The Good Book (10 page)

15. ‘“For how shall the heart not grow new when there are words of scholarship to teach it, and poetry to delight it,

16. ‘“And comedy to bring it laughter, and stories of love to make it yearn, and books of sorrows to unburden the tears of things that lie waiting within us all?

17. ‘“The greatest joy is when you pluck a flower from this garden of bookshelves, and carry it into the garden you have planted by the river,

18. ‘“There in the summer evening to read even while the music of the water flows quietly around you.

19. ‘“Then shall desire for the good renew itself in you, and your heart will be rich with manifold delight.”

20. ‘This is what our sage Tibon wrote to his son; and the words are carved on the walls so that everyone can learn them by heart.’

21. Charicles was impressed by this, and at last looked forward to seeing the stranger’s homeland, which at first he had been so reluctant to visit.

Chapter 13

  1. Charicles said, ‘Now I am eager to visit your city on its hill, and its gardens, and to reading the wise words inscribed on its walls.

  2. ‘I was nervous to accompany you at first, a stranger; but you tell me good things; and the idea of gardens of flowers and books inspires me.’

  3. The stranger said, ‘In ancient Athens the philosophers thought out their best ideas walking up and down their groves; nature sobers us, and instructs us.

  4. ‘When we look up at the night sky we are giddied by its vastness, and the immense distance of the stars;

  5. ‘And when we look down the steeps of a mountain into the abyss below, we nearly fall;

  6. ‘And when the moon paints everything silver and white in the stillness of night, when all others sleep and only we ourselves wake, and are watchful and sad,

  7. ‘Then we hear the voice of thought, and come face to face with ourselves, with the brevity of life, with the lack of all we once had and have lost;

  8. ‘And yet, also, once we have been patient awhile and continued to listen, we come face to face with hope.

  9. ‘For we learn then, if we are brave, the power of mind, which is the greatest thing in man; of how, though man is small before nature, his mind can encompass all nature,

10. ‘In thinking of it, and singing about it, searching it in science, and celebrating it in poetry.

11. ‘So I think all the sages found both courage and modesty through the mind’s contact with nature, and these two things are the begetters of hope.

12. ‘Is there proof that they were right to hope? Well, only consider: it is many centuries since the first sages paced their groves, and their words and thoughts are with us today, and we speak of them;

13. ‘Though nature conquered their bodies and their bodies are dispersed into the elements once more, the fruit of their minds is with us still.

14. ‘I like to think of the philosophers walking in their groves. What a mistake it is to stop the child fidgeting (so they call it) over his book, for the body must be active as the mind learns.

15. ‘It would be best to teach children while walking in a meadow. You see the scholars swaying as they recite their texts; mind is part of the dance; let the body be active when the mind is active too.

16. ‘Though it is good to be in the kingdom of one’s library, walking with the greatest of the past in thought, it is good to take the thoughts thus acquired into the air,

17. ‘For though it is true that literature is the criticism of life, so is it also true that life is the criticism of learning.

18. ‘Another of the sayings written on our city walls is this: let the door to the library of the world open from the library of one’s books, and vice versa.’

Chapter 14

  1. Charicles listened with great interest to these words, for as a scholar himself he enjoyed nothing more than talk of such things. He said,

  2. ‘You speak as if you know the text which says that books teach us without rods or stripes, unlike the lessons taught by impatient schoolmasters;

  3. ‘Without taunts or anger, without gifts or money. Books are not asleep when we approach them,

  4. ‘Nor do they deny us when we question them, or chide us when we err, or laugh at our ignorance.

  5. ‘No one is ever ashamed of turning to a book. We might blush to admit ignorance to a fellow human, but never to a dictionary.

  6. ‘Books are the golden pots of manna, which feed our hunger.

  7. ‘There is the story of a starving man who called out for food at the city gate, and a kind man gave him a scroll of words, which he ate: and it tasted of honey.

  8. ‘For this reason the wise man might say, “Eat the book, and be refreshed.”

  9. ‘And he might further say, “Do not make your bookcase of acacia wood, covered with gold leaf, and doors of bevelled glass with mullions and a lock of brass;

10. ‘“But of plain wood, open to everyone who wishes to take down a volume and read.”’

11. The stranger replied, ‘These thoughts remind me of a story. There was a married couple in our city, who because they married young were poor to begin with, while both studied before finding their first jobs.

12. ‘They would go together to the bookstalls in the market every weekend, and look through the old torn books being sold cheaply,

13. ‘And sometimes were able to afford one, but more often might not be able to resist one, even if it meant no supper that night;

14. ‘But they did not feel hungry, because they had the book and could pore over it together, reading to each other by turns.

15. ‘As their careers progressed and they became richer, it was easier to buy books; they bought them new, several at a time;

16. ‘And many of the new books they bought lay unread, and were put on high shelves out of reach.

17. ‘And then they could afford rare and beautiful old books, which they locked in a glass case and never touched, so delicate was the embossed gold leaf, and so fragile the ancient paper smelling of spices and history.

18. ‘But one day the wife found one of the cheap old second-hand books they had bought with such excitement in their youthful days, and had read together with pleasure;

19. ‘And she wept to think what had passed and been lost.’

Chapter 15

  1. Charicles said, ‘You remind us that reading profits most when, beside the book, you have someone with whom to talk of it.

  2. ‘If it is the book’s author, good; if your teacher, better; if a friend, best of all.

  3. ‘The teacher knows he has succeeded when the pupil no longer needs him. But discussion between friends can never exhaust itself.

  4. ‘There is a saying: if you would study, find a fellow-student.

  5. ‘Those are wise words. Friendship made over a book is enduring, and a great solace.’

  6. The stranger said, ‘I would rather read a good book than meet its author. The best of him is, or should be, in the book; in person he might disappoint us, and ruin the book therefore.

  7. ‘Someone once said, “Respect the book, or you disrespect its author”;

  8. ‘But it is better to respect not the author but the best of his mind from which his book came.

  9. ‘In that way we respect an immortality, not a life; lives burden the earth, but a good book is the distillation of something excellent, captured and stored to a use beyond the daily and the passing.’

10. With these conversations and meditations the second day of journeying was passed as lightly as the first, and Charicles and the stranger came to another city, and sought out an inn.

Chapter 16

  1. Because he had had travelled two days in the saddle, Charicles was sore, and wondered aloud to the stranger as they settled for the night, why anyone should travel.

  2. The stranger said, ‘Some travel because they must, some because they will.

  3. ‘Some feel a destiny, which is in fact curiosity and restlessness, and of their own accord take long and arduous journeys.

  4. ‘Some love to live in the whole world, and the whole world often responds by refusing to give them anywhere to call their own.

  5. ‘And so they wander still; the wood pigeon has a nest, the fox her den, but the wanderer’s home is both nowhere and everywhere.

  6. ‘The wise of every culture have their views about how to travel. It is well said that they know nothing of their homelands who know only their homelands, which implies that to travel is to learn;

  7. ‘But there are those who travel, and who learn nothing. It is well said that at the farthest point of our journeyings what we meet is ourselves;

  8. ‘But there are those who leave themselves behind, and forget themselves enough to err in foreign places, because they believe they are nowhere that matters.

  9. ‘The wise say, do not travel with a fool. So the fool had better stay at home, because travel will increase his folly.

10. ‘When the wise travel they take note of customs, of people, of the way things are done differently.

11. ‘By the same token, to receive a traveller in one’s home country is an opportunity to hear news and to learn of far places.

12. ‘The ideal traveller is he who travels with no baggage but his thoughts, eager to learn, ready to speak of what he has seen,

13. ‘But never to speak with exaggeration or falsehood, keeping due respect for all differences and strangeness he has encountered,

14. ‘Knowing that he is himself strange to the stranger, and that he seems different to those who are different from himself.

15. ‘Such a traveller is never more at home than when far from home. He sees with clearer eyes than the rest of mankind what ruins have been made by man,

16. ‘And what works he can be praised for. When he crosses the mountains on his travels, he can see the coming dawn of peace, because he sees further than the rest.

17. ‘The good traveller brings the time of peace nearer. He builds bridges across the seas, he draws nations closer together,

18. ‘He shows men that there are many ways of living and loving. He teaches them tolerance,

19. ‘He humanises them by being a brother to them even though he is a stranger in their midst.’

Chapter 17

  1. As they set forward on the third day of their journey, the stranger said, ‘Will you carry me, or shall I carry you?’

  2. Charicles replied, ‘I will carry you, with another story of a cunning animal;

  3. ‘Not the fox this time, but the monkey, whose tricks teach us more about men than men can teach us about monkeys.’ The story went as follows.

  4. A crocodile and a monkey were friends, and the monkey lived in a tree not far from the stream where the crocodile lived with his wife.

  5. The monkey ate nuts that he picked from the treetops, and daily gave some to the crocodile; and the crocodile relished them greatly.

  6. One day the crocodile took some of the nuts home to his wife, and she found them excellent.

  7. She asked, ‘Who gave these to you?’ so he told her of the monkey.

  8. She said, ‘If the monkey feeds on such ambrosial nuts, his heart must be ambrosia itself, for there the essence of these nuts will be collected.

  9. ‘Bring him to me so that I can tear him and eat his heart; a dinner such as that would give me more pleasure than anything I have experienced in my life.’

10. The crocodile refused to bring his friend the monkey to his wife, so one day when he was away in another part of the river, his wife summoned the hyena, and explained her desire to him, saying,

11. ‘If you will catch the monkey who is my husband’s friend, and bring him to me alive, I will give you anything you ask by way of reward.’

12. So the hyena went and lay in wait for the monkey, and after several days of patience succeeded in catching him in his powerful jaws.

13. At first the monkey thought he was going to be eaten by the hyena, but when he perceived that the hyena was carrying him along he asked, ‘Where are you taking me?’

14. In a muffled voice the hyena said, ‘The crocodile’s wife wants you, for she wishes to eat your heart, which she thinks must be ambrosia because of the nuts you eat.’

15. At this the monkey began to laugh, to the hyena’s annoyance; he said to the monkey, ‘Why are you laughing? You are just about to have your heart eaten by the crocodile’s wife; how is that an amusing fate?’

16. The monkey said, ‘The crocodile’s wife is going to be very disappointed, and at the same time very angry with you;

17. ‘For you forgot to make sure that I had my heart with me when you caught me.’

18. The hyena stopped in puzzlement at this. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘Have you not got your heart with you?’

19. ‘No,’ said the monkey. ‘We monkeys always leave our hearts at home, for otherwise we would be too afraid to go swinging in the trees, so high up from the ground. Did you not know that?’