Part 1 (2/2)
Everything is bought with a price--all things are of equal value--no one can cheat you, for to be cheated is a not undesirable experience, and in the act, if you are really filled with the thought, ”Know Thyself,” you get the compensation by increase in mental growth.
However, to deliberately go in search of experience, Socrates said, would be a mistake, because then you would so multiply impressions that none would be of any avail and your life would be burned out. To clutch life by the throat and demand that it shall stand and deliver is to place yourself so out of harmony with your environment that you will get nothing.
Above all things, we must be calm, self-centered, never anxious, and be always ready to accept whatever the G.o.ds may send. The world will come to us if we only wait. It will be seen that Socrates is at once the oldest and most modern of thinkers. He was the first to express the New Thought. A thought, to Socrates, was more of a reality than a block of marble--a moral principle was just as persistent as a chemical agent.
The silken-robed and perfumed Sophist was sport and game for Socrates.
For him Socrates recognized no closed season. If Socrates ever came near losing his temper, it was in dealing with this Edmund Russell of Athens.
Grant Allen used to say, ”The spores of everything are everywhere, and a certain condition breeds a certain microbe.” A period of prosperity always warms into life this social paragon, who lives in a darkened room hung with maroon drapery where incense is burned and a turbaned Hindu carries your card to the master, who faces the sun and exploits a prie-dieu when the wind blows east. Athens had these men of refined elegance, Rome evolved them, London has had her day, New York knows them, and Chicago--I trust I will not be contradicted when I say that Chicago understands her business! And so we find these folks who cultivate a pellucid pa.s.sivity, a phthisicky whisper, a supercilious smirk, and who win our smothered admiration and give us gooseflesh by imparting a taupe tinge of mystery to all their acts and words, thus proving to the a.s.sembled guests that they are the Quality and Wisdom will die with them.
This lingo of meaningless words and high-born phrases always set Socrates by the ears, and when he could corner a Sophist, he would very shortly p.r.i.c.k his pretty toy balloon, until at last the tribe fled him as a pestilence. Socrates stood for sanity. The Sophist represented moons.h.i.+ne gone to seed, and these things, proportioned ill, drive men transverse.
Extremes equalize themselves: the pendulum swings as far this way as it does that. The saponaceous Sophist who renounced the world and yet lived wholly in a world of sense, making vacuity pa.s.s legal tender for spirituality, and the priest who, mystified with a mumble of words, evolved a Diogenes who lived in a tub, wore regally a robe of rags, and once went into the temple, and cracking a louse on the altar-rail, said solemnly, ”Thus does Diogenes sacrifice to all the G.o.ds at once!” are but two sides of the same s.h.i.+eld.
In Socrates was a little jollity and much wisdom pickled in the scorn of Fortune; but the Sophists inwardly bowed down and wors.h.i.+ped the fickle dame on idolatrous knees. Socrates won immortality because he did not want it, and the Sophists secured oblivion because they deserved it.
We hear of Socrates going to Aspasia, and holding long conversations with her ”to sharpen his mind.” Aspasia did not go out in society much: she and Pericles lived very simply. It is worth while to remember that the most intellectual woman of her age was democratic enough to be on friendly terms with the barefoot philosopher who went about regally wrapped in a table-spread. Socrates did not realize the flight of time when making calls--he went early and stayed late. Possibly prenatal influences caused him often to call before breakfast and remain until after supper.
Just imagine Pericles, Aspasia and Socrates sitting at table--with Walter Savage Landor behind the arras making notes! Doubtless Socrates and Mrs. Pericles did most of the talking, while the First Citizen of Athens listened and smiled indulgently now and then as his mind wandered to construction contracts and walking delegates. Pericles, the builder of a city--Pericles, first among practical men since time began, and Socrates, who jostles history for first place among those who have done nothing but talk--imagine these two eating melons together, while Aspasia, gentle and kind, talks of spirit being more than matter and love being greater than the Parthenon!
Socrates is usually spoken of as regarding women with slight favor, but I have noticed that your genus woman-hater holds the balance true by really being a woman-lover. If a man is enough interested in women to hate them, note this: he is only searching for the right woman, the woman who compares favorably with the ideal woman in his own mind. He measures every woman by this standard, just as Ruskin compared all modern painters with Turner and discarded them with fitting adjectives as they receded from what he regarded as the perfect type. If Ruskin had not been much interested in painters, would he have written scathing criticisms about them?
In several instances we hear of Socrates reminding his followers that they are ”weak as women,” and he was the first to say ”woman is an undeveloped man.” But Socrates was a great admirer of human beauty, whether physical or spiritual, and his abrupt way of stopping beautiful women on the streets and bluntly telling them they were beautiful, doubtless often confirmed their suspicions. And thus far he was pleasing, but when he went on to ask questions so as to ascertain whether their mental estate compared with their physical, why, that was slightly different. It is good to hear him say, ”There is no s.e.x in intellect,” and also, ”I have long held the opinion that the female s.e.x is nothing inferior to ours, save only in strength of body and possibly in steadiness of judgment.” And Xenophon quotes him thus: ”It is more delightful to hear the virtue of a good woman described than if the painter Zeuxis were to show me the portrait of the fairest woman in the world.”
Perhaps Thackeray is right when he says, ”The men who appreciate woman most are those who have felt the sharpness of her claws.” That is to say, things show up best on the darkest background. If so, let us give Xantippe due credit. She tested the temper of the sage by railing on him and deluging him with Socratic propositions, not waiting for the answers; she often broke in with a broom upon his introspective efforts to know himself; if this were not enough, she dashed buckets of scrubbing-water over him; presents that were sent him by admiring friends she used as targets for her mop and wit; if he invited friends with faith plus to dine, she upset the table, dishes and all, before them--not much to their loss; she occasionally elbowed her way through a crowd where her husband was entertaining the listeners upon the divine harmonies, and would tear off his robe and lead him home by the ear. But these things never ruffled Socrates--he might roll his eyes in comic protest at the audiences as he was being led away captive, but no resentment was shown. He had the strength of a Hercules, but he was a far better non-resistant than Tolstoy, because he took his medicine with a wink, while Fate is obliged to hold the nose of the author of ”Anna Karenina,” who never sees the comedy of an inward struggle and an outward compliance, any more than does the benedict, safely entrenched under the bed, who shouts out, ”I defy thee, I defy thee!” as did Mephisto when Goethe thrust him into Tophet.
The popular belief is that Xantippe, the wife of Socrates, was a shrew, and had she lived in New England in Cotton Mather's time would have been a candidate for the ducking-stool. Socrates said he married her for discipline. A man in East Aurora, however, has recently made it plain to himself that Xantippe was possessed of a great and acute intellect. She knew herself, and she knew her liege as he never did--he was too close to his subject to get the perspective. She knew that under right conditions his name would live as one of the world's great teachers, and so she set herself to supply the conditions. She deliberately sacrificed herself and put her character in a wrong light before the world in order that she might benefit the world. Most women have a goodly grain of ambition for themselves, and if their husbands have genius, their business is not to prove it, but to show that they themselves are not wholly commonplace.
Not so Xantippe--she was quite willing to be misunderstood that her husband might live.
What the world calls a happy marriage is not wholly good--ease is bought with a price. Suppose Xantippe and Socrates had settled down and lived in a cottage with a vine growing over the portico, and two rows of hollyhocks leading from the front gate to the door; a pathway of coal-ashes lined off with broken crockery, and inside the house all sweet, clean and tidy; Socrates earning six drachmas a day carving marble, with double pay for overtime, and he handing the pay-envelope over to her each Sat.u.r.day night, keeping out just enough for tobacco, and she putting a tidy sum in the aegean Savings-Bank every month--why, what then?
Well, that would have been an end of Socrates. Xantippe was big enough to know this and so she supplied the domestic cantharides and drove him out upon the streets--he grew to care very little for her, not much for the children, nothing for his home. She drove him out into the world of thought, instead of allowing him to settle down and be content with her society.
I once knew a sculptor--another sculptor--an elemental bit of nature, original and, better still, aboriginal. He used to sleep out under the stars so as to wake up in the night and see the march of the Milky Way, and watch the Pleiades disappear over the brink of the western horizon.
He wore a flannel s.h.i.+rt, thick-soled shoes, and overalls, no hat, and his hair was thick and coa.r.s.e as a horse's mane. This man had talent, and he had sublime conceptions, great dreams, and splendid aspirations.
His soul was struggling to find expression. ”Leave him alone,” I said.
”He needs time to ripen. He is a Michelangelo in embryo!”
Did he ripen? Not he. He married a Wellesley girl of good family. She, too, had ideas about art--she painted china-b.u.t.tons for s.h.i.+rtwaists, embroidered chasubles and sang ”The Rosary” in a raucous Quinsigamond voice. The big barbarian became respectable, and the last time I saw him he wore a Tuxedo and was pa.s.sing out plat.i.tudes and raspberry-shrub at a lawn-party. The Wellesley girl had tamed her bear--they were very happy, he a.s.sured me, and she was preparing a course of lectures for him which he was to give at Mrs. Jack Gardner's. A Xantippe might have saved him.
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