Vitarum auctio

Seventh D. Regard me as your purchaser, good fellow, and tell me all about yourself. I dare say you think it rather hard to be sold for a slave?

Chrysippus Not at all. These things are beyond our control. And what is beyond our control is indifferent.

Seventh Dealer I don’t see how you make that out.

Chrysippus What! Have you yet to learn that of indifferentia some are praepostta and others rejecta?

Seventh Dealer Still I don’t quite see.

Chrysippus No; how should you? You are not familiar with our terms. You lack the comprebensio vist. The earnest student of logic knows this and more than this. He understands the nature of subject, predicate, and contingent, and the distinctions between them.

Seventh Dealer Now in Wisdom’s name, tell me, pray, what is a predicate? what is a contingent? ‘There is a ring about those words that takes my fancy.

Chrysippus With all my heart. A man lame in one foot knocks that foot accidentally against a stone, and gets a cut. Now the man is subject to lameness; which is the predicate. And the cut is a contingency.

Seventh D. Oh, subtle! What else can you tell me?

Chrysippus I have verbal involutions, for the better hampering, crippling, and muzzling of my antagonists. This is performed by the use of the far-famed syllogism.

Seventh Dealer Syllogism! I warrant him a tough customer.

Chrysippus Take a case. You have a child?

Seventh Dealer Well, and what if I have?

Chrysippus A crocodile catches him as he wanders along the bank of a river, and promises to restore him to you, if you will first

Seventh Dealer A difficult question. I don’t know which way I should get him back soonest. In Heaven’s hame, answer for me, and save the child before he is eaten up.

Chrysippus Ha, ha. I will teach you far other things than that.

Seventh Dealer For instance?

Chrysippus There is the ‘Reaper.’ There is the ‘Rightful Owner.’ Better still, there is the ‘Electra’ and the ‘Man in the Hood.’

Seventh Dealer Who was he? and who was Electra?

Chrysippus She was the Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, to whom the same thing was known and unknown at the same time. She knew that Orestes was her brother: yet when he stood before her she did not know (until he revealed himself) that her brother was Orestes. As to the Man in the Hood, he will surprise you considerably. Answer me now: do you know your own father?

Seventh Dealer Yes.

Chrysippus Well now, if I present to you a man in a hood, shall you know him? eh?

Seventh Dealer Of course not.

Chrysippus Well, but the Man in the Hood is your father. You don’t know the Man in the Hood. Therefore you don’t know your own father.

Seventh Dealer Why, no. But if I take his hood off, I shall get at the facts. Now tell me, what is the end of your philosophy? What happens when you reach the goal of virtue?

Chrysippus In regard to things external, health, wealth, and the like, I am then all that Nature intended me to be. But there is much previous toil to be undergone. You will first sharpen your eyes on minute manuscripts, amass commentaries, and get your bellyful of outlandish terms. Last but not least, it is forbidden to be wise without repeated doses of hellebore.

Seventh Dealer All this is exalted and magnanimous to a degree. But what am I to think when I find that you are also the creed of cent-per-cent, the creed of the usurer? Has be swallowed his hellebore? is be made perfect in virtue?

Chrysippus Assuredly. On none but the wise man does usury sit well, Consider. His is the art of putting two and two together, and usury is the art of putting interest together. The two are evidently connected, and one as much as the other is the prerogative of the true believer; who, not content, like common men, with simple interest, will also take interest upon interest. For interest, as you are probably aware, is of two kinds. There is simple interest, and there is its offspring, compound interest. Hear Syllogism on the subject. ‘If I take simple interest, I shall also take compound. But I shall take simple interest: therefore I shall take compound.’

Seventh D, And the same applies to the fees you take from your youthful pupils? None but the true believer sells virtue for a fee?

Chrysippus Quite right. I take the fee in my pupil’s interest, not because I want it. The world is made up of diffusion and accumulation. I accordingly practise my pupil in the former, and myself in the latter.

Seventh Dealer But it ought to be the other way. The pupil ought to accumulate, and you, ‘sole millionaire,’ ought to diffuse.

Chrysippus Ha! you jest with me? Beware of the shaft of insoluble syllogism.

Seventh Dealer What harm can that do?

Chrysippus It cripples; it ties the tongue, and turns the brain. Nay, I have but to will it, and you are stone this instant.

Seventh Dealer Stone! You are no Perseus, friend?

Chrysippus See here. A stone is a body?

Seventh Dealer Yes.

Chrysippus Well, and an animal is a body?

Seventh Dealer Yes.

Chrysippus And you are an animal?

Seventh Dealer I suppose I am.

Chrysippus ‘Therefore you are a body. Therefore a stone.

Seventh Dealer Mercy, in Heaven’s name! Unstone me, and let me be flesh as heretofore.

Chrysippus That is soon done. Back with you into flesh! Thus: Is every body animate?

Seventh Dealer No.

Chrysippus Is a stone animate?

Seventh Dealer No.

Chrysippus Now, you are a body?

Seventh Dealer Yes.

Chrysippus And an animate body?

Seventh Dealer Yes.

Chrysippus Then being animate, you cannot be a stone.

Seventh Dealer Ah! thank you, thank you. I was beginning to feel my limbs growing numb and solidifying like Niobe’s. Oh, I must have you. What’s to pay?

Heraclitus Fifty pounds.

Seventh Dealer Here it is.

Heraclitus Are you sole purchaser?

Seventh Dealer Not I. All these gentlemen here are going shares.

Heraclitus A fine strapping lot of fellows, and will do the ‘Reaper’ credit.

Zeus Don’t waste time. Next lot,—the Peripatetic!

Heraclitus Now, my beauty, now, Affluence! Gentlemen, if you want Wisdom for your money, here is a creed that comprises all knowledge.:

Eighth Dealer What is he like?

Heraclitus He is temperate, good-natured, easy to get on with; and his strong point is, that he is twins,

Eighth Dealer How can that be?

Heraclitus Why, he is one creed outside, and another inside. So remember, if you buy him, one of him is called Esoteric, and the other Exoteric.

Eighth Dealer And what has he to say for himself?

Heraclitus He has to say that there are three kinds of good: spiritual, corporeal, circumstantial,

Eighth Dealer There’s something a man can understand. How much is he?

Heraclitus Eighty pounds.

Eighth Dealer Eighty pounds is a long price.

Heraclitus Not at all, my dear sir, not at all. You see, there is some money with him, to all appearance. Snap him up before it is too late. Why, from him you will find out in no time how long a gnat lives, to how many fathoms’ depth the sunlight penetrates the sea, and what an oyster’s soul is like.

Eighth Dealer Heracles! Nothing escapes him.

Heraclitus Ah, these are trifles. You should hear some of his more abstruse speculations, concerning generation and birth and the development of the embryo; and his distinction between man, the laughing creature, and the ass, which is neither a laughing nor a carpentering nor a shipping creature.

Eighth Dealer Such knowledge is as useful as it is ornamental. Eighty pounds be it, then.

Heraclitus He is yours,

Zeus What have we left?

Heraclitus There is Scepticism. Come along, Pyrrhias, and be put up. Quick’s the word. The attendance is dwindling; there will be small competition. Well, who buys Lot 9?

Ninth Dealer I. Tell me first, though, what do you know?

Scepticism Nothing.

Ninth Dealer But how’s that?

Scepticism There does not appear to me to de anything.

Ninth Dealer Are not we something?

Scepticism How do I know that?

Ninth Dealer And you yourself?

Scepticism Of that I am still more doubtful.

Ninth Dealer Well, you are in a fix! And what have you got those scales for?

Scepticism I use them to weigh arguments in, and get them evenly balanced, They must be absolutely equal—not a feather-weight to choose between them; then, and not till then, can I make uncertain which is right.

Ninth Dealer What else can you turn your hand to?

Scepticism Anything; except catching a runaway.

Ninth Dealer And why not that?

Scepticism Because, friend, everything eludes my grasp.

Ninth Dealer I believe you. A slow, lumpish fellow you seem to be. And what is the end of your knowledge?

Scepticism Ignorance. Deafness. Blindness.

Ninth Dealer What! sight and hearing both gone?

Scepticism And with them judgement and perception, and all, in short, that distinguishes man from a worm.

Ninth Dealer You are worth money!—What shall we say for him?

Heraclitus Four pounds.

Ninth Dealer Here it is, Well, fellow; so you are mine?

Scepticism I doubt it.

Ninth Dealer Nay, doubt it not! You are bought and paid for.

Scepticism It is a difficult case.... I reserve my decision.

Ninth Dealer Now, come along with me, like a good slave.

Scepticism But how am I to know whether what you say is true?

Ninth Dealer Ask the auctioneer. Ask my money. Ask the spectators.

Scepticism Spectators? But can we be sure there are any?

Ninth Dealer Oh, V'll send you to the treadmill. That will convince you with a vengeance that I am your master.

Scepticism Reserve your decision.

Ninth Dealer Too late. It is given.

Heraclitus Stop that wrangling and go with your purchaser. Gentlemen, we hope to see you here again to-morrow, when we shall be offering some lots suitable for plain men, artisans, and shopkeepers.