Part 5
"Let us state our position with clearness. We are not concerned with the existence of the gods, but with our knowledge of their existence. It would be equally foolish in us to deny, as to affirm, their existence. There may be a supreme reason acting upon the world, whose ends we cannot understand, whose action we cannot comprehend. It may be that the world exists for some other purpose than for the realisation of our own dreams. Perhaps we are only the superfluities, the parings of ivory, the winnowed husks from the threshing, by-products in the creation of something more perfect; and perhaps the confused and obscure sense of an ideal, which works in us and is at once our desire and our despair, is a dim consciousness of the growth of this beauty, a desire and a despair of being one with it. But, if we could escape for a moment from the tyranny of our own selves, the illusion of our own momentary existence, we might learn to rejoice in the knowledge, that beauty exists, if not in us, at least somewhere in the world. If that knowledge were ever present with us, I think that we might be content. Content even to suffer, to realise that everything that ever lived has died for an idea, that all life is a martyrdom; but, alas! we have not even this knowledge. Our life is a dream of shadows. Our knowledge is but a focus of wandering ideas, burning a moment in a white heat, ere they pass again, diffused widely, into the unknown.
"The sense of divinity, which moves in us, may be but a hope born of this trouble and perplexity, a desire that at some future time the fragments of our being shall be collected again and fashioned into a whole. We cry out that we need not be wasted, to drift forever as dust, blind, dumb, and inarticulate, yet with a dim consciousness of a life stirring beyond us and alien to us. Let us share in it. Let us have a share in the world's sunlight and the sweet air. We have personified this hope, and given it an extended significance which seems to breathe and move in all things. Each individual finds his justification in God; and it follows that his God must be merciful, just, and good; but, at the same time, the notions of justice and good are entirely peculiar to the individual. God is thus a realisation of self, a self who triumphs and will be justified, even through his misery. The very practice of virtue is an accusation against the gods, an affirmation that if the good perish then God is evil.
"I am a maker of myths, one who fashions out of perishable things a thought which, through its informing truth, exists independently of time. I think of man as of one who is blind, dumb, and without hands. Sitting alone in this physical darkness a thought comes to him of what his life might have been if he had been born whole; and he imagines himself as a man with hands, a voice, and sight, creating a whole world out of his pleasure. This other man, who moves like a creature of light through the dim passages of his mind, becomes, as it were another self; but through his greater power, a being of joy living eternally, a strong, triumphant, beautiful figure; and consequently external from, and different to, the man. And the blind, dumb, handless man, bowing his head in the darkness, says: 'It is God.'
"For the gods which we have imagined are immortal men, and man a mortal God. They differ from us in nothing but the gladness and eternity of their actions. They move delightfully on the wings of the wind; through the great tumult of waters their feet are swift and sure; their voices have a music that is like the fierce motion of dancing, yellow flames. God is simply our own selves, made whole, and removed from the devouring years. God is our weakness searching after strength, our blindness, thirsting after light; our desire seeking for a voice, and we worship him. We worship him because he is ourselves; but we seek him, always, as if conscious of our own weakness and worthlessness, beyond ourselves, in the external world, Our God is hidden in the deeps of the sea; in the shadows of the forests; in that blue heaven beyond the stars. He is very subtile, moving on stealthy feet, through unknown ways. We seek him, but we find him not. He is swifter than we are, and when we pursue him he flies away into the darkness; and when we cry out that we have lost him he comes close to us again, filling our hearts with a silent sweetness. So it is ever with us; when we seek to clasp him he eludes us; but in the silence of night we imagine that he is not very far away and that a little thing would suffice to allure him to us, to reveal him to sight.
"Once in a country of hills and valleys lived a shepherd who called to the nymph Echo, and she answered him from her cave in the hillside with his own voice. Then he girded himself, and taking a staff in his hand set out to seek her; and coming to the place whence she had answered him, he called again, and she replied from a higher peak. When he had called from the next peak he was answered from the valley and descended into its deep forests; and men saw him no more, for he died there, and the beasts devoured him.
"We also die ere we have found the voice which calls to us from the mountains; but it ever lures us forward, calling sometimes from a cave quite close to us, and again from a distant peak. We also die, and our ears hear it no longer; but our children will hear and follow it gladly up the steep glens of the windy hills."
As Protagoras finished, he dropped the roll of parchment beside him, and motioned the slave to bring him some wine. Lysis rose from his couch and attempted to crown him, when the loud voice of Pythodorus broke in upon the general conversation.
"What is this that you are applauding?" he said; "are you men of Athens or foreigners fond only of subtile words? I, for one, shall not praise or consent to what has been said by Protagoras here to-night. What has he done but cloak his impiety in smooth phrases and suave periods? Are you willing, through his soft persuasion, to deny that the gods inhabit the wide skies and the hidden regions of the bright sea?"
A silence fell upon the company. One or two shifted uneasily upon their couches. It was fairly well known that Pythodorus had some personal grudge against Protagoras; but no one had suspected that he would take this opportunity of revenge.
"You are mistaken, Pythodorus," said Euripides. "Protagoras has only discussed the question of whether we can have any knowledge of the gods. He carefully disclaimed any intention of denying their existence."
"It is clear to me, Euripides, that Protagoras has denied them," answered Pythodorus. "He claims that if we do not know a thing, the thing does not exist. But I shall not argue the question here; I shall lay it before the proper judges. An offence against the gods is a crime in which the whole city is implicated, and which they must cleanse from themselves. I would have you believe that I am not moved by any personal feeling against Protagoras, but only by a desire that the whole people should not have to expiate, in suffering, the crime of one man. All the misfortunes of Athens have arisen from the spirit of irreverent sophistry which is eating her away; and people now seem to think that they may say anything, provided that it be well said."
He spoke in a raucous voice, trying to contain his passion, but with an exultant fire in his eyes. Socrates sat up on his couch and rubbed his leg.
"Pythodorus, you are as bad a listener as I am. I can never understand these long speeches. They act like a charm, and I always fall asleep in the middle of them; but before I fell asleep to-night I heard what Protagoras said as to his main position, and I think that he was laughing at us. He spoke only in a cautious vein of paradox. While he was pretending one thing, he was proving the opposite. You must not take him very seriously."
"What do you mean?"
"Were you awake all the time, Pythodorus?" said Socrates.
"Of course. I was listening most attentively."
"Then you will remember that Protagoras said that the gods were not to be found in the external world, but in the hearts of men. We cannot know them, as we know a tree, but we can feel them by us. He seems to hold that we cannot know anything except what we have drawn out of ourselves."
Socrates was attempting to lead the conversation back into quieter channels, but Pythodorus rose.
"I shall leave you. It is not for me to judge whether Protagoras is right or wrong," he said.
Some of the guests left with him, through fear, and the rest were dismayed. Protagoras, who had not said a word in answer to Pythodorus, leaned back on his couch and spoke.
"Of course, Pythodorus will accuse me," he said; "and I shall be condemned. He is powerful, and in the present condition of things can do as he likes. But it would be a shame if we allowed the malice of one person to interrupt our discussion. Let us sit talking until dawn, and then I shall prepare to leave Athens. I expected that he would do me what injury he could. Shall we have some more wine, Euripides? It is probably our last feast together."
"I am afraid it is," said Euripides. "Yes; let us have some wine. I blame myself for what has happened; but I never expected this."
"It would have happened to-morrow if not to-day," answered Protagoras. "Do not blame yourself, Euripides. There are, I think, few persons in this room, who will escape from the reaction which is developing in Athens. Socrates, of course, will survive it. He follows the traditions of religion, but, at the same time, he differs from them. What was that curious paradox you put forward about my teaching, Socrates?"
"It was no paradox, Protagoras, but sober, earnest truth. You will never persuade me that your intention was to deny the existence of the gods."
"Well, then, let us discuss it. Only our friends are here now. And to-morrow I shall be beyond the reach of malice. Can we know the gods, Socrates?"
"You confuse the two things, because Pythodorus did. Philip has not deserted us. He is sitting there half drunk. Will you argue with him? If with me, answer what I ask. You denied, did you not, that we can find any trace of the action of the gods in this world?"
"Yes."
"And did you not affirm that the gods exist, if they exist at all, in a manner peculiar to themselves."
"Yes."
"Without denying the existence of the gods, then, you affirm that we cannot know them because we cannot find any trace of their action in the life of man?"
"That is what I said," answered Protagoras.
"And you also said that, man being the measure of all things, truth is what he thinks true; good, what he thinks good. There is no truth external to the individual. Did you not?"
"Yes, Socrates; but I am afraid you are giving a sense to my words which they were not intended to convey."
"That is not my object. I wish merely to examine your thought. You incline to cloak it in myths, but you should learn to send truth from you clean and naked, as a trainer sends an athlete into the palæstra. If I offend you, Protagoras, you must forgive me; but I cannot follow an argument which is not direct. Do your words contain my meaning?"
"Yes, Socrates."
"Then you deny all truth except what a man draws out of himself?"
"Yes."
"And a man should not say it is cold. He should say I am cold?"
"Yes; all external things are only what we imagine them to be."
"The same, of course, holds good with regard to truth, virtue, and justice; these things are equally external to the individual. I think that you have said this before, Protagoras, have you not?"
"Yes," said Protagoras.
"Well, then, let us leave that part of the argument for the present," said Socrates. "We shall return to it later, as every one agrees to it. I wish to ask you another series of questions. If you wished to learn the art of making plays, would you go to a cobbler or to Euripides? To Euripides. Very well! But if you wished to learn the art of making shoes, would you go to a cobbler, or to a playwright?"
"To a cobbler, of course!"
"You would choose one skilful rather than a beginner; and in politics, also, you would choose an experienced man, in preference to one who had no experience, and in art you would take the finest artist as your master. Would you not?"
"Of course."
"And the same with pastry-cooks, with tillers of the soil and vine-dressers; you would choose the person most experienced?"
"Yes."
"All this I have learnt from what you said at the beginning of your discourse. If you wished to learn the arts of politics or of cobbling you would go to a politician or to a cobbler; but if you wished to learn the art of being virtuous, would you go to a vicious or to a virtuous man?"
"To a virtuous man."
"But why, Protagoras? Is not the test of truth in yourself and not in others?"
"Yes."
"Then you know the truth, and you recognise it when you meet with it?"
"Yes."
"But then the truth lies also outside of ourselves. Goodness, wisdom, and other excellent things are external to us, and we can only draw them out of ourselves? Have you not said that God is a projection of self?"
"A stronger self, Socrates."
"Then you recognise a standard of excellence beyond man, and this standard of excellence he draws out of himself; and that only is true which a man draws out of himself; but at the same time you recognise in others the art of cobbling and of politics."
"These things are only conventional," said Protagoras.
"Why, Protagoras? What is the difference between going as an apprentice to a good cobbler and going as an apprentice to a good man?"
"Because cobbling is an art that any one may learn, but virtue is different."
"Is virtue different from doing good?"
"No."
"A virtuous person will seek the good; he recognises goodness by his own standard?"
"Yes."
"He is the measure of truth, and he chooses a teacher who will show him a fitting wisdom, as he will choose a cobbler who will make him a fitting shoe?"
"Socrates, I frankly admit that I am tired of your cobbler."
"But is virtue doing things well or ill?"
"Well."
"And the individual judges whether the thing is well or ill done?"
"You are still cobbling, Socrates."
"Surely, Protagoras, if truth is drawn entirely out of the individual, he will know virtue better than he will know a shoe. I do not want you to say that I am forcing your words into a construction that they will not bear. Your arguments suggest others to me. I am cobbling, you say, point out the patches! You say that there is no truth external to the individual; that if a man feels hot, it is hot; that justice is what he thinks just, that he cannot know external things. Surely, then, his whole standard of truth is himself. And if he fashion a God out of his inner consciousness, surely God exists more truly than a tree or a shoe exists."
"Socrates, my words may bear this expansion. You hold, then, that we may have knowledge of their existence. I am not averse to this belief; but to me a God is simply a self, a self freed from our conditions of life.
"Let us not say that Socrates or Protagoras has triumphed. We have simply got a little closer to the truth."
"God may exist for the individual, Socrates; in the individual consciousness. But the truth lies beyond us. Man's image of a tree is true, because a tree is."
"The colour, the shape, the texture, are not," replied Socrates; "except as the man sees them. Philip was right in saying that if we know one thing we know all others. Philip, wake up!"
"Socrates, what mischief are you up to now that Pythodorus is gone," said Philip. "You talk too much. Protagoras said simply that a monkey imagines God as a monkey, while a peacock imagines him as a peacock."
"O Philip, what a fool you are! Does a foolish man imagine a foolish God? Does a blind man imagine a blind God?"
"Of course not."
"Then, listen, Philip! Does Pythodorus imagine a God who is a nuisance to his friends?"
"No."
"Very well, then, some standard exists which is external to the individual, but which he only knows through his inner consciousness. The oracle at Delphi was right when it said: 'Know thyself. For the more a man knows himself, the more he knows God.'"
"It is dawn," said Lysis.
"O Socrates, you are the most unbridled and insatiable of all the sophists," said Protagoras, laughing. "You have laid a trap for me."
"Why do you accuse me of laying a trap for you? We are not arguing with the sole desire of scoring a point against each other. I do not lay traps for you, as if I were a hunter of men; but I lay traps for truth, being a hunter of truth, and having no other reason for existence but to chase and follow after it wherever it may be hidden."
"We have no more time, Socrates," said Protagoras. "Tell me your own opinion of the gods and of the aim of life."
"What can I say to you," said Socrates, "beyond what a prophetess taught me? For she said that in our voyage through the world we are being reminded constantly of a previous existence, and that when we are brought face to face with beauty or with virtue or with truth, in short wherever we are moved to admiration as in contemplating a work of art like the chryselephantine Zeus at Olympia, it is the memory stirring in us of the place from which we came; and, further, she asked me if I had never felt an inexplicable sadness mingling with all beauty, as if beauty itself were inseparable from sorrow. 'Yes, Diotima,' I answered, 'in the presence of beauty we are all sufferers.' 'Then Socrates,' she said, 'let me tell you that this feeling of sadness in the presence of beauty is in reality a sense of exile; for however deeply we may drink of Lethe, the soul will retain some broken memories of the garden of the gods. When we meet with beauty in the world it is but a mutilated fragment of the divine beauty, but however small or slight it may be in itself, it is sufficient to call up into memory the divine beauty; and it is then that the sense of exile rushes in upon us like a wave and we weep and suffer anguish, and can neither tear ourselves away from the beautiful thing, nor be content with it; but all our being thirsts after the more perfect beauty. But let me warn you, Socrates, that however much you may be tortured in the presence of the beauty that lies scattered through the world, it is your business to collect each tiny fragment; and if it be a few bars of music you must build it into a song; if it be a mere tangle of coloured skeins you must weave it into a garment; if it be fragments of gold and ivory you must make them into a statue; if it be beautiful colours you must make them into a picture, or beautiful words then into a poem; and all this time you will suffer and be tortured with desire for the more perfect beauty. But, until you have gathered together the broken fragments which are in the world you will not return into the garden of the gods.' 'Then the gods exist?' I enquired. 'Certainly the gods exist,' answered Diotima; 'but they exist in a manner peculiar to themselves.' She would say nothing more, but when I questioned her smiled wisely and was silent."
* * * * *
Hermogenes met Lysis by the porch of the King Archon near the house of Callias.
"Have you heard the news, Hermogenes," said Lysis, "I have just been with Euripides. Protagoras is drowned. Within sight of Sicily a storm came up and drove the boat on the rocks. The sailors saved themselves by swimming; but Protagoras, who could not swim, sat on the prow of the boat. They saw him from the beach sitting calmly until the boat split in two. The waves reached out for him, and in a little time his bruised and battered body was cast up at their feet. As they reached for it it was snatched away by another wave. And so the sea played with him like a cat playing with a mouse. Then he was flung ashore. His face was bloody but smiling."
"It was a judgment of the gods," said Hermogenes.
"So everybody says."
_TO MRS ALFRED FOWLER_
III
THE FRIEND OF PAUL
III
THE FRIEND OF PAUL
The house of Serenus lay about four miles from Gades, in a country of vines and olives. It was built a little below the ridge of a hill, which sheltered it from the north-east winds, and fronted south-west, overlooking the Atlantic and a long stretch of the coast-line with its innumerable headlands and curving bays. From the windows in the upper storey Serenus could see this wide expanse of waters, never completely the same, but always restless and troubled, with caprice in sunlight, or anger in storms; or, turning to another aspect, the hills and valleys of his own estate; a land of cornfields, vineyards, and olive-yards, pleasantly diversified by slopes of green upland pasture, and beyond them the wild beauty of mountains with frosty summits and well-timbered flanks. The house was surrounded by a garden planted with myrtles and plane-trees, with alleys screened from the fierce heat of summer by dense boughs of ilex, curving tortuously in labyrinthine windings, or running perfectly straight until they ended in an arch, the frame, as it were, for some picture of land or sea. The grass by the paths was kept mown, but here and there, among thickets of myrtle, grew rank, harbouring the green lizards, who slipped out every now and then to bask in the sunlight on the marble steps, or on the pedestals of the statues of Priapus and the woodland gods.
Beyond the garden, Ceres crowded abundantly into every corner. Half a mile away, at the foot of the hill, its red-tiled roofs just showing above the terraced vines, was the house of the farm-bailiff; thither came the tall daughters of the peasantry bringing the offerings of their mothers in plaited baskets, pale honey in its wax, young leverets, and capons luscious for cooking. In the yard all the crowd of common poultry wandered about, while the tower echoed with the joy of pigeons, answered from the neighbouring trees by the cooing of ring-doves and white turtles. Thither also, on feast-days, or to the humble marriage of one of their companions, all the slaves of the estate were bidden, the huntsmen with the herds; and Serenus would sit among them, eating the same fare and drinking the same wine, while much wood burnt to the festal Lares.
As he grew older, Serenus had come to love the tranquil life at his country-house, the soft, warm air blowing from off the sea, the noise of rippling water and of wind stirring in the leaves. He had arrived at that period of life when a man is content to stand aside and become a spectator. In the last few years his hold upon the management of his large properties had been gradually relaxed, and he had come to rely more and more upon one or two trusted slaves and freedmen; but at irregular intervals he would make a journey to all his possessions in Spain, visiting Bilbilis where he had iron-fields, and bred horses; a delightful country it was, "high Bilbilis enriched by arms and horses; Caunus austere with snows, and the broken hills of Vadevero, the sweet grove of Botrodus which Pomona loves."