Pro Omnibus

What I proffered by way of suggestion has been turned against me in outright attack, with or without reason, I cannot say. It was not without some justice and furthermore with a great deal of annoyance that I said the things I did, but still I tried to say them as lightly and with as much deference as possible. I am distressed when, in the course of a discussion, certain individuals try to corner their interlocutor, disarm him, and subject him to the humiliation of defeat -- it is as unproductive, intellectually, as it is unkind, and the keen desire to win, to treat all intellectual discourse as if it were a competition at arms, displays a certain arrogance on the part of the disputants grounded in its lack of charity -- both to the others who are involved and to the sulking and miserable dispute itself.

If I am to conquer you, take your arguments by force, and subdue you until you admit that your position is inferior and mine superior, I am not a teacher -- the teacher finds the student in a wilderness, separated from him by a vast chasm, and he guides him, gently, instructs him as to the bridge's length, width, and height, but in a coaxing and patient manner, realizing that ultimately he can give every specific as to the methods of construction, the manners of proceeding, and can encourage him with every hope of success, but that in the end, the bridge is built by the student, belongs to him, and offers him the choice of leaving those vistas, valleys, mountains, and tumultuous streams he has wandered for a territory entirely new, foreign, and shrouded in darkness -- or staying there, founding with his new skill in construction innumerable cities, vast fortresses, and unassailable outposts. The teacher gazes patiently on his endeavors, smiles upon him, and is not in the least condescending because there is, for him, the firm inhabitant of no one country and the most able advocate of all, the most generous pleasure in telling others those things he has learned, wondering if they indeed come to anything at all, and hoping that what he has failed to establish in his own ignorance he might at least inspire others to strive for and attain. Everyone is his pupil, but he is no one's master, and he counts himself succesful not if he has discovered some new idea, but if he has helped another find one of his own.

Unlike him is the vagabond, the brigand, a fierce and unassailable Hannibal or a Xerxes who would bridge the Hellespont and lash it for the trouble, who would enter into the territory of others who had given him no real cause for complaint, raze their most sacred altars, skewer the suppliants, and only in that way bring them to the mercy of gods they implored. Such a man asks the wise who is happiest and deplores any man whose wealth is greater than his own. Being by nature impoverished, he gazes in twisted rage at all those who hold any possession or territory to which he has no honorable claim and then, driven by his own mad passions, seizes it by force. He cannot deign to sit with others even in banquet, and he gathers up in his grubby hands more food than he could ever possibly digest for fear that the platters and trays, filled with voluptuous bounty, will fall like the Lacedaimonians under the common merriment -- he thinks of the pleasant future when the banqueters, clamorous and hungry, will be able to gaze with the same envy upon his own flowing vessels and platters stained with the choicest cuts of meat, thus insulting the guests, the magnanimous generosity of the host, who has provided for a crowd ten times the size, and even the merriment of celebration and the smooth pluck of the guitar, the flowing voluptuous sound throbbing in violins.

Because learning is a banquet, and the great fill the tables with eloquence, delicate morsels of every type and meats sometimes choice and sometimes base! We are to sit across from each other, each man instructing the other in the delicate varieties of the spread, comparing the merits of the wine, and sometimes, forgetting that food, forgetting that drink, rising above in melodious song and exuberant dance, the very acts by which life -- life! -- is sustained, to the transcendant expression of eternal being. The philosopher is not Plato's miserly and grumpy pedant, hurling insult at the belligerent and incredible guests, but he is more like their joyous host, serving them the best and taking them into the candid light of the sun because it is a joy to their eyes and a pleasure for their hearts. And does he not love the sunlight too? Does he not enjoy the same sudden rush when, having long been accustomed to darkness, he is blinded in a moment? The sun shines every color itself and it falls upon all alike, and there is no man, be he ever so weak or frail, that we cannot guide him if he is able to walk, and carry him if he is not, into its bounteous and fragrant joys. The flowers delight in the sun and move in rhythmic flotillas of color even if they are only fluff and pipes -- nature plays them just as she plays us, and we cannot fail to serve our purpose -- and besides, even the ugliest and most contemptible beings plays some part in the chain of life, and are at base atoms and molecules, moving in harmony with universal custom and universal laws. Our only concern in life should be to apprehend these beautiful forms, for in apprehending them, we are their greatest advocate, and if we make them flourish we become all the more the teacher, the guide, watching in his poverty the rich delight of all. We are like vessels to carry nature, to bring her from a place of all too rapid undulations to a barren emptiness of soil, and when we have poured out our last we will still return, by varied and clandestine passages, to the universal flow, and by our return feed innumerable and divers lives.

So this is my goal and these are my suggestions. If I believe the same thing in ten years may I be banished, for a life without flow, like a pale and stagnant lake, supports nothing but a foul odor and the inevitability of rot. To him who I offended, if I have adequately defended myself and my aims, and if I admit that I seek to emulate all things in order to become complete and whole, believe that this is my sole pretense. And I mean nothing of censure or blame by bringing in those great philanderers of the past, who certainly stretch far beyond the case just as a shadow lengthens with the dawn, and shortens with the heightened day. I am wont to hold, like Socrates, that men do no wrong knowingly or by their own will, and that only in the misplaced pursuit of the wrong ends can any evil be done; I admit in every way that I can have no sure means of determining the right, but like us all I will twist and turn, a stream, fulfilling nature's ends and joining the seas.