No More Learning

We could
scarcely ask for a better judge of the matter than Dionysius
himself. He was as familiar with the Stoic doctrines as any man,
and held at one time that virtue was the only Good: but he
presently discovered that toil was an evil: he then chose what
seemed to him the better course. He would no doubt observe that
those philosophers who had so much to say on the subject of
patience and endurance under toil were secretly the servants of
Pleasure, carefully abiding by her laws in their own homes, though
they made so free with her name in their discourses. They cannot
bear to be detected in any relaxation, or any departure from their
principles: but, poor men, they lead a Tantalus life of it in
consequence, and when they _do_ get a chance of sinning without
being found out, they drink down pleasure by the bucketful. Depend
on it, if some one would make them a present of Gyges's ring of
invisibility, or Hades's cap, they would cut the acquaintance of
toil without further ceremony, and elbow their way into the
presence of Pleasure; they would all be Dionysiuses then. As long
as Dionysius was well, he thought that there was some good in all
this talk about endurance; but when he fell ill, and found out what
pain really was, he perceived that his body was of another school
than the Porch, and held quite other tenets: he was converted,
realized that he was flesh and blood, and from that day ceased to
behave as if he were made of marble; he knew now that the man who
talks nonsense about the iniquity of pleasure

But toys with words: his thoughts are bent elsewhither.

And now, gentlemen, I leave you to your vote.

_Porch_. Not yet! Let me ask him a few questions.

_Epi_. Yes? I am ready.

_Porch_. You hold toil to be an evil?

_Epi_. I do.

_Porch_. And pleasure a good?

_Epi_. Unquestionably.

_Porch_. Do you recognize the distinction between
_differentia_ and _indifferentia_? between
_praeposita_ and _rejecta_?

_Epi_. Why, certainly.

_Her_. Madam, this discussion must cease; the jury say they do
not understand word-chopping. They will now give their votes.

_Porch_. Ah; I should have won, if I could have tried him with
my third figure of _self-evidents_.

_Just_. Who wins?

_Her_. Unanimous verdict for Pleasure.

_Porch_. I appeal to Zeus.

_Just_. By all means. Next case, Hermes.

_Her_. Luxury _v. _ Virtue, _re_ Aristippus;
Aristippus must appear 23 in person.

_Vir_. I ought to speak first. Aristippus is mine; his words
and his deeds alike proclaim him mine.

_Lux_. On the contrary, any one who will observe his garlands
and his purple robes and his perfumes will agree that he is mine.

_Just_. Peace! This suit must stand over, until Zeus has
decided the appeal _re_ Dionysius. The cases are similar. If
Porch wins her appeal, Aristippus shall be adjudged to Virtue: if
not, Luxury must have him. Bring the next case. By the way, those
jurors must not have their fee; they have not earned it.

_Her_. So the poor old gentlemen have climbed up all this way
for nothing!

_Just_. Well, they must be content with a third. Now go away,
all of you, and don't be cross; you shall have another chance.

_Her_. Diogenes of Sinope wanted! Bank, it is for you to
speak. 24

_Diog_. Look here, Madam Justice, if she doesn't stop bothering, I
shall have assault and battery to answer for before long, instead
of desertion; my stick is ready.

_Just_. What is the meaning of this? Bank has run away, and
Diogenes after her, with his stick raised. Poor Bank! I am afraid
she will be roughly handled. Call Pyrrho.

_Her_. Here is Painting, but Pyrrho has never come up. 25 I
knew how it would be.

_Just_. And what was his reason?

_Her_. He holds that there is no such thing as a true
decision.

_Just_. Then judgement goes against him by default. Now for
the Syrian advocate. The indictments were only filed a day or two
ago; there was no such hurry. However--. We will first take the
case in which Rhetoric is plaintiff. How people crowd in to hear
it!

_Her_. Just so: the case has not had time to get stale, you
see; it has the charm of novelty, the indictment, as you say,
having only been filed yesterday. The prospect, too, of hearing the
Syrian defend himself against two such plaintiffs as Rhetoric and
Dialogue, one after the other, is a great attraction. Well,
Rhetoric, when are you going to begin?

_Rhet_. Before all things, men of Athens, I pray the Gods that
you may listen to me throughout this trial with feelings not less
warm than those that I have ever entertained towards my country and
towards each one of you, my countrymen. And if, further, I pray
them so to dispose your hearts that you will suffer me to conduct
my case in accordance with my original intention and design,
without interruption from my adversary, I shall be asking no more
than justice. When I listen to the defendant's words, and then
reflect upon the treatment I have received from him, I know not how
I am to reconcile the two. You will presently find him holding a
language scarcely distinguishable from my own: yet examine into his
conduct, and you will see, from the lengths to which he has already
gone, that I am justified in taking steps to prevent his going yet
further. But enough of preamble: I am wasting time that might be
better employed in accusing my adversary.

Gentlemen, the defendant was no more than a boy--he still spoke
with his native accent, and might at any moment have exhibited
himself in the garb of an Assyrian--when I found him wandering up
and down Ionia, at a loss for employment. I took him in hand; I
gave him an education; and, convinced of his capabilities and of
his devotion to me (for he was my very humble servant in those
days, and had no admiration to spare for any one else), I turned my
back upon the many suitors who sought my hand, upon the wealthy,
the brilliant and the high-born, and betrothed myself to this
monster of ingratitude; upon this obscure pauper boy I bestowed the
rich dowry of my surpassing eloquence, brought him to be enrolled
among my own people, and made him my fellow citizen, to the bitter
mortification of his unsuccessful rivals. When he formed the
resolution of travelling, in order to make his good fortune known
to the world, I did not remain behind: I accompanied him
everywhere, from city to city, shedding my lustre upon him, and
clothing him in honour and renown. Of our travels in Greece and
Ionia, I say nothing: he expressed a wish to visit Italy: I sailed
the Ionian Sea with him, and attended him even as far as Gaul,
scattering plenty in his path.

For a long time he consulted my wishes in everything, was unfailing
in his attendance upon me, and never passed a night away from my
side. But no sooner had he secured an adequate provision, no sooner
did he consider his reputation established, than his countenance
changed towards me: he assumed a haughty air, and neglected, nay,
utterly abandoned me; having conceived a violent affection for the
bearded old person yonder, whom you may know from his dress to be
Dialogue, and who passes for a son of Philosophy. With this
Dialogue, in spite of the disparity of age, he is now living; and
is not ashamed to clip the wings of free, high-soaring eloquence,
and submit himself to the comedian's fetters of bald question and
answer. He, whose thoughts should have found utterance in
thundering oratory, is content to weave a puny network of
conversation. Such things may draw a smile from his audience, a
nod, an unimpassioned wave of the hand, a murmur of approbation:
they can never hope to evoke the deafening uproar of universal
applause. And this, gentlemen, is the fascination under which he
looks coldly upon me; I commend his taste! They say, indeed, that
he is not on the best of terms even with his beloved Dialogue;
apparently I am not the only victim of his overweening pride. Does
not such ingratitude as this render him liable to the penalties
imposed by the marriage-laws? He leaves me, his lawful wife, to
whom he is indebted alike for wealth and reputation, leaves me to
neglect, and goes off in pursuit of novelty; and that, at a time
when all eyes are turned upon me, when all men write me their
protectress. I hold out against the entreaties of countless
suitors: they knock, and my doors remain closed to them; they call
loudly upon my name, but I scorn their empty clamours, and answer
them not. All is in vain: he will not return to me, nor withdraw
his eyes from this new love. In Heaven's name, what does he expect
to get from him? what has Dialogue but his cloak?

In conclusion, gentlemen: should he attempt to employ my art in his
defence, suffer him not thus unscrupulously to sharpen my own sword
against me; bid him defend himself, if he can, with the weapons of
his adored Dialogue.

_Her_. Now there, madam, you are unreasonable: how can he
possibly make a dialogue of it all by himself? No, no; let him
deliver a regular speech, just the same as other people.

_Syrian_. In view, gentlemen, of the indignation that plaintiff has
expressed at the idea of my employing her gift of eloquence in
order to maintain my cause at large, I shall confine myself to a
brief and summary refutation of her charges, and shall then leave
the whole matter to your discernment.

Gentlemen, all that the plaintiff has said is true. She educated
me; she bore me company in my travels; she made a Greek of me.
She has each of these claims to a husband's gratitude. I have
now to give my reasons for abandoning her, and cultivating the
acquaintance of Dialogue: and, believe me, no motive of self-
interest shall induce me to misrepresent the facts. I found,
then, that the discreet bearing, the seemly dress, which had
distinguished her in the days of her union with the illustrious
demesman of Paeania [Footnote: Demosthenes. ], were now thrown aside:
I saw her tricked out and bedizened, rouged and painted like a
courtesan. My suspicions were aroused, and I began to watch the
direction of her eyes. To make a long story short, our street was
nightly infested with the serenades of her tipsy gallants, some of
whom, not content with knocking at our doors, threw aside all
restraint, and forced their way into the house. These attentions
amused and delighted my wife: she was commonly to be seen leaning
over the parapet and listening to the loose ditties that were
bawled up from below; and when she thought she was unobserved, she
would even open the door, and admit the gallant to her shameless
embraces. Such things were not to be endured: I was loth to bring
her into the divorce-court, and accordingly sought the hospitality
of Dialogue, who was my near neighbour.

Such, gentlemen, are the grievous wrongs that plaintiff has
suffered at my hands. Even had the provocation I have described
been wanting, my age (I was then nearly forty years old) called
upon me to withdraw from the turmoil of the law-courts, and suffer
the 'gentlemen of the jury' to rest in peace. Tyrants enough had
been arraigned, princes enough been eulogized: it was time to
retreat to the walks of Academy or the Lyceum, there to enjoy, in
the delightful society of Dialogue, that tranquil discourse which
aims not at noisy acclamations. I might say much more, but I
forbear: you, gentlemen, will give your votes in accordance with
the dictates of conscience. _Just_. Who wins?

_Her_. The Syrian has all votes but one.

_Just_. And that one a rhetorician's, I suppose. Dialogue will
now address the same jury. Gentlemen, you will remain and hear this
second case, and will receive a double fee.

_Dia_. If I had had my choice, gentlemen, I should have
addressed you in the conversational style to which I am accustomed,
instead of delivering a long harangue. However, I must conform to
the custom of the law-courts, though I have neither skill nor
experience in such matters. So much by way of exordium: and now for
the outrage committed on me by the defendant. In former days,
gentlemen, I was a person of exalted character: my speculations
turned upon the Gods, and Nature, and the _Annus Magnus_; I
trod those aerial plains wherein Zeus on winged car is borne along
through the heights. My flight had actually brought me to the
heavenly vault; I was just setting foot upon the upper surface of
that dome, when this Syrian took it upon himself to drag me down,
break my wings, and reduce me to the common level of humanity.
Whisking off the seemly tragic mask I then wore, he clapped on in
its place a comic one that was little short of ludicrous: his next
step was to huddle me into a corner with Jest, Lampoon, Cynicism,
and the comedians Eupolis and Aristophanes, persons with a horrible
knack of making light of sacred things, and girding at all that is
as it should be. But the climax was reached when he unearthed a
barking, snarling old Cynic, Menippus by name, and thrust
_his_ company upon me; a grim bulldog, if ever there was one;
a treacherous brute that will snap at you while his tail is yet
wagging. Could any man be more abominably misused? Stripped of my
proper attire, I am made to play the buffoon, and to give
expression to every whimsical absurdity that his caprice dictates.
And, as if that were not preposterous enough, he has forbidden me
either to walk on my feet or to rise on the wings of poesy: I am a
ridiculous cross between prose and verse; a monster of incongruity;
a literary Centaur.

_Her_. Now, Syrian: what do you say to that?

_Syrian_. Gentlemen of the jury, I am surprised. Nothing could
be more unexpected than the charge Dialogue has brought against me.
When I first took him in hand, he was regarded by the world at
large as one whose interminable discussions had soured his temper
and exhausted his vitality. His labours entitled him to respect,
but he had none of the attractive qualities that could secure him
popularity. My first step was to accustom him to walk upon the
common ground like the rest of mankind; my next, to make him
presentable, by giving him a good bath and teaching him to smile.
Finally, I assigned him Comedy as his yokefellow, thus gaining him
the confidence of his hearers, who until then would as soon have
thought of picking up a hedgehog as of venturing into the thorny
presence of Dialogue.

But I know what the grievance is: he wants me to sit and discourse
subtle nothings with him about the immortality of the soul, and the
exact number of pints of pure homogeneous essence that went to the
making of the universe, and the claims of rhetoric to be called a
shadow of a fraction of statecraft, or a fourth part of flattery.
He takes a curious pleasure in refinements of this kind; it tickles
his vanity most deliciously to be told that not every man can see
so far into the ideal as he. Evidently he expects _me_ to
conform to his taste in this respect; he is still hankering after
those lost wings; his eyes are turned upwards; he cannot see the
things that lie before his feet. I think there is nothing else he
can complain of. He cannot say that I, who pass for a barbarian,
have torn off his Greek dress, and replaced it with one like my
own: that would have been another matter; to deprive him of his
native garb were indeed a crime.

Gentlemen, I have made my defence, as far as in me lies: I trust
that your present verdict will confirm the former one.

_Her_. Well I never! All ten are for you again. Only one
dissentient, and he the same one as before. True to his envious
principles, he must ever give his vote against his betters. The
jurors may now leave the court. The remaining cases will come on
to-morrow.




THE PARASITE, A DEMONSTRATION THAT SPONGING IS A PROFESSION

_Tychiades. Simon_


_Tyc_. I am curious about you, Simon. Ordinary people, free
and slaves alike, have some trade or profession that enables them
to benefit themselves and others; you seem to be an exception.

_Si_. I do not quite see what you mean, Tychiades; put it a
little clearer.

_Tyc_. I want to know whether you have a profession of any
sort; for instance, are you a musician?

_Si_. Certainly not.

_Tyc_. A doctor?

_Si_. No.

_Tyc_. A mathematician?

_Si_. No.

_Tyc_. Do you teach rhetoric, then? I need not ask about
philosophy; you have about as much to do with that as sin has.

_Si_. Less, if possible. Do not imagine that you are enlightening
me upon my failings. I acknowledge myself a sinner--worse than you
take me for.

_Tyc_. Very well.
But possibly you have abstained from these
professions because nothing great is easy. Perhaps a trade is more
in your way; are you a carpenter or cobbler? Your circumstances are
hardly such as to make a trade superfluous.

_Si_. Quite true. Well, I have no skill in any of these.

_Tye_. But in----?

_Si_. An excellent one, in my opinion; if you were acquainted
with it you would agree, I am sure. I can claim to be a practical
master in the art by this time; whether I can give an account of my
faith is another question.

_Tyc_. What is it?

_Si_. No, I do not think I have got up the theory of it
sufficiently. For the present, rest assured that I have a
profession, and cease your strictures on that head. Its nature you
shall know another time.

_Tyc_. No, no; I will not be put off like that.

_Si_. Well, I am afraid my profession would be rather a shock
to you.

_Tyc_. I like shocks.

_Si_. Well, I will tell you some day.

_Tyc_. Now, I say; or else I shall know you are ashamed of it.

_Si_. Well, then, I sponge.

_Tyc_. Why, what sane man would call sponging a profession?

_Si_. I, for one. And if you think I am not sane, put down my
innocence of other professions to insanity, and let that be my
sufficient excuse. My lady Insanity, they say, is unkind to her
votaries in most respects; but at least she excuses their offences,
which she makes herself responsible for, like a schoolmaster or
tutor.

_Tyc_. So sponging is an art, eh?

_Si_. It is; and I profess it.

_Tyc_. So you are a sponger?

_Si_. What an awful reproach!

_Tyc_. What! you do not blush to call yourself a sponger?

_Si_. On the contrary, I should be ashamed of not calling
myself so.

_Tyc_. And when we want to distinguish you for the benefit of
any one who does not know you, but has occasion to find you out, we
must say 'the sponger,' naturally?

_Si_. The name will be more welcome to me than 'statuary' to
Phidias; I am as proud of my profession as Phidias of his Zeus.

_Tyc_. Ha, ha, ha! Excuse me--just a particular that occurred
to me.

_Si_. Namely----?

_Tyc_. Think of the address of your letters--Simon the
Sponger!

_Si_. Simon the Sponger, Dion the Philosopher. I shall like
mine as well as he his.

_Tyc_. Well, well, your taste in titles concerns me very
little. Come now to the next absurdity.

_Si_. Which is----?

_Tyc_. The getting it entered on the list of arts. When any
one asks what the art is, how do we describe it? Letters we know,
Medicine we know; Sponging?

_Si_. My own opinion is, that it has an exceptionally good
right to the name of art. If you care to listen, I will explain,
though I have not got this properly into shape, as I remarked
before.

_Tyc_. Oh, a brief exposition will do, provided it is true.

_Si_. I think, if you agree, we had better examine Art generically
first; that will enable us to go into the question whether the
specific arts really belong under it.

_Tyc_. Well, what is Art? Of course you know that?

_Si_. Quite well.

_Tyc_. Out with it, then, as you know.

_Si_. An art, as I once heard a wise man say, is a body of
perceptions regularly employed for some useful purpose in human
life.

_Tyc_. And he was quite right.

_Si_. So, if sponging has all these marks, it must be an art?

_Tyc_. _If_, yes.

_Si_. Well, now we will bring to bear on sponging each of
these essential elements of Art, and see whether its character
rings true, or returns a cracked note like bad pottery when it is
tapped. It has got to be, like all art, a body of perceptions.
Well, we find at once that our artist has to distinguish critically
the man who will entertain him satisfactorily and not give him
reason to wish that he had sponged elsewhere. Now, in as much as
assaying--which is no more than the power of distinguishing between
false and true coin--is a recognized profession, you will hardly
refuse the same status to that which distinguishes between false
and true _men_; the genuineness of men is more obscure than
that of coins; this indeed is the gist of the wise Euripides's
complaint:

But among men how tell the base apart?
Virtue and vice stamp not the outward flesh.

So much the greater the sponger's art, which beats prophecy in the
certainty of its conclusions upon problems so difficult.

Next, there is the faculty of so directing your words and actions
as to effect intimacy and convince your patron of your devotion: is
that consistent with weak understanding or perception?

_Tyc_. Certainly not.

_Si_. Then at table one has to outshine other people, and show
the difference between amateur and professional: is that to be done
without thought and ingenuity?

_Tyc_. No, indeed.

_Si_. Or perhaps you fancy that any outsider who will take the
trouble can tell a good dinner from a bad one. Well, the mighty
Plato says, if the guest is not versed in cookery, the dressing of
the banquet will be but unworthily judged.

The next point to be established is, that sponging depends not
merely on perceptions, but on perceptions regularly employed.
Nothing simpler. The perceptions on which other arts are based
frequently remain unemployed by their owner for days, nights,
months, or years, without his art's perishing; whereas, if those of
the sponger were to miss their daily exercise, not merely his art
would perish, but he with it.

There remains the 'useful purpose in human life'; it would take a
madman to question that here. I find nothing that serves a more
useful purpose in human life than eating and drinking; without them
you cannot live.

_Tyc_. That is true.

_Si_. Moreover, sponging is not to be classed with beauty and
strength, and so called a quality instead of an art?

_Tyc_. No.

_Si_. And, in the sphere of art, it does not denote the
negative condition, of unskilfulness. That never brings its owner
prosperity. Take an instance: if a man who did not understand
navigation took charge of a ship in a stormy sea, would he be safe?

_Tyc_. Not he.

_Si_. Why, now? Because he wants the art which would enable
him to save his life?

_Tyc_. Exactly.

_Si_. It follows that, if sponging was the negative of art,
the sponger would not save his life by its means?

_Tyc_. Yes.

_Si_. A man is saved by art, not by the absence of it?

_Tyc_. Quite so.

_Si_. So sponging is an art?

_Tyc_. Apparently.

_Si_. Let me add that I have often known even good navigators
and skilful drivers come to grief, resulting with the latter in
bruises and with the former in death but no one will tell you of a
sponger who ever made shipwreck. Very well, then, sponging is
neither the negative of art, nor is it a quality; but it is a body
of perceptions regularly employed. So it emerges from the present
discussion an art.

_Tyc_. That seems to be the upshot. But now proceed to give us
a good definition of your art.

_Si_. Well thought of. And I fancy this will about do: Sponging is
the art of eating and drinking, and of the talk by which these may
be secured; its end is Pleasure.

_Tyc_. A very good definition, I think. But I warn you that
your end will bring you into conflict with some of the philosophers.

_St_. Ah well, if sponging agrees with Happiness about the
end, we may be content.

And that it does I will soon show you. The wise Homer, admiring the
sponger's life as the only blissful enviable one, has this:

I say no fairer end may be attained
Than when the people is attuned to mirth,
. . . . . and groans the festal board
With meat and bread, and the cup-bearer's ladle
From flowing bowl to cup the sweet wine dips.

As if this had not made his admiration quite clear enough, he lays
a little more emphasis, good man, on his personal opinion:

This in my heart I count the highest bliss.

Moreover, the character to whom he entrusts these words is not just
any one; it is the wisest of the Greeks. Well now, if Odysseus had
cared to say a word for the end approved by the Stoics, he had
plenty of chances--when he brought back Philoctetes from Lemnos,
when he sacked Troy, when he stopped the Greeks from giving up, or
when he made his way into Troy by scourging himself and putting on
rags bad enough for any Stoic. But no; he never said theirs was a
fairer end. And again, when he was living an Epicurean life with
Calypso, when he could spend idle luxurious days, enjoying the
daughter of Atlas and giving the rein to every soft emotion, even
then he had not his fairer end; that was still the life of the
sponger. Banqueter was the word used for sponger in his day; what
does he say? I must quote the lines again; nothing like repetition:
'The banqueters in order set'; and 'groans the festal board With
meat and bread. '

It was a remarkable piece of impudence on Epicurus's part to
appropriate the end that belongs to sponging for his system of
Happiness. That it _was_ a bit of larceny--Epicurus having
nothing, and the sponger much, to do with Pleasure--I will
soon show you. I take it that Pleasure means, first, bodily
tranquillity, and secondly, an untroubled soul. Well, the sponger
attains both, Epicurus neither. A man who is busy inquiring into
the earth's shape, the infinity of worlds, the sun's size,
astronomic distances, the elements, the existence or non-existence
of Gods, and who is engaged in incessant controversies about the
end--he is a prey not merely to human, but to cosmic perturbations.
Whereas the sponger, convinced that all is for the best in the best
of all possible worlds, living secure and calm with no such
perplexities to trouble him, eats and sleeps and lies on his back,
letting his hands and feet look after themselves, like Odysseus on
his passage home from Scheria.

But here is an independent refutation of Epicurus's pretensions to
Pleasure. Our Epicurus, whoever his Wisdom may be, either is, or is
not, supplied with victuals. If he is not, so far from having a
pleasurable life, he will have no life at all. If he is, does he
get them out of his own means, or from some one else? If the
latter, he is a sponger, and not what he says he is; if the former,
he will not have a pleasurable life.

_Tyc_. How so?

_Si_. Why, if his food is provided out of his own means, that
way of life has many consequences; reckon them up. You will admit
that, if the principle of your life is to be pleasure, all your
appetites have to be satisfied?

_Tyc_. I agree.

_Si_. Well, a large income may possibly meet that requirement,
a scanty one certainly not; consequently, a poor man cannot be a
philosopher, or in other words attain the end, which is Pleasure.
But neither will the rich, who lavishes his substance on his
desires, attain it. And why? Because spending has many worries
inseparably attached to it; your cook disappoints you, and you must
either have strained relations with him, or else purchase peace and
quiet by feeding badly and missing your pleasure. Then similar
difficulties attend your steward's management of the house. You
must admit all this.

_Tyc_. Oh, certainly, I agree.

_Si_.