ON MORAL IGNORANCE IN HIGH PLACES

|779D|When Plato was invited by the Cyrenaeans to draw up a code of laws for their use and to organize their constitution, he begged to be excused, on the ground that it was difficult to legislate for so prosperous a people:

For nought so arrogant—

nor so impracticable and headstrong—

as human kind,

when prosperity—or what is so considered—lies within its grasp.

|E|No less difficult is the task of advising a ruler how to rule. To admit reason, he fears, is to admit a ruler, whose law of duty will make a slave of him and curtail the advantage he derives from power. He has yet to learn a lesson from Theopompus, the Spartan king, who was the first to modify the powers of the throne by means of that of the Ephors. When his wife reproached him for proposing to leave to his children less authority than he had inherited, he replied: ‘Nay, greater, because more assured.’ By relaxing its excessive absolutism he escaped the|F|consequent ill-feeling, and therewith its dangers. But note. Theopompus, in diverting into other channels a portion of the full stream of power, deprived himself of just so much as he gave away. But when philosophic reason becomes the established colleague and protector of a ruler, it merely removes the perilous element and leaves the healthy—a process as necessary to power as to sound health.

In most cases, however, monarchs or rulers show as little wisdom as a tasteless sculptor, who fancies that to represent a figure with a huge stride, strained muscles, and gaping mouth, is to make it appear massive and imposing. They imagine that|780|an arrogant tone, harsh looks, short temper, and exclusiveness give them the true regal air of awe and majesty. In reality they are not a bit better than a colossal statue with the outward shape and form of a god or demigod, while the inside is a mass of earth, stone, or lead. Indeed, in the case of the statue, these heavy materials serve to keep it erect and prevent it from warping; whereas, with an unschooled governor or chief, the unreason within is often the cause of instability and collapse.|B|His foundation being out of plumb, the lofty power which he builds upon it is correspondingly unstable. Now it is only when the builder’s square is itself faultless in line and angle, that it can make other things true to line by adjustment to, and comparison with, itself. So a ruler must begin by acquiring rule within himself. Let him set his own soul straight, and make his own character firm, and then begin adjusting his subjects thereto. You cannot set upright, when you are falling; teach, when you are ignorant; discipline, when unruly; command, when disobedient; govern, when ungoverned. And yet it is a common error to suppose that the chief blessing of authority|C|is to be above authority. To the King of Persia every one was a slave except his own wife, the very person whose master he ought to have been.

By whom, then, is the ruler to be ruled? By the

Law,Sovereign of mortals and immortals all,

Law,

Sovereign of mortals and immortals all,

as Pindar says; not a law written outwardly in books or on wooden tables, but a living law of reason in himself, abiding with him, watching him, and never leaving his soul destituteof guidance. The King of Persia kept one chamberlain whose special function was to enter in the morning and say to him: ‘Rise, Sire, and attend to matters which Great Oromazdes|D|meant for your concern.’ The ruler who has learned wisdom and self-control hears the same voice of exhortation from within. It was a saying of Polemo that love is ‘serving the Gods in the care and protection of the young‘. With more truth it might be said that a ruler serves God in the care and protection of men, by dispensing, or safeguarding, the blessings which God gives to mankind.

See’st thou yon boundless sky and air aloft,How in soft arms it clasps the world about?

See’st thou yon boundless sky and air aloft,

How in soft arms it clasps the world about?

From it descend the first principles of seeds in due kind; earth brings them forth; their growth is fostered by rains or winds or the warmth of moon and stars; while the sun brings everything|E|to beauty and tinctures all creation with that peculiar love-spell which is his. But though the Gods may lavish these great boons and blessings, who can enjoy or use them rightly, if there be no law, justice, or ruler? Justice is the end of law; law is the work of the ruler; and a ruler is an image of the God who orders all things. He needs no Pheidias or Polycleitus or Myro to fashion him, but brings himself into likeness with deity|F|by means of virtue, and so creates the fairest and most divine of effigies. In the heavens the sun and moon were set by God as His own beauteous image; and, in a state, the same shining embodiment is to be found in the ruler

Godfearing, who justice upholdeth,

—that is to say, when he holds, not a sceptre, but a mind which is the reason of God; not when he holds the thunderbolt or trident with which some represent themselves in statue or picture, rendering their folly odious to Heaven by such impossible assertion. For God visits with righteous wrath him whomakes pretence of thunder or thunderbolt or darting sun-ray; but when a man studies to emulate His goodness, and to take|781|a pattern by His virtue and benevolence, He delights in furthering him and bestowing a portion of His own righteousness, justice, truth, and mercy. Not fire or light, not the course of the sun, the risings and settings of the stars, everlastingness and immortality, are more divine that these attributes. For it is not by reason of length of life that God is happy, but by reason of the virtue which rules. This is ‘divine’. ‘Noble’, however, is the virtue whose part it is only to obey.

When Alexander was in sore distress at killing Cleitus, Anaxarchus told him, by way of comfort, that Right and Justice were|B|but the ‘assessors’ of Zeus—making out that any act was right and lawful for a king. A false and pernicious salve for his repentance at his sin, this encouragement to repeat it! If we are to use such figures of speech, Right is no ‘assessor’ of Zeus, but He himself is Right and Justice, the oldest and most consummate Law. What the ancients tell and write and teach is that, without Justice, not even Zeus can properly rule. According to Hesiod

A virgin is she,

the incorruptible partner of feeling, self-control, and beneficence.|C|Hence are kings called ‘merciful’, for mercy best becomes those who are least afraid. A ruler’s fear should be of doing harm rather than of suffering it; for the former action is the cause of the latter, and this kind of fear on the part of a ruler is creditable to humanity. There is nothing ignoble in a fear for his subjects and of possible injury to them. Such rulers are like

Dogs that keep ward o’er the sheep in the farmstead, anxiously watchingAt sound of a fierce wild beast—

Dogs that keep ward o’er the sheep in the farmstead, anxiously watching

At sound of a fierce wild beast—

their anxiety being not for themselves, but for their charges.

Once when the Thebans had recklessly abandoned themselves|D|to feasting and carousal, Epaminondas went the round of the walls and the military posts all by himself, remarking that he was keeping sober and wakeful so that the rest might be drunk and asleep. When Cato, after the defeat at Utica, gave orders that every one else should be sent to sea, saw them on board, prayed that they might have a prosperous voyage, and then went back home and stabbed himself, it was a lesson on the text, ‘For whose sake should a ruler feel fear, and for what should he feel contempt?’ On the other hand, Clearchus, despot of Pontus, used at bedtime to crawl like a snake into a chest.|E|Similarly, Aristodemus of Argos crept into an upper room entered by a trap-door. Over this he would put the couch upon which he passed the night with his mistress. Meanwhile her mother dragged away the ladder from below, bringing it back and putting it in place in the morning. How, think you, must he have shuddered at the theatre, at the Government offices, at the Senate-House, at the banquet, when he turned his own bedchamber into a prison? Yes, kings are afraidfortheir subjects, despots are afraidofthem. It follows that, as they add to their power, they add to their alarms; the more people they rule, the more people they fear.

|F|It is an improbable and unworthy view to hold of God—as some philosophers do—that He exists as an element in matter to which all sorts of things may happen, and in entities which are subject to innumerable accidents, chances and changes. In reality He is stablished somewhere aloft ‘on holy pedestal’ (as Plato puts it) in the realm of nature uniform and constant, and there ‘moves according to Nature in a straight line towards the accomplishment of His end‘. And as in heaven the sun, His beauteous counterfeit, shows itself as His reflection in a mirror to those who have the power to see Him through it, so, in the justice and reason which shine in a state, He sets up a likenessof that which is in Himself, and, by copying that likeness, men|782|whom philosophy has gifted and chastened model themselves after the highest pattern.

This condition of mind nothing can implant except reason acquired from philosophy. Otherwise we are in the position of Alexander, when he went to see Diogenes at Corinth. In delight at his talent, and in admiration of his proud and lofty spirit, he exclaimed: ‘If I had not been Alexander, I would have been Diogenes.’ And what did this virtually mean? That he was vexed at his own high fortune, splendour, and|B|power, because they were an obstacle to the virtue for which he could find no time, and that he envied the cloak and the wallet, which made Diogenes as invincible and unassailable as he himself was made by armour and horses and spears. And yet by the practice of philosophy he might have secured the moral character of a Diogenes while retaining the position of an Alexander. Nay, he should have become all the more a Diogenes for being an Alexander, since his high fortune, so liable to be tossed by stormy winds, required ample ballast and a master hand at the helm.

In the case of private men without strength or standing, folly is so qualified by impotence that in the end no mischief is done. It is as with a bad dream, in which, though the mind is excited with passion, no harm results, inasmuch as it is unable to rise and act in accordance with the desires. When, on the other|C|hand, vice is adopted by power, the passions acquire sinew and strength. Dionysius spoke truly when he said that the highest advantage of power was to give speedy effect to a wish. A most parlous thing, if you can give effect to a wish, and yet wish what is wrong!

No sooner the word had been utter’d, than straightway the deed was accomplish’d.

Vice, when enabled by power to run rapid course, forces everypassion into action, converting anger into murder, love into adultery, greed into confiscation.

No sooner the word hath been utter’d,

than your opponent has met his doom. No sooner a suspicion, than the victim of slander is a dead man.

|D|Scientists tell us that, whereas lightning really follows and issues from thunder like blood from a wound, it is perceived first because, while the hearing waits for the sound, the vision goes out to meet the light. So with rulers. The punishment outstrips the charge; the condemnation does not wait for the proof.

For forthwith anger slips and loses hold,Like anchor’s tooth in sand when seas swell high,

For forthwith anger slips and loses hold,

Like anchor’s tooth in sand when seas swell high,

unless reason with all its weight puts a heavy drag on power; unless, that is, the ruler acts like the sun, whose motion is least|E|when its height is greatest, namely, at the time of its northern altitude, its course being steadied by the diminished speed.

Vice in high places cannot be hid. When an epileptic is placed upon a height and made to turn round, he is seized with giddiness and begins to totter, his malady being betrayed thereby. So with an unschooled and ignorant person. After a brief uplifting by wealth or fame or place, the same fortune which raised him up immediately reveals how ready he is to fall. To put it another way; when a vessel is empty, you cannot detect the crack or flaw, but when you begin to fill it, the leak appears.|F|So with a mind which is too unsound to hold power and authority; its leaks are to be seen in its exhibitions of lust, anger, pretentiousness, and ignorance. Yet why speak of this, when holes are picked in eminent and distinguished men for the merest peccadilloes? Cimon was reproached for his addiction to wine, Scipio for his addiction to sleep, and Lucullus for his extravagance at table[47]....

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