you not ashamed to talk thus contemptuously to one like me, even
though he be younger and less cunning in argument than yourself;
knowing as you do, how, when I might have grown rich in my native
city of Rhodes, and marrying there, as my father purposed, a wealthy
merchant's heiress, so have passed my life delicately, receiving the
profits of many ships and warehouses, I yet preferred Truth beyond
riches; and leaving my father's house, came to Athens in search of
wisdom, dissipating my patrimony upon one sophist after another,
listening greedily to Hippias, and Polus, and Gorgias, and
Protagoras, and last of all to you, hard-hearted man that you are?
For from my youth I loved and longed after nothing so much as Truth,
whatsoever it may be; thinking nothing so noble as to know that
which is Right, and knowing it, to do it. And that longing, or love
of mine, which is what I suppose Protagoras meant by the spirit of
truth, I cherished as the fairest and most divine possession, and
that for which alone it was worth while to live. For it seemed to
me, that even if in my search I never attained to truth, still it
were better to die seeking, than not to seek; and that even if
acting by what I considered to be the spirit of truth, and doing
honestly in every case that which seemed right, I should often,
acting on a false conviction, offend in ignorance against the
absolute righteousness of the gods, yet that such an offence was
deserving, if not of praise for its sincerity, yet at least of pity
and forgiveness; but by no means to be classed, as you class it,
with the appetites of brutes; much less to be threatened, as you
threaten it, with infinite and eternal misery by I know not what
necessary laws of Zeus, and to be put off at last with some myth or
other about Prometheus. Surely your mother bare you a scoffer and
pitiless, Socrates, and not, as you boast, a man-midwife fit for
fair youths."
Then, smiling sweetly, "Dear boy," said he, "were I such as you
fancy, how should I be here now, discoursing with you concerning
truth, instead of conning my speech for the Pnyx, like Alcibiades,
that I may become a demagogue, deceiving the mob with flattery, and
win for myself houses, and lands, and gold, and slave-girls, and
fame, and power, even to a tyranny itself? For in this way I might
have made my tongue a profitable member of my body; but now, being
hurried up and down in barren places, like one mad of love, from my
longing after fair youths, I waste my speech on them; receiving, as
is the wont of true lovers, only curses and ingratitude from their
arrogance. But tell me, thou proud Adonis-This spirit of truth in
thee, which thou thoughtest, and rightly, thy most noble possession-
did it desire truth, or not?"
P. "But, Socrates, I told you that very thing, and said that it was
a longing after truth, which I could not restrain or disobey."
S. "Tell me now, does one long for that which one possesses, or for
that which one does not possess?"
P. "For that which one does not possess."
S. "And is one in love with that which is oneself, or with that
which is not?"
P. "With that which is not oneself, thou mocker. We are not all,
surely, like Narcissus?"
S. "No, by the dog! not quite all. But see now: it appears that
when any one is in love with a thing, and longs for it, as thou
didst for truth, it must be something which is not himself, and
which he does not possess?"
P. "True."
S. "You, then, while you were loving facts as they are, and longing
to see them as they are, yet did not possess that which you longed
for?"
P. "True, indeed; else why should I have been driven forth by the
anger of the gods, like Bellerophon, to pace the Aleian plain,
eating my own soul, if I had possessed that for which I longed?"
S. "Well said, dear boy. But see again. This truth which you
loved, and which was not yourself or part of yourself, was certainly
also nothing of your own making?-Though they say that Pygmalion was
enamoured of the statue which he himself had carved."
P. "But he was miserable, Socrates, till the statue became alive."
S. "They say so; but what has that to do with the argument?"
P. "I know not. But it seems to me horrible, as it did to
Pygmalion, to be enamoured of anything which cannot return your
love, but is, as it were, your puppet. Should we not think it a
shameful thing, if a mistress were to be enamoured of one of her own
slaves?"
S. "We should; and that, I suppose, because the slave would have no
free choice whether to refuse or to return his mistress's love; but
would be compelled, being a slave, to submit to her, even if she
were old, or ugly, or hateful to him?"
P. "Of course."
S. "And should we not say, Phaethon, that there was no true
enjoyment in such love, even on the part of the mistress; nay, that
it was not worthy of the name of love at all, but was merely
something base, such as happens to animals?"
P. "We should say so rightly."
S. "Tell me, then, Phaethon-for a strange doubt has entered my mind
on account of your words. This truth of which you were enamoured,
seems, from what has been agreed, not to be a part of yourself, nor
a creation of your own, like Pygmalion's statue-how then has it not
happened to you to be even more miserable than Pygmalion till you
were sure that truth loved you in return?-and, moreover, till you
were sure that truth had free choice as to whether it should return
or refuse your love? For, otherwise, you would be in danger of
being found suffering the same base passion as a mistress enamoured
of a slave who cannot resist her."
P. "I am puzzled, Socrates."
S. "Shall we rather say, then, that you were enamoured, not of
truth itself, but of the spirit of truth? For we have been all
along defining truth to be 'facts as they are,' have we not?"
P. "We have."
S. "But there are many facts as they are, whereof to be enamoured
would be base, for they cannot return your love. As, for instance,
that one and one make two, or that a horse has four legs. With
respect to such facts, you would be, would you not, in the same
position as a mistress towards her slave?"
P. "Certainly. It seems, then, better to assume the other
alternative."
S. "It does. But does it not follow, that when you were enamoured
of this spirit, you did not possess it?"
P. "I fear so, by the argument."
S. "And I fear, too, that we agreed that he only who possessed the
spirit of truth saw facts as they are; for that was involved in our
definition of the spirit of truth."
P. "But, Socrates, I knew, at least, that one and one made two, and
that a horse had four legs. I must then have seen some facts as
they are."
S. "Doubtless, fair boy; but not all."
P. "I do not pretend to that."
S. "But if you had possessed the spirit of truth, you would have
seen all facts whatsoever as they are. For he who possesses a thing
can surely employ it freely for all purposes which are not contrary
to the nature of that thing; can he not?"
P. "Of course he can. But if I did not possess the spirit of
truth, how could I see any truth whatsoever?"
S. "Suppose, dear boy, that instead of your possessing it, it were
possible for it to possess you; and possessing you, to show you as
much of itself, or as little, as it might choose, and concerning
such things only as it might choose: would not that explain the
dilemma?"
P. "It would assuredly."
S. "Let us see, then, whether this spirit of truth may not be
something which is capable of possessing you, and employing you,
rather than of being possessed and employed by you. To me, indeed,
this spirit seems likely to be some demon or deity, and that one of
the greatest."
P. "Why then?"
S. "Can lifeless and material things see?"
P. "Certainly not; only live ones."
S. "This spirit, then, seems to be living; for it sees things as
they are."
P. "Yes."
S. "And it is also intellectual; for intellectual facts can be only
seen by an intellectual being."
P. "True."
S. "And also moral; for moral facts can only be seen by a moral
being."
P. "True also."
S. "But this spirit is evidently not a man; it remains therefore,
that it must be some demon."
P. "But why one of the greatest?"
S. "Tell me, Phaethon, is not God to be numbered among facts as
they are?"
P. "Assuredly; for he is before all others and more eternal and
absolute than all."
S. "Then this spirit of truth must also be able to see God as he
is."
P. "It is probable."
S. "And certain, if, as we agreed, it be the very spirit which sees
all facts whatsoever as they are. Now tell me, can the less see the
greater as it is?"
P. "I think not; for an animal cannot see a man as he is, but only
that part of him in which he is like an animal, namely, his outward
figure and his animal passions; but not his moral sense or reason,
for of them it has itself no share."
S. "True; and in like wise, a man of less intellect could not see a
man of greater intellect than himself as he is, but only a part of
his intellect."
P. "Certainly."
S. "And does not the same thing follow from what we said just now,
that God's conceptions of himself must be the only perfect
conceptions of him? For if any being could see God as he is, the
same would be able to conceive of him as he is: which we agreed was
impossible."
P. "True."
S. "Then surely this spirit which sees God as he is, must be equal
with God."
P. "It seems probable; but none is equal to God except himself."
S. "Most true, Phaethon. But what shall we say now, but that this
spirit of truth, whereof thou hast been enamoured, is, according to
the argument, none other than Zeus, who alone comprehends all
things, and sees them as they are, because he alone has given to
each its inward and necessary laws?"
P. "But, Socrates, there seems something impious in the thought."
S. "Impious, truly, if we held that this spirit of truth was a part
of your own self. But we agreed that it was not a part of you, but
something utterly independent of you."
P. "Noble would the news be, Socrates, were it true; yet it seems
to me beyond belief."
S. "Did we not prove just now concerning Zeus, that all mistakes
concerning him were certain to be mistakes of defect?"
P. "We did, indeed."
S. "How do you know, then, that you have not fallen into some such
error, and have suspected Zeus to be less condescending towards you
than he really is?"
P. "Would that it were so! But I fear it is too fair a hope."
S. "Do I seem to thee now, dear boy, more insolent and unfeeling
than Protagoras, when he tried to turn thee away from the search
after absolute truth, by saying sophistically that it was an attempt
of the Titans to scale heaven, and bade thee be content with
asserting shamelessly and brutishly thine own subjective opinions?
For I do not bid thee scale the throne of Zeus, into whose presence
none could arrive, as it seems to me, unless he himself willed it;
but to believe that he has given thee from thy childhood a glimpse
of his own excellence, that so thy heart, conjecturing, as in the
case of a veiled statue, from one part the beauty of the rest, might
become enamoured thereof, and long for that sight of him which is
the highest and only good, that so his splendour may give thee light
to see facts as they are."
P. "Oh Socrates! and how is this blessedness to be attained?"
S. "Even as the myths relate, the nymphs obtained the embraces of
the gods; by pleasing him and obeying him in all things, lifting up
daily pure hands and a thankful heart, if by any means he may
condescend to purge thine eyes, that thou mayest see clearly, and
without those motes, and specks, and distortions of thine own organs
of vision, which flit before the eyeballs of those who have been
drunk over-night, and which are called by sophists subjective truth;
watching everywhere anxiously and reverently for those glimpses of
his beauty, which he will vouchsafe to thee more and more as thou
provest thyself worthy of them, and will reward thy love by making
thee more and more partaker of his own spirit of truth; whereby,
seeing facts as they are, thou wilt see him who has made them
according to his own ideas, that they may be a mirror of his
unspeakable splendour. Is not this a fairer hope for thee, oh
Phaethon, than that which Protagoras held out to thee-that neither
seeing Zeus, nor seeing facts as they are, nor affirming any truth
whatsoever, nor depending for thy knowledge on any one but thine own
ignorant self, thou mightest nevertheless be so fortunate as to
escape punishment: not knowing, as it seems to me, that such a
state of ignorance and blindfold rashness, even if Tartarus were a
dream of the poets or the priests, is in itself the most fearful of
punishments?"
P. "It is, indeed, my dear Socrates. Yet what are we to say of
those who, sincerely loving and longing after knowledge, yet arrive
at false conclusions, which are proved to be false by contradicting
each other?"
S. "We are to say, Phaethon, that they have not loved knowledge
enough to desire utterly to see facts as they are, but only to see
them as they would wish them to be; and loving themselves rather
than Zeus, have wished to remodel in some things or other his
universe, according to their own subjective opinions. By this, or
by some other act of self-will, or self-conceit, or self-dependence,
they have compelled Zeus, not, as I think, without pity and kindness
to them, to withdraw from them in some degree the sight of his own
beauty. We must, therefore, I fear, liken them to Acharis, the
painter of Lemnos, who, intending to represent Phoebus, painted from
a mirror a copy of his own defects and deformities; or perhaps to
that Nymph, who finding herself beloved by Phoebus, instead of
reverently and silently returning the affection, boasted of it to
all her neighbours, as a token of her own beauty, and despised the
god; so that he, being angry, changed her into a chattering magpie;
or again to Arachne, who having been taught the art of weaving by
Athene, pretended to compete with her own instructress, and being
metamorphosed by her into a spider, was condemned, like the
sophists, to spin out of her own entrails endless ugly webs, which
are destroyed, as soon as finished, by every slave-girl's broom."
P. "But shall we despise and hate such, Oh Socrates?"
S. "No, dearest boy, we will rather pity and instruct them
lovingly; remembering always that we shall become such as they the
moment we begin to fancy that truth is our own possession, and not
the very beauty of Zeus himself, which he shows to those whom he
will, and in such measure as he finds them worthy to behold. But to
me, considering how great must be the condescension of Zeus in
unveiling to any man, even the worthiest, the least portion of his
own loveliness, there has come at times a sort of dream, that the
divine splendour will at last pierce through and illumine all dark
souls, even in the house of Hades, showing them, as by a great
sunrise, both what they themselves, and what all other things are,
really and in the sight of Zeus; which if it happened, even to
Ixion, I believe that his wheel would stop, and his fetters drop off
of themselves, and that he would return freely to the upper air, for
as long as he himself might choose."
Just then the people began to throng into the Pnyx; and we took our
places with the rest to hear the business of the day, after Socrates
had privately uttered this prayer:
"Oh Zeus, give to me and to all who shall counsel here this day,
that spirit of truth by which we may behold that whereof we
deliberate, as it is in thy sight!"
"As I expected," said Templeton, with a smile, as I folded up my
manuscript. "My friend the parson could not demolish the poor
Professor's bad logic without a little professional touch by way of
finish."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh-never mind. Only I owe you little thanks for sweeping away any
one of my lingering sympathies with Mr. Windrush, if all you can
offer me instead is the confounded old nostrum of religion over
again."
"Heydey, friend! What next?"
"Really, my dear fellow, I beg your pardon, I forgot that I was
speaking to a clergyman."
"Pray don't beg my pardon on that ground. If what you say be right,
a clergyman above all others ought to hear it; and if it be wrong,
and a symptom of spiritual disease, he ought to hear it all the
more. But I cannot tell whether you are right or wrong, till I know
what you mean by religion; for there is a great deal of very truly
confounded and confounding religion abroad in the world just now, as
there has been in all ages; and perhaps you may be alluding to
that."
Templeton sat silent for a few minutes, playing with the tackle in
his fly-book, and then murmured to himself the well-known lines of
Lucretius:
"Humana ante oculos foede cum vita jaceret
In terris oppressa gravi sub Relligione
Quae caput a coeli regionibus ostendebat,
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans.
There!-blasphemous reprobate fellow, am I not?"
"On the contrary," I said, "I think that in the sense in which
Lucretius intended that the lines should be taken, they contain a
great deal of truth. He had seen the basest and foullest crimes
spring from that which he calls Relligio, and he had a full right to
state that fact. I am not aware that one blasphemes the Catholic
and Apostolic Faith by saying that the devilries of the Spanish
Inquisition were the direct offspring of that 'religious sentiment'
which Mr. Windrush's school-though they are at all events right in
saying that its source is in man himself, and not in the 'regionibus
Coeli'-are now glorifying, as something which enables man to save
his own soul without the interference of 'The Deity'-indeed, whether
'The Deity' chooses or not."
"Do leave these poor Emersonians alone for a few minutes, and tell
me how you can reconcile what you have just said with your own
dialogue."
"Why not?"
"Is not Lucretius glorying in the notion that the gods do not
trouble themselves with mortals, while you have been asserting that
'The Deity' troubles Himself even with the souls of heathens?"
"Certainly. But that is quite a distinct matter from his dislike of
what he calls Relligio. In that dislike I can sympathise fully:
but on his method of escape Mr. Windrush will probably look with
more complaisance than I do, who call it by the ugly name of
Atheism."
"Then I fear you would call me an Atheist, if you knew all. So we
had better say no more about it."
"A most curious speech, certainly, to make to a parson, or soul-
curer by profession!"
"Why, what on earth have you to do but to abhor and flee me?" asked
he, with a laugh, though by no means a merry one.
"Would your having a headache be a reason for the medical man's
running away from you, or coming to visit you?"
"Ah, but this, you know, is my 'fault,' and my 'crime,' and my
'sin.' Eh?" and he laughed again.
"Would the doctor visit you the less, because it was your own fault
that your head ached?"
"Ah, but suppose I professed openly no faith in his powers of
curing, and had a great hankering after unaccredited Homoeopathies,
like Mr. Windrush's; would not that be a fair cause for interdiction
from fire and water, sacraments and Christian burial?"
"Come, come, Templeton," I said; "you shall not thus jest away
serious thoughts with an old friend. I know you are ill at ease.
Why not talk over the matter with me fairly and soberly? How do you
know till you have tried, whether I can help you or not?"
"Because I know that your arguments will have no force with me; they
will demand of me or assume in me, certain faculties, sentiments,
notions, experiences-call them what you like; I am beginning to
suspect sometimes with Cabanis that they are 'a product of the small
intestines'-which I never have had, and never could make myself
have, and now don't care whether I have them or not."
"On my honour, I will address you only as what you are, and know
yourself to be. But what are these faculties, so strangely beyond
my friend Templeton's reach? He used to be distinguished at college
for a very clear head, and a very kind heart, and the nicest sense
of honour which I ever saw in living man; and I have not heard that
they have failed him since he became Templeton of Templeton. And as
for his Churchmanship, were not the county papers ringing last month
with the accounts of the beautiful new church which he had built,
and the stained glass which he brought from Belgium, and the marble
font which he brought from Italy; and how he had even given for an
altar-piece his own pet Luini, the gem of Templeton House?"
"Effeminate picture!" he said. "It was part and parcel of the idea-
"
Before I could ask him what he meant, he looked up suddenly at me,
with deep sadness on his usually nonchalant face.
"Well, my dear fellow, I suppose I must tell you all, as I have told
you so much without your shaking the dust off your feet against me,
and consulting Bradshaw for the earliest train to Shrewsbury. You
knew my dear mother?"
"I did. The best of women."
"The best of women, and the best of mothers. But, if you recollect,
she was a great Low-Church saint."
"Why 'but'? How does that derogate in any wise from her
excellence?"
"Not from her excellence; God forbid! or from the excellence of the
people of her own party, whom she used to have round her, and who
were, some of them, I do believe, as really earnest, and pious, and
charitable, and all that, as human beings could be. But it did take
away very much indeed from her influence on me."
"Surely she did not neglect to teach you."
"It is a strange thing to say, but she rather taught me too much. I
don't deny that it may have been my own fault. I don't blame her,
or any one. But you know what I was at college-no worse than other
men, I dare say; but no better. I had no reason for being better."
"No reason? Surely she gave you reasons."
"There-you have touched the ailing nerve now. The reasons were what
you would call paralogisms. They had no more to do with me than
with those trout."
"You mistake, friend, you mistake, indeed," said I.
"I don't mistake at all about this; that whether or not the reasons
in themselves had to do with me, the way in which she put them made
them practically so much Hebrew. She demanded of me, as the only
grounds on which I was to consider myself safe from hell, certain
fears and hopes which I did not feel, and experiences which I did
not experience; and it was my fault, and a sign of my being in a
wrong state-to use no harder term-that I did not feel them; and yet
it was only God's grace which could make me feel them: and so I
grew up with a dark secret notion that I was a very bad boy; but
that it was God's fault and not mine that I was so."
"You were ripe indeed then," said I sadly, "like hundreds more, for
Professor Windrush's teaching."
"I will come to that presently. But in the meantime-was it my
fault? I was never what you call a devout person. My 'organ of
veneration,' as the phrenologists would say, was never very large.
I was a shrewd dashing boy, enjoying life to the finger-tips, and
enjoying above all, I will say, pleasing my mother in every way,
except in the understanding what she told me-and what I felt I could
not understand. But as I grew older, and watched her, and the men
round her, I began to suspect that religion and effeminacy had a
good deal to do with each other. For the women, whatsoever their
temperaments, or even their tastes might be, took to this to me
incomprehensible religion naturally and instinctively; while the
very few men who were in their clique were-I don't deny some of them
were good men enough-if they had been men at all: if they had been
well-read, or well-bred, or gallant, or clear-headed, or liberal-
minded, or, in short, anything but the silky, smooth-tongued hunt-
the-slippers nine out of ten of them were. I recollect well asking
my mother once, whether there would not be five times more women
than men in heaven-and her answering me sadly and seriously, that
she feared there would be. And in the meantime she brought me up to
pray and hope that I might some day be converted, and become a child
of God-And one could not help wishing to enjoy oneself as much as
possible before that event happened."
"Before that event happened, my dear fellow? Pardon me, but your
tone is somewhat irreverent."
"Very likely. I had no reason put before me for regarding such a
change as anything but an unpleasant doom, which would cut me off,
or ought to do so, from field sports, from poetry, from art, from
science, from politics-for Christians, I was told, had nothing to do
with the politics of this world-from man and all man's civilisation,
in short; and leave to me, as the only two lawful indulgences, those
of living in a good house, and begetting a family of children."