If Vesuvius does not frighten those who live under it, is it likely that
Hell-fire should frighten any reasonable person?
I met a traveller who had returned from Hades where he had conversed with
Tantalus and with others of the shades. They all agreed that for the
first six, or perhaps twelve, months they disliked their punishment very
much; but after that, it was like shelling peas on a hot afternoon in
July. They began by discovering (no doubt long after the fact had been
apparent enough to every one else) that they had not been noticing what
they were doing so much as usual, and that they had been even thinking of
something else. From this moment, the automatic stage of action having
set in, the progress towards always thinking of something else was rapid
and they soon forgot that they were undergoing any punishment.
Tantalus did get a little something not infrequently; water stuck to the
hairs of his body and he gathered it up in his hand; he also got many an
apple when the wind was napping as it had to do sometimes. Perhaps he
could have done with more, but he got enough to keep him going quite
comfortably. His sufferings were nothing as compared with those of a
needy heir to a fortune whose father, or whoever it may be, catches a
dangerous bronchitis every winter but invariably recovers and lives to
91, while the heir survives him a month having been worn out with long
expectation.
Sisyphus had never found any pleasure in life comparable to the delight
of seeing his stone bound down-hill, and in so timing its rush as to
inflict the greatest possible scare on any unwary shade who might be
wandering below. He got so great and such varied amusement out of this
that his labour had become the automatism of reflex action—which is, I
understand, the name applied by men of science to all actions that are
done without reflection. He was a pompous, ponderous old gentleman, very
irritable and always thinking that the other shades were laughing at him
or trying to take advantage of him. There were two, however, whom he
hated with a fury that tormented him far more seriously than anything
else ever did. The first of these was Archimedes who had instituted a
series of experiments in regard to various questions connected with
mechanics and had conceived a scheme by which he hoped to utilise the
motive power of the stone for the purpose of lighting Hades with
electricity. The other was Agamemnon, who took good care to keep out of
the stone’s way when it was more than a quarter of the distance up the
slope, but who delighted in teasing Sisyphus so long as he considered it
safe to do so. Many of the other shades took daily pleasure in gathering
together about stone-time to enjoy the fun and to bet on how far the
stone would roll.
As for Tityus—what is a bird more or less on a body that covers nine
acres? He found the vultures a gentle stimulant to the liver without
which it would have become congested.
Sir Isaac Newton was intensely interested in the hygrometric and
barometric proceedings of the Danaids.
“At any rate,” said one of them to my informant, “if we really are being
punished, for goodness’ sake don’t say anything about it or we may be put
to other work. You see, we must be doing something, and now we know how
to do this, we don’t want the bother of learning something new. You may
be right, but we have not got to make our living by it, and what in the
name of reason can it matter whether the sieves ever get full or not?”
My traveller reported much the same with regard to the eternal happiness
on Mount Olympus. Hercules found Hebe a fool and could never get her off
his everlasting knee. He would have sold his soul to find another
Ægisthus.
So Jove saw all this and it set him thinking.
“It seems to me,” said he, “that Olympus and Hades are both failures.”
Then he summoned a council and the whole matter was thoroughly discussed.
In the end Jove abdicated, and the gods came down from Olympus and
assumed mortality. They had some years of very enjoyable Bohemian
existence going about as a company of strolling players at French and
Belgian town fairs; after which they died in the usual way, having
discovered at last that it does not matter how high up or how low down
you are, that happiness and misery are not absolute but depend on the
direction in which you are tending and consist in a progression towards
better or worse, and that pleasure, like pain and like everything that
grows, holds in perfection but a little moment.
XXII
Reconciliation