Now, if the effect of such discourses was, as I imagine, to deter his hearers from the paths of quackery and false-seeming, so I am sure that language like the following was calculated to stimulate his followers to practice self-control and endurance: self-control in the matters of eating, drinking, sleeping, and the cravings of lust; endurance of cold and heat and toil and pain. He had noticed the undue license which one of his acquaintances allowed himself in all such matters. Accordingly he thus addressed him:
"Tell me, Aristippus," Socrates said, "supposing you had two children entrusted to you to educate, one of them must be brought up with an aptitude for government, and the other without the faintest propensity to rule—how would you educate them? What do you say? Shall we begin our inquiry from the beginning, as it were, with the bare elements of food and nutriment?"
Aristippus: "Yes, food to begin with, by all means, being a first principle, without which there is no man living but would perish."
Socrates: "Well, then, we may expect, may we not, that a desire to grasp food at certain seasons will exhibit itself in both the children?"
Aristippus: "It is to be expected."
Socrates: "Which, then, of the two must be trained, of his own free will, to prosecute a pressing business rather than gratify the belly?"
Aristippus: "No doubt the one who is being trained to govern, if we would not have affairs of state neglected during his government."
Socrates: "And the same pupil must be furnished with a power of holding out against thirst also when the craving to quench it comes upon him?"
Aristippus: "Certainly he must."
Socrates: "And on which of the two shall we confer such self-control in regard to sleep as shall enable him to rest late and rise early, or keep vigil, if the need arise?"
Aristippus: "To the same one of the two must be given that endurance also."
Socrates: "Well, and a continence in regard to matters sexual so great that nothing of the sort shall prevent him from doing his duty? Which of them claims that?"
Aristippus: "The same one of the pair again."
Socrates: "Well, and on which of the two shall be bestowed, as a further gift, the voluntary resolution to face toils rather than turn and flee from them?"
Aristippus: "This, too, belongs of right to him who is being trained for government."
Socrates: "Well, and to which of them will it better accord to be taught all knowledge necessary towards the mastery of antagonists?"
Aristippus: "To our future ruler certainly, for without these parts of learning all his other capacities will be merely waste."
Socrates: "Will not a man so educated be less liable to be entrapped by rival powers, and so escape a common fate of living creatures, some of which, as we all know, are hooked through their own greediness, and often even in spite of a native shyness; but through appetite for food they are drawn towards the bait, and are caught; while others are similarly ensnared by drink?"
Aristippus: "Undoubtedly."
Socrates: "And others again are victims of amorous heat, as quails, for instance, or partridges, which, at the cry of the hen-bird, with lust and expectation of such joys grow wild, and lose their power of computing dangers: on they rush, and fall into the snare of the hunter?"
Aristippus assented.
Socrates: "And would it not seem to be a base thing for a man to be affected like the silliest bird or beast? As when the adulterer invades the innermost sanctum of the house, though he is well aware of the risks which his crime involves, the formidable penalties of the law, the danger of being caught in the toils, and then suffering the direst contumely. Considering all the hideous penalties which hang over the adulterer's head, considering also the many means at hand to release him from the thraldom of his passion, that a man should so drive headlong on to the quicksands of perdition —what are we to say of such frenzy? The wretch who can so behave must surely be tormented by an evil spirit?"
Aristippus: "So it strikes me."
Socrates: "And does it not strike you as a sign of strange indifference that, whereas the greater number of the indispensable affairs of men, as for instance, those of war and agriculture, and more than half the rest, need to be conducted under the broad canopy of heaven, yet the majority of men are quite untrained to wrestle with cold and heat?"
Aristippus again assented.
Socrates: "And do you not agree that he who is destined to rule must train himself to bear these things lightly?"
Aristippus: "Most certainly."
Socrates: "And while we rank those who are self-disciplined in all these matters among persons fit to rule, we are bound to place those incapable of such conduct in the category of persons without any pretension whatsoever to be rulers?"
Aristippus: "I assent."
Socrates: "Well, then, since you know the rank peculiar to either section of mankind, did it ever strike you to consider to which of the two you are best entitled to belong?"
"Yes I have," replied Aristippus. "I do not dream for a moment of ranking myself in the class of those who wish to rule. In fact, considering how serious a business it is to cater for one's own private needs, I look upon it as the mark of a fool not to be content with that, but to further saddle oneself with the duty of providing the rest of the community with whatever they may be pleased to want. That, at the cost of much personal enjoyment, a man should put himself at the head of a state, and then, if he fail to carry through every jot and tittle of that state's desire, be held to criminal account, does seem to me the very extravagance of folly.
"Why, bless me! States claim to treat their rulers precisely as I treat my domestic slaves. I expect my attendants to furnish me with an abundance of necessaries, but not to lay a finger on one of them themselves. So these states regard it as the duty of a ruler to provide them with all the good things imaginable, but to keep his own hands off them all the while. So then, for my part, if anybody desires to have a heap of pother himself, and be a nuisance to the rest of the world, I will educate him in the manner suggested, and he shall take his place among those who are fit to rule; but for myself, I beg to be enrolled amongst those who wish to spend their days as easily and pleasantly as possible."
Socrates: "Shall we then at this point turn and inquire which of the two are likely to lead the pleasanter life, the rulers or the ruled?"
Aristippus: "By all means let us do so."
Socrates: "To begin then with the nations and races known to ourselves. In Asia the Persians are the rulers, while the Syrians, Phrygians, Lydians are ruled; and in Europe we find the Scythians ruling, and the Maeotians being ruled. In Africa the Carthaginians are rulers, the Libyans ruled. Which of these two sets respectively leads the happier life, in your opinion? Or, to come nearer home—you are yourself a Hellene—which among Hellenes enjoy the happier existence, think you, the dominant or the subject states?"
"No, I would have you to understand," exclaimed Aristippus, "that I am just as far from placing myself in the ranks of slavery; there is, I take it, a middle path between the two which it is my ambition to tread, avoiding rule and slavery alike; it lies through freedom—the high road which leads to happiness."
Socrates: "True, if only your path could avoid human beings, as it avoids rule and slavery, there would be something in what you say. But being placed as you are amidst human beings, if you purpose neither to rule nor to be ruled, and do not mean to dance attendance, if you can help it, on those who rule, you must surely see that the stronger have an art to seat the weaker on the stool of repentance both in public and in private, and to treat them as slaves.
"I daresay you have not failed to note this common case: a set of people has sown and planted, whereupon in comes another set and cuts their corn and fells their fruit-trees, and in every way lays siege to them because, though weaker, they refuse to pay them proper court, until at length they are persuaded to accept slavery rather than war against their betters. And in private life also, you will bear me out, the brave and powerful are known to reduce the helpless and cowardly to bondage, and to make no small profit out of their victims."
Aristippus: "Yes, but I must tell you I have a simple remedy against all such misadventures. I do not confine myself to any single civil community. I roam the wide world a foreigner."
Socrates: "Well, now, that is a masterly stroke, upon my word! Of course, ever since the decease of Sinis, and Sciron, and Procrustes, foreign travelers have had an easy time of it. But still, if I bethink me, even in these modern days the members of free communities do pass laws in their respective countries for self-protection against wrong-doing. Over and above their personal connections, they provide themselves with a host of friends; they gird their cities about with walls and battlements; they collect armaments to ward off evil-doers; and to make security doubly sure, they furnish themselves with allies from foreign states. In spite of all which defensive machinery these same free citizens do occasionally fall victims to injustice.
"But you, who are without any of these aids; you, who pass half your days on the high roads where iniquity is rife; you, who, into whatever city you enter, are less than the least of its free members, and moreover are just the sort of person whom any one bent on mischief would single out for attack—yet you, with your foreigner's passport, are to be exempt from injury?
"So you flatter yourself. And why? Will the state authorities cause proclamation to be made on your behalf: 'The person of this man Aristippus is secure; let his going out and his coming in be free from danger'? Is that the ground of your confidence? Or do you rather rest secure in the consciousness that you would prove such a slave as no master would care to keep? For who would care to have in his house a fellow with so slight a disposition to work and so strong a propensity to extravagance?
"Suppose we stop and consider that very point: how do masters deal with that sort of domestic? If I am not mistaken, they chastise his wantonness by starvation; they balk his thieving tendencies by bars and bolts where there is anything to steal; they hinder him from running away by bonds and imprisonment; they drive the sluggishness out of him with the lash. Is it not so? Or how do you proceed when you discover the like tendency in one of your domestics?"
Aristippus: "I correct them with all the plagues, until I force them to serve me properly. But, Socrates, to return to your pupil educated in the royal art, which, if I mistake not, you hold to be happiness: how, may I ask, will he be better off than others who lie in evil case, in spite of themselves, simply because they suffer perforce, but in his case the hunger and the thirst, the cold shivers and the lying awake at nights, with all the changes he will ring on pain, are of his own choosing?
"For my part I cannot see what difference it makes, provided it is one and the same bare back which receives the stripes, whether the whipping be self-appointed or unasked for; nor indeed does it concern my body in general, provided it be my body, whether I am beleaguered by a whole armament of such evils of my own will or against my will—except only for the folly which attaches to self-appointed suffering."
Socrates: "What, Aristippus, does it not seem to you that, as regards such matters, there is all the difference between voluntary and involuntary suffering, in that he who starves of his own accord can eat when he chooses, and he who thirsts of his own free will can drink, and so for the rest; but he who suffers in these ways perforce cannot desist from the suffering when the humor takes him?
"Again, he who suffers hardship voluntarily, gaily confronts his troubles, being buoyed on hope—just as a hunter in pursuit of wild beasts, through hope of capturing his quarry, finds toil a pleasure—and these are but prizes of little worth in return for their labors; but what shall we say of their reward who toil to obtain to themselves good friends, or to subdue their enemies, or that through strength of body and soul they may administer their households well, befriend their friends, and benefit the land which gave them birth? Must we not suppose that these too will take their sorrows lightly, looking to these high ends? Must we not suppose that they too will gaily confront existence, who have to support them not only their conscious virtue, but the praise and admiration of the world?
And once more, habits of indolence, along with the fleeting pleasures of the moment, are incapable, as gymnastic trainers say, of setting up a good habit of body, or of implanting in the soul any knowledge worthy of account; whereas by painstaking endeavor in the pursuit of high and noble deeds, as good men tell us, through endurance we shall in the end attain the goal. . . . "
—from Xenophon, Memorabilia 2.1
No comments:
Post a Comment