Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection
others, is borrowed from the Athenian; and it is incredible that in
any civilized country so barbarous a practice can be tolerated.
Travellers do indeed relate that, in certain parts of India, there are
princes at whose courts even civilians are armed. But _traveller_ has
occasionally the same signification as _liar_, and _India_ as _fable_.
However, if the practice really does exist in that remote and rarely
visited country, it must be in some region of it very far beyond the
Indus or the Ganges: for the nations situated between those rivers
are, and were in the reign of Alexander, and some thousand years
before his birth, as civilized as the Europeans; nay, incomparably
more courteous, more industrious, and more pacific; the three grand
criterions.
But answer my question: is there any foundation for so mischievous a
report?
_Timotheus._ There was indeed, so to say, an ear, or something of the
kind, abscinded; probably by mistake. But high priests' servants are
propense to follow the swaggering gait of their masters, and to carry
things with a high hand, in such wise as to excite the choler of the
most quiet. If you knew the character of the eminently holy man who
punished the atrocious insolence of that bloody-minded wretch, you
would be sparing of your animadversions. We take him for our model.
_Lucian._ I see you do.
_Timotheus._ We proclaim him Prince of the Apostles.
_Lucian._ I am the last in the world to question his princely
qualifications; but, if I might advise you, it should be to follow in
preference Him whom you acknowledge to be an unerring guide; who
delivered to you His ordinances with His own hand, equitable, plain,
explicit, compendious, and complete; who committed no violence, who
countenanced no injustice, whose compassion was without weakness,
whose love was without frailty, whose life was led in humility, in
purity, in beneficence, and, at the end, laid down in obedience to His
Father's will.
_Timotheus._ Ah, Lucian! what strangely imperfect notions! all that is
little.
_Lucian._ Enough to follow.
_Timotheus._ Not enough to compel others. I did indeed hope, O Lucian!
that you would again come forward with the irresistible arrows of your
wit, and unite with us against our adversaries. By what you have just
spoken, I doubt no longer that you approve of the doctrines inculcated
by the blessed Founder of our religion.
_Lucian._ To the best of my understanding.
_Timotheus._ So ardent is my desire for the salvation of your precious
soul, O my cousin! that I would devote many hours of every day to
disputation with you on the principal points of our Christian
controversy.
_Lucian._ Many thanks, my kind Timotheus! But I think the blessed
Founder of your religion very strictly forbade that there should be
_any_ points of controversy. Not only has He prohibited them on the
doctrines He delivered, but on everything else. Some of the most
obstinate might never have doubted of His Divinity, if the conduct of
His followers had not repelled them from the belief of it. How can
they imagine you sincere when they see you disobedient? It is in vain
for you to protest that you worship the God of Peace, when you are
found daily in the courts and market-places with clenched fists and
bloody noses. I acknowledge the full value of your offer; but really I
am as anxious for the salvation of your precious time as you appear to
be for the salvation of my precious soul, particularly since I am
come to the conclusion that souls cannot be lost, and that time can.
_Timotheus._ We mean by _salvation_ exemption from eternal torments.
_Lucian._ Among all my old gods and their children, morose as some of
the senior are, and mischievous as are some of the junior, I have
never represented the worst of them as capable of inflicting such
atrocity. Passionate and capricious and unjust are several of them;
but a skin stripped off the shoulder, and a liver tossed to a vulture,
are among the worst of their inflictions.
_Timotheus._ This is scoffing.
_Lucian._ Nobody but an honest man has a right to scoff at anything.
_Timotheus._ And yet people of a very different cast are usually those
who scoff the most.
_Lucian._ We are apt to push forward at that which we are without: the
low-born at titles and distinctions, the silly at wit, the knave at
the semblance of probity. But I was about to remark, that an honest
man may fairly scoff at all philosophies and religions which are
proud, ambitious, intemperate, and contradictory. The thing most
adverse to the spirit and essence of them all is falsehood. It is the
business of the philosophical to seek truth: it is the office of the
religious to worship her; under what name is unimportant. The
falsehood that the tongue commits is slight in comparison with what is
conceived by the heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout
life. If, professing love and charity to the human race at large, I
quarrel day after day with my next neighbour; if, professing that the
rich can never see God, I spend in the luxuries of my household a
talent monthly; if, professing to place so much confidence in His
word, that, in regard to wordly weal, I need take no care for
to-morrow, I accumulate stores even beyond what would be necessary,
though I quite distrusted both His providence and His veracity; if,
professing that 'he who giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord', I
question the Lord's security, and haggle with Him about the amount of
the loan; if, professing that I am their steward, I keep ninety-nine
parts in the hundred as the emolument of my stewardship; how, when God
hates liars and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other such thieves
and hypocrites, fare hereafter?
_Timotheus._ Let us hope there are few of them.
_Lucian._ We cannot hope against what is: we may, however, hope that
in future these will be fewer; but never while the overseers of a
priesthood look for offices out of it, taking the lead in politics, in
debate, and strife. Such men bring to ruin all religion, but their own
first, and raise unbelievers not only in Divine Providence, but in
human faith.
_Timotheus._ If they leave the altar for the market-place, the
sanctuary for the senate-house, and agitate party questions instead of
Christian verities, everlasting punishments await them.
_Lucian._ Everlasting?
_Timotheus._ Certainly: at the very least. I rank it next to heresy in
the catalogue of sins; and the Church supports my opinion.
_Lucian._ I have no measure for ascertaining the distance between the
opinions and practices of men; I only know that they stand widely
apart in all countries on the most important occasions; but this
newly-hatched word _heresy_, alighting on my ear, makes me rub it. A
beneficent God descends on earth in the human form, to redeem us from
the slavery of sin, from the penalty of our passions: can you imagine
He will punish an error in opinion, or even an obstinacy in unbelief,
with everlasting torments? Supposing it highly criminal to refuse to
weigh a string of arguments, or to cross-question a herd of witnesses,
on a subject which no experience has warranted and no sagacity can
comprehend; supposing it highly criminal to be contented with the
religion which our parents taught us, which they bequeathed to us as
the most precious of possessions, and which it would have broken their
hearts if they had foreseen we should cast aside; yet are eternal
pains the just retribution of what at worst is but indifference and
supineness?
_Timotheus._ Our religion has clearly this advantage over yours: it
teaches us to regulate our passions.
_Lucian._ Rather say it _tells_ us. I believe all religions do the
same; some indeed more emphatically and primarily than others; but
_that_ indeed would be incontestably of Divine origin, and
acknowledged at once by the most sceptical, which should thoroughly
teach it. Now, my friend Timotheus, I think you are about seventy-five
years of age.
_Timotheus._ Nigh upon it.
_Lucian._ Seventy-five years, according to my calculation, are
equivalent to seventy-five gods and goddesses in regulating our
passions for us, if we speak of the amatory, which are always thought
in every stage of life the least to be pardoned.
_Timotheus._ Execrable!
_Lucian._ I am afraid the sourest hang longest on the tree. Mimnermus
says:
In early youth we often sigh
Because our pulses beat so high;
All this we conquer, and at last
We sigh that we are grown so chaste.
_Timotheus._ Swine!
_Lucian._ No animal sighs oftener or louder. But, my dear cousin, the
quiet swine is less troublesome and less odious than the grumbling and
growling and fierce hyena, which will not let the dead rest in their
graves. We may be merry with the follies and even the vices of men,
without doing or wishing them harm; punishment should come from the
magistrate, not from us. If we are to give pain to any one because he
thinks differently from us, we ought to begin by inflicting a few
smart stripes on ourselves; for both upon light and upon grave
occasions, if we have thought much and often, our opinions must have
varied. We are always fond of seizing and managing what appertains to
others. In the savage state all belongs to all. Our neighbours the
Arabs, who stand between barbarism and civilization, waylay
travellers, and plunder their equipage and their gold. The wilier
marauders in Alexandria start up from under the shadow of temples,
force us to change our habiliments for theirs, and strangle us with
fingers dipped in holy water if we say they sit uneasily.
_Timotheus._ This is not the right view of things.
_Lucian._ That is never the right view which lets in too much light.
About two centuries have elapsed since your religion was founded. Show
me the pride it has humbled; show me the cruelty it has mitigated;
show me the lust it has extinguished or repressed. I have now been
living ten years in Alexandria; and you never will accuse me, I think,
of any undue partiality for the system in which I was educated; yet,
from all my observation, I find no priest or elder, in your community,
wise, tranquil, firm, and sedate as Epicurus, and Carneades, and Zeno,
and Epictetus; or indeed in the same degree as some who were often
called forth into political and military life; Epaminondas, for
instance, and Phocion.
_Timotheus._ I pity them from my soul: they were ignorant of the
truth: they are lost, my cousin! take my word for it, they are lost
men.
_Lucian._ Unhappily, they are. I wish we had them back again; or
that, since we have lost them, we could at least find among us the
virtues they left for our example.
_Timotheus._ Alas, my poor cousin! you too are blind; you do not
understand the plainest words, nor comprehend those verities which are
the most evident and palpable. Virtues! if the poor wretches had any,
they were false ones.
_Lucian._ Scarcely ever has there been a politician, in any free
state, without much falsehood and duplicity. I have named the most
illustrious exceptions. Slender and irregular lines of a darker colour
run along the bright blade that decides the fate of nations, and may
indeed be necessary to the perfection of its temper. The great warrior
has usually his darker lines of character, necessary (it may be) to
constitute his greatness. No two men possess the same quantity of the
same virtues, if they have many or much. We want some which do not far
outstep us, and which we may follow with the hope of reaching; we want
others to elevate, and others to defend us. The order of things would
be less beautiful without this variety. Without the ebb and flow of
our passions, but guided and moderated by a beneficent light above,