“That you may know”, he says, “that these truths from which tranquility and peace of mind come to men are not false—take my books and you shall find that what gives me peace of mind is true and in harmony with Nature.”
O great good fortune! O great benefactor, who shows us the way! And yet—though all men have raised temples and altars to Triptolemus, for teaching us the cultivation of the crops, yet what man of you ever set up an altar in honor of him who found the truth and brought it to light and published it among all men—not the truth of mere living, but the truth that leads to right living?
Whoever dedicated a shrine or an image for this gift, or worships God for it? I say shall we, who offer sacrifices because the gods gave us wheat or the vine, never give thanks to God that they produced this manner of fruit in the mind of men, whereby they were to show us the true way of happiness?
As with any other person, what Chrysippus can offer will be in the content of character, far more than in the eloquence of books; what is written will only be as good as what can be done.
I regularly hear people praised and admired for their wealth and fame, and yet the only influence that ultimately matters is an example that inspires moral progress. If it is really true, it will show itself in a life of understanding and tranquility.
We might scoff at the worship of the old Greek and Roman, gods, convinced that we have no more need for such superstitions in our enlightened age, and yet we still raise temples and altars to the things we revere, only under different guises. Our skyscrapers honor finance and banking, out sports stadiums glorify entertainment, and our shopping malls are beacons of consumption.
I will have to look very hard to find so much time and effort dedicated to the praise of wisdom, or justice, or compassion. It is still much the same, where the money and the attention flow to what gratifies the gut, not to what glorifies the heart and the mind.
I had to bite my tongue the other day, as I listened to a dean say a prayer before a faculty meeting, where he at length thanked God for the success of the recent fundraising drive. Of all the things to be grateful for, this should be the one I am asked to get most excited about? I catch myself feeling discouraged, and I try to remind myself that I can still choose to think and to live very differently.
The measures are all wrong, not because people wish to be deliberately wicked, but because they grow confused about the superior and the inferior, the ends and the means, the necessary and the contingent. Does it come as any surprise, when we honestly observe the popular pantheon?
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