hear points at. The things I really relied upon seem to be of little
account; the mere fact that my picture is of a female Centaur exercises
fascination; it passes for a novelty and a marvel, as indeed it is. The
rest of Zeuxis's pains is thrown away, I suppose. But ah, no, not thrown
away--; _you_ are connoisseurs, and judge by the rules of art. I
only hope the show may be worthy of the spectators.




HARMONIDES


'Tell me, Timotheus,' said Harmonides the flute-player one day to his
teacher, 'tell me how I may win distinction in my art. What can I do to
make myself known all over Greece? Everything but this you have taught
me. I have a correct ear, thanks to you, and a smooth, even delivery, and
have acquired the light touch so essential to the rendering of rapid
measures; rhythmical effect, the adaptation of music to dance, the true
character of the different moods--exalted Phrygian, joyous Lydian,
majestic Dorian, voluptuous Ionic--all these I have mastered with your
assistance. But the prime object of my musical aspirations seems out of
my reach: I mean popular esteem, distinction, and notoriety; I would have
all eyes turn in my direction, all tongues repeat my name: "There goes
Harmonides, the great flute-player. " Now when _you_ first came from
your home in Boeotia, and performed in the _Procne_, and won the
prize for your rendering of the _Ajax Furens_, composed by your
namesake, there was not a man who did not know the name of Timotheus of
Thebes; and in these days you have only to show yourself, and people
flock together as birds do at the sight of an owl in daylight. It is for
this that I sought to become a flute-player; this was to be the reward of
all my toil. The skill without the glory I would not take at a gift, not
though I should prove to be a Marsyas or an Olympus in disguise. What is
the use of a light that is to be hidden under a bushel? Show me then,
Timotheus, how I may avail myself of my powers and of my art. I shall be
doubly your debtor: not for my skill alone, but for the glory that skill
confers. '

'Why, really,' says Timotheus, 'it is no such easy matter, Harmonides, to
become a public character, or to gain the prestige and distinction to
which you aspire; and if you propose to set about it by performing in
public, you will find it a long business, and at the best will never
achieve a universal reputation. Where will you find a theatre or circus
large enough to admit the whole nation as your audience? But if you would
attain your object and become known, take this hint. By all means perform
occasionally in the theatres, but do not concern yourself with the
public. Here is the royal road to fame: get together a small and select
audience of connoisseurs, real experts, whose praise, whose blame are
equally to be relied upon; display your skill to these; and if you can
win _their_ approval, you may rest content that in a single hour you
have gained a national reputation. I argue thus. If you are known to be
an admirable performer by persons who are themselves universally known
and admired, what have you to do with public opinion? Public opinion must
inevitably follow the opinion of the best judges. The public after all is
mainly composed of untutored minds, that know not good from bad
themselves; but when they hear a man praised by the great authorities,
they take it for granted that he is not undeserving of praise, and praise
him accordingly. It is the same at the games: most of the spectators know
enough to clap or hiss, but the judging is done by some five or six
persons. '

Harmonides had no time to put this policy into practice. The story goes
that in his first public competition he worked so energetically at his
flute, that he breathed his last into it, and expired then and there,
before he could be crowned. His first Dionysiac performance was also his
last.

But Timotheus's remarks need not be confined to Harmonides, nor to his
profession: they seem applicable to all whose ambition prompts them to
exhibit their talents and to aim at the approbation of the public.
Accordingly, when I, like Harmonides, was debating within myself the
speediest means of becoming known, I took Timotheus's advice: 'Who,' I
asked myself, 'is the foremost man in all this city? Whose credit is
highest with his neighbours? Who shall be my _multum in parvo_? '
Only one name could reasonably suggest itself--your own; which stands for
the perfection of every excellence, the glass of culture and the mould of
wit. To submit my works to you, to win _your_ approbation--if such a
thing might be! --were to reach the goal of my desire; for your suffrage
carries the rest with it. Whom, indeed, could I substitute in your place,
and hope to preserve a reputation for sanity? In a sense, no doubt, I
shall be hazarding all on one cast of the die: yet with more truth I
might be said to have summoned the whole population into one audience-
chamber; for your single judgement must assuredly outweigh the rest,
taken individually or collectively. The Spartan kings had two votes each
to the ordinary man's one: but you are a whole Privy Council and Senate
in yourself. Your influence is unequalled in the Court of Literature,
and, above all, yours is the casting-vote of acquittal; an encouraging
thought for me, who might well be uneasy otherwise at the extent of my
hardihood. Moreover, I am not wholly without a claim on your interest, as
belonging to that city which has so often enjoyed peculiar benefits at
your hand, in addition to those which it has shared with the nation at
large; and this encourages me to hope that in the present instance, if
judgement is going against me, and the votes of acquittal are in a
minority, you will use your prerogative, and make all right with that
casting-vote of yours. I may have had successes, I may have made a name,
my lectures may have been well received:--all this amounts to nothing; it
is visionary; it is a mere bubble. The truth must come to light now; I am
put to a final test; there will be no room for doubt or hesitation after
this. It rests with you, whether my literary rank shall be assured, or my
pretensions--but no! with such a contest before me, I will abstain from
words of evil omen.

Ye Gods, give me approval _here_, and set the seal upon my
reputation! I may then face the world with a light heart: he who has
carried the prize at Olympia need fear no other course.




THE SCYTHIAN


Anacharsis was not the first Scythian who was induced by the love of
Greek culture to leave his native country and visit Athens: he had been
preceded by Toxaris, a man of high ability and noble sentiments, and an
eager student of manners and customs; but of low origin, not like
Anacharsis a member of the royal family or of the aristocracy of his
country, but what they call _'an eight-hoof man,'_ a term which
implies the possession of a waggon and two oxen. Toxaris never returned
to Scythia, but died at Athens, where he presently came to be ranked
among the Heroes; and sacrifice is still paid to 'the Foreign Physician,'
as he was styled after his deification. Some account of the significance
of this name, the origin of his worship, and his connexion with the sons
of Asclepius, will not, I think, be out of place: for it will be seen
from this that the Scythians, in conferring immortality on mortals, and
sending them to keep company with Zamolxis, do not stand alone; since the
Athenians permit themselves to make Gods of Scythians upon Greek soil.

At the time of the great plague, the wife of Architeles the Areopagite
had a vision: the Scythian Toxaris stood over her and commanded her to
tell the Athenians that the plague would cease if they would sprinkle
their back-streets with wine. The Athenians attended to his instructions,
and after several sprinklings had been performed, the plague troubled
them no more; whether it was that the perfume of the wine neutralized
certain noxious vapours, or that the hero, being a medical hero, had some
other motive for his advice. However that may be, he continues to this
day to draw a fee for his professional services, in the shape of a white
horse, which is sacrificed on his tomb. This tomb was pointed out by
Dimaenete as the place from which he issued with his instructions about
the wine; and beneath it Toxaris was found buried, his identity being
established not merely by the inscription, of which only a part remained
legible, but also by the figure engraved on the monument, which was that
of a Scythian, with a bow, ready strung, in his left hand, and in the
right what appeared to be a book. You may still make out more than half
the figure, with the bow and book complete: but the upper portion of the
stone, including the face, has suffered from the ravages of time. It is
situated not far from the Dipylus, on your left as you leave the Dipylus
for the Academy. The mound is of no great size, and the pillar lies
prostrate: yet it never lacks a garland, and there are statements to the
effect that fever-patients have been known to be cured by the hero; which
indeed is not surprising, considering that he once healed an entire city.

However, my reason for mentioning Toxaris was this. He was still alive,
when Anacharsis landed at Piraeus and made his way up to Athens, in no
small perturbation of spirit; a foreigner and a barbarian, everything was
strange to him, and many things caused him uneasiness; he knew not what
to do with himself; he saw that every one was laughing at his attire; he
could find no one to speak his native tongue;--in short he was heartily
sick of his travels, and made up his mind that he would just see Athens,
and then retreat to his ship without loss of time, get on board, and so
back to the Bosphorus; once there he had no great journey to perform
before he would be home again. In this frame of mind he had already
reached the Ceramicus, when his good genius appeared to him in the guise
of Toxaris. The attention of the latter was immediately arrested by the
dress of his native country, nor was it likely that he would have any
difficulty in recognizing Anacharsis, who was of noble birth and of the
highest rank in Scythia. Anacharsis, on the other hand, could not be
expected to see a compatriot in Toxaris, who was dressed in the Greek
fashion, without sword or belt, wore no beard, and from his fluent speech
might have been an Athenian born; so completely had time transformed him.
'You are surely Anacharsis, the son of Daucetas? ' he said, addressing him
in the Scythian language. Anacharsis wept tears of joy; he not only heard
his mother-tongue, but heard it from one who had known him in Scythia.
'How comes it, sir, that you know me? ' he asked.

'I too am of that country; my name is Toxaris; but it is probably not
known to you, for I am a man of no family. '

'Are you that Toxaris,' exclaimed the other, 'of whom I heard that for
love of Greece he had left wife and children in Scythia, and gone to
Athens, and was there dwelling in high honour? '

'What, is my name still remembered among you? --Yes, I am Toxaris. '

'Then,' said Anacharsis, 'you see before you a disciple, who has caught
your enthusiasm for Greece; it was with no other object than this that I
set out on my travels. The hardships I have endured in the countries
through which I passed on my way hither are infinite; and I had already
decided, when I met you, that before the sun set I would return to my
ship; so much was I disturbed at the strange and outlandish sights that I
have seen. And now, Toxaris, I adjure you by Scimetar and Zamolxis, our
country's Gods,--take me by the hand, be my guide, and make me acquainted
with all that is best in Athens and in the rest of Greece; their great
men, their wise laws, their customs, their assemblies, their
constitution, their everyday life. You and I have both travelled far to
see these things: you will not suffer me to depart without seeing them? '

'What! come to the very door, and then turn back? This is not the
language of enthusiasm. However, there is no fear of that--you will not
go back, Athens will not let you off so easily. She is not so much at a
loss for charms wherewith to detain the stranger: she will take such a
hold on you, that you will forget your own wife and children--if you have
any. Now I will put you into the readiest way of seeing Athens, ay, and
Greece, and the glories of Greece. There is a certain philosopher living
here; he is an Athenian, but has travelled a great deal in Asia and
Egypt, and held intercourse with the most eminent men. For the rest, he
is none of your moneyed men: indeed, he is quite poor; be prepared for an
old man, dressed as plainly as could be. Yet his virtue and wisdom are
held in such esteem, that he was employed by them to draw up a
constitution, and his ordinances form their rule of life. Make this man
your friend, study him, and rest assured that in knowing him you know
Greece; for he is an epitome of all that is excellent in the Greek
character. I can do you no greater service than to introduce you to him. '

'Let us lose no time, then, Toxaris.