Marius the Epicurean — Volume 1

  CHAPTER IX: NEW CYRENAICISM

  [144] SUCH were the practical conclusions drawn for himself by Marius,when somewhat later he had outgrown the mastery of others, from theprinciple that "all is vanity." If he could but count upon thepresent, if a life brief at best could not certainly be shown toconduct one anywhere beyond itself, if men's highest curiosity wasindeed so persistently baffled--then, with the Cyrenaics of all ages,he would at least fill up the measure of that present with vividsensations, and such intellectual apprehensions, as, in strength anddirectness and their immediately realised values at the bar of anactual experience, are most like sensations. So some have spoken inevery age; for, like all theories which really express a strong naturaltendency of the human mind or even one of its characteristic modes ofweakness, this vein of reflection is a constant tradition inphilosophy. Every age of European thought has had its Cyrenaics orEpicureans, under many disguises: even under the hood of the monk.

  [145] But--Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!--is a proposal,the real import of which differs immensely, according to the naturaltaste, and the acquired judgment, of the guests who sit at the table.It may express nothing better than the instinct of Dante's Ciacco, theaccomplished glutton, in the mud of the Inferno;+ or, since on nohypothesis does man "live by bread alone," may come to be identicalwith--"My meat is to do what is just and kind;" while the soul, whichcan make no sincere claim to have apprehended anything beyond the veilof immediate experience, yet never loses a sense of happiness inconforming to the highest moral ideal it can clearly define for itself;and actually, though but with so faint hope, does the "Father'sbusiness."

  In that age of Marcus Aurelius, so completely disabused of themetaphysical ambition to pass beyond "the flaming ramparts of theworld," but, on the other hand, possessed of so vast an accumulation ofintellectual treasure, with so wide a view before it over all varietiesof what is powerful or attractive in man and his works, the thoughts ofMarius did but follow the line taken by the majority of educatedpersons, though to a different issue. Pitched to a really high andserious key, the precept--Be perfect in regard to what is here and now:the precept of "culture," as it is called, or of a completeeducation--might at least save him from the vulgarity and heaviness[146] of a generation, certainly of no general fineness of temper,though with a material well-being abundant enough. Conceded that whatis secure in our existence is but the sharp apex of the present momentbetween two hypothetical eternities, and all that is real in ourexperience but a series of fleeting impressions:--so Marius continuedthe sceptical argument he had condensed, as the matter to hold by, fromhis various philosophical reading:--given, that we are never to getbeyond the walls of the closely shut cell of one's own personality;that the ideas we are somehow impelled to form of an outer world, andof other minds akin to our own, are, it may be, but a day-dream, andthe thought of any world beyond, a day-dream perhaps idler still: then,he, at least, in whom those fleeting impressions--faces, voices,material sunshine--were very real and imperious, might well set himselfto the consideration, how such actual moments as they passed might bemade to yield their utmost, by the most dexterous training of capacity.Amid abstract metaphysical doubts, as to what might lie one step onlybeyond that experience, reinforcing the deep original materialism orearthliness of human nature itself, bound so intimately to the sensuousworld, let him at least make the most of what was "here and now." Inthe actual dimness of ways from means to ends--ends in themselvesdesirable, yet for the most part distant and for him, certainly, belowthe [147] visible horizon--he would at all events be sure that themeans, to use the well-worn terminology, should have something offinality or perfection about them, and themselves partake, in ameasure, of the more excellent nature of ends--that the means shouldjustify the end.

  With this view he would demand culture, paideia,+ as the Cyrenaicssaid, or, in other words, a wide, a complete, education--an educationpartly negative, as ascertaining the true limits of man's capacities,but for the most part positive, and directed especially to theexpansion and refinement of the power of reception; of those powers,above all, which are immediately relative to fleeting phenomena, thepowers of emotion and sense. In such an education, an "aesthetic"education, as it might now be termed, and certainly occupied verylargely with those aspects of things which affect us pleasurablythrough sensation, art, of course, including all the finer sorts ofliterature, would have a great part to play. The study of music, inthat wider Platonic sense, according to which, music comprehends allthose matters over which the Muses of Greek mythology preside, wouldconduct one to an exquisite appreciation of all the finer traits ofnature and of man. Nay! the products of the imagination mustthemselves be held to present the most perfect forms of life--spiritand matter alike under their purest and most perfect conditions--themost strictly appropriate [148] objects of that impassionedcontemplation, which, in the world of intellectual discipline, as inthe highest forms of morality and religion, must be held to be theessential function of the "perfect." Such manner of life might comeeven to seem a kind of religion--an inward, visionary, mystic piety, orreligion, by virtue of its effort to live days "lovely and pleasant" inthemselves, here and now, and with an all-sufficiency of well-being inthe immediate sense of the object contemplated, independently of anyfaith, or hope that might be entertained as to their ulterior tendency.In this way, the true aesthetic culture would be realisable as a newform of the contemplative life, founding its claim on the intrinsic"blessedness" of "vision"--the vision of perfect men and things. One'shuman nature, indeed, would fain reckon on an assured and endlessfuture, pleasing itself with the dream of a final home, to be attainedat some still remote date, yet with a conscious, delightful home-comingat last, as depicted in many an old poetic Elysium. On the other hand,the world of perfected sensation, intelligence, emotion, is so close tous, and so attractive, that the most visionary of spirits must needsrepresent the world unseen in colours, and under a form really borrowedfrom it. Let me be sure then--might he not plausibly say?--that I missno detail of this life of realised consciousness in the present! Hereat least is a vision, a theory, [149] theoria,+ which reposes on nobasis of unverified hypothesis, which makes no call upon a future afterall somewhat problematic; as it would be unaffected by any discovery ofan Empedocles (improving on the old story of Prometheus) as to what hadreally been the origin, and course of development, of man's actuallyattained faculties and that seemingly divine particle of reason orspirit in him. Such a doctrine, at more leisurable moments, would ofcourse have its precepts to deliver on the embellishment, generally, ofwhat is near at hand, on the adornment of life, till, in a notimpracticable rule of conduct, one's existence, from day to day, cameto be like a well-executed piece of music; that "perpetual motion" inthings (so Marius figured the matter to himself, under the old Greekimageries) according itself to a kind of cadence or harmony.

  It was intelligible that this "aesthetic" philosophy might find itself(theoretically, at least, and by way of a curious question incasuistry, legitimate from its own point of view) weighing the claimsof that eager, concentrated, impassioned realisation of experience,against those of the received morality. Conceiving its own function ina somewhat desperate temper, and becoming, as every high-strung form ofsentiment, as the religious sentiment itself, may become, somewhatantinomian, when, in its effort towards the order of experiences itprefers, it is confronted with the traditional and popular [150]morality, at points where that morality may look very like aconvention, or a mere stage-property of the world, it would be found,from time to time, breaking beyond the limits of the actual moralorder; perhaps not without some pleasurable excitement in so bold aventure.

  With the possibility of some such hazard as this, in thought or even inpractice--that it might be, though refining, or tonic even, in the caseof those strong and in health, yet, as Pascal says of the kindly andtemperate wisdom of Montaigne, "pernicious for those who have anynatural tendency to impiety or vice," the line of reflection traced outabove, was fai
rly chargeable.--Not, however, with "hedonism" and itssupposed consequences. The blood, the heart, of Marius were stillpure. He knew that his carefully considered theory of practice bracedhim, with the effect of a moral principle duly recurring to mind everymorning, towards the work of a student, for which he might seemintended. Yet there were some among his acquaintance who jumped to theconclusion that, with the "Epicurean stye," he was makingpleasure--pleasure, as they so poorly conceived it--the sole motive oflife; and they precluded any exacter estimate of the situation bycovering it with a high-sounding general term, through the vagueness ofwhich they were enabled to see the severe and laborious youth in thevulgar company of Lais. Words like "hedonism"-- [151] terms of largeand vague comprehension--above all when used for a purpose avowedlycontroversial, have ever been the worst examples of what are called"question-begging terms;" and in that late age in which Marius lived,amid the dust of so many centuries of philosophical debate, the air wasfull of them. Yet those who used that reproachful Greek term for thephilosophy of pleasure, were hardly more likely than the old Greeksthemselves (on whom regarding this very subject of the theory ofpleasure, their masters in the art of thinking had so emphatically toimpress the necessity of "making distinctions") to come to any verydelicately correct ethical conclusions by a reasoning, which began witha general term, comprehensive enough to cover pleasures so different inquality, in their causes and effects, as the pleasures of wine andlove, of art and science, of religious enthusiasm and politicalenterprise, and of that taste or curiosity which satisfied itself withlong days of serious study. Yet, in truth, each of those pleasurablemodes of activity, may, in its turn, fairly become the ideal of the"hedonistic" doctrine. Really, to the phase of reflection throughwhich Marius was then passing, the charge of "hedonism," whatever itstrue weight might be, was not properly applicable at all. Notpleasure, but fulness of life, and "insight" as conducting to thatfulness--energy, variety, and choice of experience, including [152]noble pain and sorrow even, loves such as those in the exquisite oldstory of Apuleius, sincere and strenuous forms of the moral life, suchas Seneca and Epictetus--whatever form of human life, in short, mightbe heroic, impassioned, ideal: from these the "new Cyrenaicism" ofMarius took its criterion of values. It was a theory, indeed, whichmight properly be regarded as in great degree coincident with the mainprinciple of the Stoics themselves, and an older version of the precept"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might"--a doctrineso widely acceptable among the nobler spirits of that time. And, aswith that, its mistaken tendency would lie in the direction of a kindof idolatry of mere life, or natural gift, or strength--l'idolatrie destalents.

  To understand the various forms of ancient art and thought, the variousforms of actual human feeling (the only new thing, in a world almosttoo opulent in what was old) to satisfy, with a kind of scrupulousequity, the claims of these concrete and actual objects on hissympathy, his intelligence, his senses--to "pluck out the heart oftheir mystery," and in turn become the interpreter of them to others:this had now defined itself for Marius as a very narrowly practicaldesign: it determined his choice of a vocation to live by. It was theera of the rhetoricians, or sophists, as they were sometimes called; ofmen who came in some instances to [153] great fame and fortune, by wayof a literary cultivation of "science." That science, it has been oftensaid, must have been wholly an affair of words. But in a world,confessedly so opulent in what was old, the work, even of genius, mustnecessarily consist very much in criticism; and, in the case of themore excellent specimens of his class, the rhetorician was, after all,the eloquent and effective interpreter, for the delighted ears ofothers, of what understanding himself had come by, in years of traveland study, of the beautiful house of art and thought which was theinheritance of the age. The emperor Marcus Aurelius, to whose serviceMarius had now been called, was himself, more or less openly, a"lecturer." That late world, amid many curiously vivid modern traits,had this spectacle, so familiar to ourselves, of the public lecturer oressayist; in some cases adding to his other gifts that of the Christianpreacher, who knows how to touch people's sensibilities on behalf ofthe suffering. To follow in the way of these successes, was the naturalinstinct of youthful ambition; and it was with no vulgar egotism thatMarius, at the age of nineteen, determined, like many another young manof parts, to enter as a student of rhetoric at Rome.

  Though the manner of his work was changed formally from poetry toprose, he remained, and must always be, of the poetic temper: by which,I mean, among other things, that quite [154] independently of thegeneral habit of that pensive age he lived much, and as it were bysystem, in reminiscence. Amid his eager grasping at the sensation, theconsciousness, of the present, he had come to see that, after all, themain point of economy in the conduct of the present, was thequestion:--How will it look to me, at what shall I value it, this daynext year?--that in any given day or month one's main concern was itsimpression for the memory. A strange trick memory sometimes playedhim; for, with no natural gradation, what was of last month, or ofyesterday, of to-day even, would seem as far off, as entirely detachedfrom him, as things of ten years ago. Detached from him, yet very real,there lay certain spaces of his life, in delicate perspective, under afavourable light; and, somehow, all the less fortunate detail andcircumstance had parted from them. Such hours were oftenest those inwhich he had been helped by work of others to the pleasurableapprehension of art, of nature, or of life. "Not what I do, but what Iam, under the power of this vision"--he would say to himself--"is whatwere indeed pleasing to the gods!"

  And yet, with a kind of inconsistency in one who had taken for hisphilosophic ideal the monochronos hedone+ of Aristippus--the pleasureof the ideal present, of the mystic now--there would come, togetherwith that precipitate sinking of things into the past, a desire, afterall, [155] to retain "what was so transitive." Could he but arrest,for others also, certain clauses of experience, as the imaginativememory presented them to himself! In those grand, hot summers, hewould have imprisoned the very perfume of the flowers. To create, tolive, perhaps, a little while beyond the allotted hours, if it were butin a fragment of perfect expression:--it was thus his longing defineditself for something to hold by amid the "perpetual flux." With men ofhis vocation, people were apt to say, words were things. Well! withhim, words should be indeed things,--the word, the phrase, valuable inexact proportion to the transparency with which it conveyed to othersthe apprehension, the emotion, the mood, so vividly real withinhimself. Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur:+ Virileapprehension of the true nature of things, of the true nature of one'sown impression, first of all!--words would follow that naturally, atrue understanding of one's self being ever the first condition ofgenuine style. Language delicate and measured, the delicate Atticphrase, for instance, in which the eminent Aristeides could speak, wasthen a power to which people's hearts, and sometimes even their purses,readily responded. And there were many points, as Marius thought, onwhich the heart of that age greatly needed to be touched. He hardlyknew how strong that old religious sense of responsibility, theconscience, as we call it, [156] still was within him--a body of inwardimpressions, as real as those so highly valued outward ones--to offendagainst which, brought with it a strange feeling of disloyalty, as to aperson. And the determination, adhered to with no misgiving, to addnothing, not so much as a transient sigh, to the great total of men'sunhappiness, in his way through the world:--that too was something torest on, in the drift of mere "appearances."

  All this would involve a life of industry, of industrious study, onlypossible through healthy rule, keeping clear the eye alike of body andsoul. For the male element, the logical conscience asserted itselfnow, with opening manhood--asserted itself, even in his literary style,by a certain firmness of outline, that touch of the worker in metal,amid its richness. Already he blamed instinctively alike in his workand in himself, as youth so seldom does, all that had not passed a longand liberal process of erasure. The happy phrase or sentence wasreally modelled upon a
cleanly finished structure of scrupulousthought. The suggestive force of the one master of his development,who had battled so hard with imaginative prose; the utterance, thegolden utterance, of the other, so content with its living power ofpersuasion that he had never written at all,--in the commixture ofthese two qualities he set up his literary ideal, and this rareblending of grace with an intellectual [157] rigour or astringency, wasthe secret of a singular expressiveness in it.

  He acquired at this time a certain bookish air, the somewhat sombrehabitude of the avowed scholar, which though it never interfered withthe perfect tone, "fresh and serenely disposed," of the Romangentleman, yet qualified it as by an interesting oblique trait, andfrightened away some of his equals in age and rank. The soberdiscretion of his thoughts, his sustained habit of meditation, thesense of those negative conclusions enabling him to concentratehimself, with an absorption so entire, upon what is immediately hereand now, gave him a peculiar manner of intellectual confidence, as ofone who had indeed been initiated into a great secret.--Though with anair so disengaged, he seemed to be living so intently in the visibleworld! And now, in revolt against that pre-occupation with otherpersons, which had so often perturbed his spirit, his wistfulspeculations as to what the real, the greater, experience might be,determined in him, not as the longing for love--to be with Cynthia, orAspasia--but as a thirst for existence in exquisite places. The veilthat was to be lifted for him lay over the works of the old masters ofart, in places where nature also had used her mastery. And it was justat this moment that a summons to Rome reached him.

  NOTES

  145. +Canto VI.

  147. +Transliteration: paideia. Definition "rearing, education."

  149. +Transliteration: theoria. Definition "a looking at ...observing ... contemplation."

  154. +Transliteration: monochronos hedone. Pater's definition "thepleasure of the ideal present, of the mystic now." The definition isfitting; the unusual adjective monokhronos means, literally, "single orunitary time."

  155. +Horace, Ars Poetica 311. +Etext editor's translation: "Thesubject once foreknown, the words will follow easily."