BOOK IV. THE SCHOOL CHAPTER XXVIII PHILOSOPHY AND ETERNAL LIFE WHEN, then, Trivialis the craven-hearted, had come forth out of his hiding, he would, when no one looked, be a-pilfering. And having grown bolder, he snatched at girdles and bulgas, and became, in time, a great robber. But on a day, having received a fearful wound, he said in his heart: "I will go back into the city, even Athens. For, being much changed since I did leave the legionaries with a poor excuse, it is not like, now, that any shall be able to say to me who I am." He took, therefore, the little sum which he had had from his last misdoing, and set him up a shop in the Street of the Ants, which had gotten its name from this that it was crooked, narrow and in utmost darkness. But here he had no good fortune, even as ever had been the issue, when he had sought the ways of business on his own uninstructed part. Therefore resorted he to little shabby tricks, as, to wit, the selling of poor wine for good, the giving of short measures, and the making of false accomptings. At length he began to ask himself, "Is it well to exist so? For behold, I am not any longer an honest man. Moreover, I soon shall have neither wine nor oil nor grapes nor figs nor oboli. But behold! I have a knife, and the edge is very keen, and my throat-" Then he went for a walk in the agora and stood by the public sundial, watching the shadow of that inexorable finger, the digit of Chronos or old Time. He said, "What shall be for me when time is no more?" Again he felt of the edge of his knife. Came then certain philosophers walking in a near-by stoa, in their midst a tall young man, richly apparelled, a new disciple, who was both lean and yellow of countenance. Said one of the teachers to the young man, "Verily I do tell thee philosophy is that department of human intellectual endeavor which seeketh to comprehend the universe as one single rational whole. It refuseth to see the parts of the world except in their relations to other parts.' 14 Said the disciple, "Yea, but today I am told by my physician that 209 I must shortly die. And I am fearful lest, when I die, I shall wholly dissolve and lose my relations to all the other parts. Who hath not at some time felt so? Speak ye therefore unto me concerning the immortality of the soul. Your fees shall be doubled." Said a Pythagorean, "I will tell thee, Humanus, what my master hath said upon this point. Thou knowest Pythagoras-he that was born in Samos, or, as Aristoxenus asserteth, a Tyrrhenian? He made a cavern deep within the earth and so secretly that only his mother did know thereof. Then went he down thereinto and hid. His mother dropped into the cavern daily certain tablets whereon she had written all the happenings of the city. And after a very long time he came up forth of the earth again, wrinkled, lean, and looking as he were a skeleton with a mere skin stretched over it. He passed out into the Agora and said he had come from the dead, and told the people all those things which had gone on in his absence. Then thought they him a divine being." But Humanus coughed and spat, and said irritably, even with his hand over his chest: "But what said he about the soul, about life everlasting?" The Pythagorean smiled and answered and said unto him, "One of his so-called 'symbols' was this: 'When travelling abroad, look not back upon your own borders.' Whereby he meant that those preparing to die should cease to care too much about life. And yet-" "Is there not some one," Humanus asked, "that can tell me what I fain would know?" "Not so fast," replied the Pythagorean. "My master did believe that the souls of the righteous are transformed and absorbed into God." "But I-I myself-am I lost?" "I fear that thou art lost." Then said Humanus, "Yet another speak to me. Spake unto him a pupil of Zeno, a Stoic, a very lean and slender man, marching with slowness and sad dignity. Said the Stoic unto Humanus, "If thou art worthy, thou wilt indeed, after that thou hast departed the earth, pass into the Infinite Being. But first thou shalt live on, thyself as thyself alone, for a certain limited period: long, hast thou been just, but short, if unjust.' The Epicurean chuckled. Not like unto the Stoic he, but of glad and rosy countenance. Turning his bright, keen eyes both upon Humanus and all that company, he saith: "Why delude the dying? |