“Prepare yourselves! Prepare yourselves!” cried the panting scholar.
“Oh! Pollux! such a couple! The contrast might convulse a Scythian.”
“What is it? What is the matter?” cried a dozen voices.
“I’ll explain directly—Give me breath—and yet I must be quick, for they
are close on my heels. Gryphus, the cynic—some of you must have seen
him. Well, he’s coming side by side with young Lycaon.”
“Coming here!” said the master smiling. “What can have procured me the
honor of such a visit?”
“Oh! your fame, of course.”
“I suspect you are making a fool of the old cynic,” said Epicurus.
“Nay, if he be a fool, he is one without my assistance: Lycaon and I
were standing on the steps of the Prytaneum, disputing about something,
I forget what, when by came Gryphus, and stopping short at bottom of the
steps, ‘Are you disciples of Epicurus, of Gargettium?’ ‘We are,’
answered I, for Lycaon only stood staring in amazement. ‘You may show me
the way to him then.’ ‘With all my heart,’ I again replying, Lycaon not
yet finding his tongue. ‘We are, at present, for the Gardens, and shall
hold it an honor to be conductors to so extraordinary a personage.’ I
wanted to put him between us, but Lycaon seemed unambitious of his share
in this distinction, for, stepping back, he slipped round to my other
side. Oh! Jupiter! I shall never forget the contrast between my two
companions. The rough, dirty, hairy cynic on my right hand, and the
fine, smooth, delicate, pretty Aristippian on my left. We brought the
whole street at our heels. Lycaon would have slunk away, but I held him
tight by the sleeve. When we were fairly in the Gardens, I gave them the
slip at a cross-path, and run on before to give timely notice, as you
see. But, lo! Behold!”
The two figures now appeared at the door. The contrast was not much less
singular than the scholar had represented; and there was a sort of faint
prelude to a universal laugh, which, however, a timely look from the
Master instantly quelled. Lycaon, from the lightness of his figure, and
delicacy of his features and complexion, might have been mistaken for a
female: his skin had the whiteness of the lily, and the blushing red of
the rose: his lips the vermil of coral: his hair soft and flowing; in
texture, silk; in color, gold: his dress was chosen with studied nicety,
and disposed with studied elegance: the tunic of the whitest and finest
linen, fastened at the shoulder with a beautiful onyx: the sash of
exquisite embroidery, and the robe of the richest Tyrian, falling in
luxuriant folds from the shoulders, and over the right arm, which
gracefully sustained its length, for the greater convenience in walking:
the sandals, purple, with buttons of gold. Gryphus, short, square, and
muscular; his tunic of the coarsest and not the cleanest woollen, in
some places worn threadbare, and with one open rent of considerable
magnitude that proved the skin to be as well engrained as its covering;
his girdle, a rope: his cloak, or rather rag, had the appearance of a
sail taken from the wreck of an old trader: his feet bare, and thickly
powdered with dust: of his face, little more might be distinguished than
the nose; the lower part being obscured by a bushy and wide-spreading
beard, and the upper, by a profusion of long, tangled and grisly hair.
The wondering disciples opened a passage for this singular intruder,
who, without looking to the right or the left, walked on, and stopped
before Epicurus.
“I suppose you are the Master, by the needless trouble I see you take,
in coming to meet me.”
“When Gryphus has possibly walked a mile to meet Epicurus, Epicurus may
without much trouble walk a step to meet Gryphus.”
“In my walk of a mile,” returned the cynic, “there was no trouble: I
took it for my own pleasure.”
“And my walk of a step I also took for mine.”
“Aye, the pleasure of ceremony!”
“I may hope, then, this your visit is from something more than
ceremony—perhaps a feeling of real friendship, or as a mark of your good
opinion.”
“I hate useless words,” returned the cynic, “and am not come here either
to make any, or hearken to any. I have heard you much talked of lately.
Our streets and our porticoes buzz eternally with your name, till now
all wise men are weary of it. I come to tell you this, and to advise you
to shut the gates of your gardens forthwith, and to cease the harangues
of a master; since you only pass for a philosopher among fools, and for
a fool among philosophers.”
“I thank you for your honest advice and information, friend; but as the
object of a master is not to teach the wise, but only the unwise, do you
not think I may still harangue among fools to some little purpose,
though Gryphus, and all sages, will of course justly hold me in
contempt?”
“And so that fools may be made wise, the wise are to be plagued with
folly?”
“Nay, you would surely cease to think that folly which could make a fool
wise.”
“A fool wise! And who but a fool would think that possible?”
“I grant it were difficult: but may it not also sometimes be difficult
to discover who is a fool, and who not? Among my scholars there, some
doubtless may be fools, and some possibly may not be fools.”
“No,” interrupted the cynic; “or they would not be your scholars.”
“Ah! I being a fool myself. Well reminded! I had forgot that was one of
our premises. But then, I being a fool, and all my scholars being fools,
I do not see how much harm can be done, either by my talking folly, or
their hearkening to it.”
“No, if wise men were not forced to hearken also. I tell you that our
streets and our porticoes buzz with your name and your nonsense. Keep
all the fools of Athens in your gardens, and lock the gates, and you may
preach folly as long and as loud as you please.”
“I have but one objection to this; namely, that my gardens would not
hold all the fools of Athens. Suppose, therefore, the wise men, being a
smaller body, were shut into a garden, and the city and the rest of
Attica left for the fools?”
“I told you,” cried the cynic, in a voice of anger, “that I hate useless
words.”
“Nay, friend, why then walk a mile to speak advice to me? No words so
useless as those thrown at a fool.”
“Very true, very true;” and so saying, the stranger turned his back, and
quitted the temple.
“There,” said the son of Neocles to his smiling disciples, “is a good
warning to any, or all of us, who would be philosophers.”
“Nay, master,” cried Sofron, “do you think us in danger of following the
pleasant example of this savage? Do you, indeed, expect to see Lycaon
there, with beard, head and clothing, after the fashion of Gryphus?”
“Not beard, head and clothing, perhaps,” answered the Gargettian;
“pride, vanity, and ambition, may take less fearful coverings than
these.”
“Pride, vanity, and ambition? I should rather suspect Gryphus of the
want of all three.”
“Nay, my son, believe me all those three qualities were concerned in the
carving of those three frightful appendages of our cynic’s person. Pride
need not always lead a man to cut mount Athos in two, like Xerxes; nor
ambition, to conquer a world, and weep that there is yet not another to
conquer, like Alexander; nor vanity, to look in a stream at his own face
till he fall in love with it, like Narcissus. When we cannot cut an
Athos, we may leave uncut our beard; when we cannot mount a throne, we
may crawl into a tub; and when we have no beauty, we may increase our
ugliness. If a man of small, or even of moderate talents, be smitten
with a great desire of distinction, there is nothing too absurd, perhaps
nothing too mischievous, for him to commit. Our friend, the cynic,
happily for himself and his neighbors, seems disposed to rest with the
absurd. Erostratus took to the mischievous—to eternize his name
destroying that temple, by the building of which Ctesiphon immortalized
his. Be it our care to keep equally clear of the one as of the other.”
“Do you, then,” asked Theon, “think a desire of distinction a vicious
desire?”
“I think it is often a dangerous desire, and very often an unhappy one.”
“But surely very often a fortunate one,” said Leontium. “Without it,
would there ever have been a hero?”
“And perhaps,” returned the sage, with a smile, “the world might have
been as happy if there had not.”
“Well, without arguing for an Achilles, would there have been a Homer?”
“I agree with you,” replied the Master, more seriously. “The desire of
distinction, though often a dangerous, and often an unhappy desire, is
likewise often, though I believe here _sometimes_ were a better word, a
fortunate one. It is dangerous in the head of a fool; unhappy, in that
of a man of moderate abilities, or unfavorable situation, who can
conceive a noble aim, but lacks the talent or the means necessary for
its attainment. It is fortunate only in the head of a genius, the heart
of a sage, and in a situation convenient for its development and
gratification. These three things you will allow do not often meet in
one person.”
“Yet,” said Theon, “how many great men has Athens produced?”
“But it is not a consequent that they were happy?”
“Happy or not happy, who would refuse their fate?”
“I like that feeling,” replied the Gargettian; “nor do I dissent from
it. The fate of greatness will always be enviable, even when the darkest
storms trouble its course. Well-merited fame has in itself a pleasure so
much above all pleasures, that it may weigh in the balance against all
the accumulated evils of mortality. Grant then our great men to have
been fortunate; are they, as you say, so many?—Alas! my son, we may
count them on our fingers. A generation, the most brilliant in genius,
leaves out of its thousands and millions but three or four, or a dozen,
to the worship, even to the knowledge of futurity.”
“And these, only these three, four, or a dozen, have a right to the
desire of distinction?”
“As to the right,” replied the sage, playfully, “I mean not to dispute
that. The right lies with all men in our democracy to sit in a tub, or
to walk in a dirty tunic.”
“But you will allow of no end in ambition but an absurd one.”
“I have not expressed myself well, or you have not understood me well,
if you draw that conclusion. I surely have granted our great men to have
had great ends of ambition.”
“But is it only great men, or men destined to be great, that may have
such ends?”
“I allowed that others might; I only said that they would be unhappy in
consequence. The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy,
is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our
capacities.”
“Then,” cried Metrodorus, “I have substantially proved myself this
morning to be no philosopher, when I chose a study beyond the reach of
my pencil.”
“No,” said Leontium, playfully tapping his shoulder, “the Master will
make a distinction between what is beyond the reach of our capacity, and
what beyond the reach of our practice. Erostratus might _never_ have
planned the edifice he destroyed; Ctesiphon could not _always_ have
planned it.” The smile that accompanied these words, lighted one yet
more brilliant in the face of Metrodorus. Theon guessed that he felt
more than admiration and more than friendship for this female disciple.
“Your remark was well timed and well pointed,” said the Master, “and has
saved me some talking.”
“I am not sure of that,” cried Sofron, stepping forwards; “for though
Leontium has so nicely worded the distinction between want of capacity
and want of practice in the general, I should like to be told, how a man
is to make this distinction between his own in particular? For instance,
I have a fancy to turn philosopher, and supersede my master; how am I to
tell, at my first nonplus in logic or invention, whether the defect be
in my capacity or my practice?”
“If it be only in the last, I apprehend you will easily perceive it; if
in the first, not so readily. A man, if he set about the search, will
quickly discover his talents; he may continue it to his death without
discovering his deficiencies. The reason is plain; the one hurts our
self-love, the other flatters it.”
“And yet,” interrupted Theon, “I think, in my first interview with the
Philosopher of Gargettium, he remarked, that thousands had the seeds of
excellence in them who never found them out.”
“I see you have a good memory,” returned the Master, “I did say so, and
I think it still. Many might have been heroes, and many philosophers,
had they had a desire to be either; had accident or ambition made them
look into themselves, and inquire into their powers; but though jewels
be hid in a sack of oats, they will never be found, unless the oats be
shaken. Remember, however, we are now speaking of one class of men
only—the ambitious: and the ambitious will never have any seeds in them,
bad or good, that will not generate and produce their proper fruit.
Ambition is the spur, and the necessary spur, of a great mind to great
action; when acting upon a weak mind it impels it to absurdity, or sours
it with discontent.”
“Nay, then,” said Sofron, “’tis but a dangerous inmate, as minds go; and
I, for one, had better have none of it, for I doubt I am not born to be
an Epicurus, and I am certain I have no inclination to be a Gryphus.”
“Well,” said the Master, “we have at least to thank Gryphus for our
morning’s dialogue. If any of us wish to prosecute it farther, we may do
it over our repast—the sun has reached his noon, so let us to the bath.”
They left the temple, and crossing the gardens in an opposite direction
from that by which Theon had entered, soon reached a gate, which, to his
surprise, opened on a court at the back of the Gargettian’s house, the
same in which he had supped the preceding evening.