“ALL philosophers are agreed that the conscious organism must be in dynamic relation with other objects surroundng it, not merely in space, but also in time.”
Thus spoke Epicurus as he sat in his garden with Typhon upon the following day.
“Now give heed,” he continued, “for I am to speak seriously, but you must not be bored, my friend. Much of genuine entertainment and delight, I hope, lies before you, yet to-day I will beg that you will tune your ear to sober subjects and thus fortify your wits against the future.”
“I will listen and understand as much as I can,” replied Typhon, “so long as it is agreed that I start on adventures without let or hindrance.”
“It is proposed that presently you launch upon a new stage of life and emulate the birds and beasts in their perfect and sanguinary freedom. For the young there are, of course, far healthier states than security; but your enterprise must be based on understanding and your experiment shall have an object and a goal. Now I am going to be dull; but I invite you to listen honestly and apply your intelligence to every word. I shall have more exciting things to tell you before you depart.”
Typhon fixed his eyes upon the beautiful countenance of the Master, and Epicurus proceeded in this manner.
“Life,” said he, “is largely wasted, even as the heat of the sun is wasted. Most of that blessed ardour flows into the void, and our world picks up only a genial breath of the god. So with human life in the mass: nearly all this precious energy is frittered away from generation to generation. Now, my Typhon, you must no longer radiate into space as you are doing at present; the excellent and bright ray you cast upon cosmos must not be lost. But that it may be preserved, we shall catch it, guide it, discipline it and train it to play its own perfect part. The means for this process are philosophy and experience, and while philosophies are fleeting, and each race and era develop their own, we happen at this moment to be rather rich in them and your choice is not severely limited. No less than four roads of conduct offer to the serious-minded man or boy; and I shall briefly adumbrate their guiding principles. Four schools, then, there are, of which we speak roughly under four different names, calling them The Academy, The Stoa, The Peripatetic and The Garden. The first spells Plato; the second, Zeno; the third, Aristotle; and the fourth your friend, Epicurus.
“Our Schools — that of Zeno, the Stoic and my own — may be set not unreasonably against those of the divine Plato and Aristotle. They are greater metaphysicians than we, and deal more largely and brilliantly with abstract truth; but we are content to deal with a sort of practical sanity for which metaphysic does not make. Plato and Aristotle are as a steadfast Pharos — a lighthouse which casts its pure and unsleeping beam over the troubled seas of thought and destiny; while Zeno and myself may better be likened to a genial fire of logs whereat night-foundered man shall warm his hands and his heart a little. We climb the same mountains and seek the same good, but by different paths; and my path is that of the easiest gradients, the sunniest, least wind-swept passages. I would regulate conduct and sustain principle, where conduct and principle are alike threatened under the ravages of the times. For the moment we need balance rather than progress, since a nation off its balance cannot advance. We must, then, become sure-footed and regain a measure of equilibrium ere we can proceed.
“It happens, however, that my great concept of ‘ataraxia,’ or freedom from perturbation, is unsuited to youth; for youth is a period wherein storm and stress are seemly, healthy, desirable. The young crave excitement, as they crave sugar: it is through excitement and challenge, danger and trial that youth develops nerve, nous and value. But we must not mistake excitement for happiness, or pleasure for content. Seek pleasure, but never forget its consequences, and forgo the roses that your own wits tell you have poisoned thorns. Weigh pleasure in the scales of reason, and construct a system of life that shall at least be negatively happy by avoiding that violent happiness whose reaction is unhappiness. To tell a boy that pleasure is only escape from pain would be absurd, or to direct him to seek those pursuits whose sole pleasure lies in escaping their consequences. This, Typhon, is not a doctrine for your young and passionate soul, and I would not direct you to pursue it yet awhile. Serenity for you would be but boredom; and my ideal of the kindly circle — my conviction that in well-chosen and dear friends our highest pleasure may be found — must in your ears awake nothing but depression and denial. You want enemies, hard knocks, perils, floutings, victories; and I shall direct your energy to adventure and experience, that you may play your normal part in the world order. Then, through failure and triumph, you will presently judge whether my ideal does not shine the brighter as the years go by. But certain rules there are that become the boy as well as the man. In Menander’s admirable phrase: ‘Evil communications corrupt good instincts or manners.’ He makes that remark in his Thais — a magnificent piece which some day you will have the joy of reading.
“To study character will become you and strengthen observation. Nor need this human occupation make you a cynic. Trust the best in man, while you help him to fight the worst. Keep an open mind and take every man as seriously as you take yourself — nay, more seriously. Do not be too serious with yourself and do not grow so fond of life that you fear death, but preserve a golden mean between them and pay court neither to the one nor the other. Face both without flinching and hold yourself as a man in trust for mankind — your reason, your endowment of character and your existence, in which to unfold these gifts, all as loans of which neither interest nor principal is yours.”
Typhon yawned.
“I shall have no time for adventures if I am to remember all these things, great Epicurus,” he said.
“You will have plenty of time for adventures, and you will not remember any of these things except fitfully, at such moments as they may be useful. Life will teach you far shrewder wisdom than I, my lad, and her lessons are often enforced so bluntly that only a very great fool forgets them. And now we come to the exciting part of this conversation. It is understood you follow my direction in everything?”
“In everything,” answered Typhon. “I swear by Zeus to do as you bid me, so long as it is in my power.”
“Good. Then we have to consider the object of your great entry into real life — the search for that panacea which is going to turn ‘hubris’ into ‘aidos’ in your somewhat hawk-like spirit.
“Briefly, then, you will set forth to find a little plant, Typhon — a small herb of the field — and where you will discover it, whether in the vales, or upon the mountain-tops, I know not. Its place and home are hidden from me; its very shape I cannot tell. The colour of its flowers; the habit of its foliage; its odour; its fruits — all concerning it have yet to be learned by you and you alone. Its name is all that I can tell you: ‘Soter’ — an epithet of Zeus. You will ask me how shall you know Soter when you see it; and my answer is going to charm you. By magic. You do not go empty-handed in this quest, nor need you think the finding of this treasure a small matter. The plant may indeed be little, but the business of finding it will signify much to you; and that you may set forth in hope and well armed for the occasion, a rare weapon shall be trusted in your hand.”
Typhon was now alert.
“A sword or a spear?” he asked.
“Neither sword nor spear, but knowledge — knowledge in a fair way to perish out of earth, but of which by good chance I hold the secret. She who bore me was a woman of wondrous wisdom and knew many things of which, as a philosopher and supporter of reason, it is not expedient for me to speak nowadays. But the learning of my dear mother, Archestrata, went above and below human reason and explored depths of wisdom that reason discredits. This is called witchcraft — a foolish word. Her witchcraft consisted chiefly in common-sense, a faculty so rare that it invariably dazzles the majority, who have it not. But greater gifts she also treasured. She communed with many other mortal things than man, Typhon; she could comprehend the voices of the mountains; the words of the many-tongued ocean; and the message of the four winds. I have secretly dipped into her archives on your account, my friend, and won for you a power of utmost significance. You will presently drink five drops that I have distilled from Archestrata’s own prescription, and, having done so, your ears will be opened and you will understand the speech of the forest. You are quite brutal enough, and I do not design for you any communication with lynx or pard; but the gracious wisdom of the growing things, the opinions of the trees, the shrubs, the fruit-bearers — all that they can reveal of themselves and their knowledge shall be yours. Thus you enter upon your pilgrimage mightily supported by a wealth of new wisdom. For though doubtless some trees, even as some men, are stupid fellows and lack any sort of valuable learning, others are surely wise. From their rooted fastnesses they have looked at the dance of the months and the more solemn procession of the seasons; they have watched nature and, in virtue of their many years, arrived at a synthesis denied to our shorter span. All this is yours, Typhon; and much good may it do you. From them you shall learn what they may know of ‘Soter’; and they can be trusted in fullness of time to direct you to the abode of that precious thing.”
“I would very much rather hear what the four-footed and two-winged people had to say,” answered Typhon.
“I know it; but your lot is cast. Come now. We will find the magic potion. To-morrow night it is determined that you start upon your travels; and though Elpenice, your mother, deplores the task that I have set you, she will live to learn that you and I were not mistaken.”
“Perhaps some day you will let me talk with the eagles and foxes, Epicurus?”
“Perhaps — if you find the need of their wisdom, after you bring me ‘Soter’ from its hiding-place.”
They returned to the philosopher’s villa, and Epicurus uttered a warning:
“Think not I associate myself too closely with Zeno in what I said just now.”
“I shan’t think about it,” answered Typhon.
“You may, however. But remember that I hold his logic a superfluity and his fatalism a peril. Rather trust in all the gods on Olympus than make yourself a slave to the natural philosophers.”
“I haven’t thought much about the gods,” confessed Typhon; then Epicurus directed his eyes to something of the greatest interest.
“Observe now how sensation and feeling are the only ultimate canon of reality. What see you here?”
“I see a blue lotus in a round pond.”
“And what is this?”
Epicurus pointed to a water-lily, knobbed and rounded like the living flower; but its exquisite globe was carven — a work of art in marble of Pentelicus. Larger far than life, it stood on a little Doric column six feet high.
“There is the lotus again,” said Typhon, “and this time an artist has made it.”
“Now look at my house,” directed the philosopher, and the lad, lifting his eyes, laughed.
“There it is again!” he cried. “The lotus grown to a great bubble of silver.”
It was so, for, crowning the home of Epicurus, above the bronze statues in the pediment, arose the symbol upon the sky, with shadows of a rosy grey within its folded petals.
“Seek yet again,” directed Typhon’s new master, and wonder filled the boy’s face, for now he saw the lotus once more, grown to the mightiness of a great hill, which ascended over against the garden. Olive and vine, corn and citron clustered thereon, and the homes of husbandmen peered from the mingled vegetation; but the contours of the lotus persisted, hugely wrought by nature. The hill was round, and the drifts of corn or smoke-grey passages of olive took the form of petals upon it.
That essence of amusement which may lurk in surprise impressed itself upon Typhon. He uttered his rare, short laugh.
“By good chance you may seek the lotus yet again; but use your eyes quickly.”
“There can be nothing greater than yonder hill,” declared Typhon; yet even as he spoke he found another and a mightier lily — this time burning in a massed cumulus of cloud, that sailed in billows of red-gold upon the sky and dwarfed the bosomed earth beneath. Here was the symbol gloriously painted, floating upon the radiant blue — a vast lotus of pure light, with roseate petals, whose reflected wonder made shining places on the sea beneath them, and lent all the lesser lilies a gleam of its own splendour.
“You are fortunate to have seen the last expression of the symbol, for that only happens sometimes when the clouds roll their heads and float as now. What think you of this lotus, Typhon, that climbs from your feet to the pillar, from the pillar to the rooftree, thence to the hills and still upwards and onwards, waxing ever, until it adds a beauty to the sunset sky?”
“I feel it; but I do not know what to think of it,” answered the lad, while for a moment reflection knit his forehead.
“You answer well; for through feeling may come a wisdom that understanding never reaches; and when shapes of earth lift the mind as high as the zenith, be sure that the emotions they awaken are not ignoble. Here, my Typhon, is an attempt through phenomena of nature to make that intelligible, by mighty instances, which as yet we only know in small ones. This is what I call explaining what we do not see by what we do see. Sensation is, in fact, sensation, whether of the mind’s eye or the body’s eye. To seek to explain anything, without granting us the power of comprehension through sensation, is to attempt a vain deed. What says Plato? That from things of beauty we may continue to ascend for beauty’s sake by making use of steps. Thus we advance from one beautiful object to two, from two to three, from three to many more; from the beauty of form to the beauty of life; from the beauty of the body to the beauty of the soul; from the beauty of contemplation to the beauty of creation, and so forth. But your eyes tell me that you are out of your depth?”
“I am,” said Typhon.
“All young men should never suffer a day to pass that does not find them out of their depth,” declared the sage. “Only thus shall you learn to swim.”
Presently Typhon drank the magic drops which Epicurus had distilled from plants in his garden, and then the lad prepared to go upon his way.
“When chance offers,” directed the Master, “send some brief account of your doings by a traveller on his march to Athens. Opportunity will occur, and, for the sake of your parents, do not neglect it. No light task awaits you, and it is a sign that I think well of your endowments that I put these charges upon you. Hold your way stoutly; keep a good heart and a good temper; and never listen to a Macedonian. Lastly, remember my valuable saying: ‘To him that a little will not content nothing will content.’ Be moderate and self-contained, ask no more than you are prepared to give. Indeed, give more than you get, for it is a sign of mediocrity that a man should seek more out of the world than he can bring into it. And now, farewell. May the gods smile upon you and hold you in their keeping.”
Somewhat overburdened with this great load of advice, Typhon scowled thoughtfully upon his monitor, then saluted him with becoming reverence and turned homeward. His forehead pinched him and his mind was weary. Then, in the dusk, as he neared Agathion’s magnificent palace, a thing happened that convinced Typhon of reality in the midst of so much vague reflection. Overhead he heard the murmur of strange voices, such as never came from mortal mouths, and he perceived that a plane-tree and her neighbour laurel spoke together.
Leaves were fluttering from the plane, sliding helplessly through the air, then sinking with resignation upon the earth.
“Winter is at hand once more,” murmured the plane. “Soon shall I and my kindred be naked, and envying you and yours the snug overcoats that no hyperborean blast can pierce.”
“It is so,” replied the laurel. “But who shall doubt the justice inherent in the nature of things, my sprawling friend? To us the comfort of our winter jackets; to you the glory of anticipation and the pageant of the spring.”
“I would gladly exchange my vernal miracles for your perennial security,” replied the plane; but his companion did not believe him.
“You think so now; you are mistaken. In a word: nobody can have it both ways.”
“Yet what is life,” inquired the deciduous tree, “but one long and disappointing endeavour to get it both ways?”
Typhon went forward.
“I understand them,” he thought; “though if they are all going to talk like Epicurus, I shan’t listen long. Probably trees are dull dogs at heart, because they’ve got to stick in the mud, whether they like it or not. If he had only let me understand the wild beasts …”
At sundown on the day following, the boy set forth to roam his native land, and seek Soter for Epicurus. That it was a herb of might he doubted not; and that he would find it without much delay he also felt assured.
“Then,” said Typhon to his mother, “the Master will put a harder and more dignified task upon me.”
Elpenice shed tears, and Agathion cleared his throat, and pressed a fat purse upon the traveller in that twilight hour; but Typhon felt no other prompting than a desire to speed forward beyond reach of parental emotion.
His mother pulled his chlamys, or little cloak, about his neck. She dreaded the evening air, for there came a cold breath at this hour before balmy Night spread out her wings.
Then they kissed him, and called Zeus to guard and Pallas Athene to pour wisdom; and so he sprang away from them, their good prayers following.
At his side he carried a short dagger in a sheath, and in his hand a staff. There was a pocket within his tunic of white wool, and it contained Menander’s poem and his father’s purse. He set forth along the Sacred Way, crossed the River Cephissus and then turned northwards. Night descended genially upon the lad, and over distant mountains there laughed sheet lightning and echoed reverberation of melodious thunder.