Vitarum auctio

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?