The Gift of Fire by Richard Mitchell (rainbow fish read aloud txt) 📕

The practice of Reason is the secret of home rule, but it would be an imprudent king who neglected foreign policy and the defense of the realm. Every border is threatened by wandering bands and smugglers, and agents provocateurs, and single spies, and thoroughly regimented armies as well; and the higher his tower, the farther a king can see. I think that Epictetus was right, and that true education, which he called philosophy, has power only within, but that is also the power to understand and judge whatever comes in from the world outside. True education is not an adjustment to the world, but a defense against the world, and those who would have it must know the world as best they can. Fortunately, true education is also the best possible way of knowing the world for what it is.

Colonialism

When you use the power of Reason as strictly as you can to make judgments about the voice of the world, some unsettling things can happen to you. Consider the frightening results of a little experiment in thinking that anyone can perform:

The dramatic power of the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman is not great. Although the punishment she faces is indeed lethal, her crime seems trivial. She is not a monster of depravity. We have reached an interesting and useful understanding of that story, but is it the understanding we might have reached if we had been able to share the supposed moral outrage of her would-be executioners? If her crime had been truly monstrous, would we still be ready to conclude that Jesus had brought those men out of a bad condition and into a good one?

Suppose the culprit were not merely a self-indulgent woman, but a different sort of criminal, one who arouses in us no sympathetic sentiment whatsoever. An Adolf Eichmann, perhaps, of whom we will not say that he merely succumbed, as we all might, to a natural human weakness. Ought Jesus to deal with his case as he did with the woman? Will we be pleased with the end of the tale, when the accusers drop their stones and walk away, having become better? Will we still believe them bettered? And whether they are better or not, can we still suppose that justice has been done when this culprit is let off with nothing more than advice?

I imagine now, that, having heard of my deliberations in these matters, Jesus, troubled as to whether he may have set a bad example, and hoping to do better, comes to me seeking understanding.

How shall I, from now on, he will ask, learn to find the mark that must lie somewhere along the line that runs from a silly and self-indulgent woman at one end to Adolf Eichmann at the other? At what point should I put aside the business of awakening the accusers and take up instead the business of the accusers?

Or should I, he asks, simply withdraw, saying to the accusers: Who am I to tell you what is right? And saying that, don’t I also say, Seek some other to tell you what is right? If that is what you would recommend, then I must point out that it is exactly what I did. To each man I said: Ask yourself that question, and be advised by the one authority that has no other axe to grind but yours. Is there some better authority to whom I should have sent them? Do you have some suggestions as to who that other should be?

So I explain that, in sense that goes deeper even than the customs and the laws, a “criminal” is one who does harm. I talk about harm, the various degrees of harm, and even different kinds of harm - physical harm and psychological harm; harm that lasts, and harm that goes away; harm that sometimes actually helps, and harm that never helps; harm in a good cause, and harm in a bad cause. In the original case, Jesus has himself done no harm. Indeed, he has made the accusers better than they were, and may even have done some good for the accused, beyond saving her life, although she wasn’t all that bad to begin with. She hadn’t really done much harm, I guess. But if the culprit were Eichmann, who did harm beyond our powers to believe, although believe it we must, then Jesus would do a terrible thing indeed, not only to turn aside his accusers, but to say thereafter, Doth no man accuse thee? Neither do I. Go, and sin no more.

At the same time, though, I know that I am also talking about that mark on the line that runs from one culprit to the other. That mark is now all the harder to find, too, for I have made it dependent on all those marks by which the various sorts of harm, which can be told from one another only by finding some other obscure marks along another line. If I am to instruct Jesus, for instance, in distinguishing between harm done in a good cause and harm done in a bad one, is he not likely to ask for some way of finding a certain mark along the line that runs from one cause to the other? And will he remind me, as Plato does, that everybody always thinks that his cause is good. No one says, Aha! I will now do some evil in a bad cause.

Is there any point, Jesus asks, sounding more and more like Socrates, in asking whether a cause is good or bad? A cause is not a person, that it can will its deeds. And if the ends do not justify the means, neither do they condemn them. No matter what the cause, bravery is bravery, and cowardice, cowardice. Can I truly judge of deeds by judging, instead, of the cause in which they were done?

His questions make me wary. Suppose, for instance, that I am so frightened by the prospect of the next great war that I insist that there can be no justification whatsoever for warfare, and that the harm it will certainly do is utterly out of proportion to the supposed and merely possible good of any “good cause” in which it might be done. Few will accuse me of irrationality for that view. But I have already put it to Jesus that there is some cause, in this case the punishment of Eichmann, in which we must do harm, if we are to be just. And still there are few who will accuse me of irrationality, but Jesus will be one of them.

And what of the stone-carriers, he asks, Must I do harm to them, in the name of a good cause? Before, I brought them into some goodness. Must I now, because the cause is great, leave them in some badness?

His questions bring me into that deep discomfort of which Socrates spoke. I am unsure of everything. I would rather not stay around to hear the argument out. I would prefer to go to a ball game. And ball games, like all their uncountable equivalents, if taken in strong enough and continual doses, provide the hope of never falling into such discomfort. I would like to wash my hands of the whole business and just live. I would like to rule my own little kingdom, and keep it simple, and not be bothered by questions that have an unsettling look of “the ultimate” about them. When the time comes to do harm, or to refrain from doing harm, well, presuming that I can control myself at all, I’ll just try to figure something out. Besides, there already are all sorts of answers to such questions. You could look them up. And a fat lot of good they have done us in all these thousands of years, so that we can still bother ourselves with them. As to advising Jesus as to how to handle the Eichmann case, I’ll just forget the whole business.

But, having suffered at least partial and occasional education, I find myself just as troubled by forgetting the whole business as by remembering it. I can not forget utterly that wretched Petronilla, the child who lives in me, and whose rearing seems not only my obligation, but my natural obligation, far stronger even than a legal or social obligation. I also have in my little kingdom a certain nagging counselor, who seems to have appointed himself Petronilla’s advocate. He keeps asking questions that do not smell of the ultimate, and can not be dismissed out of hand as beyond my powers to answer.

He insists upon asking, Which would you say, O King, is the better parent and most likely to consider whether harm might ever be remedial, one who gives thought or one who does not give thought to the difference between Eichmann and the woman taken in adultery? What king, he asks, is the more likely to rule well in his own country, he who bothers his head as to the distinction of the good cause from the bad, or he who goes to the ball game?

Unfortunately, those questions are not at all hard to answer. Indeed, of their answers I must say that I know them, and not merely that I am informed of them.

Accordingly, I know better than to say, Listen, many have already considered such questions, and their conclusions are easily found; when I have need of them, I’ll look them up, and, somehow or other, choose among them as to which is wisdom and which is not.

He would surely say, And who then, O King, would be ruling in this little country of yours, when you choose to follow the counsel of this one or that of a host of foreign advisors?

To that I would have to answer, I will still be ruling, for it will be I who chooses.

And he will ask, How, O King, will you know to make that choice wisely unless you have given thoughtful consideration to some principle by which to distinguish between good causes and bad causes, which will also be a principle by which to distinguish between the better and the worse, and to distinguish among the many answers in your collection of foreign sages?

Here is a truth that most teachers will not tell you, even if they know it: Good training is a continual friend and a solace; it helps you now, and assures you of help in the future. Good education is a continual pain in the neck, and assures you always of more of the same. When training is not called forth into service, it lies quietly in its place. Neither the accountant nor the chemist nor even the tuner of engines is vexed by thoughtful doubting right in the middle of the ball game by the murmurings of his skill. But any one of them, all unmolested by an obedient training, may notice, even at the ball game, that he has not tried to understand something that he knows he should try to understand, and be vexed. Training is a good dog, a constant companion and an utterly loyal and devoted friend, and everyone should have one. Education is a nagging counselor. And, I am convinced, everyone does have one. It happens, however, that some nagging counselors have grown strong by a certain kind of nourishment. Others are weak and puny, even infantile, having never been nourished at all.

What becomes of one who is not