_Law,
Sovereign of mortals and immortals all_,
as Pindar says; not a law written outwardly in books or on wooden
tables, but a living law of reason in himself, abiding with him,
watching him, and never leaving his soul destitute of guidance. The King
of Persia kept one chamberlain whose special function was to enter in
the morning and say to him: ‘Rise, Sire, and attend to matters which
Great Oromazdes [Sidenote: D] meant for your concern.’ The ruler who has
learned wisdom and self-control hears the same voice of exhortation from
within. It was a saying of Polemo that love is ‘_serving the Gods in the
care and protection of the young_‘. With more truth it might be said
that a ruler serves God in the care and protection of men, by
dispensing, or safeguarding, the blessings which God gives to mankind.
_See’st thou yon boundless sky and air aloft,
How in soft arms it clasps the world about?_
From it descend the first principles of seeds in due kind; earth brings
them forth; their growth is fostered by rains or winds or the warmth of
moon and stars; while the sun brings everything [Sidenote: E] to beauty
and tinctures all creation with that peculiar love-spell which is his.
But though the Gods may lavish these great boons and blessings, who can
enjoy or use them rightly, if there be no law, justice, or ruler?
Justice is the end of law; law is the work of the ruler; and a ruler is
an image of the God who orders all things. He needs no Pheidias or
Polycleitus or Myro to fashion him, but brings himself into likeness
with deity [Sidenote: F] by means of virtue, and so creates the fairest
and most divine of effigies. In the heavens the sun and moon were set by
God as His own beauteous image; and, in a state, the same shining
embodiment is to be found in the ruler
_Godfearing, who justice upholdeth_,
—that is to say, when he holds, not a sceptre, but a mind which is the
reason of God; not when he holds the thunderbolt or trident with which
some represent themselves in statue or picture, rendering their folly
odious to Heaven by such impossible assertion. For God visits with
righteous wrath him who makes pretence of thunder or thunderbolt or
darting sun-ray; but when a man studies to emulate His goodness, and to
take [Sidenote: 781] a pattern by His virtue and benevolence, He
delights in furthering him and bestowing a portion of His own
righteousness, justice, truth, and mercy. Not fire or light, not the
course of the sun, the risings and settings of the stars,
everlastingness and immortality, are more divine that these attributes.
For it is not by reason of length of life that God is happy, but by
reason of the virtue which rules. This is ‘divine’. ‘Noble’, however, is
the virtue whose part it is only to obey.
When Alexander was in sore distress at killing Cleitus, Anaxarchus told
him, by way of comfort, that Right and Justice were [Sidenote: B] but
the ‘assessors’ of Zeus—making out that any act was right and lawful for
a king. A false and pernicious salve for his repentance at his sin, this
encouragement to repeat it! If we are to use such figures of speech,
Right is no ‘assessor’ of Zeus, but He himself is Right and Justice, the
oldest and most consummate Law. What the ancients tell and write and
teach is that, without Justice, not even Zeus can properly rule.
According to Hesiod
_A virgin is she_,
the incorruptible partner of feeling, self-control, and beneficence.
[Sidenote: C] Hence are kings called ‘merciful’, for mercy best becomes
those who are least afraid. A ruler’s fear should be of doing harm
rather than of suffering it; for the former action is the cause of the
latter, and this kind of fear on the part of a ruler is creditable to
humanity. There is nothing ignoble in a fear for his subjects and of
possible injury to them. Such rulers are like
_Dogs that keep ward o’er the sheep in the farmstead, anxiously
watching
At sound of a fierce wild beast_—
their anxiety being not for themselves, but for their charges.
Once when the Thebans had recklessly abandoned themselves [Sidenote: D]
to feasting and carousal, Epaminondas went the round of the walls and
the military posts all by himself, remarking that he was keeping sober
and wakeful so that the rest might be drunk and asleep. When Cato, after
the defeat at Utica, gave orders that every one else should be sent to
sea, saw them on board, prayed that they might have a prosperous voyage,
and then went back home and stabbed himself, it was a lesson on the
text, ‘For whose sake should a ruler feel fear, and for what should he
feel contempt?’ On the other hand, Clearchus, despot of Pontus, used at
bedtime to crawl like a snake into a chest. [Sidenote: E] Similarly,
Aristodemus of Argos crept into an upper room entered by a trap-door.
Over this he would put the couch upon which he passed the night with his
mistress. Meanwhile her mother dragged away the ladder from below,
bringing it back and putting it in place in the morning. How, think you,
must he have shuddered at the theatre, at the Government offices, at the
Senate-House, at the banquet, when he turned his own bedchamber into a
prison? Yes, kings are afraid _for_ their subjects, despots are afraid
_of_ them. It follows that, as they add to their power, they add to
their alarms; the more people they rule, the more people they fear.
[Sidenote: F] It is an improbable and unworthy view to hold of God—as
some philosophers do—that He exists as an element in matter to which all
sorts of things may happen, and in entities which are subject to
innumerable accidents, chances and changes. In reality He is stablished
somewhere aloft ‘_on holy pedestal_’ (as Plato puts it) in the realm of
nature uniform and constant, and there ‘_moves according to Nature in a
straight line towards the accomplishment of His end_‘. And as in heaven
the sun, His beauteous counterfeit, shows itself as His reflection in a
mirror to those who have the power to see Him through it, so, in the
justice and reason which shine in a state, He sets up a likeness of that
which is in Himself, and, by copying that likeness, men [Sidenote: 782]
whom philosophy has gifted and chastened model themselves after the
highest pattern.
This condition of mind nothing can implant except reason acquired from
philosophy. Otherwise we are in the position of Alexander, when he went
to see Diogenes at Corinth. In delight at his talent, and in admiration
of his proud and lofty spirit, he exclaimed: ‘If I had not been
Alexander, I would have been Diogenes.’ And what did this virtually
mean? That he was vexed at his own high fortune, splendour, and
[Sidenote: B] power, because they were an obstacle to the virtue for
which he could find no time, and that he envied the cloak and the
wallet, which made Diogenes as invincible and unassailable as he himself
was made by armour and horses and spears. And yet by the practice of
philosophy he might have secured the moral character of a Diogenes while
retaining the position of an Alexander. Nay, he should have become all
the more a Diogenes for being an Alexander, since his high fortune, so
liable to be tossed by stormy winds, required ample ballast and a master
hand at the helm.
In the case of private men without strength or standing, folly is so
qualified by impotence that in the end no mischief is done. It is as
with a bad dream, in which, though the mind is excited with passion, no
harm results, inasmuch as it is unable to rise and act in accordance
with the desires. When, on the other [Sidenote: C] hand, vice is adopted
by power, the passions acquire sinew and strength. Dionysius spoke truly
when he said that the highest advantage of power was to give speedy
effect to a wish. A most parlous thing, if you can give effect to a
wish, and yet wish what is wrong!
_No sooner the word had been utter’d, than straightway the deed was
accomplish’d._
Vice, when enabled by power to run rapid course, forces every passion
into action, converting anger into murder, love into adultery, greed
into confiscation.
_No sooner the word hath been utter’d_,
than your opponent has met his doom. No sooner a suspicion, than the
victim of slander is a dead man.
[Sidenote: D] Scientists tell us that, whereas lightning really follows
and issues from thunder like blood from a wound, it is perceived first
because, while the hearing waits for the sound, the vision goes out to
meet the light. So with rulers. The punishment outstrips the charge; the
condemnation does not wait for the proof.
_For forthwith anger slips and loses hold,
Like anchor’s tooth in sand when seas swell high_,
unless reason with all its weight puts a heavy drag on power; unless,
that is, the ruler acts like the sun, whose motion is least [Sidenote:
E] when its height is greatest, namely, at the time of its northern
altitude, its course being steadied by the diminished speed.
Vice in high places cannot be hid. When an epileptic is placed upon a
height and made to turn round, he is seized with giddiness and begins to
totter, his malady being betrayed thereby. So with an unschooled and
ignorant person. After a brief uplifting by wealth or fame or place, the
same fortune which raised him up immediately reveals how ready he is to
fall. To put it another way; when a vessel is empty, you cannot detect
the crack or flaw, but when you begin to fill it, the leak appears.
[Sidenote: F] So with a mind which is too unsound to hold power and
authority; its leaks are to be seen in its exhibitions of lust, anger,
pretentiousness, and ignorance. Yet why speak of this, when holes are
picked in eminent and distinguished men for the merest peccadilloes?
Cimon was reproached for his addiction to wine, Scipio for his addiction
to sleep, and Lucullus for his extravagance at table[47]....
Footnote 47:
The rest of the essay is missing.
FAWNER AND FRIEND
(WITH AN EXCURSUS ON CANDOUR)