Hypolympia Part 7

PALLAS.

I quite see that it has made your position a more academic one than you could wish.

aeSCULAPIUS.

It has made it purely academic, and indeed, Pallas, if you will reflect upon it, the very existence of a physician in a social system which is eternally protected against every species of bodily disturbance borders upon the ridiculous.

PALLAS.

It would interest me to know whether in our old home you were conscious of this incongruity, of this lack of harmony between your science and your occasions of using it.

aeSCULAPIUS.

No; I think not. I was satisfied in the possession of exact knowledge, and not directly aware of the charm of application. It is the result, no doubt, of this resignation of immortality which has startled and alarmed us all so much----

PALLAS.

Me, aesculapius, it has neither alarmed nor startled.

aeSCULAPIUS.

I mean that while we were beyond the dread of any attack, the pleasure of reb.u.t.ting such attack was unknown to us. I have divined, since our misfortunes, that disease itself may bring an excitement with it not all unallied to pleasure.... You smile, Euterpe, but I mean even for the sufferer. There is more in disease than the mere pang and languishment. There is the sense of alleviation, the cessation of the throb, the resuming glitter in the eye, the restoration of cheerfulness and appet.i.te. These, Pallas, are qualities which are indissolubly identified with pain and decay, and which therefore--if we rightly consider--were wholly excluded from our experience. In Olympus we never brightened, for we never flagged; we never waited for a pang to subside, nor felt it throbbing less and less poignantly, nor, as if we were watching an enemy from a distance, hugged ourselves in a breathless ecstasy as it faded altogether; this exquisite experience was unknown to us, for we never endured the pang.

EUTERPE.

You make me eager for an illness. What shall it be? Prescribe one for me. I am ignorant even of the names of the princ.i.p.al maladies.

Let it be a not unbecoming one.

aeSCULAPIUS.

Ah! no, Euterpe. Your mind still runs in the channel of your lost impermeability. Till now, you might fling yourself from the crags of Tartarus, or float, like a trail of water-plants, on the long, blown flood of the altar-flame, and yet take no hurt, being imperishable. But now, part of your hourly occupation, part of your faith, your hope, your duty, must be to preserve your body against the inroads of decay.

EUTERPE.

You present us with a tedious conception of our new existence, surely.

aeSCULAPIUS.

Why should it be tedious? There was tedium, rather, in the possession of bodies as durable as metal, as renewable as wax, as insensitive as water. In the fiercest onset of the pa.s.sions, prolonged to satiety, there was always an element of the unreal.

What is pleasure, if the strain of it is followed by no fatigue; what the delicacy of taste, if we can eat like caverns and drink like conduits without being vexed by the slightest inconvenience?

You will discover that one of the acutest enjoyments of the mortal state will be found to consist in guarding against suffering. If you are provided with balloons attached to all your members, you float upon the sea with indifference. It is the certainty that you will drown if you do not swim which gives zest to the exercise. I climb along yonder jutting cornice of the cliff with eagerness, and pluck my simples with a hand that trembles more from joy than fear, precisely because the strain of balancing the nerves, and the certainty of suffering as the result of carelessness, knit my sensations together into an exaltation which is not exactly pleasure, perhaps, but which is not to be distinguished from it in its exciting properties.

PALLAS.

Is life, then, to resolve itself for us into a chain of exhilarating pangs?

aeSCULAPIUS.

Life will now be for you, for all of us, a perpetual combat with a brine that half supports, half drags us under; a continual creeping and balancing on a chamois path around the forehead of a precipice.

A headache will be the breaking of a twig, a fever a stone that gives way beneath your foot, to lose the use of an organ will be to let the alpenstock slip out of your starting fingers. And the excitement, and be sure the happiness, of existence will be to protract the struggle as long as possible, to push as far as you can along the dwindling path, to keep the supports and the alleviations of your labour about you as skilfully as you can, and in the fuss and business of the little momentary episodes of climbing to forget as long and as fully as may be the final and absolutely unavoidable plunge. [_A pause, during which_ EUTERPE _sinks upon the green sward_.]

aeSCULAPIUS.

I have unfolded before you a scheme of philosophical activity. Are you not gratified?

PALLAS.

Euterpe will learn to be gratified, aesculapius, but she had not reflected upon the plunge. If she will take my counsel, she will continue to avoid doing so. [EUTERPE _rises, and approaches_ PALLAS, _who continues, to_ aeSCULAPIUS.] I am with you in recommending to her a constant consideration of the momentary episodes of health. And now let us detain you no longer from the marchanteas.

EUTERPE.

But pray recollect that they grow where the rocks are both slippery and shelving.

[_Exit_ aeSCULAPIUS. EUTERPE _sinks again upon the gra.s.s, with her face in her hands, and lies there motionless_. PALLAS _walks up and down, in growing emotion, and at length breaks forth in soliloquy_.]

PALLAS.

Higher than this dull circle of the sense-- Shrewd though its pulsing sharp reminders be, With ceaseless fairy blows that ring and wake The anvil of the brain--I rather choose To lift mine eyes and pierce The long transparent bar that floats above, And hides, or feigns to hide, the choiring stars, And dulls, or faintly dulls, the fiery sun, And lacquers all the gla.s.sy sky with gold.

For so the strain that makes this mortal life Irksome or squalid, chains that bind us down, Rust on those chains which soils the reddening skin, Pa.s.ses; and in that concentrated calm, And in that pure concinnity of soul, And in that heart that almost fails to beat, I read a faint beat.i.tude, and dream I walk once more upon the roof of Heaven, And feel all knowledge, all capacity For sovereign thought, all intellectual joy, Blow on me, like fluttering and like dancing winds.

We are fallen, fallen!...

And yet a nameless mirth, flooding my veins, And yet a sense of limpid happiness And buoyancy and anxious fond desire Quicken my being. It is much to see The perfected geography of thought Spread out before the gorged intelligence, A map from further detail long absolved.

But ah! when we have tasted the delight Of toilsome apprehension, how return To that satiety of mental ease Where all is known because it merely is?

Nay, here the joy will be to learn and learn, To learn in error and correct in pain, To learn through effort and with ease forget, Building of rough and slippery stones a House, Long schemed, and falling from us, and at the last Imperfect. Knowledge not the aim, so much As pleasure in the toil that leads to knowledge, We shall build, although the house before our eyes Crumble, and we shall gladden in the toil Although it never leads to habitation-- Building our goal, though never a fabric rise.

V

[_The glen, down which a limpid and murmuring brook descends, with numerous tiny cascades and pools. Beside one of the latter, underneath a great beech-tree, and sitting on the root of it_, APHRODITE, _alone. Enter from below, concealed at first by the undergrowth_, ARES. _It is mid-day._]

APHRODITE [_to herself_].

Here he comes at last, and from the opposite direction.... No!

that cannot be Phoebus.... Ah! it is you, then!

ARES.

Is it possible? Your Majesty--and alone!

APHRODITE.

Phoebus offered me the rustic entertainment of gathering wild raspberries. We found some at length, and regaled ourselves. I wished for more, and Phoebus, with his usual gallantry, wandered dreamily away into the forest on the quest. He has evidently lost his way. I sat me down on this tree and waited.

ARES.

Surely it is the first time that you were ever abroad unattended.

I am amazed at the carelessness of Phoebus. Aphrodite--without an attendant!