Sayings of Ramakrishna 284

The human Guru whispers the sacred formula into the ear; the Divine Guru breathes the spirit into the soul. 

Dio Chrysostom, On Slavery and Freedom 2.3

Now up to this point the audience paid attention to their arguments, under the impression that they were not made so much in earnest as in jest. 

Yet afterwards they fell to wrangling and were inclined to the opinion that it was a strange thing if it was going to be impossible for a man to cite any evidence by which the slave could be unequivocally distinguished from the free man, but that it would be easy to debate and argue about every individual case. 

So they dropped their discussion about the particular man in question⁠ and his slavery, and proceeded to consider the general question: Who is a slave? 

And the consensus of their opinion was that when anyone gets possession of a human being, in the strict meaning of the term, just as he might of any item of his goods or cattle, so as to have the right to use him as he likes, then that man is both correctly called and in fact is the slave of the man into whose possession he has come.

Consequently, the man who had objected to being called a slave raised the further question as to what constituted the validity of possession. 

For, he said, in the case of a house, a plot of land, a horse, or a cow, many of those who had possession had in the past been found to have held them for a long time unjustly, in some instances even though they had inherited the things from their fathers. 

In precisely the same way it was possible, he maintained, to have gained possession also of a human being unjustly. For manifestly of those who from time to time acquire slaves, as they acquire all other pieces of property, some get them from others either as a free gift from someone or by inheritance or by purchase, whereas some few from the very beginning have possession of those who were born under their roof, "home-bred" slaves as they call them. 

A third method of acquiring possession is when a man takes a prisoner in war or even in brigandage and in this way holds the man after enslaving him, the oldest method of all, I presume. For it is not likely that the first men to become slaves were born of slaves in the first place, but that they were over­powered in brigandage or war and thus compelled to be slaves to their captors. 

So we see that this earliest method, upon which all the others depend, is exceedingly vulnerable and has no validity at all; for just as soon as those men are able to make their escape, there is nothing to prevent them from being free as having been in servitude unjustly. Consequently, they were not slaves before that, either. And sometimes they not only escaped from slavery themselves, but also reduced their masters to slavery. In this case, also, we have now found that "at the flip of a shell",⁠ as the saying goes, their positions are completely reversed.

At this point one of the audience interjected that while those men themselves perhaps could not be called slaves, yet their children and those of the second and third generations could quite properly be so designated. 

"But how can that be? For if being captured makes a man a slave, the men who themselves were captured deserve that appellation more than their descendants do; and if it is having been born of slaves that makes men so, it is clear that by virtue of being sprung from those who were taken captive and were consequently freeborn, their descendants would not be slaves. 

"For instance, we see that those famous Messenians after the lapse of so many years recovered not only their freedom but their territory as well.  For when the Spartans were defeated at Leuctra⁠ by the Thebans, the latter marched into the Peloponnese supported by their allies, and not only compelled the Spartans to give back the Messenian territory, but settled in Messene again all the original Messenians' descendants, the Helots as they were called, who had previously been in servitude to the Spartans. And not a man says that the Thebans therein acted unjustly, but all agree that altogether nobly and justly. 

"Consequently, if this method of gaining possession, from which all the others take their beginning, is not just, it is likely that no other one is either, and that the term 'slave' does not in reality correspond to the truth. 

"But perhaps it was not in this way that the term 'slave' was originally applied—that is, to a person for whose body someone paid money, or, as the majority think, to one who was sprung from persons who were called slaves, but rather to the man who lacked a free man's spirit and was of a servile nature. 

"For of those who are called slaves we will, I presume, admit that many have the spirit of free men, and that among free men there are many who are altogether servile.⁠ The case is the same with those known as 'noble' and 'well-born.' For those who originally applied these names applied them to persons who were well-born in respect to virtue or excellence, not bothering to inquire who their parents were. 

"Then afterwards the descendants of families of ancient wealth and high repute were called 'well-born' by a certain class. Of this fact there is the clearest indication: for in the case of cocks and horses and dogs the designation was retained, just as it had been applied to men in olden times. 

"For instance, when one sees a spirited and mettlesome horse that is well built for ra­cing, without stopping first to enquire whether its sire by any chance came from Arcadia or from Media or is Thessalian, he judges the horse on its own merits and says that it is 'well-bred.' And it is the same with any connoisseur of dogs: whenever he sees a dog that is swift and keen and sagacious in following the scent, he does not go on to enquire whether it is of Carian or Spartan or some other breed, but says that it is a 'noble' dog. And it is exactly the same in regard to the cock and the other animals. 

"Therefore it is clear that it would be the same in the case of a man also. And so when a man is well-born in respect to virtue, it is right to call him 'noble,' even if no one knows his parents or his ancestors either. 

"But," you will object, "it is impossible for anyone to be 'noble' without being 'well-born' at the same time, or for one who is 'well-born' not to be free; hence we are absolutely obliged to conclude that it is the man of ignoble birth who is a slave.⁠ For surely, if it were the custom to use the terms freedom and slavery with reference to horses and cocks and dogs, we should not call some 'noble' and others 'free,' nor say that some were 'slaves' while others were of 'ignoble' birth or breed. 

"In the same way, then, when we are speaking of men, it is not reasonable to call some 'noble' and 'well-born,' and others 'free'; but we should make no distinction between the two classes. Nor is it reasonable either to say that some are of ignoble birth and mean, and that others are slaves.

"In this way, then, our argument shows that it is not the philosophers who misuse the terms but the common run of ignorant men, because they know nothing about the matter." 

Stoic Snippets 283

How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man, for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal! 

And how small a part of the whole substance; and how small a part of the Universal Soul; and on what a small clod of the whole earth you creep! 

Reflecting on all this, consider nothing to be great, except to act as your nature leads you, and to endure that which the Common Nature brings. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.32 

IMAGE: Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis, Eternity (1906) 

Dio Chrysostom, On Slavery and Freedom 2.2

B. "Well then," said the other, "let us drop all this about family and ancestors, since you think it is so difficult to determine; for it is quite possible that you will turn out to be just like Amphion and Zethus,⁠ and like Alexander⁠ the offspring of Priam. But as for you, your own self, we all know that you are in a state of servitude."

A. "What," said the first man, "do you think that all those who are in a state of servitude are slaves?⁠ But are not many of these, although free men, yet held unjustly in servitude? Some of them have already gone before the court and proved that they are free, while others are enduring to the end, either because they have no clear proof of their freedom, or else because those who are called their masters are not harsh with them. 

"Consider, for instance, the case of Eumaeus,⁠ the son of Ctesias, son of Ormenus: he was the son of a man who was altogether free and of great wealth, but did he not serve as a slave in Ithaca in the households of Odysseus and Laertes? And yet, although he could, time and again, have sailed off home if he had so wished, he never thought it worth while. 

"What, did not many Athenians among those made prisoners in Sicily serve as slaves in Sicily and in the Peloponnese⁠ although they were free men; and of those taken captive from time to time in many other battles, some only for a time until they found men who would ransom them, and others to the very end? 

"In the same period too, even the son of Callias⁠ was thought to have been in servitude a long time in Thrace after the battle in which the Athenians suffered a defeat at Acanthus,⁠ so that when he escaped afterwards and reached home he laid claim to the estate left by Callias and caused a great deal of trouble to the next of kin, being, in my opinion, an impostor. For he was not the son of Callias but his groom, in appearance resembling that boy of Callias who did lose his life in the battle; and besides he spoke Greek accurately and could read and write. 

"But there have been innumerable others who have suffered this fate, since, even of those who are in servitude here at the present time I firmly believe that many are freeborn men. For we shall not assert that any Athenian who is freeborn is a slave if he has been made a prisoner in war and carried off to Persia, or even, if you like, is taken to Thrace or Sicily and sold like a chattel; but if any Thracian or Persian, not only born there of free parents but even the son of some prince or king, is brought here, we shall not admit that he is a free person. 

"Do you not know," he continued, "the law they have at Athens and in many other states as well, which does not allow the man who was born a slave to enjoy the rights of a citizen? But the son of Callias, if he actually did escape from captivity on that occasion, after reaching home from Thrace, even though he had spent many years there and had often been scourged, no one would think it right to exclude from Athenian citizen­ship; so that there are occasional instances where the law too denies that those who have been unjustly in servitude have thereby become slaves. 

"In heaven's name, I ask you, what is it that I do of which you have knowledge, or what is it that is done to me, which justifies your saying that you know that I am in a state of slavery?"

B. "I know that you are being kept by your master, dance attendance upon him, and do whatever he commands; or else you take a beating."

A. "According to that," said the first man, "you can make out that sons also are the slaves of their fathers; for they dance attendance upon their fathers, often, if they are poor, walking with them to the gymnasium or to dinner; and they without exception are supported by their fathers and frequently are beaten by them, and they obey any orders their fathers give them. 

"And yet, so far as obeying and being thrashed are concerned, you can go on and assert that the boys who take lessons of schoolmasters are likewise their servants and that the gymnastic trainers are slave masters of their pupils, or those who teach anything else; for they give orders to their pupils and trounce them when they are disobedient."

B. "Indeed that's true," replied the other, "but it is not permissible for the gymnastic instructors or for the other teachers to imprison their pupils or to sell them or to cast them into the mill, but to slave masters all these things are allowed." 

A. "Yes, but perhaps you do not know that in many states which have exceedingly good laws fathers have all these powers which you mention in regard to their sons, and what is more, if they wish to do so, they may even imprison or sell them; and they have a power even more terrible than any of these; for they actually are allowed to put their sons to death without any trial and even without bringing any accusation at all against them;⁠ but still none the less they are not their fathers' slaves but their sons. 

"And even if I was once in a state of slavery in the fullest sense of the term and had been a slave justly from the very beginning, what is to prevent me now," he continued, "from being just as free as anybody else, and you in your turn, on the contrary, even if you most indisputably were the son of free parents, from being an out-and‑out slave?" 

B. "For my part," rejoined the other, "I do not see how I am to become a slave when, in fact, I am free; but as for you, it is not impossible that you have become free by your master's having emancipated you."

A. "See here, my good fellow," said his antagonist, "would nobody get his freedom unless emancipated by his owner?"

B. "Why, how could anybody?" asked the other.

A. "In the same way that, when the Athenians after the battle of Chaeronea passed a vote to the effect that those slaves who would help them in the war should receive their freedom, if the war had continued and Philip had not made peace with them too soon, many of the slaves at Athens, or rather, practically all of them, would have been free without having been emancipated one at a time by their respective masters."

B. "Yes, let that be granted—if the state⁠ is going to free you by taking official action." 

A. "But what have you to say to this: Do you not think that I could liberate myself?"

B. "Yes, if you should raise the money somewhere to pay your master with." 

A. "That is not the method I mean, but the one by which Cyrus freed not only himself but also all the Persians, great host that they were, without paying down money to anyone or being set free by any master. Or do you not know that Cyrus⁠ was the vassal⁠ of Astyages and that when he got the power and decided that the time was ripe for action, he became both free and king of all Asia?"

B. "Granted; I know it. But what do you mean by saying that I might become a slave?"

A. "I mean that great numbers of men, we may suppose, who are freeborn sell themselves, so that they are slaves by contract, sometimes on no easy terms but the most severe imaginable." 

Epictetus, Fragments 1

A life entangled with Fortune is like a torrent. It is turbulent and muddy; hard to pass and masterful of mood: noisy and of brief continuance. 

Dio Chrysostom, On Slavery and Freedom 2.1

Recently, I assure you, I was present when two men were disputing at great length about slavery and freedom, not before judges or in the marketplace, but at their ease at home, taking a long time about it; and each of the two men had a considerable number of warm adherents. 

For they had been debating other questions before that, as is my impression; and the one who was worsted in the debate, being at a loss for arguments, became abusive, as often happens in such cases, and taunted the other with not being a freeman. Whereupon the first very gently smiled and said: 

A. "But how can you say that? Is it possible, my good friend, to know who is a slave, or who is free?" 

B. "Yes, it certainly is," replied the other. "I know at any rate that I myself am free and that all these men here are, but that you have no lot or share in freedom." 

At this some of those present laughed, and yet the first man was not one whit more abashed, but just as gallant cocks are aroused at the blow of their masters and take courage, so he too was aroused and took courage at the insult, and asked his opponent where he got his knowledge about the two of them. 

B. "Because," said he, "I know that my father is an Athenian, if any man is, while yours is the slave of so-and‑so," mentioning his name.

A. "According to this, then," said the first man, "what is to prevent me from anointing myself in the Cynosarges⁠ along with the bastards, if I really am the son of a freeborn mother—who is, perhaps, a citizen into the bargain—and of the father whom you mention? Have not many women who are citizens, embarrassed by the scarcity of eligible men, been got with child either by foreigners or by slaves, sometimes not knowing the fact, but sometimes also with full knowledge of it? And of the children thus begotten none is a slave, but only a non-Athenian." 

B. "Well, in your case," he rejoined, "I myself know that your mother is a slave in the same household as your father."

A. "Very well!" said the first man, "Do you know who your own mother is?" 

B. "Why certainly; a citizen born of citizens, who brought to her husband a pretty good dowry too." 

A. "Could you actually take your oath that you are the son of the father of whom she says that you are? Telemachus, you know, did not care at all to insist in support of Penelope, the daughter of Icarius, who was regarded as a very chaste woman, that she spoke the truth when she declared that Odysseus was his father.⁠ But you, not only in support of yourself and of your mother, would take oath apparently, if anyone should bid you, but in regard to any slave woman as to who the man was by whom she was got with child, such a slave woman as you say that my mother was. 

"Pray, does it seem to you impossible that she should have been got with child by some other man, a freeman, or even by her own master? Do not many Athenian men have intercourse with their maidservants, some of them secretly, but others quite openly? For surely it cannot be that every Greek is superior to Heracles, who did not think it beneath him to have intercourse even with the slave woman of Iardanus, who became the mother of the kings of Sardis.⁠ 

"And further, you do not believe, as it seems, that Clytemnestra, the daughter of Tyndareüs and the wife of Agamemnon, not only lived with Agamemnon, her own husband, but also, when he was away, had relations with Aegistheus, and that Aeropê, the wife of Atreus, accepted the advances of Thyestes, and that many other wives of distinguished and wealthy men in both ancient and modern times have had relations with other men and sometimes have had children by them? But she who you say was a maidservant was so scrupulously faithful to her own husband that she would not have had relations with any other man! 

"And further, in regard to yourself and me as well you asseverate that each of us was born of the woman who is reputed to be and is called his mother. And yet you might name many Athenians, and very prominent ones too, who turned out later not only not to have been the sons of the father but not even those of the mother to whom they were attributed, having been supposititious children of unknown origin who had been reared as sons. 

"And such incidents you yourself are constantly seeing exhibited and described by the writers of comedy and in tragedies, but nevertheless you go on in the same old way, making positive statements about yourself and about me, as if you knew for a certainty the circumstances of our birth and the identity of our parents. 

"Do you not know," he continued, "that the law permits anyone to bring an action for libel against the man who slanders without being able to adduce any clear proof of his statements?" 

B. And the other man replied, "Yes, I know that freeborn women often palm off other persons' children as their own on account of their childlessness, when they are unable to conceive children themselves, because each one wishes to keep her own husband and her home, while at the same time they do not lack the means to support the children; but in the case of slave women, on the other hand, some destroy the child before birth and others afterwards, if they can do so without being caught, and yet sometimes even with the connivance of their husbands, that they may not be involved in trouble by being compelled to raise children in addition to their enduring slavery." 

A. "O yes, certainly," the first man replied, "if you make an exception of the slave girl of Oeneus, the bastard son, as he alleged, of Pandion.⁠ For Oeneus' herdsman, who lived at Eleutherae, and that herdsman's wife, so far from exposing their own children, took up other people's children whom they found by the roadside, without having the least notion whose children they were, and reared them as their own, nor at any time afterwards were they willing to admit that they were not their own. But you, perhaps, would have abused both Zethus and Amphion before their identity became known, and would have taken solemn oath that the sons of Zeus were slaves." 

B. Then this opponent laughed very ironically and said: "Aha! Is it the tragic poets to whom you appeal as witnesses?" 

A. "Yes indeed," said the other man, "for the Greeks have confidence in them; for whomsoever these poets exhibit as heroes, to them you will find all Greeks offering sacrifice as heroes, and you may see with your eyes the shrines which the people have erected in their honor. 

"And in the same manner consider, if you please, the Phrygian woman, who was the slave of Priam, who reared Alexander on Mount Ida as her own son after taking him from her husband, who was a herdsman, and raised no objection to her rearing a child. And Telephus, the son of Augê and Heracles, they say was not reared by a woman but by a hind. Or do you think that a hind would have more compassion on a babe and desire to rear it than a human being would if she happened to be a slave? 

"Come now, in Heaven's name, if I should go so far as to admit to you that my parents are those whom you say they are, how can you know that they are slaves? Or were you really sure who their parents were, and are you ready to take your solemn oath in regard to each of them also that both were born of two slaves—they and their progenitors back to the very beginning — all of them?⁠ 

"For it is clear that if any member of a family is freeborn, it is no longer possible rightly to regard his descendants as slaves. And it is impossible, my good sir, that from all eternity, as the saying is, there should be any race of men in which there have not been countless numbers free and not fewer than these in number those who have been slaves; and indeed, tyrants and kings and prisoners and branded slaves and shopkeepers and cobblers and all the rest such as are found in the world of men, so that among them you have had experience of all the occupations, all the careers, all the fortunes, and all the mischances. 

"Or do you not know that the reason why the poets trace the families of so‑called heroes directly back to the gods is simply that the character in question may not be investigated further? And quite the majority of them men say are sprung from Zeus, in order that they may not have their kings and the founders of their cities and their eponymous heroes getting into predicaments of the kind that are regarded among men as disgraceful. 

"Consequently, if it really is with men as we and others wiser than we claim, you can have no greater share in freedom on the score of family than any one of those who are regarded as out-and‑out slaves—unless, of course, you too make haste to trace your own ancestry back to Zeus or Poseidon or Apollo—and I no greater share in slavery." 

IMAGE: Jean-Leon Gerome, Cave Canem (1881) 

Jacob's Ladder 10

James Tissot, Jacob's Dream (c. 1896) 

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel 21

Charles Foster, Jacob Wrestled with an Angel (1897) 

Netherlandish Proverbs 14

"To get the lid on the head." 

To end up taking responsibility. 

Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 5.1

Paradox 5: That the Wise Man Alone Is Free, and That Every Fool Is a Slave 
 
Here let a general be celebrated, or let him be honored with that title, or let him be thought worthy of it. But how or over what free man will he exercise control who cannot command his own passions? 
 
Let him in the first place bridle his lusts, let him despise pleasures, let him subdue anger, let him get the better of avarice, let him expunge the other stains on his character, and then when he himself is no longer in subjection to disgrace and degradation, the most savage tyrants, let him then, I say, begin to command others. 
 
But while he is subservient to these, not only is he not to be regarded as a general, but he is by no means to be considered as even a free man. 
 
This is nobly laid down by the most learned men, whose authority I should not make use of were I now addressing myself to an assembly of rustics. But as I speak to the wisest men, to whom these things are not new, why should I falsely pretend that all the application I have bestowed upon, this study has been lost? 
 
It has been said, then, by the most learned men, that none but the wise man is free. For what is liberty? The power of living as you please. 

—from Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 5 
 
We like to lay it on thick when we praise our glorious leaders, but no man is able to rule over others until he can first rule over himself. For all of his subtle skills at diplomacy, has the statesman tamed his own appetites? For all of his victories on the battlefield, has the general conquered his own vanity? The character on the inside will determine any greatness on the outside; there will no excellence in the public things if there is only mediocrity in the private things. 
 
Though I suspect my friends will roll their eyes, I think once again of George Washington, and how vastly he differed from Napoleon Bonaparte. Indeed, the teacher in me has already dreamed up a possible class discussion, in which we might compare two paintings: John Trumbull’s General George Washington Resigning His Commission and Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of Napoleon. Please bear with me, because it is my own peculiar way to make some sense of the contrast. 
 
While I cannot, of course, know the inner workings of such historical figures, I can still discern something of their motives through the consistency of their words and deeds. Nor should I distort them into being angels or demons, for the struggle between good and evil exists within all of us, in subtle ways that others will rarely see. Instead, I ask myself how their examples, for better or for worse, can guide me toward what is ideal. 
 
At the height of his personal influence, Washington wishes to surrender his authority, much like Cincinnatus. Behind him is an empty chair, as if it were a throne that must rightly go unoccupied. His country later elects him as its first President, and yet he refuses to run for a third term, knowing full well what becomes of a nation run by self-serving tyrants. 
 
At the height of his personal influence, Napoleon wishes to immortalize his authority, much like Julius Caesar. He has already crowned himself, in a perversion of tradition, and now proceeds to crown Josephine. Over the next decade, he bleeds his country dry in constant foreign wars, refusing until the bitter end to temper his ambitions or to swallow his pride. 
 
David was commissioned to produce his work by Napoleon himself, who was very specific about how he should be represented. I am more inclined to be impressed by the words of Trumbull, when he described the distinct moment he was hoping to capture: 
 
What a dazzling temptation was here to earthly ambition! Beloved by the military, venerated by the people, who was there to oppose the victorious chief, if he had chosen to retain that power, which he had so long held with universal approbation? The Caesars, the Cromwells, the Napoleons, yielded to the charm of earthly ambition, and betrayed their country; but Washington aspired to loftier, imperishable glory—to that glory which virtue alone can give, and which no power, no effort, no time, can ever take away or diminish.
 
You must forgive me when I say that I do not find these words to be exaggerated. Washington died in his bed at Mount Vernon, and Napoleon died in exile on Saint Helena, but their ultimate dispositions were far more important than their final locations. One strove to become free in his virtues, while the other remained enslaved to his vices. 

—Reflection written in 5/1999 

IMAGES: 

John Trumbull, General George Washington Resigning His Commission (1824) 

Jacques-Louis David, The Coronation of Napoleon (1807) 

Abandoned Places 68

IMAGE by Brett Patman 

Nature 70

IMAGE by Jono Allen 

Stockdale on Stoicism 56

Given their charge, the breaking of human will, all political prisons are similar. That is to say, neither what goes on there, nor how their prey grapple with it, appreciably change, century in and century out: Cervantes', Dostoevsky’s, and my accounts are all the same. 

At the heart of the organization is a master extortionist or commissar, like Gletkin of Darkness At Noon and the Cat of In Love and War. The same methods are used now as were used in the Middle Ages. 

They don’t use drugs; they want to impose guilt; they want authenticity with no easy outs or plausible denials. 

They don’t use brainwashing; there is no such thing. They do use pain, administered by a few selected torture guards. They also use isolation. 

Such prisons use a tripwire system of multitudinous regulations, some of which many inmates inadvertently break because of their number and ambiguity, and other regulations which almost all inmates eventually intentionally break because their requirements defy human nature. In particular, there was a regulation for us never to communicate in any way with another American prisoner. 

The idea in political prisons is to get prisoners to break regulations. Since any violation is considered, prima facie, moral turpitude or "evidence of ingratitude," it is used as justification to recycle the inmate through the torture meat grinder. From that, the commissars obtain, on a production line basis: confessions, apologies, and atonements. 

Seasoned veterans of these regimes realize that pain and isolation, to say nothing of other deprivations and miseries, are mere accelerators to the major pincers of this will-breaking machine: imposed fear and guilt. 

"Destabilize with fear, polarize with guilt," say the graffiti on the cave walls of the alchemists of the Middle Ages who worked on psychic transformation under pressure. In fact, the total regime comes to seem to its sufferers like an alchemist’s hermetically sealed, pressurized, and heated retort, in which they are perpetually stalked, hounded down, and harpooned with barbs of fear and guilt. 

—from James B. Stockdale, Epictetus' Enchiridion: Conflict and Character 

IMAGE: Jacek Malczewski, The Prisoners (1883) 

Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 4.3

You most frantic of all madmen, will you never look around you? Will you never consider what you say, or what you do? Do you not know that exile is the penalty of guilt: but that the journey I set out upon was undertaken by me in consequence of the most illustrious exploits performed by me? 
 
All the criminals, all the profligates, of whom you avow yourself the leader, and on whom our laws pronounce the sentence of banishment, are exiles, even though they have not changed their locality. 
 
At the time when all our laws doom you to banishment, will you not be an exile? Is not the man an enemy who carries about him offensive weapons? A cutthroat belonging to you was taken near the senate house. Who has murdered a man? You have murdered many. Who is an incendiary? You; for with your own hand you set fire to the temple of the nymphs. Who violated the temples? You pitched your camp in the forum. 
 
But what do I talk of well-known laws, all which doom you to exile; for your most intimate friend carried through a bill with reference to you, by which you were condemned to be banished, if it was found that you had presented yourself at the mysteries of the goddess Bona; and you are even accustomed to boast that you did so. 
 
As therefore you have by so many laws been doomed to banishment, how is it that you do not shrink from the designation of exile? You say you are still at Rome, and that you were present at the mysteries too: but a man will not be free of the place where he may be, if he cannot be there with the sanction of the laws. 

—from Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 4 
 
I regularly find myself tempted to deeply distrust all authority and to bitterly resent being an outcast, until I remind myself why those who coerce are themselves lawless, whether they come from the right or from the left, and that those who exclude others are themselves exiles, regardless of their deference to this or that tribe. Whatever is lawful proceeds from Nature, and whoever denies Nature has already exiled himself from the human fellowship. 
 
Without the rule of reason, in which all of us must freely share, those vainglorious schemes will merely descend into madness. Be on your guard against those who inflame the passions, and yet they are unable to offer a sound argument in defense of their manifestos. 
 
When was the last time you heard a politician present a syllogism, or a preacher define his terms? They confidently speak of what is “good”, or cry out for “justice”, or stand with the “community”, while never establishing their first principles. Do not be surprised, therefore, when they ask you to lie, to slander, and to commit violence in the name of their causes. 
 
I have felt wronged by the man who claims to be in charge, all the while forgetting how he can do me no real harm, and the greatest evil is the one he inflicts upon himself. His power over me will be as great or as small as I allow it to be. 
 
I have felt banished from a place I consider my home, all the while forgetting how my true shelter is in my state of mind, not in any one place. A house is only as good or as bad as the character of the man who lives within its walls. 
 
The law of what is true, good, and beautiful is bigger than any one person, even as it includes the dignity of every single person, without exception. Though it is my privilege to discover what is lawful, it is arrogance to believe that I can create it, for I am not a measure, but a thing measured, not the Creator, but a creature. It is no accident that the wicked man likes to hide behind an unintelligible relativism, which clouds and distorts an objective sense of meaning and purpose. 
 
I can’t blame Cicero for getting a little hot under the collar about Clodius, and yet without the benefit of an informed conscience, he would become just as brutal as his opponent. Cicero shows a remarkable restraint in not simply murdering the rascal, a self-control perhaps born of a pity for such ignorance. The Stoic, and any man of goodwill, knows why succumbing to the vices is like suffering from a moral disease. 

—Reflection written in 5/1999 

IMAGE: Frederick Dielman, Law (1896) 

Henry David Thoreau 15

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. 

—from Henry David Thoreau, Journals (1847) 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 20

A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befall him must be from himself. He only can do himself any good or any harm. Nothing can be given to him or can taken from him but always there is a compensation. 

There is a correspondence between the human soul and everything that exists in the world; more properly, everything that is known to man. Instead of studying things without the principles of them, all may be penetrated unto with him. Every act puts the agent in a new position. 

The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live the future as described to him but to live the real future to the real present. The highest revelation is that God is in every man. 

—from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (8 September, 1833) 

IMAGE: Tintoretto, Christ Washing the Disciples' Feet (1549) 

Dhammapada 418

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who has left what gives pleasure and what gives pain, who is cool, and free from all germs of renewed life, the hero who has conquered all the worlds. 

IMAGE: William Degouve de Nuncques, Nocturn in the Parc Royal, Brussels (1897) 

Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 4.2

But see how much I despised the shafts of your villainy. That you aimed your villainous wrongs at me, I was always aware; but that they reached me I never thought. It is true, you might think that somewhat belonging to me was tumbling down or consuming, when you were demolishing my walls, and applying your detestable torches to the roofs of my houses. 
 
But neither I nor any man can call that our own which can be taken away, plundered, or lost. Could you have robbed me of my godlike constancy of mind, of my application, of my vigilance, and of those measures through which, to your confusion, the republic now exists; could you have abolished the eternal memory of this lasting service; far more, had you robbed me of that soul from which these designs emanated; then, indeed, I should have confessed that I had received an injury. 
 
But as you neither did nor could do this, your persecution rendered my return glorious, but not my departure miserable. I, therefore, was always a citizen of Rome, but especially at the time when the senate charged foreign nations with my preservation as the best of her citizens. 
 
As to you, you are at this time no citizen, unless the same person can be at once a citizen and an enemy. Can you distinguish a citizen from an enemy by the accidents of nature and place, and not by its affections and actions? 
 
You have perpetrated a massacre in the forum, and occupied the temples with bands of armed ruffians; you have set on fire the temples of the gods and the houses of private citizens. 
 
If you are a citizen, in what sense was Spartacus an enemy? Can you be a citizen, through whom, for a time, the state had no existence? And do you apply to me your own designation, when all mankind thought that on my departure Rome herself was gone into exile? 

—from Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes 4 
 
Once a man binds himself to wickedness, he wishes to live his life as a contradiction, and what could be more insane than to repudiate his very nature? He demands to receive, though he will not bow to give. He expects to be adored, yet he never offers love. He considers himself an end, while he treats others as means. His entire outlook is a paradox: rules for thee, but not for me. 
 
He defines his worth by everything except his own character, and so he assumes that his own benefit must come at someone else’s expense. This is why he is so full of hatred, because his desire to acquire and to consume knows no bounds. Success is viewed as a series of conflicts, in which cooperation will only be the temporary mask for a cunning exploitation. 
 
A fellow like Clodius believes himself the victor when he has destroyed an enemy’s property, rank, and privileges, but he does not understand how a genuine liberty is in the dignity of the spirit, not from the circumstances of the flesh. All the scoundrel has managed is to diminish his own excellence, even as he unwittingly offers others an opportunity to stand firmer in their convictions. 
 
I do not think that Cicero expects this to come easily, but what a triumph it is to not become like your oppressor! Yes, while it is frustrating to lose one’s money, and painful to see one’s house burned to the ground, and downright agonizing to be exiled from one’s country, the bully can never seize another man’s integrity, the only unassailable fortress he can ever hold. Cicero did not have to be a card-carrying Stoic to understand this timeless truth. 
 
One reason I try to stay clear of any contemporary political bickering is that such an animosity is itself a blatant betrayal of precisely what it means to be a citizen. Where there is no love of neighbor, there can be no loyalty to the state, and hating an enemy, whatever the color of his flag, is no excuse for abandoning my humanity. Do not let the demagogues trick you into believing that the good of the fashionable many requires the destruction of the inconvenient few. 
 
Distinguish between the those who define their honor through power and those who define their honor through service. I think it no exaggeration to say that the rise or fall of whole civilizations depends upon the health of our personal virtues. 

—Reflection written in 5/1999 

IMAGE: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Destruction (1836) 

The Liberation

Jean Delville, The Liberation (1936) 

The Ideas

Jean Delville, The Ideas (1934)