THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
O mare! O littus! verum secretumque Mouseion,+
quam multa invenitis, quam multa dictatis!
Pliny’s Letters.
It would hardly have been possible to feel more seriously than did
Marius in those grave years of his early life. But the death of his
mother turned seriousness of feeling into a matter of the intelligence:
it made him a questioner; and, by bringing into full evidence to him
the force of his affections and the probable importance of their place
in his future, developed in him generally the more human and earthly
elements of character. A singularly virile consciousness of the
realities of life pronounced itself in him; still however as in the
main a poetic apprehension, though united already with something of
personal ambition and the instinct of self-assertion. There were days
when he could suspect, though it was a suspicion he was careful at
first to put from him, that that early, much cherished religion of the
villa might come to count with him as but one form of poetic beauty, or
of the ideal, in things; as but one voice, in a world where there were
many voices it would be a moral weakness not to listen to. And yet this
voice, through its forcible pre-occupation of his childish conscience,
still seemed to make a claim of a quite exclusive character, defining
itself as essentially one of but two possible leaders of his spirit,
the other proposing to him unlimited self-expansion in a world of
various sunshine. The contrast was so pronounced as to make the easy,
light-hearted, unsuspecting exercise of himself, among the temptations
of the new phase of life which had now begun, seem nothing less than a
rival religion, a rival religious service. The temptations, the various
sunshine, were those of the old town of Pisa, where Marius was now a
tall schoolboy. Pisa was a place lying just far enough from home to
make his rare visits to it in childhood seem like adventures, such as
had never failed to supply new and refreshing impulses to the
imagination. The partly decayed pensive town, which still had its
commerce by sea, and its fashion at the bathing-season, had lent, at
one time the vivid memory of its fair streets of marble, at another the
solemn outline of the dark hills of Luna on its background, at another
the living glances of its men and women, to the thickly gathering crowd
of impressions, out of which his notion of the world was then forming.
And while he learned that the object, the experience, as it will be
known to memory, is really from first to last the chief point for
consideration in the conduct of life, these things were feeding also
the idealism constitutional with him—his innate and habitual longing
for a world altogether fairer than that he saw. The child could find
his way in thought along those streets of the old town, expecting duly
the shrines at their corners, and their recurrent intervals of
garden-courts, or side-views of distant sea. The great temple of the
place, as he could remember it, on turning back once for a last look
from an angle of his homeward road, counting its tall gray columns
between the blue of the bay and the blue fields of blossoming flax
beyond; the harbour and its lights; the foreign ships lying there; the
sailors’ chapel of Venus, and her gilded image, hung with votive gifts;
the seamen themselves, their women and children, who had a whole
peculiar colour-world of their own—the boy’s superficial delight in the
broad light and shadow of all that was mingled with the sense of power,
of unknown distance, of the danger of storm and possible death.
To this place, then, Marius came down now from White-nights, to live in
the house of his guardian or tutor, that he might attend the school of
a famous rhetorician, and learn, among other things, Greek. The school,
one of many imitations of Plato’s Academy in the old Athenian garden,
lay in a quiet suburb of Pisa, and had its grove of cypresses, its
porticoes, a house for the master, its chapel and images. For the
memory of Marius in after-days, a clear morning sunlight seemed to lie
perpetually on that severe picture in old gray and green. The lad went
to this school daily betimes, in state at first, with a young slave to
carry the books, and certainly with no reluctance, for the sight of his
fellow-scholars, and their petulant activity, coming upon the sadder
sentimental moods of his childhood, awoke at once that instinct of
emulation which is but the other side of sympathy; and he was not
aware, of course, how completely the difference of his previous
training had made him, even in his most enthusiastic participation in
the ways of that little world, still essentially but a spectator. While
all their heart was in their limited boyish race, and its transitory
prizes, he was already entertaining himself, very pleasurably
meditative, with the tiny drama in action before him, as but the mimic,
preliminary exercise for a larger contest, and already with an implicit
epicureanism. Watching all the gallant effects of their small
rivalries—a scene in the main of fresh delightful sunshine—he entered
at once into the sensations of a rivalry beyond them, into the passion
of men, and had already recognised a certain appetite for fame, for
distinction among his fellows, as his dominant motive to be.
The fame he conceived for himself at this time was, as the reader will
have anticipated, of the intellectual order, that of a poet perhaps.
And as, in that gray monastic tranquillity of the villa, inward voices
from the reality of unseen things had come abundantly; so here, with
the sounds and aspects of the shore, and amid the urbanities, the
graceful follies, of a bathing-place, it was the reality, the tyrannous
reality, of things visible that was borne in upon him. The real world
around—a present humanity not less comely, it might seem, than that of
the old heroic days—endowing everything it touched upon, however
remotely, down to its little passing tricks of fashion even, with a
kind of fleeting beauty, exercised over him just then a great
fascination.
That sense had come upon him in all its power one exceptionally fine
summer, the summer when, at a somewhat earlier age than was usual, he
had formally assumed the dress of manhood, going into the Forum for
that purpose, accompanied by his friends in festal array. At night,
after the full measure of those cloudless days, he would feel well-nigh
wearied out, as if with a long succession of pictures and music. As he
wandered through the gay streets or on the sea-shore, the real world
seemed indeed boundless, and himself almost absolutely free in it, with
a boundless appetite for experience, for adventure, whether physical or
of the spirit. His entire rearing hitherto had lent itself to an
imaginative exaltation of the past; but now the spectacle actually
afforded to his untired and freely open senses, suggested the
reflection that the present had, it might be, really advanced beyond
the past, and he was ready to boast in the very fact that it was
modern. If, in a voluntary archaism, the polite world of that day went
back to a choicer generation, as it fancied, for the purpose of a
fastidious self-correction, in matters of art, of literature, and even,
as we have seen, of religion, at least it improved, by a shade or two
of more scrupulous finish, on the old pattern; and the new era, like
the Neu-zeit of the German enthusiasts at the beginning of our own
century, might perhaps be discerned, awaiting one just a single step
onward—the perfected new manner, in the consummation of time, alike as
regards the things of the imagination and the actual conduct of life.
Only, while the pursuit of an ideal like this demanded entire liberty
of heart and brain, that old, staid, conservative religion of his
childhood certainly had its being in a world of somewhat narrow
restrictions. But then, the one was absolutely real, with nothing less
than the reality of seeing and hearing—the other, how vague, shadowy,
problematical! Could its so limited probabilities be worth taking into
account in any practical question as to the rejecting or receiving of
what was indeed so real, and, on the face of it, so desirable?
And, dating from the time of his first coming to school, a great
friendship had grown up for him, in that life of so few attachments—the
pure and disinterested friendship of schoolmates. He had seen Flavian
for the first time the day on which he had come to Pisa, at the moment
when his mind was full of wistful thoughts regarding the new life to
begin for him to-morrow, and he gazed curiously at the crowd of
bustling scholars as they came from their classes. There was something
in Flavian a shade disdainful, as he stood isolated from the others for
a moment, explained in part by his stature and the distinction of the
low, broad forehead; though there was pleasantness also for the
newcomer in the roving blue eyes which seemed somehow to take a fuller
hold upon things around than is usual with boys. Marius knew that those
proud glances made kindly note of him for a moment, and felt something
like friendship at first sight. There was a tone of reserve or gravity
there, amid perfectly disciplined health, which, to his fancy, seemed
to carry forward the expression of the austere sky and the clear song
of the blackbird on that gray March evening. Flavian indeed was a
creature who changed much with the changes of the passing light and
shade about him, and was brilliant enough under the early sunshine in
school next morning. Of all that little world of more or less gifted
youth, surely the centre was this lad of servile birth. Prince of the
school, he had gained an easy dominion over the old Greek master by the
fascination of his parts, and over his fellow-scholars by the figure he
bore. He wore already the manly dress; and standing there in class, as
he displayed his wonderful quickness in reckoning, or his taste in
declaiming Homer, he was like a carved figure in motion, thought
Marius, but with that indescribable gleam upon it which the words of
Homer actually suggested, as perceptible on the visible forms of the
gods—hoia theous epenênothen aien eontas.+
A story hung by him, a story which his comrades acutely connected with
his habitual air of somewhat peevish pride. Two points were held to be
clear amid its general vagueness—a rich stranger paid his schooling,
and he was himself very poor, though there was an attractive piquancy
in the poverty of Flavian which in a scholar of another figure might
have been despised. Over Marius too his dominion was entire. Three
years older than he, Flavian was appointed to help the younger boy in
his studies, and Marius thus became virtually his servant in many
things, taking his humours with a sort of grateful pride in being
noticed at all, and, thinking over all this afterwards, found that the
fascination experienced by him had been a sentimental one, dependent on
the concession to himself of an intimacy, a certain tolerance of his
company, granted to none beside.
That was in the earliest days; and then, as their intimacy grew, the
genius, the intellectual power of Flavian began its sway over him. The
brilliant youth who loved dress, and dainty food, and flowers, and
seemed to have a natural alliance with, and claim upon, everything else
which was physically select and bright, cultivated also that foppery of
words, of choice diction which was common among the élite spirits of
that day; and Marius, early an expert and elegant penman, transcribed
his verses (the euphuism of which, amid a genuine original power, was
then so delightful to him) in beautiful ink, receiving in return the
profit of Flavian’s really great intellectual capacities, developed and
accomplished under the ambitious desire to make his way effectively in
life. Among other things he introduced him to the writings of a
sprightly wit, then very busy with the pen, one Lucian—writings seeming
to overflow with that intellectual light turned upon dim places, which,
at least in seasons of mental fair weather, can make people laugh where
they have been wont, perhaps, to pray. And, surely, the sunlight which
filled those well-remembered early mornings in school, had had more
than the usual measure of gold in it! Marius, at least, would lie awake
before the time, thinking with delight of the long coming hours of hard
work in the presence of Flavian, as other boys dream of a holiday.
It was almost by accident at last, so wayward and capricious was he,
that reserve gave way, and Flavian told the story of his father—a
freedman, presented late in life, and almost against his will, with the
liberty so fondly desired in youth, but on condition of the sacrifice
of part of his peculium—the slave’s diminutive hoard—amassed by many a
self-denial, in an existence necessarily hard. The rich man, interested
in the promise of the fair child born on his estate, had sent him to
school. The meanness and dejection, nevertheless, of that unoccupied
old age defined the leading memory of Flavian, revived sometimes, after
this first confidence, with a burst of angry tears amid the sunshine.
But nature had had her economy in nursing the strength of that one
natural affection; for, save his half-selfish care for Marius, it was
the single, really generous part, the one piety, in the lad’s
character. In him Marius saw the spirit of unbelief, achieved as if at
one step. The much-admired freedman’s son, as with the privilege of a
natural aristocracy, believed only in himself, in the brilliant, and
mainly sensuous gifts, he had, or meant to acquire.
And then, he had certainly yielded himself, though still with untouched
health, in a world where manhood comes early, to the seductions of that
luxurious town, and Marius wondered sometimes, in the freer revelation
of himself by conversation, at the extent of his early corruption. How
often, afterwards, did evil things present themselves in malign
association with the memory of that beautiful head, and with a kind of
borrowed sanction and charm in its natural grace! To Marius, at a later
time, he counted for as it were an epitome of the whole pagan world,
the depth of its corruption, and its perfection of form. And still, in
his mobility, his animation, in his eager capacity for various life, he
was so real an object, after that visionary idealism of the villa. His
voice, his glance, were like the breaking in of the solid world upon
one, amid the flimsy fictions of a dream. A shadow, handling all things
as shadows, had felt a sudden real and poignant heat in them.
Meantime, under his guidance, Marius was learning quickly and
abundantly, because with a good will. There was that in the actual
effectiveness of his figure which stimulated the younger lad to make
the most of opportunity; and he had experience already that education
largely increased one’s capacity for enjoyment. He was acquiring what
it is the chief function of all higher education to impart, the art,
namely, of so relieving the ideal or poetic traits, the elements of
distinction, in our everyday life—of so exclusively living in them—that
the unadorned remainder of it, the mere drift or débris of our days,
comes to be as though it were not. And the consciousness of this aim
came with the reading of one particular book, then fresh in the world,
with which he fell in about this time—a book which awakened the poetic
or romantic capacity as perhaps some other book might have done, but
was peculiar in giving it a direction emphatically sensuous. It made
him, in that visionary reception of every-day life, the seer, more
especially, of a revelation in colour and form. If our modern
education, in its better efforts, really conveys to any of us that kind
of idealising power, it does so (though dealing mainly, as its
professed instruments, with the most select and ideal remains of
ancient literature) oftenest by truant reading; and thus it happened
also, long ago, with Marius and his friend.
NOTES
43. +Transliteration: Mouseion. The word means “seat of the muses.”
Translation: “O sea! O shore! my own Helicon, / How many things have
you uncovered to me, how many things suggested!” Pliny, Letters, Book
I, ix, to Minicius Fundanus.
50. +Transliteration: hoia theous epenênothen aien eontas. Translation:
“such as the gods are endowed with.” Homer, Odyssey, 8.365.