A CONVERSATION NOT IMAGINARY
In cheerfulness is the success of our studies, says Pliny—studia
hilaritate proveniunt. It was still the habit of Marius, encouraged by
his experience that sleep is not only a sedative but the best of
stimulants, to seize the morning hours for creation, making profit when
he might of the wholesome serenity which followed a dreamless night.
“The morning for creation,” he would say; “the afternoon for the
perfecting labour of the file; the evening for reception—the reception
of matter from without one, of other men’s words and thoughts—matter
for our own dreams, or the merely mechanic exercise of the brain,
brooding thereon silently, in its dark chambers.” To leave home early
in the day was therefore a rare thing for him. He was induced so to do
on the occasion of a visit to Rome of the famous writer Lucian, whom he
had been bidden to meet. The breakfast over, he walked away with the
learned guest, having offered to be his guide to the lecture-room of a
well-known Greek rhetorician and expositor of the Stoic philosophy, a
teacher then much in fashion among the studious youth of Rome. On
reaching the place, however, they found the doors closed, with a slip
of writing attached, which proclaimed “a holiday”; and the morning
being a fine one, they walked further, along the Appian Way. Mortality,
with which the Queen of Ways—in reality the favourite cemetery of
Rome—was so closely crowded, in every imaginable form of sepulchre,
from the tiniest baby-house, to the massive monument out of which the
Middle Age would adapt a fortress-tower, might seem, on a morning like
this, to be “smiling through tears.” The flower-stalls just beyond the
city gates presented to view an array of posies and garlands, fresh
enough for a wedding. At one and another of them groups of persons,
gravely clad, were making their bargains before starting for some
perhaps distant spot on the highway, to keep a dies rosationis, this
being the time of roses, at the grave of a deceased relation. Here and
there, a funeral procession was slowly on its way, in weird contrast to
the gaiety of the hour.
The two companions, of course, read the epitaphs as they strolled
along. In one, reminding them of the poet’s—Si lacrimae prosunt, visis
te ostende videri!—a woman prayed that her lost husband might visit her
dreams. Their characteristic note, indeed, was an imploring cry, still
to be sought after by the living. “While I live,” such was the promise
of a lover to his dead mistress, “you will receive this homage: after
my death,—who can tell?”—post mortem nescio. “If ghosts, my sons, do
feel anything after death, my sorrow will be lessened by your frequent
coming to me here!” “This is a privileged tomb; to my family and
descendants has been conceded the right of visiting this place as often
as they please.” “This is an eternal habitation; here lie I; here I
shall lie for ever.” “Reader! if you doubt that the soul survives, make
your oblation and a prayer for me; and you shall understand!”
The elder of the two readers, certainly, was little affected by those
pathetic suggestions. It was long ago that after visiting the banks of
the Padus, where he had sought in vain for the poplars (sisters of
Phaethon erewhile) whose tears became amber, he had once for all
arranged for himself a view of the world exclusive of all reference to
what might lie beyond its “flaming barriers.” And at the age of sixty
he had no misgivings. His elegant and self-complacent but far from
unamiable scepticism, long since brought to perfection, never failed
him. It surrounded him, as some are surrounded by a magic ring of fine
aristocratic manners, with “a rampart,” through which he himself never
broke, nor permitted any thing or person to break upon him. Gay,
animated, content with his old age as it was, the aged student still
took a lively interest in studious youth.—Could Marius inform him of
any such, now known to him in Rome? What did the young men learn, just
then? and how?
In answer, Marius became fluent concerning the promise of one young
student, the son, as it presently appeared, of parents of whom Lucian
himself knew something: and soon afterwards the lad was seen coming
along briskly—a lad with gait and figure well enough expressive of the
sane mind in the healthy body, though a little slim and worn of
feature, and with a pair of eyes expressly designed, it might seem, for
fine glancings at the stars. At the sight of Marius he paused suddenly,
and with a modest blush on recognising his companion, who straightway
took with the youth, so prettily enthusiastic, the freedom of an old
friend.
In a few moments the three were seated together, immediately above the
fragrant borders of a rose-farm, on the marble bench of one of the
exhedrae for the use of foot-passengers at the roadside, from which
they could overlook the grand, earnest prospect of the Campagna, and
enjoy the air. Fancying that the lad’s plainly written enthusiasm had
induced in the elder speaker somewhat more fervour than was usual with
him, Marius listened to the conversation which follows.—
“Ah! Hermotimus! Hurrying to lecture! —if I may judge by your pace, and
that volume in your hand. You were thinking hard as you came along,
moving your lips and waving your arms. Some fine speech you were
pondering, some knotty question, some viewy doctrine—not to be idle for
a moment, to be making progress in philosophy, even on your way to the
schools. To-day, however, you need go no further. We read a notice at
the schools that there would be no lecture. Stay therefore, and talk
awhile with us.
—With pleasure, Lucian.—Yes! I was ruminating yesterday’s conference.
One must not lose a moment. Life is short and art is long! And it was
of the art of medicine, that was first said—a thing so much easier than
divine philosophy, to which one can hardly attain in a lifetime, unless
one be ever wakeful, ever on the watch. And here the hazard is no
little one:—By the attainment of a true philosophy to attain happiness;
or, having missed both, to perish, as one of the vulgar herd.
—The prize is a great one, Hermotimus! and you must needs be near it,
after these months of toil, and with that scholarly pallor of yours.
Unless, indeed, you have already laid hold upon it, and kept us in the
dark.
—How could that be, Lucian? Happiness, as Hesiod says, abides very far
hence; and the way to it is long and steep and rough. I see myself
still at the beginning of my journey; still but at the mountain’s foot.
I am trying with all my might to get forward. What I need is a hand,
stretched out to help me.
—And is not the master sufficient for that? Could he not, like Zeus in
Homer, let down to you, from that high place, a golden cord, to draw
you up thither, to himself and to that Happiness, to which he ascended
so long ago?
—The very point, Lucian! Had it depended on him I should long ago have
been caught up. ’Tis I, am wanting.
—Well! keep your eye fixed on the journey’s end, and that happiness
there above, with confidence in his goodwill.
—Ah! there are many who start cheerfully on the journey and proceed a
certain distance, but lose heart when they light on the obstacles of
the way. Only, those who endure to the end do come to the mountain’s
top, and thereafter live in Happiness:—live a wonderful manner of life,
seeing all other people from that great height no bigger than tiny
ants.
—What little fellows you make of us—less than the pygmies—down in the
dust here. Well! we, ‘the vulgar herd,’ as we creep along, will not
forget you in our prayers, when you are seated up there above the
clouds, whither you have been so long hastening. But tell me,
Hermotimus!—when do you expect to arrive there?
—Ah! that I know not. In twenty years, perhaps, I shall be really on
the summit.—A great while! you think. But then, again, the prize I
contend for is a great one.
—Perhaps! But as to those twenty years—that you will live so long. Has
the master assured you of that? Is he a prophet as well as a
philosopher? For I suppose you would not endure all this, upon a mere
chance—toiling day and night, though it might happen that just ere the
last step, Destiny seized you by the foot and plucked you thence, with
your hope still unfulfilled.
—Hence, with these ill-omened words, Lucian! Were I to survive but for
a day, I should be happy, having once attained wisdom.
—How?—Satisfied with a single day, after all those labours?
—Yes! one blessed moment were enough!
—But again, as you have never been, how know you that happiness is to
be had up there, at all—the happiness that is to make all this worth
while?
—I believe what the master tells me. Of a certainty he knows, being now
far above all others.
—And what was it he told you about it? Is it riches, or glory, or some
indescribable pleasure?
—Hush! my friend! All those are nothing in comparison of the life
there.
—What, then, shall those who come to the end of this discipline—what
excellent thing shall they receive, if not these?
—Wisdom, the absolute goodness and the absolute beauty, with the sure
and certain knowledge of all things—how they are. Riches and glory and
pleasure—whatsoever belongs to the body—they have cast from them:
stripped bare of all that, they mount up, even as Hercules, consumed in
the fire, became a god. He too cast aside all that he had of his
earthly mother, and bearing with him the divine element, pure and
undefiled, winged his way to heaven from the discerning flame. Even so
do they, detached from all that others prize, by the burning fire of a
true philosophy, ascend to the highest degree of happiness.
—Strange! And do they never come down again from the heights to help
those whom they left below? Must they, when they be once come thither,
there remain for ever, laughing, as you say, at what other men prize?
—More than that! They whose initiation is entire are subject no longer
to anger, fear, desire, regret. Nay! They scarcely feel at all.
—Well! as you have leisure to-day, why not tell an old friend in what
way you first started on your philosophic journey? For, if I might, I
should like to join company with you from this very day.
—If you be really willing, Lucian! you will learn in no long time your
advantage over all other people. They will seem but as children, so far
above them will be your thoughts.
—Well! Be you my guide! It is but fair. But tell me—Do you allow
learners to contradict, if anything is said which they don’t think
right?
—No, indeed! Still, if you wish, oppose your questions. In that way you
will learn more easily.
—Let me know, then—Is there one only way which leads to a true
philosophy—your own way—the way of the Stoics: or is it true, as I have
heard, that there are many ways of approaching it?
—Yes! Many ways! There are the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, and those
who call themselves after Plato: there are the enthusiasts for
Diogenes, and Antisthenes, and the followers of Pythagoras, besides
others.
—It was true, then. But again, is what they say the same or different?
—Very different.
—Yet the truth, I conceive, would be one and the same, from all of
them. Answer me then—In what, or in whom, did you confide when you
first betook yourself to philosophy, and seeing so many doors open to
you, passed them all by and went in to the Stoics, as if there alone
lay the way of truth? What token had you? Forget, please, all you are
to-day—half-way, or more, on the philosophic journey: answer me as you
would have done then, a mere outsider as I am now.
—Willingly! It was there the great majority went! ’Twas by that I
judged it to be the better way.
—A majority how much greater than the Epicureans, the Platonists, the
Peripatetics? You, doubtless, counted them respectively, as with the
votes in a scrutiny.
—No! But this was not my only motive. I heard it said by every one that
the Epicureans were soft and voluptuous, the Peripatetics avaricious
and quarrelsome, and Plato’s followers puffed up with pride. But of the
Stoics, not a few pronounced that they were true men, that they knew
everything, that theirs was the royal road, the one road, to wealth, to
wisdom, to all that can be desired.
—Of course those who said this were not themselves Stoics: you would
not have believed them—still less their opponents. They were the
vulgar, therefore.
—True! But you must know that I did not trust to others exclusively. I
trusted also to myself—to what I saw. I saw the Stoics going through
the world after a seemly manner, neatly clad, never in excess, always
collected, ever faithful to the mean which all pronounce ‘golden.’
—You are trying an experiment on me. You would fain see how far you can
mislead me as to your real ground. The kind of probation you describe
is applicable, indeed, to works of art, which are rightly judged by
their appearance to the eye. There is something in the comely form, the
graceful drapery, which tells surely of the hand of Pheidias or
Alcamenes. But if philosophy is to be judged by outward appearances,
what would become of the blind man, for instance, unable to observe the
attire and gait of your friends the Stoics?
—It was not of the blind I was thinking.
—Yet there must needs be some common criterion in a matter so important
to all. Put the blind, if you will, beyond the privileges of
philosophy; though they perhaps need that inward vision more than all
others. But can those who are not blind, be they as keen-sighted as you
will, collect a single fact of mind from a man’s attire, from anything
outward?—Understand me! You attached yourself to these men—did you
not?—because of a certain love you had for the mind in them, the
thoughts they possessed desiring the mind in you to be improved
thereby?
—Assuredly!
—How, then, did you find it possible, by the sort of signs you just now
spoke of, to distinguish the true philosopher from the false? Matters
of that kind are not wont so to reveal themselves. They are but hidden
mysteries, hardly to be guessed at through the words and acts which may
in some sort be conformable to them. You, however, it would seem, can
look straight into the heart in men’s bosoms, and acquaint yourself
with what really passes there.
—You are making sport of me, Lucian! In truth, it was with God’s help I
made my choice, and I don’t repent it.
—And still you refuse to tell me, to save me from perishing in that
‘vulgar herd.’
—Because nothing I can tell you would satisfy you.
—You are mistaken, my friend! But since you deliberately conceal the
thing, grudging me, as I suppose, that true philosophy which would make
me equal to you, I will try, if it may be, to find out for myself the
exact criterion in these matters—how to make a perfectly safe choice.
And, do you listen.
—I will; there may be something worth knowing in what you will say.
—Well!—only don’t laugh if I seem a little fumbling in my efforts. The
fault is yours, in refusing to share your lights with me. Let
Philosophy, then, be like a city—a city whose citizens within it are a
happy people, as your master would tell you, having lately come thence,
as we suppose. All the virtues are theirs, and they are little less
than gods. Those acts of violence which happen among us are not to be
seen in their streets. They live together in one mind, very seemly; the
things which beyond everything else cause men to contend against each
other, having no place upon them. Gold and silver, pleasure, vainglory,
they have long since banished, as being unprofitable to the
commonwealth; and their life is an unbroken calm, in liberty, equality,
an equal happiness.
—And is it not reasonable that all men should desire to be of a city
such as that, and take no account of the length and difficulty of the
way thither, so only they may one day become its freemen?
—It might well be the business of life:—leaving all else, forgetting
one’s native country here, unmoved by the tears, the restraining hands,
of parents or children, if one had them—only bidding them follow the
same road; and if they would not or could not, shaking them off,
leaving one’s very garment in their hands if they took hold on us, to
start off straightway for that happy place! For there is no fear, I
suppose, of being shut out if one came thither naked. I remember,
indeed, long ago an aged man related to me how things passed there,
offering himself to be my leader, and enrol me on my arrival in the
number of the citizens. I was but fifteen—certainly very foolish: and
it may be that I was then actually within the suburbs, or at the very
gates, of the city. Well, this aged man told me, among other things,
that all the citizens were wayfarers from afar. Among them were
barbarians and slaves, poor men—aye! and cripples—all indeed who truly
desired that citizenship. For the only legal conditions of enrolment
were—not wealth, nor bodily beauty, nor noble ancestry—things not named
among them—but intelligence, and the desire for moral beauty, and
earnest labour. The last comer, thus qualified, was made equal to the
rest: master and slave, patrician, plebeian, were words they had not—in
that blissful place. And believe me, if that blissful, that beautiful
place, were set on a hill visible to all the world, I should long ago
have journeyed thither. But, as you say, it is far off: and one must
needs find out for oneself the road to it, and the best possible guide.
And I find a multitude of guides, who press on me their services, and
protest, all alike, that they have themselves come thence. Only, the
roads they propose are many, and towards adverse quarters. And one of
them is steep and stony, and through the beating sun; and the other is
through green meadows, and under grateful shade, and by many a fountain
of water. But howsoever the road may be, at each one of them stands a
credible guide; he puts out his hand and would have you come his way.
All other ways are wrong, all other guides false. Hence my
difficulty!—The number and variety of the ways! For you know, There is
but one road that leads to Corinth.
—Well! If you go the whole round, you will find no better guides than
those. If you wish to get to Corinth, you will follow the traces of
Zeno and Chrysippus. It is impossible otherwise.
—Yes! The old, familiar language! Were one of Plato’s fellow-pilgrims
here, or a follower of Epicurus—or fifty others—each would tell me that
I should never get to Corinth except in his company. One must therefore
credit all alike, which would be absurd; or, what is far safer,
distrust all alike, until one has discovered the truth. Suppose now,
that, being as I am, ignorant which of all philosophers is really in
possession of truth, I choose your sect, relying on yourself—my friend,
indeed, yet still acquainted only with the way of the Stoics; and that
then some divine power brought Plato, and Aristotle, and Pythagoras,
and the others, back to life again. Well! They would come round about
me, and put me on my trial for my presumption, and say:—‘In whom was it
you confided when you preferred Zeno and Chrysippus to me?—and
me?—masters of far more venerable age than those, who are but of
yesterday; and though you have never held any discussion with us, nor
made trial of our doctrine? It is not thus that the law would have
judges do—listen to one party and refuse to let the other speak for
himself. If judges act thus, there may be an appeal to another
tribunal.’ What should I answer? Would it be enough to say:—‘I trusted
my friend Hermotimus?’—‘We know not Hermotimus, nor he us,’ they would
tell me; adding, with a smile, ‘your friend thinks he may believe all
our adversaries say of us whether in ignorance or in malice. Yet if he
were umpire in the games, and if he happened to see one of our
wrestlers, by way of a preliminary exercise, knock to pieces an
antagonist of mere empty air, he would not thereupon pronounce him a
victor. Well! don’t let your friend Hermotimus suppose, in like manner,
that his teachers have really prevailed over us in those battles of
theirs, fought with our mere shadows. That, again, were to be like
children, lightly overthrowing their own card-castles; or like
boy-archers, who cry out when they hit the target of straw. The Persian
and Scythian bowmen, as they speed along, can pierce a bird on the
wing.’
—Let us leave Plato and the others at rest. It is not for me to contend
against them. Let us rather search out together if the truth of
Philosophy be as I say. Why summon the athletes, and archers from
Persia?
—Yes! let them go, if you think them in the way. And now do you speak!
You really look as if you had something wonderful to deliver.
—Well then, Lucian! to me it seems quite possible for one who has
learned the doctrines of the Stoics only, to attain from those a
knowledge of the truth, without proceeding to inquire into all the
various tenets of the others. Look at the question in this way. If one
told you that twice two make four, would it be necessary for you to go
the whole round of the arithmeticians, to see whether any one of them
will say that twice two make five, or seven? Would you not see at once
that the man tells the truth?
—At once.
—Why then do you find it impossible that one who has fallen in with the
Stoics only, in their enunciation of what is true, should adhere to
them, and seek after no others; assured that four could never be five,
even if fifty Platos, fifty Aristotles said so?
—You are beside the point, Hermotimus! You are likening open questions
to principles universally received. Have you ever met any one who said
that twice two make five, or seven?
—No! only a madman would say that.
—And have you ever met, on the other hand, a Stoic and an Epicurean who
were agreed upon the beginning and the end, the principle and the final
cause, of things? Never! Then your parallel is false. We are inquiring
to which of the sects philosophic truth belongs, and you seize on it by
anticipation, and assign it to the Stoics, alleging, what is by no
means clear, that it is they for whom twice two make four. But the
Epicureans, or the Platonists, might say that it is they, in truth, who
make two and two equal four, while you make them five or seven. Is it
not so, when you think virtue the only good, and the Epicureans
pleasure; when you hold all things to be material, while the Platonists
admit something immaterial? As I said, you resolve offhand, in favour
of the Stoics, the very point which needs a critical decision. If it is
clear beforehand that the Stoics alone make two and two equal four,
then the others must hold their peace. But so long as that is the very
point of debate, we must listen to all sects alike, or be well-assured
that we shall seem but partial in our judgment.
—I think, Lucian! that you do not altogether understand my meaning. To
make it clear, then, let us suppose that two men had entered a temple,
of Aesculapius,—say! or Bacchus: and that afterwards one of the sacred
vessels is found to be missing. And the two men must be searched to see
which of them has hidden it under his garment. For it is certainly in
the possession of one or the other of them. Well! if it be found on the
first there will be no need to search the second; if it is not found on
the first, then the other must have it; and again, there will be no
need to search him.
—Yes! So let it be.
—And we too, Lucian! if we have found the holy vessel in possession of
the Stoics, shall no longer have need to search other philosophers,
having attained that we were seeking. Why trouble ourselves further?
—No need, if something had indeed been found, and you knew it to be
that lost thing: if, at the least, you could recognise the sacred
object when you saw it. But truly, as the matter now stands, not two
persons only have entered the temple, one or the other of whom must
needs have taken the golden cup, but a whole crowd of persons. And
then, it is not clear what the lost object really is—cup, or flagon, or
diadem; for one of the priests avers this, another that; they are not
even in agreement as to its material: some will have it to be of brass,
others of silver, or gold. It thus becomes necessary to search the
garments of all persons who have entered the temple, if the lost vessel
is to be recovered. And if you find a golden cup on the first of them,
it will still be necessary to proceed in searching the garments of the
others; for it is not certain that this cup really belonged to the
temple. Might there not be many such golden vessels?—No! we must go on
to every one of them, placing all that we find in the midst together,
and then make our guess which of all those things may fairly be
supposed to be the property of the god. For, again, this circumstance
adds greatly to our difficulty, that without exception every one
searched is found to have something upon him—cup, or flagon, or diadem,
of brass, of silver, of gold: and still, all the while, it is not
ascertained which of all these is the sacred thing. And you must still
hesitate to pronounce any one of them guilty of the sacrilege—those
objects may be their own lawful property: one cause of all this
obscurity being, as I think, that there was no inscription on the lost
cup, if cup it was. Had the name of the god, or even that of the donor,
been upon it, at least we should have had less trouble, and having
detected the inscription, should have ceased to trouble any one else by
our search.
—I have nothing to reply to that.
—Hardly anything plausible. So that if we wish to find who it is has
the sacred vessel, or who will be our best guide to Corinth, we must
needs proceed to every one and examine him with the utmost care,
stripping off his garment and considering him closely. Scarcely, even
so, shall we come at the truth. And if we are to have a credible
adviser regarding this question of philosophy—which of all philosophies
one ought to follow—he alone who is acquainted with the dicta of every
one of them can be such a guide: all others must be inadequate. I would
give no credence to them if they lacked information as to one only. If
somebody introduced a fair person and told us he was the fairest of all
men, we should not believe that, unless we knew that he had seen all
the people in the world. Fair he might be; but, fairest of all—none
could know, unless he had seen all. And we too desire, not a fair one,
but the fairest of all. Unless we find him, we shall think we have
failed. It is no casual beauty that will content us; what we are
seeking after is that supreme beauty which must of necessity be unique.
—What then is one to do, if the matter be really thus? Perhaps you know
better than I. All I see is that very few of us would have time to
examine all the various sects of philosophy in turn, even if we began
in early life. I know not how it is; but though you seem to me to speak
reasonably, yet (I must confess it) you have distressed me not a little
by this exact exposition of yours. I was unlucky in coming out to-day,
and in my falling in with you, who have thrown me into utter perplexity
by your proof that the discovery of truth is impossible, just as I
seemed to be on the point of attaining my hope.
—Blame your parents, my child, not me! Or rather, blame mother Nature
herself, for giving us but seventy or eighty years instead of making us
as long-lived as Tithonus. For my part, I have but led you from premise
to conclusion.
—Nay! you are a mocker! I know not wherefore, but you have a grudge
against philosophy; and it is your entertainment to make a jest of her
lovers.
—Ah! Hermotimus! what the Truth may be, you philosophers may be able to
tell better than I. But so much at least I know of her, that she is one
by no means pleasant to those who hear her speak: in the matter of
pleasantness, she is far surpassed by Falsehood: and Falsehood has the
pleasanter countenance. She, nevertheless, being conscious of no alloy
within, discourses with boldness to all men, who therefore have little
love for her. See how angry you are now because I have stated the truth
about certain things of which we are both alike enamoured—that they are
hard to come by. It is as if you had fallen in love with a statue and
hoped to win its favour, thinking it a human creature; and I,
understanding it to be but an image of brass or stone, had shown you,
as a friend, that your love was impossible, and thereupon you had
conceived that I bore you some ill-will.
—But still, does it not follow from what you said, that we must
renounce philosophy and pass our days in idleness?
—When did you hear me say that? I did but assert that if we are to seek
after philosophy, whereas there are many ways professing to lead
thereto, we must with much exactness distinguish them.
—Well, Lucian! that we must go to all the schools in turn, and test
what they say, if we are to choose the right one, is perhaps
reasonable; but surely ridiculous, unless we are to live as many years
as the Phoenix, to be so lengthy in the trial of each; as if it were
not possible to learn the whole by the part! They say that Pheidias,
when he was shown one of the talons of a lion, computed the stature and
age of the animal it belonged to, modelling a complete lion upon the
standard of a single part of it. You too would recognise a human hand
were the rest of the body concealed. Even so with the schools of
philosophy:—the leading doctrines of each might be learned in an
afternoon. That over-exactness of yours, which required so long a time,
is by no means necessary for making the better choice.
—You are forcible, Hermotimus! with this theory of The Whole by the
Part. Yet, methinks, I heard you but now propound the contrary. But
tell me; would Pheidias when he saw the lion’s talon have known that it
was a lion’s, if he had never seen the animal? Surely, the cause of his
recognising the part was his knowledge of the whole. There is a way of
choosing one’s philosophy even less troublesome than yours. Put the
names of all the philosophers into an urn. Then call a little child,
and let him draw the name of the philosopher you shall follow all the
rest of your days.
—Nay! be serious with me. Tell me; did you ever buy wine?
—Surely.
—And did you first go the whole round of the wine-merchants, tasting
and comparing their wines?
—By no means.
—No! You were contented to order the first good wine you found at your
price. By tasting a little you were ascertained of the quality of the
whole cask. How if you had gone to each of the merchants in turn, and
said, ‘I wish to buy a cotylé of wine. Let me drink out the whole cask.
Then I shall be able to tell which is best, and where I ought to buy.’
Yet this is what you would do with the philosophies. Why drain the cask
when you might taste, and see?
—How slippery you are; how you escape from one’s fingers! Still, you
have given me an advantage, and are in your own trap.
—How so?
—Thus! You take a common object known to every one, and make wine the
figure of a thing which presents the greatest variety in itself, and
about which all men are at variance, because it is an unseen and
difficult thing. I hardly know wherein philosophy and wine are alike
unless it be in this, that the philosophers exchange their ware for
money, like the wine-merchants; some of them with a mixture of water or
worse, or giving short measure. However, let us consider your parallel.
The wine in the cask, you say, is of one kind throughout. But have the
philosophers—has your own master even—but one and the same thing only
to tell you, every day and all days, on a subject so manifold?
Otherwise, how can you know the whole by the tasting of one part? The
whole is not the same—Ah! and it may be that God has hidden the good
wine of philosophy at the bottom of the cask. You must drain it to the
end if you are to find those drops of divine sweetness you seem so much
to thirst for! Yourself, after drinking so deeply, are still but at the
beginning, as you said. But is not philosophy rather like this? Keep
the figure of the merchant and the cask: but let it be filled, not with
wine, but with every sort of grain. You come to buy. The merchant hands
you a little of the wheat which lies at the top. Could you tell by
looking at that, whether the chick-peas were clean, the lentils tender,
the beans full? And then, whereas in selecting our wine we risk only
our money; in selecting our philosophy we risk ourselves, as you told
me—might ourselves sink into the dregs of ‘the vulgar herd.’ Moreover,
while you may not drain the whole cask of wine by way of tasting,
Wisdom grows no less by the depth of your drinking. Nay! if you take of
her, she is increased thereby.
And then I have another similitude to propose, as regards this tasting
of philosophy. Don’t think I blaspheme her if I say that it may be with
her as with some deadly poison, hemlock or aconite. These too, though
they cause death, yet kill not if one tastes but a minute portion. You
would suppose that the tiniest particle must be sufficient.
—Be it as you will, Lucian! One must live a hundred years: one must
sustain all this labour; otherwise philosophy is unattainable.
—Not so! Though there were nothing strange in that, if it be true, as
you said at first, that Life is short and art is long. But now you take
it hard that we are not to see you this very day, before the sun goes
down, a Chrysippus, a Pythagoras, a Plato.
—You overtake me, Lucian! and drive me into a corner; in jealousy of
heart, I believe, because I have made some progress in doctrine whereas
you have neglected yourself.
—Well! Don’t attend to me! Treat me as a Corybant, a fanatic: and do
you go forward on this road of yours. Finish the journey in accordance
with the view you had of these matters at the beginning of it. Only, be
assured that my judgment on it will remain unchanged. Reason still
says, that without criticism, without a clear, exact, unbiassed
intelligence to try them, all those theories—all things—will have been
seen but in vain. ‘To that end,’ she tells us, ‘much time is necessary,
many delays of judgment, a cautious gait; repeated inspection.’ And we
are not to regard the outward appearance, or the reputation of wisdom,
in any of the speakers; but like the judges of Areopagus, who try their
causes in the darkness of the night, look only to what they say.
—Philosophy, then, is impossible, or possible only in another life!
—Hermotimus! I grieve to tell you that all this even, may be in truth
insufficient. After all, we may deceive ourselves in the belief that we
have found something:—like the fishermen! Again and again they let down
the net. At last they feel something heavy, and with vast labour draw
up, not a load of fish, but only a pot full of sand, or a great stone.
—I don’t understand what you mean by the net. It is plain that you have
caught me in it.
—Try to get out! You can swim as well as another. We may go to all
philosophers in turn and make trial of them. Still, I, for my part,
hold it by no means certain that any one of them really possesses what
we seek. The truth may be a thing that not one of them has yet found.
You have twenty beans in your hand, and you bid ten persons guess how
many: one says five, another fifteen; it is possible that one of them
may tell the true number; but it is not impossible that all may be
wrong. So it is with the philosophers. All alike are in search of
Happiness—what kind of thing it is. One says one thing, one another: it
is pleasure; it is virtue;—what not? And Happiness may indeed be one of
those things. But it is possible also that it may be still something
else, different and distinct from them all.
—What is this?—There is something, I know not how, very sad and
disheartening in what you say. We seem to have come round in a circle
to the spot whence we started, and to our first incertitude. Ah!
Lucian, what have you done to me? You have proved my priceless pearl to
be but ashes, and all my past labour to have been in vain.
—Reflect, my friend, that you are not the first person who has thus
failed of the good thing he hoped for. All philosophers, so to speak,
are but fighting about the ‘ass’s shadow.’ To me you seem like one who
should weep, and reproach fortune because he is not able to climb up
into heaven, or go down into the sea by Sicily and come up at Cyprus,
or sail on wings in one day from Greece to India. And the true cause of
his trouble is that he has based his hope on what he has seen in a
dream, or his own fancy has put together; without previous thought
whether what he desires is in itself attainable and within the compass
of human nature. Even so, methinks, has it happened with you. As you
dreamed, so largely, of those wonderful things, came Reason, and woke
you up from sleep, a little roughly: and then you are angry with
Reason, your eyes being still but half open, and find it hard to shake
off sleep for the pleasure of what you saw therein. Only, don’t be
angry with me, because, as a friend, I would not suffer you to pass
your life in a dream, pleasant perhaps, but still only a dream—because
I wake you up and demand that you should busy yourself with the proper
business of life, and send you to it possessed of common sense. What
your soul was full of just now is not very different from those Gorgons
and Chimaeras and the like, which the poets and the painters construct
for us, fancy-free:—things which never were, and never will be, though
many believe in them, and all like to see and hear of them, just
because they are so strange and odd.
And you too, methinks, having heard from some such maker of marvels of
a certain woman of a fairness beyond nature—beyond the Graces, beyond
Venus Urania herself—asked not if he spoke truth, and whether this
woman be really alive in the world, but straightway fell in love with
her; as they say that Medea was enamoured of Jason in a dream. And what
more than anything else seduced you, and others like you, into that
passion, for a vain idol of the fancy, is, that he who told you about
that fair woman, from the very moment when you first believed that what
he said was true, brought forward all the rest in consequent order.
Upon her alone your eyes were fixed; by her he led you along, when once
you had given him a hold upon you—led you along the straight road, as
he said, to the beloved one. All was easy after that. None of you asked
again whether it was the true way; following one after another, like
sheep led by the green bough in the hand of the shepherd. He moved you
hither and thither with his finger, as easily as water spilt on a
table!
My friend! Be not so lengthy in preparing the banquet, lest you die of
hunger! I saw one who poured water into a mortar, and ground it with
all his might with a pestle of iron, fancying he did a thing useful and
necessary; but it remained water only, none the less.”
Just there the conversation broke off suddenly, and the disputants
parted. The horses were come for Lucian. The boy went on his way, and
Marius onward, to visit a friend whose abode lay further. As he
returned to Rome towards evening the melancholy aspect, natural to a
city of the dead, had triumphed over the superficial gaudiness of the
early day. He could almost have fancied Canidia there, picking her way
among the rickety lamps, to rifle some neglected or ruined tomb; for
these tombs were not all equally well cared for (Post mortem nescio!)
and it had been one of the pieties of Aurelius to frame a severe law to
prevent the defacing of such monuments. To Marius there seemed to be
some new meaning in that terror of isolation, of being left alone in
these places, of which the sepulchral inscriptions were so full. A
blood-red sunset was dying angrily, and its wild glare upon the shadowy
objects around helped to combine the associations of this famous way,
its deeply graven marks of immemorial travel, together with the earnest
questions of the morning as to the true way of that other sort of
travelling, around an image, almost ghastly in the traces of its great
sorrows—bearing along for ever, on bleeding feet, the instrument of its
punishment—which was all Marius could recall distinctly of a certain
Christian legend he had heard. The legend told of an encounter at this
very spot, of two wayfarers on the Appian Way, as also upon some very
dimly discerned mental journey, altogether different from himself and
his late companions—an encounter between Love, literally fainting by
the road, and Love “travelling in the greatness of his strength,” Love
itself, suddenly appearing to sustain that other. A strange contrast to
anything actually presented in that morning’s conversation, it seemed
nevertheless to echo its very words—“Do they never come down again,” he
heard once more the well-modulated voice: “Do they never come down
again from the heights, to help those whom they left here below?”—“And
we too desire, not a fair one, but the fairest of all. Unless we find
him, we shall think we have failed.”