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."

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Said the disciple, "Yea, but today I am told by my physician that

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I must shortly die.

dissolve and lose my

And I am fearful lest, when I die, I shall wholly 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?

We are bones and ashes-nothing more. Let us therefore drink and eat and be as happy as we can, for soon-"

"I have already said," cried out Humanus, with a despairing wave of his bony fingers, "that, for me, this life no longer exists. Is this the comfort ye give?"

The Epicurean answered nothing, but cat-footed softly over against the public sun-dial where Trivialis stood, feigning to study the dial.

Then said another (while Trivialis, with his finger in his bosom and still upon the knife's edge-leaned over and listened that he might not miss one word of that which was unto him as a judgment) "I remember," said this other of the mighty teachers, "how Socrates is thought to have said (as we may guess from Xenophon and what that writer declareth about Cyrus on his death bed) that no one knoweth whether indeed the soul existeth after the bodily death or not, but he thinketh that the soul may be eternal, and because of these three things: (1st) the reverence which all men show to the dead (2d) the soul's invisibility (3d) the likeness of death unto his brother, sleep. And likewise certain other reasons not necessary to be distributed and numbered."

"And he felt not certain, then?"

"Nay, not wholly. Speak thou unto the Platonist.'

But the Platonist—a hunchback with a beautiful countenancesaid without asking, "I, indeed, know more than any of these others about the soul's true life and its ever continued being whenas the body has fallen from it away.

"My Master, Plato, has in fact, in his 'Phædo,' held that the soul doth own three several parts, corresponding in outward nature unto plant and animal and man. The effect of the superdominance of the one part or the other is seen in (1) the Phoenicians and Egyptians, who most love profit (2) the vigorous nations of the North, who most delight in fortitude and valor (3) the Greeks, who are all for culture and the things which appertain unto mind. Now, this three-fold thing, the soul, is immortal (as the man himself has said in his 'Phædrus') because, from it, originateth motion; also because (as he saith in his "Timæus') God himself would not destroy so wonderful a thing and all beautiful as is the soul; and, finally, because (even as the Master hath put it in his 'Phædo') the soul's eternal longing for future life is a fine and cogent evidence that such life pertaineth by very nature unto it."

And when he had finished, then was the company silent a very long time, for each of them present did know that these were the

greatest of all the arguments which philosophy hath for the immortality of the soul.

Over by the steps of a near-by temple men were playing at mora, crying: "I win, I win: I have won everything!" Farther away, a little grinding sound was heard, the under-moaning of the world at trade.

There passed a trembling shadow over the sun. The Epicurean, who stood even yet by the dial, announceth unto them all: "It is now high noon."

Came a wail from the sickly lips of Humanus. "Know ye, any of you, the least certainty about these things? Know ye these things at all, or are they merely speculations? Say."

"Speculations only, as thou seest," the hunchback saith unto him. "As Socrates declared, 'We never can know concerning these matters, until some one comes from the other world to tell us.'"'

Then the Epicurean whispered, "The sky darkeneth, even at midday. And there be no clouds."

At this the Skeptic laughed, but the Platonist admonished him, saying: "Laugh not at all; it darkeneth."

And all the other philosophers repeated, "It doth darken.”

The busy city became silent, and the world as it were a hornful of ink. High upon the Acropolis, a heifer moving up for sacrifice in the temple of Athena Parthena ( the Athenian virgin) lowed, and after a very long time, lowed yet again-in the midst of a solemn hush as it were in the unpeopled meadow of a distant farmstead.

"The gods have heard," said the Skeptic, "and do revenge themselves upon us that, just now, we were discussing sacred things, which they alone might fathom.'

But the disciple saith, "I care not what fortuneth me here, for die I shall in any case, and ye also, now or a little later. But I would a friend or a brother might have died and come back and assured me certainly of some of these other things. Oh for a friend or a brother that might come back!"

And the city remained in darkness, and more and more dreadful groanings came from under the height of rocks.

And Trivialis fled the Stoa, nor knew which way he went, but ran, some of the time this way, again that. And all the world was dark for the space of three hours, whenafter-a mighty earthquake, the world shaken to its foundations. There were moanings in the center of the earth, and people from time to time cried out in the very deep darkness.

CHAPTER XXIX

VIA DOLOROSA AD MAXIMUM PROTRACTA

SIMON OF CYRENE led the procession of the miserable.1

All night long the wretches had marched-these poor, friendless convicts, in the night-chill and the dust. Sentenced by the judges of Cæsar were they, some for great offenses some for little: better by far, too, taken by and large, than any of the judges who had condemned them.

Poor servi publici, slaves of an indifferent state, marching to who might say what further indifferences and indignities!

At the head of the procession, bigger and more mournful than any of the others, plodded Simon of far Cyrene.

In his mind the disconsolate Jew retraced again and yet again. the cruelly incomprehensible events which had come to him so lately that they seemed still a portion of the bitterly sensible present.

He went back over this march, and recalled the landing at Gades, there among the free-eyed, curiously watching tourists from Massilia and Rome; back still farther to the weary tugging at the oar across the

1 It has been asserted by a number of commentators, without, however, one scintilla of evidence, that Simon became a Christian, either at the foot of the cross or on some later day. Others declare that, though we have no reason at all for supposing that Simon himself ever became a Christian, yet that it is surely proved that his two sons, Rufus and Alexander, did certainly become such.

Here, now, is all the evidence which we really possess upon these three points: Matthew, 27, 32: "And as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to go with them, that he might bear his cross." Mark 15, 21: "And they compel one passing by, Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to go with them, that he might bear his cross." Luke 23, 26: "And when they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon of Cyrene, coming from the country, and laid on him the cross, to bear it after Jesus." John nowhere mentions either Simon or his sons. Plainly, the language of Matthew, Mark and Luke is not of a kind even to suggest the probability that Simon was a Christian at the time when these three gospellers wrote i. e., many years after the crucifixion. "One Simon of Cyrene," etc., is hardly the language that would have been employed for the purpose of designating a fellow disciple. As to Rufus and Alexander, these are mentioned by Mark alone, and by him not as "brethren," or "disciples," but only as persons who, perhaps, would be better known to those for whom Mark was writing than would Simon himself. They might have been known either as Christians, or as nonChristians even as actual persecutors of our brethren. The sacred author neither states nor implies in what capacity the sons of Simon were known, but only implies that, being known, they might serve as means of identification of the Simon who bore the cross-and who is presumed by all the gospellers to have been unknown to Christians.

As to the attempted identification, made by certain writers, of these three characters with persons of the same name mentioned in some of the epistles, the authoritative Edersheim says ("Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah," II, 587): "Thus much only can we say with certainty; to identify them with persons of the same name mentioned in other parts of the New Testament can only be matter of speculation."

Where, then, all is uncertainty, the fictionist is free to invent.