Grateful men indeed and reverential: Why, if nothing else, at least they eat bread every day, and yet have the audacity to say, “We do not know if there is a Demeter, or a Kore, or a Pluto”; not to mention that, although they enjoy night and day, the changes of the year and the stars and the sea and the earth and the co-operation of men, they are not moved in the least by any one of these things, but look merely for a chance to belch out their trivial “problem,” and after thus exercising their stomach to go off to the bath. But what they are going to say, or what they are going to talk about, or to whom, and what their hearers are going to get out of these things that they are saying, all this has never given them a moment’s concern. I greatly fear that a noble-spirited young man may hear these statements and be influenced by them, or, having been influenced already, may lose all the germs of the nobility which he possessed; that we may be giving an adulterer grounds for brazening out his acts; that some embezzler of public funds may lay hold of a specious plea based upon these theories; that someone who neglects his own parents may gain additional afTrontery from them.
What, then, in your opinion is good or bad, base or noble? This or that? What then? Is there any use in arguing further against any of these persons, or giving them a reason, or listening to one of theirs, or trying to convert them? By Zeus, one might much rather hope to convert a filthy degenerate than men who have become so deaf and blind!
CHAPTER XXI
Of inconsistency
Some of their faults men readily admit, but others not so readily. Now no one will admit that he is foolish or unintelligent, but, quite the contrary, you hear everyone say, “I wish I had as much luck as I have sense.” But they readily admit that they are timid, and say, “I am a bit timid, I admit; but in general you will not find me to be a fool” A man will not readily admit that he is incontinent, not at all that he is unjust, and will never admit that he is envious or meddlesome; but most men will admit that they are moved by pity. What is the reason for this? The principal reason is confusion of thought and an unwilligness to admit a fault in matters which involve good and evil; but, apart from that, different people are affected by different motives, and, as a rule, they will never admit anything that they conceive to be disgraceful; timidity, for example, they conceive to be an indication of a prudent disposition, and the same is true of pity, but stupidity they conceive to be a slave’s quality altogether; also they will never plead guilty to offences against society. Now in the case of most errors, the principal reason why men are inclined to admit them is because they conceive that there is an involuntary element in them, as, for instance, in timidity and pity. And if a man ever does, grudgingly, admit that he is incontinent, he adds that he is in love, expecting to be excused as for an involuntary act. But injustice they do not at all conceive of as involuntary. In jealousy there is also, as they fancy, an element of the involuntary, and therefore this too is a fault which men grudgingly admit.
When such are the men we live among — so confused, so ignorant both of what they mean by “evil” and what evil quality they have, or whether they have one, or, if so, how they come to have it, or how they will get rid of it — among such men I wonder whether it is not worth while for us also to watch ourselves, each one asking himself the questions: “Is it possible that I too am one of these people? What conceit am I cherishing regarding myself? How do I conduct myself? Do I for my part act like a wise man? Do I for my part act like a man of self-control? Do I for my part ever say that I have been educated to meet whatever comes? Have I the consciousness, proper to a man who knows nothing, that I do know nothing? Do I go to my teacher, like one who goes to consult an oracle, prepared to obey? Or do I, too, like a sniffling child, go to school to learn only the history of philosophy and to understand the books which I did not understand before, and, if chance offers, to explain them to others?” Man, at home you have fought a regular prize-fight with your slave, you have driven your household into the street, you have disturbed your neighbours’ peace; and now do you come to me with a solemn air, like a philosopher, and sitting down pass judgement on the explanation I gave of the reading of the text and on the application, forsooth, of the comments I made as I babbled out whatever came into my head? You have come in a spirit of envy, in a spirit of humiliation because nothing is being sent you from home, and you sit there while the lecture is going on, thinking, on your part, of nothing in the world but how you stand with your father or your brother! You reflect: “What are my people at home saying about me? At this moment they are thinking that I am making progress in my studies, and they are saying ‘He will know everything when he comes back home!’ I did want, at one time, I suppose, to learn everything before going back home, but that requires a great deal of hard work, and nobody sends me anything, and at Nicopolis they have rotten accommodations at the baths, and my lodgings are bad, and the school here is bad.”
And then people say: “Nobody gets any good from going to school.” Well, who goes to school — who, I repeat — with the expectation of being cured? Who with the expectation of submitting his own judgements for purification? Who with the expectation of coming to a realization of what judgements he needs? Why, then, are you surprised, if you carry back home from your school precisely the judgements you bring to it? For you do not come with the expectation of laying them aside, or of correcting them, or of getting others in exchange for them. Not at all, nor anything like it. Look rather to this at least — whether you are getting what you came for. You want to be able to speak fluently about philosophic principles. Well, are you not becoming more of an idle babbler? Do not these petty philosophic principles supply you with material for making exhibitions? Do you not resolve syllogisms, and arguments with equivocal premisses? Do you not examine the assumptions in The Liar syllogism, and in hypothetical syllogisms? Why, then, are you still vexed, if you are getting what you came for? “Yes, but if my child or my brother dies, or if I must die, or be tortured, what good will such things do me?” But was it really for this that you came? Is it really for this that you sit by my side? Did you ever really light your lamp, or work late at night, for this? Or when you went out into the covered walk did you ever set before yourself, instead of a syllogism, some external impression and examine this with your fellow-students? When did you ever do that? And then you say, “The principles are useless.” To whom? To those who do not use them properly. For instance, eye-salves are not useless to those who rub them on when and as they ought, and poultices are not useless, jumping-weights are not useless; but they are useless to some people, and, on the other hand, useful to others. If you ask me now, “Are our syllogisms useful?” I will tell you that they are, and, if you wish, I will show how they are useful “Have they, then, helped me at all?” Man, you did not ask, did you? whether they are useful to you, but whether they are useful in general? Let the man who is suffering from dysentery ask me whether vinegar is useful; I will tell him that it is useful. “Is it useful, then, to me?” I will say, “No. Seek first to have your discharge stopped, the little ulcers healed.” So do you also, men, first cure your ulcers, stop your discharges, be tranquil in mind, bring it free from distraction into the school; and then you will know what power reason has.
CHAPTER XXII
Of friendship
Whatever a man is interested in he naturally loves. Now do men take an interest in things evil? Not at all. Well, and do they take an interest in things which in no respect concern them? No, not in these, either. It remains, therefore, that men take an interest in good things only; and if they take an interest in them, they love them. Whoever, then, has knowledge of good things, would know how to love them too; but when a man is unable to distinguish things good from things evil, and what is neither good nor evil from both the others, how could he take the next step and have the power to love? Accordingly, the power to love belongs to the wise man and to him alone.
How so? says someone; for I am foolish myself, but yet I love my child. — By the gods, I am surpris
ed at you; at the very outset you have admitted that you are foolish. For something is lacking in you; what is it? Do you not use sense perception, do you not distinguish between external impressions, do you not supply the nourishment for your body that is suitable to it, and shelter, and a dwelling? How comes it, then, that you admit you are foolish? Because, by Zeus, you are frequently bewildered and disturbed by your external impressions, and overcome bv their persuasive character; and at one moment you consider these things good, and then again you consider them, though the very same, evil, and later on as neither good nor evil; and, in a word, you are subject to pain, fear, envy, turmoil, and change; that is why you are foolish, as you admit you are. And in loving are you not changeable? But as for wealth, and pleasure, and, in a word, material things, do you not consider them at one moment good, at another bad? And do you not consider the same persons at one moment good, and at another bad, and do you not at one moment feel friendly towards them, and at another unfriendly, and at one moment praise them, while at another you blame them? — Yes, I am subject to exactly these emotions. — What then? Do you think that the man who has been deceived about someone can be his friend? — No, indeed. — And can the man whose choice of a friend is subject to change show good will to that friend? — No, neither can he. — And the man who now reviles someone, and later on admires him? — No, neither can he. — What then? Did you never see dogs fawning on one another and playing with one another, so that you say, “Nothing could be more friendly”? But to see what their friendship amounts to, throw a piece of meat between them and you will find out. Throw likewise between yourself and your son a small piece of land, and you will find out how much your son wants to bury you, the sooner the better, and how earnestly you pray for your son’s death. Then you will change your mind again and say, “What a child I have brought up! All this time he has been ready to carry me to my grave.” Throw between you a pretty wench, and the old man as well as the young one falls in love with her; or, again, a bit of glory. And if you have to risk your life you will say what the father of Admetus did:
“Thou joyest seeing daylight: dost suppose
Thy father joys not too?”
Do you imagine that he did not love his own child when it was small, and that he was not in agony when it had the fever, and that he did not say over and over again, “If only I had the fever instead”? And then, when the test comes and is upon him, just see what words he utters! Were not Eteocles and Polyneices born of the same mother and the same father? Had they not been brought up together, lived together, played together, slept together, many a time kissed one another? So that I fancy if anyone had seen them, he would have laughed at the philosophers for their paradoxical views on friendship. But when the throne was cast between them, like a piece of meat between the dogs, see what they say:
Eteo. Where before the wall dost mean to stand?
Poly. Why asked thou this of me?
Eteo. I shall range myself against thee.
Poly. Mine is also that desire!
Such also are the prayers they utter.
It is a general rule — be not deceived — that every living thing is to nothing so devoted as to its own interest. Whatever, then, appears to it to stand in the way of this interest, be it a brother, or father, or child, or loved one, or lover, the being hates, accuses, and curses it. For its nature is to love nothing so much as its own interest; this to it is father and brother and kinsmen and country and God. When, for instance, we think that the gods stand in the way of our attainment of this, we revile even them, cast their statues to the ground, and burn their temples, as Alexander ordered the temples of Asclepius to be burned when his loved one died. For this reason, if a man puts together in one scale his interest and righteousness and what is honourable and country and parents and friends, they are all safe; but if he puts his interest in one scale, and in the other friends and country and kinsmen and justice itself, all these latter are lost because they are outweighed by his interest. For where one can say “I” and “mine,” to that side must the creature perforce incline; if they are in the flesh, there must the ruling power be; if they are in the moral purpose, there must it be; if they are in externals, there must it be. If, therefore, I am where my moral purpose is, then, and then only, will I be the friend and son and the father that I should be. For then this will be my interest — to keep my good faith, my self-respect, my forbearance, my abstinence, and my co-operation, and to maintain my relations with other men. But if I put what is mine in one scale, and what is honourable in the other, then the statement of Epicurus assumes strength, in which he declares that “the honourable is either nothing at all, or at best only what people hold in esteem.”
It was through ignorance of this that the Athenians and Lacedaemonians quarrelled, and the Thebans with both of them, and the Great King with Greece, and the Macedonians with both of them, and in our days the Romans with the Getae, and yet earlier than any of these, what happened at Ilium was due to this. Alexander was a guest of Menelaus, and if anyone had seen their friendly treatment of one another, he would have disbelieved any man who said they were not friends. But there was thrown in between them a morsel, a pretty woman, and to win her war arose. So now, when you see friends, or brothers, who seem to be of one mind, do not instantly make pronouncement about their friendship, not even if they swear to it, nor even if they say that they cannot be separated from one another. The ruling principle of the bad man is not to be trusted; it is insecure, incapable of judgement, a prey now to one external impression and now to another. Nay, do not make the same enquiry that most men do, asking whether two men are of the same parents, or were brought up together, or had the same school attendant, but this, and this only: Where do they put their interest — outside themselves, or in their moral purpose? If outside, call them not friends, any more than you would call them faithful, steadfast, courageous, or free; nay, call them not even human beings, if you are wise. For it is no judgement of human sort which makes them bite (that is revile) one another, and take to the desert (that is, to the market-place) as wild beasts take to the mountains, and in courts of law act the part of brigands; nor is it a judgement of human sort which makes them profligates and adulterers and corrupters; nor is it any such thing which makes men guilty of any of the many other crimes which they commit against one another; it is because of one single judgement, and this alone — because they put themselves and what belongs to themselves in the category of things which lie outside the sphere of moral purpose. But if you hear these men assert that in all sincerity they believe the good to be where moral purpose lies, and where there is the right use of external impressions, then you need no longer trouble yourself as to whether they are son and father, or brothers, or have been schoolmates a long time and are comrades; but though this is the only knowledge you have concerning them, you may confidently declare them “friends,” just as you may declare them “faithful” and “upright.” For where else is friendship to be found than where there is fidelity, respect, a devotion to things honourable and to naught beside?
“But he has paid attention to me all these years; and did he not love me?” How do you know, slave, whether he has paid attention to you just as he sponges his shoes, or curries his horse? How do you know but that, when you have lost your utility, as that of some utensil, he will throw you away like a broken plate? “But she is my wife and we have lived together all these years.” But how long did Eriphyle live with Amphiaraus, yes, and bore him children, and many of them? But a necklace came in between them. And what does a necklace signify? One’s judgement about things like a necklace. That was the brutish element, that was what sundered the bond of love, what would not allow a woman to be a wife, a mother to remain a mother. So let every one of you who is eager to be a friend to somebody himself, or to get somebody else for a friend, eradicate these judgements, hate them, banish them from his own soul. When this is done, first of all, he will not be reviling himself, fighting with himself, repenting,
tormenting himself: and, in the second place, in relation to his comrade, he will be always straightforward to one who is like him himself, while to one who is unlike he will be tolerant, gentle, kindly, forgiving, as to one who is ignorant or is making a mistake in things of the greatest importance; he will not be harsh with anybody, because he knows well the saying of Plato, that “every soul is unwillingly deprived of the truth.” But if you fail to do this, you may do everything else that friends do — drink together, and share the same tent, and sail on the same ship — and you may be sons of the same parents; yes, and so may snakes! But they will never be friends and no more will you, as long as you retain these brutish and abominable judgements.
CHAPTER XXIII
Of the faculty of expression
Everyone would read with greater pleasure and ease the book that is written in the clearer characters. Therefore everyone would also listen with greater ease to those discourses that are expressed in appropriate and attractive language. We must not, therefore, say that there is no faculty of expression, for this is to speak both as an impious man and as a coward. As an impious man, because one is thereby disparaging the gifts received from God, as though one were denying the usefulness of the faculty of vision, or that of hearing, or that of speech itself. Did God give you eyes to no purpose, did He to no purpose put in them a spirit so strong and so cunningly devised that it reaches out to a great distance and fashions the forms of whatever is seen? And what messenger is so swift and so attentive as the eye? And did He to no purpose make also the intervening air so active and so intent that the vision passes through it as through some tense medium? And did He to no purpose create light, without the presence of which all else were useless?