Phaethon: Loose Thoughts For Loose Thinkers Part 5

P. "I know none."

S. "But may it not be possible that we, not having been initiated, like Alcibiades, into the Babylonian mysteries, have somewhat mistaken the meaning of that expression, 'spirit of truth'? For truth we defined to be 'facts as they are.' The spirit of truth then should mean, should it not, the spirit of facts as they are?"

P. "It should."

S. "But what shall we say that this expression, in its turn, means?

The spirit which makes facts as they are?"

A. "Surely not. That would be the supreme Demiurgus himself."

S. "Of whom you were not speaking, when you spoke of the spirit of truth?"

A. "Certainly not. I was speaking of a spirit in man."

S. "And belonging to him?"

A. "Yes."

S. "And doing-what, with regard to facts as they are? for this is just the thing which puzzles me."

A. "Telling facts as they are."

S. "Without seeing them as they are?"

A. "How you bore one! of course not. It sees facts as they are, and therefore tells them."

S. "But perhaps it might see them as they are, and find it expedient, being of the same temperament as I, to hold its tongue about them? Would it then be still the spirit of truth?"

A. "It would, of course."

S. "The man then who possesses the spirit of truth will see facts as they are?"

A. "He will."

S. "And conversely?"

A. "Yes."

S. "But if he sees anything only as it seems to him, and is not in fact, he will not, with regard to that thing, see it by the spirit of truth?"

A. "I suppose not."

S. "Neither then will he be able to speak of it by the spirit of truth."

A. "Why?"

S. "Because, by what we agreed before, it will not be there to speak of, my wondrous friend. For it appeared to us, if I recollect right, that facts can only exist as they are, and not as they are not, and that therefore the spirit of truth had nothing to do with any facts but those which are."

"But," I interrupted, "O dear Socrates, I fear much that if the spirit of truth be such as this, it must be beyond the reach of man."

S. "Why then?"

P. "Because the immortal G.o.ds only can see things as they really are, having alone made all things, and ruling them all according to the laws of each. They therefore, I much fear, will be alone able to behold them, how they are really in their inner nature and properties, and not merely from the outside, and by guess, as we do.

How then can we obtain such a spirit ourselves?"

S. "Dear boy, you seem to wish that I should, as usual, put you off with a myth, when you begin to ask me about those who know far more about me than I do about them. Nevertheless, shall I tell you a myth?"

P. "If you have nothing better."

S. "They say, then, that Prometheus, when he grew to man's estate, found mankind, though they were like him in form, utterly brutish and ignorant, so that, as AEschylus says:

Seeing they saw in vain, Hearing they heard not; but were like the shapes Of dreams, and long time did confuse all things At random:

being, as I suppose, led, like the animals, only by their private judgments of things as they seemed to each man, and enslaved to that subjective truth, which we found to be utterly careless and ignorant of facts as they are. But Prometheus, taking pity on them, determined in his mind to free them from that slavery and to teach them to rise above the beasts, by seeing things as they are. He therefore made them acquainted with the secrets of nature, and taught them to build houses, to work in wood and metals, to observe the courses of the stars, and all other such arts and sciences, which if any man attempts to follow according to his private opinion, and not according to the rules of that art, which are independent of him and of his opinions, being discovered from the unchangeable laws of things as they are, he will fail. But yet, as the myth relates, they became only a more cunning sort of animals; not being wholly freed from their original slavery to a certain subjective opinion about themselves, that each man should, by means of those arts and sciences, please and help himself only. Fearing, therefore, lest their increased strength and cunning should only enable them to prey upon each other all the more fiercely, he stole fire from heaven, and gave to each man a share thereof for his hearth, and to each community for their common altar. And by the light of this celestial fire they learnt to see those celestial and eternal bonds between man and man, as of husband to wife, of father to child, of citizen to his country, and of master to servant, without which man is but a biped without feathers, and which are in themselves, being independent of the flux of matter and time, most truly facts as they are. And since that time, whatsoever household or nation has allowed these fires to become extinguished, has sunk down again to the level of the brutes: while those who have pa.s.sed them down to their children burning bright and strong, become partakers of the bliss of the Heroes, in the Happy Islands. It seems to me then, Phaethon and Alcibiades, that if we find ourselves in anywise dest.i.tute of this heavenly fire, we should pray for the coming of that day, when Prometheus shall be unbound from Caucasus, if by any means he may take pity on us and on our children, and again bring us down from heaven that fire which is the spirit of truth, that we may see facts as they are. For which, if he were to ask Zeus humbly and filially, I cannot believe that He would refuse it. And indeed, I think that the poets, as is their custom, corrupt the minds of young men by telling them that Zeus chained Prometheus to Caucasus for his theft; seeing that it befits such a ruler, as I take the Father of G.o.ds and men to be, to know that his subjects can only do well by means of his bounty, and therefore to bestow it freely, as the kings of Persia do, on all who are willing to use it in the service of their sovereign."

"So then," said Alcibiades, laughing, "till Prometheus be unbound from Caucasus, we who have lost, as you seem to hint, this heavenly fire, must needs go on upon our own subjective opinions, having nothing better to which to trust. Truly, thou sophist, thy conclusion seems to me after all not to differ much from that of Protagoras."

S. "Ah dear boy! know you not that to those who have been initiated, and, as they say in the mysteries, twice born, Prometheus is always unbound, and stands ready to a.s.sist them; while to those who are self-willed and conceited of their own opinions, he is removed to an inaccessible distance, and chained in icy fetters on untrodden mountain-peaks, where the vulture ever devours his fair heart, which sympathises continually with the follies and the sorrows of mankind? Of what punishment, then, must not those be worthy, who by their own wilfulness and self-confidence bind again to Caucasus the fair t.i.tan, the friend of men?"

"By Apollo!" said Alcibiades, "this language is more fit for the tripod in Delphos, than for the bema in the Pnyx. So fare-thee- well, thou Pythoness! I must go and con over my oration, at least if thy prophesying has not altogether addled my thoughts."

But I, as soon as Alcibiades was gone, for I was ashamed to speak before, turning to Socrates said to him, all but weeping:

"Oh Socrates, what cruel words are these which you have spoken? Are you not ashamed to talk thus contemptuously to one like me, even though he be younger and less cunning in argument than yourself; knowing as you do, how, when I might have grown rich in my native city of Rhodes, and marrying there, as my father purposed, a wealthy merchant's heiress, so have pa.s.sed my life delicately, receiving the profits of many ships and warehouses, I yet preferred Truth beyond riches; and leaving my father's house, came to Athens in search of wisdom, dissipating my patrimony upon one sophist after another, listening greedily to Hippias, and Polus, and Gorgias, and Protagoras, and last of all to you, hard-hearted man that you are?

For from my youth I loved and longed after nothing so much as Truth, whatsoever it may be; thinking nothing so n.o.ble as to know that which is Right, and knowing it, to do it. And that longing, or love of mine, which is what I suppose Protagoras meant by the spirit of truth, I cherished as the fairest and most divine possession, and that for which alone it was worth while to live. For it seemed to me, that even if in my search I never attained to truth, still it were better to die seeking, than not to seek; and that even if acting by what I considered to be the spirit of truth, and doing honestly in every case that which seemed right, I should often, acting on a false conviction, offend in ignorance against the absolute righteousness of the G.o.ds, yet that such an offence was deserving, if not of praise for its sincerity, yet at least of pity and forgiveness; but by no means to be cla.s.sed, as you cla.s.s it, with the appet.i.tes of brutes; much less to be threatened, as you threaten it, with infinite and eternal misery by I know not what necessary laws of Zeus, and to be put off at last with some myth or other about Prometheus. Surely your mother bare you a scoffer and pitiless, Socrates, and not, as you boast, a man-midwife fit for fair youths."

Then, smiling sweetly, "Dear boy," said he, "were I such as you fancy, how should I be here now, discoursing with you concerning truth, instead of conning my speech for the Pnyx, like Alcibiades, that I may become a demagogue, deceiving the mob with flattery, and win for myself houses, and lands, and gold, and slave-girls, and fame, and power, even to a tyranny itself? For in this way I might have made my tongue a profitable member of my body; but now, being hurried up and down in barren places, like one mad of love, from my longing after fair youths, I waste my speech on them; receiving, as is the wont of true lovers, only curses and ingrat.i.tude from their arrogance. But tell me, thou proud Adonis-This spirit of truth in thee, which thou thoughtest, and rightly, thy most n.o.ble possession- did it desire truth, or not?"

P. "But, Socrates, I told you that very thing, and said that it was a longing after truth, which I could not restrain or disobey."

S. "Tell me now, does one long for that which one possesses, or for that which one does not possess?"

P. "For that which one does not possess."

S. "And is one in love with that which is oneself, or with that which is not?"

P. "With that which is not oneself, thou mocker. We are not all, surely, like Narcissus?"

S. "No, by the dog! not quite all. But see now: it appears that when any one is in love with a thing, and longs for it, as thou didst for truth, it must be something which is not himself, and which he does not possess?"

P. "True."

S. "You, then, while you were loving facts as they are, and longing to see them as they are, yet did not possess that which you longed for?"

P. "True, indeed; else why should I have been driven forth by the anger of the G.o.ds, like Bellerophon, to pace the Aleian plain, eating my own soul, if I had possessed that for which I longed?"

S. "Well said, dear boy. But see again. This truth which you loved, and which was not yourself or part of yourself, was certainly also nothing of your own making?-Though they say that Pygmalion was enamoured of the statue which he himself had carved."