"Many, thou son of Philip, are the vices and corrupting influences that in all circumstances beget wretched man, and they are well-nigh more numerous than tongue can tell. For in truth, as the poet says,
No word is there so fraught with fear to speak,
Nor sorrow, nor calamity god-sent,
But mortal man might bear the weight thereof.
"Now as there are, roughly speaking, three prevailing types of lives which the majority usually adopt, not after thoughtful consideration and testing, I assure you, but because they are carried away by chance and thoughtless impulse, we must affirm that there is just the same number of spirits whom the great mass of foolish humanity follows and serves—some men one spirit and some another—just as a wicked and wanton troop follows a wicked and frenzied leader.
"Of these types of lives which I have mentioned, the first is luxurious and self-indulgent as regards bodily pleasures, the second, in its turn, is acquisitive and avaricious, while the third is more conspicuous and more disordered than the other two—I mean the one that loves honor and glory—and it manifests a more evident and violent disorder or frenzy, deluding itself into believing that it is enamored of some noble ideal.
"Therefore, come, let us imitate clever artists. They put the impress of their thought and art upon practically everything, representing not only the various gods in human forms but everything else as well. Sometimes they paint rivers in the likeness of men and springs in certain feminine shapes, yes, and islands and cities and well-nigh everything else, like Homer, who boldly represented the Scamander as speaking beneath his flood, and though they cannot give speech to their figures, nevertheless do give them forms and symbols appropriate to their nature, as, for example, their river gods recline, usually naked, and wear long flowing beards and on their heads crowns of tamarisk or rushes.
"Let us then show ourselves to be no whit worse or less competent in the field of discourse than they in their several arts as we mould and depict the characters of the three spirits of the three lives, therein displaying an accomplishment the reverse of and complementary to the skill and prophetic power of the physiognomists, as they call them.
"These men can determine and announce a man's character from his shape and appearance; while we propose to draw from a man's habits and acts, a type and shape that will match the physiognomist's work—that is, if we shall succeed in getting hold rather of the average and lower types.
"Since our purpose is to show the absurdity existing in human lives, there is no impropriety or objection to our being seen imitating poets or artists or, if need be, priests of purification and to our striving to furnish illustrations and examples from every source, in the hope of being able to win souls from evil, delusion, and wicked desires and to lead them to love virtue and to long for a better life; or else we might follow the practice of some of those who deal with initiations and rites of purification, who appease the wrath of Hecate and undertake to make a person sound, and then before the cleansing process, as I understand, set forth and point to the many and various visions that, as they claim, the goddess sends when angry.
"Well, then, the avaricious spirit craves gold, silver, lands, cattle, blocks of houses, and every kind of possession. Would it not be represented by a good artist as downcast and gloomy of appearance, humble and mean of dress—aye, as squalid and ragged, loving neither children nor parents nor native land, and recognizing no kinship but that of money, and considering the gods as nothing more than that which reveals to him many vast treasures or the deaths of certain kinsfolk and connections from whom he might inherit, regarding our holy festivals as sheer loss and useless expense, never laughing or smiling, eyeing all with suspicion and thinking them dangerous, distrusting everybody, having a rapacious look, ever twitching his fingers as he computes his own property, I take it, or that of someone else—a spirit not only without appreciation or capacity for any other thing, but scoffing at education and literature except when they have to do with estimates and contracts, the still blinder lover of wealth, which is rightly described and portrayed as blind; mad about every kind of possession and thinking that nothing should be thrown away; unlike the magnetic stone, which they say attracts iron to itself, but amassing copper and lead as well, yes, even sand and rock if anyone gives them, and everywhere and in almost every case regarding possession as more profitable and better than non-possession.
"He is most frantic and eager, however, to get money, simply because success here is quickest and cheapest, since money goes on piling up day and night and outstrips, I ween, the circuits of the moon. He recks naught of dislike, hate, and curses and, besides, holds that while other kinds of possessions may be pretty baubles wherewith to amuse oneself, money, to put it succinctly, is the very essence of wealth.
"This, therefore, is what he seeks and pursues from any and every source, never concerning himself at all to ask whether it is acquired by shameful or by unjust means, except insofar as, observing the punishments meted out to footpads, he lets cowardice get the better of him and becomes cautious.
"For he has the soul of a worthless cur, that snatches up things when it expects not to be noticed, and looks on other morsels with longing eyes but keeps away from them, though reluctantly, because the guards are by. So let him be a man insignificant in appearance, servile, unsleeping, never smiling, ever quarreling and fighting with someone, very much like a pander, who in garb as well as in character is shameless and niggardly, dressed in a colored mantle, the finery of one of his harlots.
"A foul and loathsome spirit is this, for he brings every possible insult and shame upon his own friends and comrades, or, rather, his slaves and underlings, whether he find them in the garb of private citizens or in that of royalty. Or is it not plain to see that many who are called kings are only traders, tax-gatherers, and keepers of brothels? Shall we assert that Dromon and Sarambus, because they keep shops in Athens and are called shopkeepers by the Athenians, come fairly by the name, but that the elder Darius, who kept a shop in Babylon and in Susa, and whom the Persians still to this day call a shopkeeper, has not deserved this name
"Moreover, there is one peculiarity about this spirit, not shared by the others: although he sometimes rules and masters the soul, yet sometimes he seems to be compliant, the reason being that wealth is the handmaid and the willing ministrant to every appetite and interest. I, however, am now speaking of the spirit that takes the lead himself and dominates the faculties of his unhappy possessor; he has neither pleasure nor glory as the motive for the acquisition of wealth, and does not intend to spend or to use what he has gotten together, but keeps his wealth out of circulation and useless, actually locked up in secret and sunless vaults."
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